LIBRARY UNIv :>l!:iTYOF CALirO.".N!A , masb's ©veat mopcl XtDrarg UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE Nash*s Great Novel Library THE FOUR FEATHERS By A. E. W. Mason. RODNEY STONE By A. Conan Doyle. TRISTRAM OF BLENT By Anthony Hope. RED POTTAGE By Mary Cholmondeley. ALMAYER'S FOLLY By Joseph Conrad. IN KEDAR'S TENTS By Henry Seton Merriman. UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE By Thomas Hardy. THE BLUE LAGOON By H. de Vera Sttcpcole. ANN VERONICA By H. G. Wells. QUINNEYS' By Horace Annesley Vachell. THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE By Robert Louis Stevenson. THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF By Stanley Weyman. THE WOMAN WITH THE FAN By Robert Hichens. THE GUARDED FLAME By W. B. Maxwell. THE SECRET WOMAN By Eden Phillpotts. SHE By H. Rider Haggard. /;V PREPARATION. THE REFUGEES By A. Conan Doyle. THE GATELESS BARRIER By Lucas Malet. THE DEEMSTER By Hall Caine. UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE OR THE MELLSTOCK QUIRE A RURAL PAINTING OF THE DUTCH SCHOOL By THOMAS HARDY London EVELEIGH NASH & GRAYSON LTD. 148, Strand '"^' ftKlfc" I CONTENTS. Part I. Minitt. CHAP. I. Mellstock-lanb rAOK X u. The Tranter's . ► . 8 III. The assembled Choir . 21 IV. Going the Rounds . . 33 V. The Listeners . . 44 VI. Christmas Morning . . 56 VII. The Tranter's Party . 70 VIII. They dance more wildly . . 84 IX. Dick oaixs at the School • 4 . 103 Part II. jjpnng. I. Passing by the School . u. A Meeting of the Choir . 108 109 vi CONTENTS, HI. A Turn in the Discussion IV. The Interview with the Vicar V. Eeturning Homeward vj. Yalbury Wood and the Keeper's House VII. Dick makes himself Useful . VIII. Dick meets his Father . Part III. ^ujumer, I. Driving out of Budmouth II. Farther along the Eoad III. A Confession . IV. An Arrangement . 119 128 148 153 173 182 196 205 217 227 Part IY. g^ufunm. I. Going ;N"utting . . » • #233 II. Honey-taking, and Afterwards . •245 III. Fancy in the Eain . . * , ,264 IV. The Spell 271 V. After gaining her Point . • • 280 VL Into Temptation 288 VII. A Crisis . . . • • • • 298 CONTENTS. vu Part V. CoJTtlttgrott. CHAP. PlOB I. * The Knot there's no Untying' , . 30? II. Under the Greenwood Treb , • • 33^ UNDER TEE GREENWOOD TRER Part I. WiivdJ^X, Chapter I. Mellstook-lanb. To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze, the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock ; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall. And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality. On a cold and starry Christmas-eve less than a generation ago, a man was passing along a lane in the darkness of a plantation 2 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. that whispered thus distinctively to his in- telligence. All the evidences of his nature were those afforded by the spirit of his foot- steps, which succeeded each other lightly and quickly, and by the liveliness of his voice as he sang in a rural cadence : * With the rose and the lily And the daffodowndilly, The lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go.* The lonely lane he was following con- nected the hamlets of Mellstock and Lew- gate, and to his eyes, casually glancing up- ward, the silver and black-stemmed birches with their characteristic tufts, the pale gray boughs of oak, the dark-creviced elm, all appeared now as black and flat outlines upon the sky, wherein the white stars twinkled so vehemently that their flickering seemed like the flapping of wings. Within the woody pass, at a level anything lower than the horizon, all was dark as the grave. The copsewood forming the sides of the boAver interlaced its branches so densely, even at this season of the year, that the draught from the north-east flew along the MELLSTOCK-LANE. channel with scarcely an interruption from lateral breezes. At the termination of the wood, the white surface of the lane revealed itself be- tween the dark hedgerows, like a ribbon jagged at the edges ; the irregularity being caused by temporary accumulations of leaves extending from the ditch on either side. The song (many times interrupted by flitting thoughts which took the place of several bars, and resumed at a point it would have reached had its continuity been unbroken) now received a more palpable check, in the shape of ^ Ho-i-i-i-i-i I' from the dark part of the lane in the rear of the singer, who had just emerged from the trees. * Ho-i-i-i-i-i I* he answered with uncon- cern, stopping and looking round, though with no idea of seeing anything more than imagination pictured. * Is that thee, young Dick Dewy ?' came from the darkness. ' Ay, sure, Michael Mail.* ' Then why not stop for fellow-craters — 4 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. going to tliy own father's house too, as we be, and knowen us so well?' Young Dick Dewy faced about and con- tinued his tune in an under-whistle, imply- ino; that the business of his mouth could not be checked at a moment's notice by the placid emotion of friendship. Having escaped both trees and hedge, he could now be distinctly seen rising against the sky, his profile appearing on the light background like the portrait of a gentleman in black cardboard. It assumed the form of a low-crowned hat, an ordi- nary-shaped nose, an ordinary chin, an ordi- nary neck, and ordinary shoulders. What he consisted of farther down was invisible from lack of sky low enough to picture him on. Shuffling, halting, irregular footsteps of various kinds were now heard, coming up the hill from the dark interior of the grove, and presently there emerged severally five men of different ages and gaits, all of them working villagers of the parish of Mellstock. They too had lost their rotundity with the daylight, and advanced against the sky ii^ MELLSTOCK-LANE. flat outlines, like some procession in Assy- rian or Egyptian incised work. They repre- sented the chief portion of Mellstock parish choir. The first was a bowed and bent man, who carried a fiddle under his arm, and walked as if engaged in studying some sub- ject connected with the surface of the road. He was Michael Mail, the man who had hallooed to Dick. The next was Mr. Robert Penny, boot- and shoe-maker ; a little man, who, though rather round-shouldered, walked as if that fact had not come to his own knowledge, moving on with his back very hollow and his face fixed on the north quarter of the heavens before him, so that his lower waist- coat-buttons came first, and then the re- mainder of his figure. His features were invisible ; yet when he occasionally looked round, two faint moons of light gleamed for an instant from the precincts of his eyes, denoting that he wore spectacles of a circu- lar form. The third was Elias Spinks, who walked 6 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, perpendicularly and dramatically. The fourth outline was that of Joseph Bo^vman, who had now no distinctive appearance be- yond that of a human being. Finally came a weak lath-like form, trotting and stumb- ling along with one shoulder forward and his head inclined to the left, his arms dang- ling nervelessly in the wind as if they were empty sleeves. This was Thomas Leaf. * Where be the boys?' said Dick to this somewhat indifferently-matched assembly. The eldest of the group, Michael Mail, cleared his throat from a great depth. ' We told them to keep back at home for a time, thinken they wouldn't be wanted yet awhile ; and we could choose the tuens, and so on.' ' Father and grandfather William have expected ye a little sooner. I have just been for a run to warm my feet.' *To be sure father did I To be sure a did expect us — to taste the little barrel beyond compare that he's going to tap.' ' 'Od rabbit it all ! Never heard a word of it P said Mr. Penny, small gleams of de- MELLSTOCK-LANE, light appearing upon his spectacle-glasses, Dick meanwhile singing parenthetically, * The lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go.' * Neighbours, there's time enough to drink a sight of drink now afore bedtime,' said Mail. 'Trew, trew — time enough to get as drunk as lords!' replied Bowman cheer- fuUy. This argument being convincing, they all advanced between the varying hedges and the trees dotting them here and there, kicking their toes occasionally among the crumpled leaves. Soon appeared glimmer- ing indications of the few cottages forming the small hamlet of Lewgate, for which they were bound, whilst the faint sound of church- bells ringing a Christmas peal could be heard floating over upon the breeze from the direction of Mintfield parish on the other side of the hills. A little wicket admitted them to a garden, and they pro- ceeded up the path to Dick's house. UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, CHAPTER 11. THE tranter's. It was a small low cottage with a thatclied pyramidal roof, and having dormer win- dows breaking up into the eaves, a single chimney standing in the very midst. The window-shutters were not yet closed, and the fire- and candle-light within radiated forth upon the bushes of variegated box and thick laurestinus growing in a throng out- side, and upon the bare boughs of several codlin-trees hanging about in various dis- torted shapes, the result of early training as espaliers, combined with careless climbing into their boughs in later years. The walls of the dwelling were for the most part covered with creepers, though these were rather beaten back from the doorway — a feature which was worn and scratched by much passing in and out, giving it by day the appearance of an old keyhole. Light streamed through the cracks and joints of a wooden shed at the end of the cottage, a sight THE TRANTERS, which nourished a fancy that the purpose of the erection must be rather to veil bright attractions than to shelter unsightly neces- saries. The noise of a beetle and wedges and the splintering of wood was periodically heard from this direction ; and at the other end of the house a steady regular munch- ing and the occasional scurr of a rope be- tokened a stable, and horses feeding with- in it. The choir stamped severally on the door- stone to shake from their boots any frag- ment of dirt or leaf adhering thereto, then entered the house, and looked around to survey the condition of things. Through the open doorway of a small inner room on the left hand, of a character between pantry and cellar, was Dick Dewy^s father, Reuben, by vocation a 'tranter,^ or irregu- lar carrier. He was a stout florid man about forty years of age, who surveyed people up and down when first making their acquaint- ance, and generally smiled at the horizon or other distant object during conversa- tions with friends, walking about with a lo UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. steady sway, and turning out his toes very considerably. Being now occupied in bend- ing over a hogshead, that stood in the pan- try ready horsed for the process of broach- ing, he did not take the trouble to turn or raise his eyes at the entry of his visitors, well knowing by their footsteps that they were the expected old acquaintance. The main room, on the right, was decked with bunches of holly and other evergreens, and from the middle of the huge beam bi- secting the ceiling hung the mistletoe, of a size out of all proportion to the room, and extending so low that it became necessary for a full-grown person to walk round it in passing, or run the risk of entangling his hair. This apartment contained Mrs. Dewy the tranter's wife, and the four remaining children, Susan, Jim, Bessy, and Charley, graduating uniformly though at wide stages from the age of sixteen to that of four years — the eldest of the series being separated from Dick the firstborn by a nearly equal interval. Some circumstance having apparently THE TRANTERS. ii caused much grief to Charley just previous to the entry of the choir, he had absently taken down a looking-glass, and was holding it before his face to see how the human countenance appeared when engaged in crying, which survey led him to pause at the various points in each wail that were more than ordinarily striking, for a more thorough appreciation of the general effect. Bessy was leaning against a chair, and glancing under the plaits about the waist of the plaid frock she wore, to notice the original unfaded pattern of the material as there preserved, her face bearing an ex- pression of regret that the brightness had passed away from the visible portions. Mrs. Dewy sat in a brown settle by the side of the glowing wood fire — so glowing that with a doubting compression of the lips she would now and then rise and put her hand upon the hams and flitches of bacon lining the chimney, to reassure herself that they were not being broiled instead of smoked, — a misfortune that had been known to happen at Christmas-time. 12 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. * Hullo, my sonnies, here you be, then !' said Reuben Dewy at length, standing up and blowing forth a vehement gust of breath. * How the blood do puff up in anybody's head, to be sure, stooping like that ! I was just coming athwart to hunt ye out.' He then carefully began to wind a strip of brown paper round a brass tap he held in his hand. ' This in the cask here is a drop o' the right sort' (tapping the cask) ; ' 'tis a real drop o' cordial from the best picked apples — Horner's and Cadbury's — you d'mind the sort, Michael ?' (Michael nodded.) ^ And there's a sprinkling of they that grow down by the orchard - rails — streaked ones — rail apples we d'call 'em, as 'tis by the rails they grow, and not know- ing the right name. The water-cider from 'em is as good as most people's best cider is.' 'Ay, and of the same make too,' said Bowman. 'It rained when we wrung it out, and the water got into it, folk wiU say. But 'tis on'y an excuse. Watered cider is too common among us.' ' Yes, yes ; too common it is !' said Spinks THE TRANTERS. 13 with an inward sigh, whilst his eyes seemed to be looking at the world in an abstract form rather than at the scene before him. ' Such poor liquor makes a man's throat feel very melancholy — and is a disgrace to the name of stimmilent.' ' Come in, come in, and draw up to the fire; never mind your shoes,' said Mrs. Dewy, seeing that all except Dick had paused to wipe them upon the door-mat. * I be glad that youVe stepped up-along at last; and, Susan, you run across to Gam- mer Caytes's and see if you can borrow some larger candles than these fourteens. Tommy Leaf, don't ye be afeardi Come and sit here in the settle.' This was addressed to the young man before mentioned, consisting chiefly of a human skeleton and a smock-frock, and who was very awkward in his movements, ap- parently on account of having grown so very fast, that before he had had time to get used to his height he was higher. ' Hee— hee — ay !* replied Leaf, letting Jiis mouth continue to smile for some time 14 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. after his mind had done smiling, so that his teeth remained in view as the most conspi- cuous members of his body. ' Here, Mr. Penny,' continued Mrs. Dewy, 'you sit in this chair. And how's your daughter, Mrs. Brownjohn?' ' Well, I suppose I must say pretty fair,' adjusting his spectacles a quarter of an inch to the right. ' But she'll be worse before she's better, 'a b'lieve.' ' Indeed — poor soul ! And how many will that make in all, four or five?* * Five ; they've buried three. Yes, five ; and she no more than a maid yet. How- ever, 'twas to be, and none can gainsay it.' Mrs. Dewy resigned Mr. Penny. ' Won- der where your grandfather James is ?' she inquired of one of the children. * He said he'd drop in to-night.* * Out in fuel -house with grandfather William,' said Jimmy. * Now let's see what we can do,' was heard spoken about this time by the tranter in a private voice to the barrel, beside THE TRANTERS. Which he had again established himself) and was stooping to cut away the cork. * Reuben, don t make such a mess o* tapping that barrel as is mostly made in this house,' Mrs. Dewy cried from the fire- place. ' I'd tap a hundred without wasting more than you do in one. Such a squizzling and squirting job as *tis in your hands. There, he always was such a clumsy man indoors.' ^ Ay, ay ; I know you'd tap a hundred, Ann — I know you would; two hundred, perhaps. But I can't promise. This is a old cask, and the wood's rotted away about the tap-hole. The husbird of a feller Sam Lawson — that ever I should call'n such, now he's dead and gone, pore old heart ! — took me in completely upon the feat of buying this cask. " Reub," says he — 'a always used to call me plain Reub, pore old heart I — '^ Reub," he said, says he, ''that there cask, Reub, is as good as new; yes, good as new. 'Tis a wine-hogshead; the best port- wine in the commonwealth have been in that there cask ; and you shall have i6 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, en for ten shillens, Reub," — \ said, says he — "he's worth twenty, ay, five -and - twenty, if he's worth one; and an iron hoop or two put round en among the wood ones will make en worth thirty shillens of any man's money, if — " ' *I think I should have used the eyes that Providence gave me to use afore I paid any ten shillens for a jimcrack wine-barrel ; a saint is sinner enough not to be cheated. But 'tis like all your family were, so easy to be deceived.' ' That's as true as gospel of this mem- ber,' said Reuben. Mrs. Dewy began a smile at the ans- wer, then altering her lips and re-folding them so that it was not a smile, commenced smoothing little Bessy's hair ; the tranter having meanwhile suddenly become oblivi- ous to conversation, occupying himself in a deliberate cutting and arrangement of some more brown paper for the broaching oper- ation. ' Ah, who can believe sellers !' said oW Michael Mail in a carefully-cautious voice, THE TRANTERS. 17 by way of tiding-over this critical point of affairs. ' No one at all,' said Joseph Bowman, in the tone of a man fully agreeing with everybody. * Ay/ said Mail, in the tone of a man who did not agree with everybody as a rule, though he did now; 'I knowed an auctioneering feller once — a very friendly feller 'a was too. And so one day as I was walking down the front street of Caster- bridge, I passed a shop-door and see him inside, stuck upon his perch, a-selling off. I jest nodded to en in a friendly way as I passed, and went my way, and thought no more about it. Well, next day, as I was oilen my boots by fuel-house door, if a letter didn't come wi' a bill in en, charging me with a feather-bed, bolster, and pillers, that I had bid for at Mr. Taylor's sale. The slim-faced martel had knocked 'em down to me because I nodded to en in my friendly way ; and I had to pay for 'em too. Now, I hold that that was cutting it very close, Reuben?' i8 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ' 'Twas close, there's no denying/ said the general voice. ' Too close, 'twas,* said Reuben, in the rear of the rest. * And as to Sam Lawson —pore heart ! now he's dead and gone too ! — I'll warrant, that if so be I Ve spent one hour in making hoops for that barrel, I've spent fifty, first and last. That's one of my hoops' — touching it with his elbow — * that's one of mine, and that, and that, and all these.' ' Ah, Sam was a man !' said Mr. Penny, looking contemplatively at a small stool. ' Sam was I' said Bowman, shaking his head t^vice. ' Especially for a drap o' drink,' said the tranter. *Good, but not religious -good,' sug- gested Mr. Penny. The tranter nodded. Having at last made the tap and hole quite ready, ' Now then, Suze, bring a mug,' he said. * Here's luck to us, my sonnies !' The tap went in, and the cider imme- diately squirted out in a horizontal shower THE TRANTERS. 19 over Reuben's hands, knees, and leggings, and into the eyes and neck of Charley, who, having temporarily put off his grief undei pressure of more interesting proceedings, was squatting down and blinking near his father. ' There 'tis again !' said Mrs. Dewy. ' D — 1 take the hole, the cask, and Sam Lawson too, that good cider should be wasted like this !' exclaimed the tranter excitedly. ' Your thumb ! Lend me your thumb, Michael ! Ram it in here, Michael ! I must get a bigger tap, my sonnies.' 'Idd it cold inthide te hole?' inquired Charley of Michael, as he continued in a stooping posture with his thumb in the cork- hole. 'What wonderful odds and ends that chiel has in his head to be sure !' Mrs. Dewy admiringly exclaimed from the distance. * I lay a wager that he cares more about the climate inside that barrel than in all the other parts of the world put together.' All persons present put on a speaking countenance of admiration for the cleverness 20 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. alluded to, in the midst of which Reuben returned. The operation was then satisfac- torily performed ; when Michael arose, and stretched his head to the extremest fraction of height that his body would allow of, to restraighten his bent back and shoulders — thrusting out his arms and twisting his fea- tures to a mere mass of wrinkles at the same time, to emphasise the relief acquired. A quart or two of the beverage was then brought to table, at which all the new arri- vals reseated themselves with wide- spread knees, their eyes meditatively seeking out with excruciating precision any small speck or knot in the table upon which the gaze might precipitate itself. * What ever is father a-biding out in fuel- house so long for ?' said the tranter. * Never such a man as father for two things — cleav- ing up old dead apple-tree wood and play- ing the bass-viol. 'A'd pass his life between the two, that ^a would.* He stepped to the door and opened it. * Father!' * Ay !' rang thinly from round the corner. THE ASSEMBLED CHOIR. 21 ' Here's the barrel tapped, and we all a- waiting !' A series of dull thuds, that had been heard through the chimney-back for some time past, now ceased ; and after the light of a lantern had passed the window and made wheeling rays upon the ceiling inside, the eldest of the Dewy family appeared. CHAPTER ni. THE ASSEMBLED CHOIR. William Dewy — otherwise grandfather William — was now about seventy; yet an ardent vitality still preserved a warm and roughened bloom upon his face, which re- minded gardeners of the sunny side of a ripe ribstone-pippin ; though a narrow strip of forehead, that was protected from the weather by lying above the line of his hat- brim, seemed to belong to some town man, so gentlemanly was its whiteness. His was a humorous and gentle nature, not unmixed with a frequent melancholy ; and he had a 22 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, firm religious faith. But to his neighbours he had no character in particular. If they saw him pass by their windows when they had been bottling off old mead, or when they had just been called long-headed men who might do anything in the world if they chose, they thought concerning him, *Ah, there^s that good-hearted man — open as a child !* If they saw him just after losing a shilling or half-a-crown, or accidentally let- ting fall a piece of crockery, they thought, * There^s that poor weak-minded man Dewy again! Ah, hell never do much in the world either!' If he passed when fortune neither smiled nor frowned on them, they merely thought him old William Dewy. *Ah, so's—here you be! — Ah, Michael and Joseph and John — and you too, Leaf! a merry Christmas all ! We shall have a rare log- wood fire directly, Reub, if it d'go by the toughness of the job I had in cleaving 'em.' As he spoke he threw down an armful of logs, which fell in the chimney-corner with a rumble, and looked at them with some- thing of the admiring enmity he would THE ASSEMBLED CHOIR. 23 have bestowed on living people who had been very obstinate in holding their own. * Come in, grandfather James.* Old James (grandfather on the maternal side) had simply called as a visitor. He lived in a cottage by himself, and many people considered him a miser : some, rather slovenly in his habits. He now came for- ward from behind grandfather William, and his stooping figure formed a well-illumi- nated picture as he passed towards the fire- place. Being by trade a mason, he wore a long linen apron reaching almost to his toes, corduroy breeches and gaiters, which, together with his boots, graduated in tints of whitish-brown by constant friction against lime and stone. He also wore a very stifi^ fustian coat, having folds at the elbows and shoulders as unvarying in their arrange- ment as those in a pair of bellows: the ridges and the projecting parts of the coat collectively exhibiting a shade different from that of the hollows, which were lined with small ditch-like accumulations of stone and mortar-dust. The extremely large side- 24 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. pockets, sheltered beneath wide flaps, bulged out convexly whether empty or full; and as he was often engaged to work at build- ings far away — his breakfasts and dinners being eaten in a strange chimney-corner, by a garden wall, on a heap of stones, or walking along the road — he carried in these pockets a small tin canister of butter, a small canister of sugar, a small canister of tea, a paper of salt, and a paper of pepper ; the bread, cheese, and meat, forming the substance of his meals, hanging up behind him in his basket among the hammers and chisels. If a passer-by looked hard at him when he was drawing forth any of these, — ' My larders,* he said, with a pinched smile. ' Better try over number seventy-eight before we start, I suppose ?' said William, pointing to a heap of old Chrismas- carol books on a side table. ' Wi' all my heart,' said the choir gene- rally. ' Number seventy-eight was always a teaser — always. I can mind him ever since I was growing up a hard boy-chap/ 777^ ASSEMBLED CHOIR. 25 ' But he's a good tune, and worth a mint o' practice/ said Michael. 'He is ; though I've been mad enough wi' that tune at times to seize en and tear en all to linnet. Ay, he's a splendid carrel — there's no denying that.^ ' The first line is well enough,' said Mr. Spinks ; ' but when you come to "0, thou man," you make a mess o't.' ' We'll have another go into en, and see what we can make of the martel. Half an hour's hammering at en mil conquer the toughness of en; I'll warn it.' ' 'Od rabbit it all !' said Mr. Penny, in- terrupting with a flash of his spectacles, and at the same time clawing at something in the depths of a large side-pocket. ' If so be I hadn't been as scatter-brained and thirtingill as a chiel, I should have called at the schoolhouse wi' a boot as I cam up- along. What ever is coming to me I really can't estimate at all !' *The brain hev its weaknesses,' mur- mured Mr. Spinks, waving his head omin- ously. 26 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. 'Well, I must call with en the first thing to-morrow. And I'll empt my pocket o' this last too, if you don't mind, Mrs. Dewy.' He drew forth a last, and placed it on a table at his elbow. The eyes of three or four followed it. * Well,' said the shoemaker, seeming to perceive that the sum-total of interest the object had excited was greater than he had anticipated, and warranted the last's being taken up again and exhibited, ' now, whose foot do ye suppose this last was made for ? It was made for Geoffrey Day's father, over at Yalbury Wood. Ah, many's the pair o' boots he've had off the last ! Well, when 'a died, I used the last for Geoffrey, and have ever since, though a little doctoring was wanted to make it do. Yes, a very quaint humorous last it is now, 'a b'lieve,^ he con- tinued, turning it over caressingly. ^Now, you notice that there' (pointing to a lump of leather bradded to the toe) — 'that's a very bad bunion that he've had ever since 'a was a boy. Now, this remarkable large piece' (pointing to a patch nailed to the side) THE ASSEMBLED CHOIR. 2J * shows an accident he received by the tread of a horse, that squashed his foot a most to a pomace. The horseshoe cam full- butt on this point, you see. And so I've just been over to Geoffrey's, to know if he wanted his bunion altered or made bigger in the new pair I'm making/ During the latter part of this speech, Mr. Penny's left hand wandered towards the cider-cup, as if the hand had no connec- tion with the person speaking ; and bring- ing his sentence to an abrupt close, all but the extreme margin of the bootmaker's face was eclipsed by the circular brim of the vessel. 'However, I was going to say,' con- tinued Penny, putting down the cup, ' I ought to have called at the school' — here he went groping again in the depths of his pocket — ' to leave this without fail, though I suppose the first thing to-morrow will do.' He now drew forth and placed upon the table a boot — small, light, and prettily shaped — upon the heel of which he had been operating. ' The new schoolmistress's !' 28 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, 'Ay, no less; Miss Fancy Day: as nate a little figure of fun as ever I see, and just husband-high/ * Never Geoffrey's daughter Fancy ?' said Bowman, as all glances present converged like wheel-spokes upon the boot in the centre of them. 'Yes, sure,' resumed Mr. Penny, regard- ing the boot as if that alone were his audi- tor ; ' 'tis she that's come here schoolmis- tress. You knowed his daughter was in training ?' 'Strange, isn't it, for her to be here Christmas-night, Master Penny ?' ' Yes ; but here she is, 'a b'lieve.' ' I know how she d'come here — so I do !* chirruped one of the children. 'Why?' Dick inquired, with subtle in- terest. ' Parson Maybold was afraid he couldn't manage us all to-morrow at the dinner, and he talked o* getting her jist to come over and help him hand about the plates, and see we didn't make beasts of ourselves ; and tb?it'g what sbe'apome for!' THE ASSEMBLED CHOIR. 29 ' And that's the boot, then/ continued it3 mender imaginatively, Hhat she'll walk to church in to-moirow morning. I don't care to mend boots I don't make ; but there's no knowing what it may lead to, and her father always comes to me.' There, between the cider-mug and the candle, stood this interesting receptacle of the little unknown's foot ; and a very pretty boot it was. A character, in fact — the flexi- ble bend at the instep, the rounded locali- ties of the small nestling toes, scratches from careless scampers now forgotten — all, as repeated in the tell-tale leather, evi- dencing a nature and a bias. Dick surveyed it with a delicate feeling that he had no right to do so without having first asked the owner of the foot's permission. * Now, naibours, though no common eye can see it,* the shoemaker went on, ' a man in the trade can see the likeness between this boot and that last, although that is so deformed as hardly to be called one of God's creatures, and this is one of as pretty a pair as you'd get for ten- and- sixpence in 30 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. Casterbridge. To you, nothing ; but 'tis father's foot and daughter's foot to me, as plain as houses.' ' I don't doubt there's a likeness, Master Penny — a mild likeness — a far-remote like- ness — still, a likeness as far as that goes,' said Spinks. ' But / haven't imagination enough to see it, perhaps.' Mr. Penny adjusted his spectacles. 'Now, I'll tell you what happened to me once on this very point. You used to know Johnson the dairyman, William ? ' Ay, sure ; that I did.' 'Well, 'twasn't opposite his house, but a little lower down — by his pigsty, in front o' Parkmaze Pool. I was a- walking down the lane, and lo and behold, there was a man just brought out o' the Pool, dead; he had been bathing, and gone in flop over his head. Men looked at en ; women looked at en ; children looked at en ; nobody knowed en. He was covered in a cloth; but I catched sight of his foot, just showing out as they carried en along. " I don't care what name that man went by," I said, in my THE ASSEMBLED CHOIR. 31 bold way, " but he's John Woodward's bro- ther ; I can swear to the family foot." At that very moment, up comes John Wood- ward, weeping and crying, "I've lost my brother ! I've lost my brother !" ' ' Only to think of that !' said Mrs. Dewy. * 'Tis well enough to know this foot and that foot,' said Mr. Spinks. ' 'Tis some- thing, in fact, as far as that goes. I know little, 'tis true — I say no more; but show me a man's foot, and I'll tell you that man s heart.' ' You must be a cleverer feller, then, than mankind in jineral,' said the tranter. 'Well, that's nothing for me to speak of,' returned Mr. Spinks solemnly. ^ A man acquires. Maybe I've read a leaf or two in my time. I don't wish to say anything large, mind you ; but nevertheless, maybe I have.* ' Yes, I know,' said Michael soothingly, 'and all the parish knows, that yeVe read something of everything almost. Learning's a worthy thing, and yeVe got it. Master Spinks.' 32 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. * I make no boast, though I may have read and thought a little; and I know — it may be from much perusing, but I make no boast — that by the time a man's head is finished, 'tis almost time for him to creep underground. I am over forty-five/ Mr. Spinks emitted a look to signify that if his head was not finished, nobody's head ever could be. * Talk of knowing people by their feet 1* said Reuben. ' Rot me, my sonnies, then, if I can tell what a man is from all his members put together, oftentimes.' ' But still, look is a good deal,' observed grandfather William absently, moving and balancing his head till the tip of grand- father James's nose was exactly in a right line with William's eye and the mouth of a miniature cavern he was discerning in the fire. ' By the way,' he continued in a fresher voice, and looking up, ' that young crater, the schoolmistress, must be sung to to- night wi' the rest? If her ear is as fine as her face, we shall have enough to do to be up-sides with her.' GOING THE ROUNDS. 33 'What about her face?' said young Dewy. ' Well, as to that/ Mr. Spinks replied, * 'tis a face you can hardly gainsay. A very good face — and a pink face, as far as that goes. Still, only a face, when all is said and done.' ' Come, come, Elias Spinks, say she's a pretty maid, and have done wi' her,' said the tranter, again preparing to visit the cider-barrel. CHAPTER IV. GOING THE BOUNDS. Shortly after ten o'clock, the singing- boys arrived at the tranter s house, which was invariably the place of meeting, and prepa- rations were made for the start. The older men and musicians wore thick coats, with stiff perpendicular collars, and coloured handl^erchiefs wound round and round the neck till the end came to han-d, over all which they just showed their ears and noses, like people looking over a wall. The 34 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. remainder, stalwart ruddy men and boys, were mainly dressed in snow-white smock- frocks, embroidered upon the shoulders and breasts, in ornamental forms of hearts, diamonds, and zigzags. The cider -mug was emptied for the ninth time, the music-books were arranged and the pieces finally decided upon. The boys in the mean time put the old horn-lanterns in order, cut candles into short lengths to fit the lanterns ; and a thin fleece of snow having fallen since the early part of the evening, those who had no leg- gings went to the stable and wound wisps of hay round their ankles to keep the insi- dious flakes from the interior of their boots. Mellstock was a parish of considerable acreage, the hamlets composing it lying at a much greater distance from each other than is ordinarily the case. Hence several hours were consumed in playing and sing- ing within hearing of every family, even if but a single air were bestowed on each. There was East MeUstock, the main village ; half a mile from this were the church and the vicarage, called West Mellstock, and GOING THE ROUNDS. 35 originally the most thickly - populated portion. A mile north-east lay the hamlet of Lewgate, where the tranter lived; and at other points knots of cottages, besides solitary farmsteads and dairies. Old William Dewy, with the violoncello, played the bass ; his grandson Dick the treble violin ; and Eeuben and Michael Mail the tenor and second violins respectively. The singers consisted of four men and seven boys, upon whom devolved the task of carrying and attending to the lanterns, and holding the books open for the players. Directly music was the theme, old William ever and instinctively came to the front. * Now mind, naibours,' he said, as they all went out one by one at the door, he himself holding it ajar and regarding them with a critical face as they passed, like a shepherd counting out his sheep. ' You two counter- boys, keep your ears open to Michael's fin- gering, and don't ye go straying into the treble part along o' Dick and his set, as ye did last year ; and mind this especially when we be in " Arise^ and hail." Billy Chimlen, 36 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. don't you sing quite so raving mad as you fain would ; and, all o' ye, whatever ye do, keep from making a great scuffle on the ground when we go in at people's gates; but go quietly, so as to strik' up all of a sudden, like spirits.' ' Farmer Ledlow's first?* 'Farmer Ledlow's first; the rest as usual.' 'And, Voss,' said the tranter termina- tively, ' you keep house here till about half- past two ; then heat the metheglin and cider in the warmer you'll find turned up upon the copper; and bring it wi' the victuals to church-porch, as th'st know.' Just before the clock struck twelve, they lighted the lanterns and started. The moon, in her third quarter, had risen since the snow-storm ; but the dense accumulation of snow- cloud weakened her power to a faint twilight, which was rather pervasive of the landscape than traceable to the sky. The breeze had gone down, and the rustle of their feet, aud tones of tbeir speech, echoed GOING THE ROUNDS. 37 with an alert rebound from every post, boundary-stone, and ancient wall they passed, even where the distance of the echo's oriorin was less than a few yards. Beyond their own slight noises nothing was to be heard, save the occasional howl of foxes in the direction of Yalbury Wood, or the brush of a rabbit among the grass now and then, as it scampered out of their way. Most of the outlying homesteads and hamlets had been visited by about two o'clock : they then passed across the Home Plantation to^vard the main village. Pur- suing no recognised track, great care was necessary in walking lest their faces should come in contact with the low -hanging boughs of the old trees, which in many spots formed dense overgrowths of inter- laced branches. 'Times have changed from the times they used to be,* said Mail, regarding no- body can tell what interesting old pano- ramas with an inward eye, and letting his outward glance rest on the ground, because it was as convenient a position as any. 38 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ' People don't care much about us now I 1 Ve been thinking, we must be almost the last left in the county of the old strinff players. Barrel-organs, and they next door to 'em that you blow wi' your foot, have come in terribly of late years.' *Ah!' said Bowman, shaking his head; and old William, on seeing him, did the same thing. ' More's the pity,' replied another. ' Time was — long and merry ago now ! — when not one of the varmits was to be heard of; but it served some of the choirs right. They should have stuck to strings as we did, and keep out clar'nets, and done away with ser- pents. If you'd thrive in musical religion, stick to strings, says I.^ * Strings are well enough, as far as that goes,' said Mr. Spink s. ' There's worse things than serpents,' said Mr. Penny. ' Old things pass away, 'tis true ; but a serpent was a good old note : a deep rich note was the serpent.' ' Clar'nets, however, be bad at all times,* said Michael Mail. ' One Christmas — years GOING THE ROUNDS. 39 agone now, years — I went the rounds wi* the Dibbeach choir. 'Twas a hard frosty night, and the keys of all the clar'nets froze — ah, they did freeze ! — so that 'twas like drawing a cork every time a key was opened ; the players o' 'em had to go into a hedger and ditcher s chimley-corner, and thaw their clar'nets every now and then. An icicle o' spet hung do^vn from the end of every man*s clar'net a span long ; and as to fingers — well, there, if ye'll believe me, we had no fingers at all, to our know- ledge.' 'I can well bring back to my mind,' said Mr. Penny, ' what I said to poor Joseph Ryme (who took the tribble part in High- Story Church for two-and-forty year) when they thought of having clar'nets there. "Joseph," I said, says I, '^depend upon't, if so be you have them tooting clar'nets you'll spoil the whole set-out. Clar'nets were not made for the service of Providence ; you can see it by looking at 'em," I said. And what cam o't? Why, my dear souls, the parson set up a barrel-organ on his own ac- 40 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. count within two years o' the time I spoke, and the old choir went to nothing/ *As far as look is concerned/ said the tranter, ' I don't for my part see that a fid- dle is much nearer heaven than a clar net. 'Tis farther off. There's always a rakish, scampish countenance about a fiddle that seems to say the Wicked One had a hand in making o'en; while angels be supposed to play clar'nets in heaven, or som'at like 'em, if ye may believe picters.' ' Robert Penny, you were in the right,' broke in the eldest Dewy. ' They should ha' stuck to strings. Your brass-man, is brass — well and good ; your reed-man, is reed — well and good; your percussion-man, is percussion — good again. But I don't care who hears me say it, nothing will speak to your heart wi' the sweetness of the man of strings !' ' Strings for ever !' said little Jimmy. ' Strings alone would have held their ground against all the new comers in crea- tion.' (' True, true I' said Bowman.) * But clar'nets was death.' ('Death they was !' said GOING THE ROUNDS. 41 Mr. Penny.) 'And harmoniums,' William continued in a louder voice, and getting excited by these signs of approval, ' har- moniums and barrel-organs' ('Ah I' and groans from Spinks) 'be miserable — what shall I call 'em ? — miserable — * ' Sinners,' suggested Jimmy, who made large strides like the men, and did not lag behind like the other little boys. ' Miserable machines for such a divine thing as music !' ' Right, William, and so they be !' said the choir with earnest unanimity. By this time they were crossing to a wicket in the direction of the school, which, standing on a slight eminence on the op- posite side of a cross lane, now rose in un- varying and dark flatness against the sky. The instruments were retuned, and all the band entered the enclosure, enjoined by old William to keep upon the grass. 'Number seventy -eight,' he softly gave oat as they termed round in a semicircle, the boys opening the lanterns to get a clearer light, and directing their rays on the books. 42 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and well-worn hymn, embodying Christianity in words peculiarly befitting the simple and honest hearts of the quaint characters who sang them so earnestly. * Remember Adam's fall, thou man : Eemember Adam's fall From Heaven to Hell. Kemember Adam's fall ; How he hath condemn'd all In Hell perpetual Therefore to dwell. Remember God's goodnesse, thou man : Remember God's goodnesse, His promise made. Remember God's goodnesse ; He sent his Son sinlesse Our ails for to redress, Our hearts to aid. In Bethlehem he was born, thou man : In Bethlehem he was bo/xj, For mankind's sake. In Bethlehem he was born, Christmas-day i' the morn : Our Saviour did not scoim Oui faults to take. GOING THE ROUNDS. 43 Give thanks to God ahvay, thou man : Give thanks to God ahvay With heart-felt joy. Give thanks to God ahvay On this our joyful day : Let all men sing and say, Holy, Holy !' Having concluded the last note, they listened for a minute or two, but found that no sound issued from the school-house. ' Forty breaths, and then, " 0, what unbounded goodness!" number fifty -nine/ said William. This was duly gone through, and no notice whatever seemed to be taken of the performance. ' Surely 'tisn't an empty house, as befell us in the year thirty-nine and forty-three !' said old Dewy, with much disappointment. * Perhaps she's jist come from some noble city, and sneers at our doings,' the tranter whispered. ' 'Od rabbit her !' said Mr. Penny, with an annihilating look at a corner of the school chimney, ' I don't quite stomach her, if this 44 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. is it. Your plain music well done is as worthy as your other sort done bad, a' b'lieve souls; so say 1/ 'Forty breaths, and then the last/ said the leader authoritatively. ' " Rejoice, ye tenants of the earth," number sixty- four.' At the close, waiting yet another minute, he said in a clear loud voice, as he had said in the village at that hour and season for the previous forty years : ' A merry Christmas to ye I' CHAPTER V. THE LISTENERS. When the expectant stillness consequent upon the exclamation had nearly died out of them all, an increasing light made itself visible in one of the windows of the upper floor. It came so close to the blind that the exact position of the flame could be perceived from the outside. Remaining steady for an instant, the blind went up- THE LISTENERS, 45 ward from before it, revealing to thirty con- centrated eyes a young girl, framed as a picture by the window-architrave, and un- consciously illuminating her countenance to a vivid brightness by a candle she held in her left hand, close to her face, her right hand being extended to the side of the win- dow. She was wrapped in a white robe of some kind, whilst down her shoulders fell a twining profusion of marvellously rich hair, in a wild disorder which proclaimed it to be only during the invisible hours of the night that such a condition was dis- coverable. Her bright eyes were looking into the gray world outside with an uncer- tain expression, oscillating between courage and shyness, which, as she recognised the semicircular group of dark forms gathered before her, transformed itself into pleasant resolution. Opening the window, she said lightly and warmly : ' Thank you, singers, thank you !' Together went the window quickly and quietly, and the blind started downward 46 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. on its return to its place. Her fair fore- head and eyes vanished ; her little mouth ; her neck and shoulders ; all of her. Then the spot of candlelight shone nebulously as before ; then it moved away. * How pretty !' exclaimed Dick Dewy. ^ If she'd been rale wexwork she couldn*t ha' been comelier,' said Michael Mail. ' As near a thing to a spiritual vision as ever I wish to see !' said tranter Dewy fervently. ' 0, sich I never, never see !' said Leaf. All the rest, after clearing their throats and adjusting their hats, agreed that such a sight was worth singing for. ' Now to Farmer Shinar's, and then re- plenish our inside s, father,' said the tran- ter. ' Wi' all my heart,' said old William, shouldering his bass-viol. Farmer Shinar's was a queer lump of a house, standing at the corner of a lane that ran obliquely into the principal thorough- fare. The upper windows were much wider than they were high, and this feature, to- THE LISTENERS. 47 getlier with a broad bay-window where the door might have been expected, gave it by day the aspect of a human countenance turned askance, and wearing a sly and wicked leer. To-night nothing was visible but the outline of the roof upon the sky. The front of this building was reached, and the preliminaries arranged as usual. ' Porty breaths, and number thirty- two, — " Behold the morning star," ' said old Wilham. They had reached the end of the second verse, and the fiddlers were doing the up bow-stroke previously to pouring forth the opening chord of the third verse, when, without a light appearing or any signal being given, a roaring voice exclaimed : ' Shut up ! Don't make your blaring row here. A feller wi' a headache enough to split likes a quiet night.' Slam went the window. * Hullo, that's an ugly blow for we artists !' said the tranter, in a keenly appre- ciative voice, and turning to his companions. * Finish the carrel, all who be Iriends of 48 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, harmony!' said old William commandingly ; and they continued to the end. * Forty breaths, and number nineteen !' said William firmly. ' Give it him well ; the choir can't be insulted in this manner !' A light now flashed into existence, the window opened, and the farmer stood re- vealed as one in a terrific j^assion. ^ Drown en! — drown en!' the tranter cried, fiddling frantically. ' Play fortissimy and drown his spaking!' ' Fortissimy !' said Michael Mail, and the music and singing waxed so loud that it was impossible to know what Mr. Shinar had said, was saying, or was about to say ; but wildly flinging his arms and body about in the form of capital Xs and Ys, he appeared to utter enough invectives to consign the whole parish to perdition. 'Yery unseemly — very! 'said old Wil- liam, as they retired. ' Never such a dread- ful scene in the whole round o' my carrel practice — never! And he a churchwarden!' ' Only a drap o' drink got into his head,' Raid the tranter. * Man's well enough when THE LISTENERS. 49 he^s in his religious frame. He's in his worldly frame now. Must ask en to our bit of a party to-morrer night, I suppose, and so put en in track again. We bear no martel man ill-will.' They now crossed Twenty-acres to pro- ceed to the lower village, and met Voss with the hot mead and bread-and-cheese as they were crossing the churchyard. This determined them to eat and drink before proceeding farther, and they entered the belfry. The lanterns were opened, and the whole body sat round against the walls on benches and whatever else was available, and made a hearty meal. In the pauses of conversation could be heard through the floor overhead a little world of undertones and creaks from the halting clockwork, which never spread farther than the tower they were born in, and raised in the more meditative minds a fancy that here lay the direct pathway of Time. Having done eating and drinking, the instruments were again tuned, and once more the party emerged into the night air. 50 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ' T\^ere's Dick ?' said old Dewy. Every man looked round upon every other man, as if Dick might have been transmuted into one or the other; and then they said they didn't know. ^ Well now, that's what I call very nasty of Master Dicky, that I do so,' said Michael Mail. 'He've clinked off home-along, depend upon 't,' another suggested, though not quite believing that he had. ' Dick !' exclaimed the tranter, and his voice rolled sonorously forth among the yews. He suspended his muscles rigid as stone whilst listening for an answer, and finding he listened in vain, turned to the assem- blage. ' The tribble man too ! Now if he'd been a tinner or counter chap, we might ha' con- trived the rest o't without en, you see. But for a choir to lose the tribble, why, my sonnies, you may so well lose your . . . .' The tranter paused, unable to mention an image vast enough for the occasion. THE LISTENERS. 5» *Your head at once/ suggested Mr. Penny. The tranter moved a pace, as if it were puerile of people to complete sentences when there were more pressing things to be done. 'Was ever heard such a thing as a young man leaving his work half done and turning tail like this !* * Never,' replied Bowman, in a tone sig- nifying that he was the last man in the world to wish to withhold the formal finish required of him. ' I hope no fatal tragedy has overtook the lad!* said his grandfather. * no,' replied tranter Dewy placidly. ' Wonder where he've put that there fiddle of his. Why that fiddle cost thirty shillens, and good words besides. Somewhere in the damp, without doubt ; that there instru- ment will be unglued and spoilt in ten minutes — ten ! ay, two.' * What in the name o' righteousness can have happened ?' said old William still more uneasily. 52 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. Leaving their lanterns and instruments in the belfry they retraced their steps. * A strapping lad like Dick d'know better than let anything happen onawares/ Reuben re- marked. 'There's sure to be some poor little scram reason for't staring us in the face all the while.' He lowered his voice to a mysterious tone: 'Naibours, have ye noticed any sign of a scornful woman in his head, or suchlike ?' * Not a glimmer of such a body. He's as clear as water yet.' ' And Dicky said he should never marry,' cried Jimmy, 'but live at home always along wi' mother and we !' ' Ay, ay, my sonny ; every lad has said that in his time.' They had now again reached the pre- cincts of Mr. Shinar's, but hearing nobody in that direction, one or two went across to the school-house. A light was still burning in the bedroom, and though the blind was down, the window had been slightly opened, as if to admit the distant notes of the carol- lers to tiie ears of the occupant of the room. THE LISTENERS. 53 Opposite the window, leaning motion- less against a wall, was the lost man, his arms folded, his head thrown back, his eyes fixed upon the illuminated lattice. ' Why, Dick, is that thee ? What's doing here V Dick's body instantly flew into a more rational attitude, and his head was seen to turn east and west in the gloom, as if en- deavouring to discern some proper answer to that question ; and at last he said in rather feeble accents, * Nothing, father.' * Th'st take long enough time about it then, upon my body,' said the tranter, as they all turned towards the vicarage. ' I thought you hadn't done having snap in the belfry,' said Dick. ' Why, we've been traypsing and ram- bling about, looking everywhere like any- thing, and thinking you'd done fifty horrid things, and here have you been at nothing at all!' *The insult lies in the nothingness of tbe deed/ murmured Mr. Spink§» 54 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. The vicarage garden was their next field of operation, and Mr. Maybold, the lately-arrived incumbent, duly received his share of the night's harmonies. It was hoped that by reason of his profession he would have been led to open the window, and an extra carol in quick time was added to draw him forth. But Mr. Maybold made no stir. * A bad sign !^ said old William, shaking his head. However, at that same instant a musi- cal voice was heard exclaiming from inner depths of bedclothes, * Thanks, villagers !' ' What did he say T asked Bowman, who was rather dull of hearing. Bowman's voice, being therefore loud, had been heard by the vicar within. 'I said, " Thanks, villagers!" ' cried the vicar again. 'Beg yer pardon; didn^t hear ye the first time !' cried Bowman. * Now don't for heaven's sake spoil the young man's temper by answering like that'' said the tranter THE LISTENERS. 55 ' You won't do that, my friends !* the vicar shouted. ^ Well to be sure, what ears !' said Mr. Penny in a whisper. ' Beats any horse or dog in the parish, and depend upon't, that's a sign he's a proper clever chap.' 'We shall see that in time,' said the tranter. Old William, in his gratitude for such thanks from a comparatively new inhabi- tant, was anxious to play all the tunes over again ; but renounced his desire on being reminded by Eeuben that it would be best to leave well alone. 'Now putting two and two together,' the tranter continued, as they wended their way to the other portion of the village, ' that is, in the form of that young vision we seed just now, and this young tinner- voiced parson, my belief is she'll wind en round her finger, and twist the pore young feller about like the figure of 8— that she will so, my sonnies.* 56 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. CHAPTER VI. CHRISTMAS MORNING. The choir at last reached their beds, and slept like the rest of the parish. Dick's slumbers, through the three or four hours remaining for rest, were disturbed and slight ; an exhaustive variation upon the incidents that had passed that night in con- nection with the school-window going on in his brain every moment of the time. In the morning, do what he would — go upstairs, downstairs, out of doors, speak of the wind and weather, or what not — he could not refrain from an unceasing renewal, in imagination, of that interesting enactment. Tilted on the edge of one foot he stood beside the fireplace, watching his mother grilling rashers ; but there was nothing in grilling, he thought, unless the Vision grilled. The limp rasher hung down be- tween the bars of the gridiron like a cat in a child's arms; but there was nothing in similes. He looked at the daylight shadows CHRISTMAS MORNING. 57 of a yellow hue, dancing with the firelight shadows in blue on the whitewashed chim- ney corner, but there was nothing in shadows. ' Perhaps the new young worn — sch — Miss Fancy Day will sing in church with us this morning,' he said. The tranter looked a long time before he replied, ^ I fancy she will ; and yet I fancy she won't/ Dick implied that such a remark was rather to be tolerated than admired ; though the slight meagreness observable in the in- formation conveyed disappointed him less than may be expected, deliberateness in speech being known to have, as a rule, more to do with the machinery of the tranter's throat than with the matter enunciated. They made preparations for going to church as usual; Dick with extreme alac- rity, though he would not definitely con- sider why he was so religious. His won- derful nicety in brushing and cleaning his best light boots had features which ele- vated it to the rank of an art. Every particle and speck of last week's mud was 58 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. scraped and brushed from toe and heel ; new blacking from the packet was carefully mixed and made use of, regardless of ex- pense. A coat was laid on and polished ; then another coat for increased blackness; and lastly a third, to give the perfect and mirror-like jet which the hoped-for ren- contre demanded. It being Christmas-day, the tranter prepared himself with Sunday particularity. Loud sousing and snorting noises were heard to proceed from the back quarters of the dwelling, proclaiming that he was there performing his great Sunday wash, lasting half an hour, to which his washings on working-day mornings were mere flashes in the pan. Vanishing into the outhouse with a large brown basin, and the above-named bubblings and snortings being carried on for about twenty minutes, the tranter would appear round the edge of the door, smelling like a summer fog, and looking as if he had just narrowly escaped a watery grave with the loss of hat and neckerchief, having since been weeping bitterly till his eyes were red; CHRISTMAS MORNING. 59 a crystal drop of water hanging ornament- ally at the bottom of each ear, one at the tip of his nose, and others in the form of spangles about his hair. After a great deal of crunching upon the sanded stone floor by the feet of father, son, and grandson as they moved to and fro in these preparations, the bass-viol and fiddles were taken from their nook, and the strings examined and screwed a httle above concert pitch, that they might keep their tone when service commenced, to obviate the awkward contingency of having to retune them at the back of the gallery during a cough, sneeze, or amen — an inconvenience which had been known to arise in damp wintry weather. The three left the door and paced down Mellstock-lane, bearing under their arms the instruments in faded green-baize bags, and old brown music-books in their hands ; Dick continually finding himself in advance of the other two, and the tranter moving on with toes turned outwards to an enormous angle. Seven human heads in a row were now observable over a hedge of laurel, which 6o UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. proved to be the choristers waiting ; sitting occasionally on the churchyard - wall and letting their heels dangle against it, to pass the time. The musicians beinof now in sight, the youthful party scampered off and rattled up the old wooden stairs of the gal- lery like a regiment of cavalry ; the other boys of the parish waiting outside looking at birds, cats, and other creatures till the vicar entered, when they suddenly subsided into sober church-goers, and passed down the aisle with echoing heels. The gallery of Mellstock Church had a status and sentiment of its own. A stranger there was regarded with a feeling altogether differing from that of the congre- gation below towards him. Banished from the nave as an intruder whom no originality could make interesting, he was received above as a curiosity that no unfitness could render dull. The gallery, too, looked down upon and knew the habits of the nave to its remotest peculiarity, and had an extensive stock of exclusive information about it ; whilst the nave knew nothing of the gallery CHRISTMAS MORNING. 6i people, as gallery people, beyond their loud- sounding minims and chest notes. Such topics as that the clerk was always chewing tobacco except at the moment of crying amen ; that he had a dust-hole in his pew ; that during the sermon certain young daughters of the village had left off caring to read anything so mild as the marriage service for some years, and now regularly studied the one which chronologically fol- lows it ; that a pair of lovers touched fin- gers through a knot-hole between their pews in the manner ordained by their great ex- emplars, Pyramus and Thisbe ; that Mrs. Ledlow, the farmer's wife, counted her money and reckoned her week's marketing expenses during the first lesson — all news to those below — were stale subjects here. Old "William sat in the centre of the front row, his violoncello between his knees and two singers on each hand. Behind him, on the left, came the treble singers and Dick ; and on the right the tranter and the tenors. Farther back was old Mail with the altos and supernumeraries. 62 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. But before they had taken their places, and whilst they were standing in a circle at the back of the gallery practising a psalm or two, Dick cast his eyes over his grand- father's shoulder, and saw the vision of the past night enter the porch-door as methodi- cally as if she had never been a vision at all. A new atmosphere seemed suddenly to be puffed into the ancient edifice by her movement, which made Dick's body and soul tingle with novel sensations. Directed by Shinar, the churchwarden, she proceeded to the short aisle on the north side of the chancel, a spot now allotted to a throng of Sunday-school girls, and distinctly visible from the gallery -front by looking under the curve of the furthermost arch on that side. Before this moment the church had seemed comparatively empty — now it was thronged ; and as Miss Fancy rose from her knees and looked around her for a perma- nent place in which to deposit herself — fin- ally choosing the remotest corner — Dick began to breathe more freely the warm new CHRISTMAS MORNING. 63 air she had brought with her ; to feel rush- ings of blood, and to have impressions that there was a tie between her and himself visible to all the cono^reo^ation. Ever afterwards the young man could recollect individually each part of the ser- vice of that bright Christmas morning, and the minute occurrences which took place as its hours slowly drew along ; the duties of that day dividing themselves by a complete line from the services of other times. The tunes they that morning essayed remained with him for years, apart from all others; also the text; also the appearance of the layer of dust upon the capitals of the piers ; that the holly-bough in the chancel archway was hung a little out of the centre — all the ideas, in short, that creep into the mind when reason is only exercising its lowest activity through the eye. By chance or by fate, another young man who attended Mellstock Church on that Christmas morning had towards the end of the service the same instinctive perception of an interesting presence, in the shape of 64 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. the same bright maiden, though his emotion reached a far less - developed stage. And there was this difference, too, that the per- son in question was surprised at his condi- tion, and sedulously endeavoured to reduce himself to his normal state of mind. He was the young vicar, Mr. Maybold. The music on Christmas mornings was frequently below the standard of church-per- formances at other times. The boys were sleepy from the heavy exertions of the night ; the men were slightly wearied ; and now, in addition to these constant reasons, there was a dampness in the atmosphere that still farther aggravated the evil. Their strings, from the recent long exposure to the night air, rose whole semitones, and snapped with a loud twang at the most silent moment; which necessitated more re- tiring than ever to the back of the gallery, and made the gallery throats quite husky with the quantity of coughing and hemming required for tuning in. The vicar looked cross. When the singing was in progress, there CHRISTMAS MORNING. 65 was suddenly discovered to be a strong and shrill reinforcement from some point, ulti- mately found to be the school-girls' aisle. At every attempt it grew bolder and more distinct. At the third time of singing, these intrusive feminine voices were as mighty as those of the regular singers; in fact, the flood of sound from this quarter assumed such an individuality, that it had a time, a key, almost a tune of its own, surging up- wards when the gallery plunged downwards, and the reverse. Now this had never happened before within the memory of man. The girls, like the rest of the congregation, had always been humble and respectful followers of the gallery ; singing at sixes and sevens if with- out gallery leaders ; never interfering with the ordinances of these practised artists — having no will, union, power, or proclivity except it was given them from the estab- lished choir enthroned above them. A good deal of desperation became no- ticeable in the gallery throats and strings, which continued throughout the musical 66 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. portion of the service. Directly the fiddles were laid down, Mr. Penny's spectacles put in their sheath, and the text had been given out, an indignant whispering began. ^Did ye hear that, souls?' Mr. Penny said in a groaning breath. ^ Brazen-faced hussies !' said Bowman. 'Trew; why, they were every note as loud as we, fiddles and all, if not louder.' * Fiddles and all/ echoed Bowman bit- terly. ' Shall anything bolder be found than united woman?' Mr. Spinks murmured. * What I want to know is,' said the tran- ter (as if he knew already, but that civilisa- tion required the form of words), 'what business people have to tell maidens to sing like that when they don't sit in a gallery, and never have entered one in their lives? That's the question, my sonnies.' ^'Tis the gallery have got to sing, all the world knows,' said Mr. Penny. ' Why, souls, what's the use o' the ancients spend- ing scores of pounds to build galleries if people down in the lowest depths of the CHRISTMAS MORNING. 67 church sing like that at a moment's no- tice?' * Keally, I think we useless ones had better march out of church, fiddles and all!' said Mr. Spinks, with a laugh which, to a stranger, would have sounded mild and real. Only the initiated body of men he addressed could understand the horrible bitterness of u'ony that lurked under the quiet words ^ useless ones,' and the ghasthness of the laughter apparently so natural. . ' Never mind ! Let 'em sing too — 'twill make it all the louder — hee, hee !' said Leaf ' Thomas Leaf, Thomas Leaf ! Where have you lived all your life?' said grand- father William sternly. The quailing Leaf tried to look as if he had lived nowhere at all. * When all's said and done, my sonnies,* Eeuben said, 'there'd have been no real harm in their singing if they had let no- body hear 'em, and only jined in now and then.' 'None at all,' said Mr. Penny. 'But 68 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. though I don't wish to accuse people wrongfully, I'd say before my lord judge that I could hear every note o' that last psalm come from 'em as much as from us — every note as if 'twas their own.' ' Know it ! ah, I should think I did know it !' Mr. Spinks was heard to observe at this moment, without reference to his fel- low-creatures — shaking his head at some idea he seemed to see floating before him, and smiling as if he were attending a fune- ral at the time. ^ Ah, do I or don't I know itr No one said * Know what?' because all were aware from experience that what he knew would declare itself in process of time. ' I could fancy last night that we should have some trouble wi' that young man,* said the tranter, pending the continuance of Spinks' s speech, and looking towards the unconscious Mr. Maybold in the pul- pit. ' / fancy,' said old William, rather se- verely, ' I fancy there's too mucb whisper- CHRISTMAS^ MORNING. 69 in^ going on to be of any spiritual use to gentle or simple.' Then folding his lips and concentrating his glance on the vicar, he implied that none but the ignorant would speak again ; and accordingly there was silence in the gallery, Mr. Spinks's telling speech remaining for ever unspoken. Dick had said nothing, and the tranter little, on this episode of the morning; for Mrs. Dewy at breakfast expressed it as her intention to invite the youthful leader of the culprits to the small party it was customary with them to have on Christmas- night — a piece of knowledge which had given a particular brightness to Dick's re- flections since he had received it. And in the tranter's slightly cynical nature, party feeling was weaker than in the other mem- bers of the choir, though friendliness and faithful partnership still sustained in him a hearty earnestness on their accouiit. 7© UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. CHAPTER YII. THE tranter's PARTY. During the afternoon unusual activity was seen to prevail about the precincts of tranter Dewy's house. The flagstone floor was swept of dust, and a sprinkling of the finest yellow sand from the innermost stra- tum of the adjoining sand-pit lightly scattered thereupon. Then were produced large knives and forks, which had been shrouded in darkness and grease since the last occasion of the kind, and bearing upon their sides, ' Shear-steel, warranted,' in such emphatic letters of assurance, that the cutler's name was not required as further proof, and not given. The key was left in the tap of the cider-barrel, instead of being carried in a pocket. And finally the tranter had to stand up in the room and let his wife wheel him round like a turnstile, to see if anything discreditable was visible in his appearance. ' Stand still till I've been for the scis- sors,' said Mrs. Dewy. THE TRANTERS PARTY. 71 The tranter stood as still as a sentinel at the challenge. The only repairs necessary were a trim- ming of one or two whiskers that had ex- tended beyond the general contour of the mass ; a like trimming of a slightly frayed edge visible on his shirt-collar; and a final tug at a gray hair — to all of which opera- tions he submitted in resigned silence, ex- cept the last, which produced a mild ' Come, come, Ann,' by way of expostulation. * Really, Reuben, 'tis quite a disgrace to see such a man,' said Mrs. Dewy, with the severity justifiable in a long - tried com- panion, giving him another turn round, and picking several of Smiler's hairs from the shoulder of his coat. Reuben's thoughts seemed engaged elsewhere, and he yawned. ' And the collar of your coat is a shame to behold — so plastered with dirt, or dust, or grease, or something. Why, wherever could you have got it?' ' 'Tis my warm nater in summer-time, I suppose. I always did get in such a heat when I bustle about.' 72 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ' Ay, the Dewys always were such a coarse -skinned family. There's your bro- ther Bob — as fat as a porpoise — just as bad; wi' his low, mean, "How'st do, Ann?" whenever he meets me. I'd " How'st do'* him, indeed ! If the sun only shines out a minute, there be you all streaming in the face — I never see!' ' If I be hot week-days, I must be hot Sundays.' ' If any of the girls should turn after their father 'twill be a poor look-out for 'em, poor things ! None of my family was sich vulgar perspirers, not one of 'em. But, Lord-a-mercy, the Dewys! I don't know how ever I came into such a family.' ' Your woman's weakness when I asked ye to jine us. That's how it was, I suppose ;' but the tranter appeared to have heard some such words from his wife before, and hence his answer had not the energy it might have possessed if the inquiry had possessed the charm of novelty. 'You never did look so well in a pair o' trousers as in them,' she continued in THE TRANTERS PARTY. 73 the same unimpassioned voice, so that the un- friendly criticism of the Dewy family seemed to have been more normal than spontaneous. * Such a cheap pair as 'twas too. As big as any man could wish to have, and lined inside, and double-lined in the lower parts, and an extra piece of stiffening at the bot- tom. And 'tis a nice high cut that comes up right under your armpits, and there's enough turned down inside the seams to make half a pair more, besides a piece of stuff left that will make an honest waist- coat — all by my contriving in buying the stuff at a bargain, and having it made up under my eye. It only shows what may be done by taking a little trouble, and not going straight to the rascally tailors.' The discourse was cut short by the sudden appearance of Charley on the scene with a face and hands of hideous blackness, and a nose guttering like a candle. Why, on that particularly cleanly afternoon, he should have discovered that the chimney- crook and chain from which the hams were suspended should have possessed more merits 74 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. and general interest as playthings than any other article in the house, is a question for nursing mothers to decide. However, the humour seemed to lie in the result being, as has been seen, that any given player with these articles was in the long-run daubed with soot. The last that was seen of Charley by daylight after this piece of ingenuity was when in the act of vanishing from his father's presence round the corner of the house, — looking back over his shoul- der with an expression of great sin on his face, like Cain as the Outcast in Bible pic- tures. The guests had all assembled, and the tranter's party had reached that degree of development which accords with ten o'clock P.M. in rural assemblies. At that hour the sound of a fiddle in process of tuning was heard from the inner pantry. ' That's Dick,' said the tranter. * That lad's crazy for a jig.' * Dick ! Now I cannot — really, I can- not allow any dancing at all till Christmas- THE TRANTERS PARTY. 75 day is out,' said old William emphatically. * When the clock ha' done striking twelve, dance as much as ye like.' * Well, I must say there's reason in that, William,' said Mrs. Penny. ' If you do have a party on Christmas- day-night, 'tis only fair and honourable to the Church of England to have it a sit -still party. Jig- ging parties be all very well, and this, that, and therefore; but a jigging party looks suspicious. 0, yes ; stop till the clock strikes, young folk — so say I.' It happened that some warm mead ac- cidentally got into Mr. Spinks's head about this time. ' Dancing,' he said, ' is a most strength- ening, enlivening, and courting movement, especially with a little beverage added ! And dancing is good. But why disturb what is ordained, Eichard and Reuben, and the company zhinerally ? Why, I ask, as far as that goes ?' * Then nothing till after twelve,' said William. Though Reuben and his wife ruled on 76 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. social points, religious questions were mostly disposed of by the old man, whose firmness on this head quite counterbalanced a cer- tain weakness in his handling of domestic matters. The hopes of the younger mem- bers of the household were therefore rele- gated to a distance of one hour and three- quarters — a result that took visible shape in them by a remote and listless look about the eyes — the singing of songs being per- mitted in the interim. At five minutes to twelve the soft tun- ing was again heard in the back quarters ; and when at length the clock had whizzed forth the last stroke, Dick appeared ready primed, and the instruments were boldly handled; old William very readily taking the bass-viol from its accustomed nail, and touching the strings as irreligiously as could be desired. The country-dance called the 'Triumph, or Follow my Lover,' was the figure with which they opened. The tranter took for his partner Mrs. Penny, and Mrs. Dewy was chosen by Mr. Penny, who made so THE TRANTERS PARTY. 77 much of his limited height by a judicious carriage of the head, straightening of the back, and important flashes of his spectacle- glasses, that he seemed almost as tall as the tranter. Mr. Shinar, age about thirty- five, farmer and churchwarden, a character principally composed of watch-chain, with a mouth always hanging on a smile but never smiling, had come quite willingly to the party, and showed a wondrous oblivi- ousness of all his antics on the previous night. But the comely, slender, prettily- dressed prize Fancy Day fell to Dick's lot, in spite of some private machinations of the farmer, for the reason that Mr. Shinar, as a richer man, had shown too much assurance in asking the favour, whilst Dick had been duly courteous. We gain a good view of our heroine as she advances to her place in the ladies' line. She belonged to the taller division of mid- dle height. Flexibility was her first cha- racteristic, by which she appeared to enjoy the most easeful rest when she was in gliding motion. Her dark eyes — arched by 78 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. brows of so keen, slender, and soft a curve, that they resembled nothing so much as two slurs in music — showed primarily a bright sparkle each. This was softened by a fre- quent though tfulness, yet not so frequent as to do away, for more than a few minutes at a time, with a certain coquettishness ; which in its turn was never so decided as to banish honesty. Her lips imitated her brows in their clearly- cut outline and softness of curve; and her nose was well shaped — which is say- ing a great deal, when it is remembered that there are a hundred pretty mouths and eyes for one pretty nose. Add to this, plen- tiful knots of dark-brown hair, a gauzy dress of white, with blue facings ; and the slight- est idea may be gained of the young maiden who showed, amidst the rest of the dancing- ladies, like a flower among vegetables. And so the dance proceeded. Mr. Shinar, accord- ing to the interesting rule laid down, de- serted his own partner, and made off down the middle with this fair one of Dick's — the pair appearing from the top of the room like two persons tripping dowii a lane to be THE TRANTERS PARTY, 79 married. Dick trotted behind with what was intended to be a look of composure, but which was, in fact, a rather silly expression of feature — implying, with too much earnest- ness, that such an elopement could not be tolerated. Then they turned and came back, when Dick o^rew more rio;id around his mouth, and blushed with ingenuous ardour as he joined hands with the rival and formed the arch over his lady's head ; relinquishing her again at setting to partners, when Mr. Shinar's new chain quivered in every link, and all the loose flesh upon the tranter — who here came into action again — shook like jelly. Mrs. Penny, being always rather concerned for her personal safety when she danced with the tranter, fixed her face to a chronic smile of timidity the whole time it lasted — a peculiarity which filled her fea- tures with wrinkles, and reduced her eyes to little straight lines like hyphens, as she jigged up and down opposite him; repeating in her own person not only his proper move- ments, but also the minor flourishes which the richness of the tranter's imagination led 8o UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, him to introduce from time to time — an imitation which had about it something of slavish obedience, not unmixed with fear. The ear-rings of the ladies now flung themselves wildly about, turning violent summersaults, banging this way and that, and then swinging quietly against the ears sustaining them. Mrs. Grumpier — a heavy woman, who, for some reason which nobody ever thought worth inquiry, danced in a clean apron — moved so smoothly through the figure that her feet were never seen; conveying to imaginative minds the idea that she rolled on castors. Minute after minute glided by, and the party reached the period when ladies' back- hair begins to look forgotten and dissipated; when a perceptible dampness makes itself apparent upon the faces even of delicate girls — a ghastly dew having for some time rained from the features of their masculine partners; when skirts begin to be torn out of their gathers ; when elderly people, who have stood up to please their juniors, begin to feel sundry small tremblings in the re- THE TRANTER'S PARTY, 8i gion of the knees, and to wish the inter- minable da^ice was at Jericho; when (at country parties) waistcoats begin to be un- buttoned, and when the fiddlers' chairs have been wriggled, by the frantic bowing of their occupiers, to a distance of about two feet from where they originally stood. Fancy was dancing with Mr. Shinar. Dick knew that Fancy, by the law of good manners, was bound to dance as pleasantly with one partner as with another; yet he could not help suggesting to himself that she need not have put quite so much spirit into her steps, nor smiled quite so frequently whilst in the farmer's hands. 'I'm afraid you didn't cast ofi^,' said Dick mildly to Mr. Shinar, before the latter man's watch-chain had done vibrating from a recent whirl. Fancy made a motion of accepting the correction; but her partner took no no- tice, and proceeded with the next move- ment, with an affectionate bend towards her. ' That Shinar's too fond of her,' the young man said to himself as he watched 82 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. them. They came to the top again, Fancy smiling warmly towards her partner, and went to their places. 'Mr. Shinar, you didn't cast off/ said Dick, for want of something else to demolish him mth; casting off himself, and being put out at the farmer's irregularity. ' Perhaps I shan't cast off for any man,* said Mr. Shinar. ' I think you ought to, sir.* Dick's partner, a young lady of the name of Lizzy — called Lizz for short — tried to mollify. ' I can't say that I myself have much feeling for casting off,' she said. ' Nor I,* said Mrs. Penny, following up the argument ; ' especially if a friend and naibour is set against it. Not but that 'tis a terrible tasty thing in good hands and well done ; yes, indeed, so say L' 'All I meant was,' said Dick, rather sorry that he had spoken correctingly to a guest, ' that 'tis in the dance ; and a man has hardly any right to hack and mangle what was ordained by the regular dance- THE TRANTERS PARTY. 83 maker, who, I daresay, got his living by- making 'em, and thought of nothing else all his life.' * I don't like casting off : then very well; I cast off for no dance -maker that ever lived.' Dick now appeared to be doing mental arithmetic, the act being reaUy an effort to present to himself, in an abstract form, how far an argument with a formidable rival ought to be carried, when that rival was his mother's guest. The dead-lock was put an end to by the stamping arrival up the middle of the tranter, who, despising mi- nutiae on principle, started a theme of his own. * I assure you, naibours,' he said, ^ the heat of my frame no tongue can tell !' He looked around, and endeavoured to give, by a forcible gaze of self - sympathy, some faint idea of the truth. Mrs. Dewy formed one of the next couple. ' Yes,' she said in an auxiliary tone, ' Reuben always was such a hot man.' 84 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, Mrs. Penny implied the correct species of sympathy that such a class of affliction required, by trying to smile and to look grieved at the same time. * If he only walk round the garden of a Sunday morning, his shirt-collar is as limp as no starch at all,' continued Mrs. Dewy, her countenance lapsing parenthetically into a housewifely expression of concern at the reminiscence. * Come, come, you wimmen-folk; 'tis hands-across — come, come!' said the tran- ter; and the conversation ceased for the present CHAPTER YIIL THEY DANCE MOKE WILDLY. Dick had at length secured Fancy for that most delightful of country-dances, be- ginning with six-hands-round. * Before we begin,' said the tranter, *my proposal is, that 'twould be a right and proper plan for every martel man in THEY DANCE MORE WILDLY, 85 the dance to pull off his jacket, considering the heat.' ' Such low notions as you have, Reuben! Nothing but strip will go down with you when you are a-dancing. Such a hot man as he is !' * Well, now, look here, my sonnies,' he argued to his wife, whom he often addressed in the plural masculine for convenience of epithet merely; ^I don't see that. You dance and get hot as fire; therefore you lighten your clothes. Isn't that nater and reason for gentle and simple ? If I strip by myself and not necessary, 'tis rather pot- housey, I own ; but if we stout chaps strip one and all, why, 'tis the native manners of the country, which no man can gainsay. Hey — what do you say, my somiies?' 'Strip we will!' said the three other heavy men; and their coats were accord- ingly taken off and hung in the passage, whence the four sufferers from heat soon reappeared, marching in close column, with flapping shirt- sleeves, and having, as com- mon to them all, a general glance of being 86 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. now a match for any man or dancer in England or Ireland. Dick, fearing to lose ground in Fancy's good opinion, retained his coat ; and Mr. Shinar did the same from superior knowledge. And now a further phase of rural revelry had disclosed itself. It was the time of night when a guest may write his name in the dust upon the tables and chairs, and a bluish mist pervades the atmosphere, be- coming a distinct halo round the candles; when people's nostrils, wrinkles, and cre- vices in general, seem to be getting gradu- ally plastered up ; when the very fiddlers as well as the dancers get red in the face, the dancers having advanced farther still towards incandescence, and entered the cadaverous phase ; the fiddlers no longer sit down, but kick back their chairs and saw madly at the strmgs, with legs firmly spread and eyes closed, regardless of the visible world. Again and again did Dick share his Love's hand with another man, and wheel round; then, more delightfully, promenade in a cir- cle with her all to himself, his arm holding her THEY DANCE MORE WILDLY, 87 waist more firmly each time, and liis elbow getting farther and farther behind her back, till the distance reached was rather notice- able ; and, most blissful, swinging to places shoulder to shoulder, her breath curling round his neck like a summer zephyr that had strayed from its proper date. Thread- ing the couples one by one they reached the bottom, when there arose in Dick's mind a minor misery lest the tune should end before they could work their way to the top again, and have anew the same ex- citing run down through. Dick's feelings on actually reaching the top in spite of his doubts were supplemented by a mortal fear that the fiddling might even stop at this supreme moment ; which prompted him to convey a stealthy whisper to the far-gone musicians, to the efi*ect that they were not to leave off till he and his partner had reached the bottom of the dance once more, which remark was rephed to by the nearest of those convulsed and quivering men by a private nod to the anxious young man be- tween two semiquavers of the tune, and a 88 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. simultaneous ' All right, ay, ay,^ without opening his eyes. Fancy was now held so closely, that Dick and she were practically one person. The room became to Dick like a picture in a dream ; all that he could re- member of it afterwards being the look of the fiddlers going to sleep, as humming-tops sleep — by increasing their motion and hum, together with the figures of grandfather James and old Simon Grumpier sitting by the chimney-corner, talking and nodding in dumb-show, and beating the air to their emphatic sentences like people in a railway train. The dance ended. *Piph-h-h-hr said tranter Dewy, blowing out his breath in the very finest stream of vapour that a man's lips could form. ' A regular tightener, that one, sonnies!' He wiped his forehead, and went to the cider-mug on the table. * Well !' said Mrs. Penny, flopping into a chair, ^my heart haven't been in such a thumping state of uproar since I used to sit up on old Midsummer-eves to see who my husband was going to be.* THEY DANCE MORE WILDLY. 89 ' And that's getting on for a good few- years ago now, from what I've heard you tell,' said the tranter without lifting his eyes from the cup he was filling. Being now engaged in the business of handing round refreshments, he was warranted in keeping his coat off still, though the other heavy men had resumed theirs. ' And a thing I never expected would come to pass, if you'll believe me, cam to pass then,' continued Mrs. Penny. ' Ah, the first spirit ever I see on a Midsummer- eve was a puzzle to me when he appeared, a hard puzzle, so say I !' ' So I should have imagined ; as far as that goes,' said EHas Spinks. 'Yes,' said Mrs. Penny, throwing her glance into past times, and talking on in a running tone of complacent abstraction, as if a listener were not a necessity. ' Yes ; never was I in such a taking as on that Midsummer-eve ! I sat up, quite deter- mined to see if John Wild way was going to marry me or no. I put the bread-and- cheese and cider quite ready, as the witch's 90 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. book ordered, and I opened the door, and I waited till the clock struck twelve, my nerves all alive, and so distinct that I could feel every one of 'em twitching like bell- wires. Yes, sure ! and when the clock had struck, lo and behold, I could see through the door a little small man in the lane wi' a shoemaker's apron on.' Here Mr. Penny stealthily enlarged himself half an inch. 'Now John Wildway,' Mrs. Penny con- tinued, ' who courted me at that time, was a shoemaker, you see, but he was a very fair- sized man, and I couldn't believe that any such a little small man had anything to do wi' me, as anybody might. But on he came, and crossed the threshold — not John, but actually the same little small man in the shoemaker's apron — ' ' You needn't be so mighty particular about little and small!' said her husband, pecking the air with his nose. ' In he walks, and down he sits, and my goodness me, didn't I flee upstairs, body and soul hardly hanging together! THEY DANCE MORE WILDLY. 91 Well, to cut a long story short, by -long and by-late, John Wildway and I had a miff and parted; and lo and behold, the coming man came ! Penny asked me if I'd go snacks with him, and afore I knew what I was about a'most, the thing was done.' ' I've fancied you never knew better in your life ; but I may be mistaken/ said Mr. Penny in a murmur. After Mrs. Penny had spoken, there being no new occupation for her eyes, she still let them stay idling on the past scenes just related, which were apparently visible to her in the candle- flame. Mr. Penny's remark received no reply. During this discourse the tranter and his wife might have been observed standing in an unobtrusive corner, in mysterious closeness to each other, a just perceptible current of intelligence passing from each to each, which had apparently no relation whatever to the conversation of their guests, but much to their sustenance. A conclu- sion of some kind having at length been dra^.Yn. the palpable confederacy of man 92 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. and wife was once more obliterated, the tranter marching off into the pantry, humming a tune that he couldn't quite recollect, and then breaking into the words of a song of which he could remember about one line and a quarter. Mrs. Dewy men- tioned a few words about preparations for a bit of supper. That portion of the company which loved eating and drinking then put on a look to signify that till that moment they had quite forgotten that it was customary to eat suppers in this climate ; going even farther than this politeness of feature, and abruptly starting irrelevant subjects, the exceeding flatness and forced tone of which rather betrayed their object. The younger members said they were quite hungry, and that supper would be delightful though it was so late. Good luck attended Dick's love-passes during the meal. He sat next Fancy, and had the thrilling pleasure of using perman- ently a glass which had been taken by Fancy in mistake ; of letting the outer THEY DANCE MORE WILDLY. 93 edo-e of the sole of his boot touch the lower verge of her skirt; and to add to these delights, a cat, which had lain un- observed in her lap for several minutes, crept across into his own, touching him with the same portion of fur that had touched her hand a moment before. Besides these, there were some little pleasures in the shape of helping her to vegetable she didn't want, and when it had nearly alighted on her plate, taking it across for his own use, on the plea of waste not, want not. He also, from time to time, sipped sweet sly glances at her profile; noticing the set of her head, the curve of her throat, and other artistic properties of the lively goddess, who the while kept up a rather free, not to say too free, conversation with Mr. Shinar sit- ting opposite ; which, after some uneasy criticism, and much shifting of argument backwards and forwards in Dick's mind, he decided not to consider of alarming signifi- cance. * A new music greets our ears now,' said Miss Fancy, alluding, with the sharpness 94 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. that her position as village sharpener de- manded, to the contrast between the rattle of knives and forks and the late notes of the fiddlers. ' Ay ; and I don't know but that *tis sweeter in tone when you get above forty/ said the tranter ; * except, in faith, 'tis as re- gards father there : never such a martel man as he for tunes. They move his soul; don't 'em, father?' The eldest Dewy smiled across from his distant chair an assent to Reuben's remark. ' Spaking of being moved in soul,' said Mr. Penny, ' I shall never forget the first time I heard the " Dead March." 'Twas at poor Corp'l Nineman's funeral at Caster- bridge. It fairly made my hair creep and fidget about like a flock of sheep — ah, it did, souls ! And when they had done, and the last trump had sounded, and the guns was fired over the dead hero's grave, an icy- cold drop of moist sweat hung upon my forehead, and another upon my jawbone. Ah, 'tis a very solemn thing !' * Well, as to father in the corner there,' THEY DANCE MORE WILDLY. 95 the tranter said, pointing to old William, who was in the act of filling his mouth ; 'he'd starve to death for music's sake now, as much as when he was a boy -chap of fifteen/ ' Truly, now,' said Michael Mail, clearing the corner of his throat in the manner of a man who meant to be convincing ; ' there's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.* He lifted the cup to his mouth, and drank himself gradually backwards from a perpendicular position to a slanting one, during which time his looks performed a circuit from the wall opposite him to the ceiling overhead. Then clearing the other corner of his throat: ' Once I was sittins: in the little kitchen of the Three Chouo-hs at Casterbridge, having a bit of dinner, and a brass band struck up in the street. Sich a beautiful band as that were ! I was sittino- eating fried liver and lights, I well can mind — ah, I was! and to save my life, I couldn't help chawing to the tune. Band played six-eight time; six-eight chaws I, willynilly. Band plays common j common 96 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. time went my teeth among the fried liver and lights as true as a hair. Beautiful 'twere ! Ah, I shall never forget that there bandl' * That's as musical a circumstance as ever I heard of,' said grandfather James, with the absent gaze which accompanies pro- found criticism. * I don't like Michael's musical circum- sitances then,' said Mrs. Dewy. ' They are quite coarse to a person of decent taste.* Old Michael's mouth twitched here and there, as if he wanted to smile but didn't know where to begin, which gradually set- tled to an expression that it was not dis- pleasing for a nice woman like the tranter's wife to correct him. * Well, now,' said Reuben, with decisive earnestness, ^ that coarseness that's so up- setting to Ann's feelings is to my mind a recommendation ; for it do always prove a story to be true. And for the same reason, I like a story with a bad moral. My sonnies, all true stories have a coarseness or a bad moral, depend upon't. If the story-tellers THE\ DANCE MORE WILDLY, 97 could have got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd ha' troubled to in- vent parables ?' Saying this the tranter arose to fetch a new stock of cider, mead, and home-made wines. Mrs. Dew}^ sighed, and appended a re- mark (ostensibly behind her husband's back, though that the words should reach his ears distinctly was understood by both) : ' Such a man as Dewy is ! nobody do know the trouble I have to keep that man barely re- spectable. And did you ever hear too — just now at supper- time — talking about "taties" with Michael in such a labourer's way. Well, 'tis what I was never brought up to! With our family 'twas never less than " taters,'' and very often " pertatoes" outright ; mother was so particular and nice with us girls : there was no family in the parish that kept theirselves up more than we.' The hour of parting came. Fancy could not remain for the night, because she had engaged a woman to wait up for her. She disappeared temporarily from the flagging 9& UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. party of dancers, and then came downstairs wrapped up and looking altogether a differ- ent person from whom she had been hither- to, in fact (to Dick's sadness and disap- pointment), a woman somewhat reserved and of a phlegmatic temperament — nothing left in her of the romping girl that she had been but a short quarter-hour before, who had not minded the weight of Dick's hand upon her waist, nor shirked the purlieus of the mistletoe. ' What a contradiction !' thought the young man — hoary cynic 'pro tern, ^ What a miserable delusive contradiction between the manners of a maid's life at dancing times and at others I Look at this idol Fancy ! dur- ing the whole past evening touchable, press- able — even kissable. For whole half-hours I held her so close to me that not a sheet of paper could have been slipped between us; and I could feel her heart only just out- side my own, her existence going on so close to mine, that I was aware of every breath in it. A flit is made to the bedroom — a hat and a cloak put on — and I no more THEY DANCE MORE WILDLY. 99 dare to touch her than — ' Thouo-ht failed him, and he returned to life. But this was an endurable misery in comparison with what followed. Mr. Shinar and his watch-chain, taking the intrusive ad- vantage that ardent males who are going homeward along the same road as a pretty- young female always do take of that cir- cumstance, came forward to assure Fancy — with a total disregard of Dick's emotions, and in tones which were certainly not frigid — that he (Shinar) was not the man to go to bed before seeing his Lady Fair safe within her own door — not he : nobody should say he was that ; — and that he would not leave her side an inch till the thing was done — drown him if he would. The pro- posal was assented to by Miss Day, in Dick's foreboding judgment with one degree — or at any rate, an appreciable fraction of a degree — of warmth beyond that required by a disinterested desire for protection from the dangers of the night. All was over; and Dick surveyed the chair she had last occupied, looking now loo UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, like a setting from which the gem has been torn. There stood her glass, and the ro- mantic teaspoonful of elder wine at the bot- tom that she couldn't drink by trying ever so hard, in obedience to the mighty argu- ments of the tranter (his hand coming down upon her shoulder the while, like a Nasmyth hammer) ; but the drinker was there no longer. There were the nine or ten pretty little crumbs she had left on her plate ; but the eater was no more seen. There seemed to be a disagreeable close- ness of relationship between himself and the members of his family, now that they were left alone again face to face. His father seemed quite offensive for appearing to be in just as high spirits as when the guests were there ; and as for grandfather James (who had not yet left), he was quite fiendish in being rather glad they were gone. ' Really,' said the tranter, in a tone of placid satisfaction, * I've had so little time to attend to myself all the evenen, that I mane to enjoy a quiet meal now! A slice of this here ham — neither too fat nor too THEY DANCE MORE WILDLY, loi lane — so ; and then a drop of this vinegar and pickles — there, that's it — and I «hall be as fresh as a lark again ! And to tell the truth, my sonny, my inside H^e a-been as dry as a lime -basket all night.' ' I like a party very well,' said Mrs. Dewy, leaving oflp the adorned tones she had been bound to use throughout the evening, and returning to the natural mar- riage voice ; ' but, lord, 'tis such a sight of heavy work next day ! And what with the plates, and knives and forks, and bits kicked off your furniture, and I don't know what- all, why a body could a'most wish there were no such things as Christmases, Ah-h dear !' she yawned, till the clock in the corner had ticked several beats. She cast her eyes round upon the dust-laden fur- niture, and sank down overpowered at the sight. ' Well, I be getting all right by degrees, thank the Lord for't !' said the tranter cheerfully through a mangled mass of ham and bread, without lifting his eyes from his plate, and chopping away with his knife I02 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. and fork as if he were felling trees. ' Ann, you may as well go on to bed at once, and not bide there making such sleepy faces; you look as long-favoured as a fiddle, upon my life, Ann. There, you must be wearied out, ^tis true. I'll do the doors and wind up the clock ; and you go on, or you'll be as white as a sheet to-morrow.' ' Ay ; I don't know whether I sha'n't or no.* The matron passed her hand across her eyes to brush away the film of sleep till she got upstairs. Dick wondered how it was that when people were married they could be so bhnd to romance; and was quite certain that if he ever took to wife that dear impossible Fancy, he and she would never be so dread- fully practical and undemonstrative of the Passion as his father and mother were. The most extraordinary thing was, that all the fathers and mothers he knew were just as undemonstrative as his own. DICK CALLS AT THE SCHOOL. 103 CHAPTER IX. DICK CALLS AT THE SCHOOL. The early days of the year drew on, and Fancy, having passed the holiday weeks at home, returned again to Mellstock. Every spare minute of the week follow- ing her return was spent by Dick in acci- dentally passing the school-house in his journeys about the neighbourhood; but not once did she make herself visible. A hand- kerchief belonging to her had been provi- dentially found by his mother in clearing the rooms the day after that of the dance ; and by much contrivance Dick got it handed over to him, to leave with her at any time he was passing the school after her return. But he delayed taking the extreme measure of calling with it lest, had she really no sentiment of interest in him, it might be regarded as a slightly absurd errand, the reason guessed ; and the sense of the ludi- crous, which was rather keen in her, might do his dignity considerable injury in her I04 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, eyes: and what she thought of him, even apart from the question of her loving, was all the world to him now. But the hour came when the patience of love at twenty -one could endure no longer. One Saturday he approached the school with a mild air of indifference, and had the satisfaction of seeing the object of his quest at the farther end of her garden, trying, by the aid of a spade and gloves, to root a bramble that had intruded itself there. He disguised his feelings from some sus- picious-looking cottage- windows opposite, by endeavouring to appear like a man in a great hurry of business, who wished to leave the handkerchief and have done with such trifling errands. This endeavour signally failed; for on approaching the gate, he found it locked to keep the children, who were playing pri- soner's base in the front, from running into her private grounds. She did not see him ; and he could only think of one thing to be done, which was to shout her name. DICK CALLS AT THE SCHOOL, 105 * Miss Day!' The words were uttered with a jerk and a look, which were meant to imply to the cottages opposite that he was simply a young man who liked shouting, as being a plea- sant way of passing his time, without any reference at aU to persons in gardens. The name died away, and the unconscious Miss Day continued digging and pulling as before. He screwed himself up to enduring the cottage -windows yet more stoically, and shouted again. Fancy took no notice what- ever. He shouted again the third time, with desperate vehemence ; then turned suddenly about and retired a little distance, as if he had no connection with the school, but was standing there by chance. This time she heard him, came down the garden, and entered the school at the back. Footsteps echoed across the interior, the door opened, and three-quarters of the blooming young schoolmistress's face and figure stood revealed before him ; a perpen- io6 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. dicular slice on her left-hand side being cut off by the edge of the door she held ajar. Having surveyed and recognised hira, she came to the gate. At sight of him had the pink of her cheeks increased, lessened, or did it con- tinue to cover its normal area of ground ? It was a question meditated several hun- dreds of times by her visitor in after-hours — the meditation, after wearying involu- tions, always ending in one way, that it was impossible to say. ' Your handkerchief: Miss Day : I called with.* He held it out spasmodically and awkwardly. 'Mother found it: under a chair.' ' 0, thank you very much for bringing it, Mr. Dewy. I couldn't think where I had dropped it.* Now Dick, not being an experienced lover — indeed, never before having been engaged in the practice of love-making at all, except in a small schoolboy way — could not take advantage of the situation; and out came the blunder, which afterwards DICK CALLS AT THE SCHOOL. 107 cost him SO many bitter moments and three sleepless nights : — * Good-morning, Miss Day.' * Good-morning, Mr. Dewy/ The gate was closed ; she was gone ; and Dick was standing outside, unchanged in his condition from what he had been before he called. Of course Angel was not to blame — a young woman living alone in a house could not ask him indoors unless she had known him better — he should have kept her outside. He wished that before he called he had realised more fully than he did the pleasure of being about to call; and turned away. PartII. ^pnnj Chapter I. Passing by the School It followed that as the spring advanced, Dick walked abroad much more frequently than had hitherto been usual mth him, and was continually finding that his nearest way to or from home lay across the field at the corner of the school. The first-fruits of his perseverance were that, on turning the angle on the nineteenth journey that way, he saw Miss Fancy's figure, clothed in a dark-gray dress, looking from a high open window upon the crown of his hat. The friendly greeting, which was the result of this rencounter, was considered so valuable an elixir that Dick passed still oftener ; and by the time he had trodden a little path in the grass where never a path was before, A MEETING OF THE CHOIR. 109 he was rewarded with an actual meeting face to face on the open ground. This brought another meeting, and another, Fancy faintly showing by her bearing that it was a pleasure to her of some kind to see him there ; but the sort of pleasure she de- rived, whether exultation at the hope her exceeding fairness inspired, or the true feel- ing which was alone Dick's concern, he could not anyhow decide, although he meditated on her every little movement for hours after it was made. CHAPTER II. A MEETING OF THE CHOIR. It was the evening of a fine spring day. The descending sun appeared as a nebulous blaze of amber light, its outline being lost in cloudy masses hanging round it, like wild locks of hair. The chief members of Mellstock parish choir were standing in a group in front of Mr. Penny's workshop in the lower village. no UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. They were all brightly illuminated, and each was backed up by a shadow as long as a steeple ; the lowness of the source of light rendering the brims of their hats of no use at all as a protection to the eyes. Mr. Penny^s was the last house in that portion of the parish, and stood in a hollow by the road-side; so that cart-wheels and horses' feet were about level with the sill of his shop-window. This was low and wide, and was open from morning till even- ing, Mr. Penny himself being invariably seen working inside, like a framed portrait of a shoemaker by some modern Moroni. He sat facing the road, with a boot on his knees and the awl in his hand, only looking up for a moment as he stretched out his arms and bent forward at the pull, when his spectacles flashed in the passer's face with a shine of flat whiteness, and then returned again to the boot as usual. Rows of lasts, small and large, stout and slender, covered the wall which formed the background, in the ex- treme shadow of which a kind of dummy was seen sitting, in the shape of ap appreu- A MEETING OF THE CHOIR. iii tice with a string tied round his hair (pro- bably to keep it out of his eyes). He smiled at remarks that floated in from the outside, but was never known to answer them in Mr. Penny's presence. Outside the window, the upper-leather of a Wellington-boot was usually hung, pegged to a board as if to dry. No sign was over his door ; in fact — as with old banks and mercantile houses — advertising in any shape was scorned, and it would have been felt as beneath his dig- nity to paint, for the benefit of strangers, the name of an establishment the trade of which came solely by connection based on personal respect. His visitors now stood on the outside of his window, sometimes leanino^ a2:ainst the sill, sometimes moving a pace or two backwards and forwards in front of it. They talked with deliberate gesticulations to Mr. Penny, enthroned in the shadow of the in- terior. * I do like a man to stick to men who be in the same line o' life — o' Sundays, any way — that I do so.' **2 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ' 'Tis like all the doings of folk who don't know what a day's work is, that's what 1 say.' ' My belief is the man's not to blame ; 'tis she — she's the bitter weed/ ' No, not altogether. He's a poor gawk- hammer. Look at his sermon yesterday.' ' His sermon was well enough, a very excellent sermon enough, only he couldn't put it into words and speak it. That's all was the matter wi' the sermon. He hadn't been able to get it past his pen.' ' Well — ay, the sermon might be good enough ; for, ye see, the sermon of Old Ecclesiastes himself lay in Old Ecclesiastes's ink-bottle afore he got it out.' Mr. Penny, being in the act of drawing the last stitch tight, could aiFord time to look up and throw in a word at this point. ' He's no spouter — that must be said, 'a b'lieve.' ' 'Tis a terrible muddle sometimes with the man, as far as that goes,' said Spinks. ^ Well, we'll say nothing about that,* the tranter answered ; ' for I don't believe 'twill make a penneth o' difference to we A MEETING OF THE CHOIR. 113 poor martels here or hereafter whether hia sermons be good or bad, my sonnies.' Mr. Penny made another hole with his awl, pushed in the thread, and looked up and spoke again at the extension of arms. ' 'Tis his goings-on, souls, that's what it is.' He clenched his features for an Her- culean addition to the ordinary pull, and went on, *The first thing he do when he cam here was to be hot and strong about church business.' ' Trew,' said Spinks; ' that was the very first thing he do.' Mr. Penny, having now been offered the ear of the assembly, accepted it, ceased stitching, swallowed an unimportant quan- tity of air as if it were a pill, and con- tinued : ' The next thing he do is to think about altering the church, until he found 'twould be a matter o' cost and what not, and then not to think no more about it.' ' Trew : that was the next thing he do.* * And the next thing was to tell the young chaps that they were not on no ac- .14 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. count to put their hats in the font during service.' ' Trew.' ' And then 'twas this, and then *twas that, and now 'tis — ' Words were not forcible enough to con- clude the sentence, and Mr. Penny gave a huge pull to signify the concluding word. ' Now 'tis to turn us out of the quire neck and crop,' said the tranter after a silent interval of half a minute, not at all by way of explaining the pause and pull, which had been quite understood, but sim- ply as a means of keeping the subject well before the meeting. Mrs. Penny came to the door at this point in the discussion. Like all good wives, however much she was incHned to play the Tory to her husband's Whiggism, and vice versd^ in times of peace, she coa- lesced with him heartily enough in time of war. * It must be owned he's not all there,* she replied, in a general way, to the frag- ments of talk she had heard from indoors. A MEETING OF THE CHOIR. 115 'Far below poor Mr. Grinham' (the late vicar). * Ay, there was this to be said for him, that you were quite sure he'd never come mumbudgeting to see ye, just as you were in the middle of your work, and put you out with his anxious trouble about you — so say L' ' Never. But as for this new Mr. May- bold, he's a very singular, well-intentioned party in that respect, but unbearable; for as to sifting your cinders, scrubbing your floors, or emptying your soap-suds, why you can't do it. I assure you I've not been able to empt them for several days, unless I throw 'em up the chimley or out of win- der; for as sure as the sun you meet him at the door, coming to ask how you be, and 'tis such a confusing thing to meet a gentleman at the door when ye are in the mess o' washing.' * 'Tis only for want of knowing better, poor gentleman,' said the tranter. ' His maning's good enough. Ay, your parson comes by fate : 'tis heads or tails, like pitch- fi6 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. halfpenny, and no choosing ; so we must take en as he is, my sonnies, and thank God he's no worse, I suppose.' ' I fancy I've seen him look across at Miss Day in a warmer way than Chris- tianity required,' said Mrs. Penny mus- ingly; ' but I don't quite like to say W *0, no; there's nothing in that,' said grandfather William. 4f there's nothing, we shall see nothing,' Mrs. Penny replied, in the tone of a woman who might possibly have private opinions still. * Ah, Mr. Grinham was the man !' said Bowman. ' Why, he never troubled us wi' a visit from year's end to year's end. You might go anywhere, do anything : you'd be sure never to see him.' ' 'A was a right sensible parson,' said Michael. ' He never entered our door but once in his life, and that was to tell my poor wife — ay, poor soul, dead and gone now, as we all shall ! — that as she was such a old aged person, and lived so far from the church, he didn't at all expect her to come any more to the service.' A MEETING OF THE CHOIR. 117 ' And 'a was a very jinerous gentleman about choosing the psalms and hymns o' Sun- days. " Confound ye," says he, '' blare and scrape what ye like, but don't bother me !" ' ' And he was a very honourable good man in not wanting any of us to come and hear him if we were all on-end for a jaunt or spree, or to bring the babies to be chris- tened if they were inclined to squalling. There's virtue in a man's not putting a parish to spiritual trouble.' ' And there's this man never letting us have a bit of peace ; but wanting us to be good and upright till 'tis carried to such a shameful pitch as I never see the like afore nor since!' ' Still, for my part,' said old William, ' though he's arrayed against us, I like the hearty borus-snorus ways of the new pa'son.' ' You, ready to die for the quire,' said Bowman reproachfully, ^ to stick up for the quire's enemy, William !' ' Nobody will feel the loss of our occu- pation so much as I,' said the old man firmly; ^ that you d'all know. I've been Ii8 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. in the quire man and boy ever since I was a chiel of eleven. But for all that 'tisn't in me to call the man a bad man, because I truly and sincerely believe en to be a good young feller.' Some of the youthful sparkle that used to reside there animated William's eye as he uttered the words, and a certain nobility of aspect was also imparted to him by the setting sun, which gave him a Titanic sha- dow at least thirty feet in length, stretching away to the east in outlines of imposing magnitude, his head finally terminating upon the trunk of a grand old oak-tree. ' Mayble's a hearty feller,' the tranter rephed, * and will spak to you be you dirty or be you clane. The first time I met en was in a drong, and though 'a didn't know me no more than the dead, 'a passed the time of day. " D'ye do?" he said, says he, nodding his head, '' A fine day." Then the second time I met en was full-bufi" in town street, when my breeches were tore all to strents and lippets by getting through a copse of thorns and brimbles for a short A TURN IN THE DISCUSSION. 119 cut home - alono: ; and not wantino^ to dis- grace the man by spaking in that state, I fixed my eye on the Aveathercock to let en pass me as a stranger. But no : " How d'ye do, Keuben ?" says he, right hearty. If I'd been dressed in silver spangles from top to toe, the man couldn't have been civiller.' At this moment Dick was seen coming up the village- street, and they turned and watched him. CHAPTER III. A TURN IN THE DISCUSSION. 'I'm afraid Dick's a lost man,' said the tranter. ' What ? — no !' said Mail, implying by his manner that it was a far commoner thing for his ears to report what was not said than that his judgment should be at fault. ' Ay,' said the tranter, still looking at Dick's unconscious advance. ' I don't at all like what I see! There's too many 120 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. o' them looks out of the winder without noticing anything ; too much shining of boots ; too much peeping round corners ; too much looking at the clock ; telling about clever things She did till you be sick of it, and then upon a hint to that effect a horrible silence about her. I've walked the path once in my life and know the country, naibours; and Dick's a lost man!' The tranter turned a quarter round and smiled a smile of miserable satire at the rising new moon, which happened to catch his eye. The others' looks became far too serious at this announcement to allow them to speak ; and they still regarded Dick in the dis- tance. ' 'Twas his mother's fault,' the tranter continued, shaking his head two-and-half times, ' in asking the young woman to our party last Christmas. When I eyed the blue frock and light heels o' the maid, I had my thoughts directly. ^' God bless thee, Dicky my sonny," I said to myself " there's a delusion for thee !" ' *They seemed to be rather distant in A TURN IN THE DISCUSSION. 121 manner last Sunday, I thought,' said Mail tentatively, as became one who was not a member of the family. 'Ay, that's a part of the illness. Dis- tance belongs to it, slyness belongs to it, quarest things on earth belongs to it. There, 'tmay as well come early as late s'far as I know. The sooner begun, the sooner over; for come it will.' * The question I ask is,' said Mr. Spinks, connecting into one thread the two subjects of discourse, as became a man learned in rhetoric, and beating with his hand in a way which signified that the manner rather than the matter of his speech was to be observed, ' how did Mr. Maybold know she could play the organ ? You know we had it from her own lips, as far as that goes, that she has never, first or last, breathed such a thing to him ; much less that she ever would play.' In the midst of this puzzle Dick joined the party, and the news which had caused such a convulsion among the ancient musicians was unfolded to him. ' Well,' he 124 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ing his measure from top to bottom by the eye. ' He's so terrible silly that he might ruin the concern.' ' He don't want to go much ; do ye, Thomas Leaf?' said William. ' Hee-hee! no; I don't want to.* 'I be martal afeard, Leaf, that you'll never be able to tell how many cuts d'take to sharpen a spar/ said Mail. ' I never had no head, never! that's how it happened to happen, hee-hee !' They all assented to this, not with any sense of humiliating Leaf by disparaging him after an open confession, but because it was an accepted thing that Leaf didn't in the least mind having no head, that he habitu- ally walked about without one being an unimpassioned matter of parish history. * But I can sing my treble !' continued Thomas Leaf, quite delighted at being called a fool in such a friendly way; 'I can sing my treble as well as any maid, or married woman either, and better ! And if Jim had lived, I should have had a clever brother! To-morrow is poor Jim's birthday. He'd A TURN IN THE DISCUSSION. 125 ha' been twenty-six if he'd lived till to- morrow.' ' You always seem very sorry for Jim/ said old William musingly. ' Ah ! I do. Such a stay to mother as he'd always ha' been! She'd never have had to work in her old age if he had con- tinued strong, poor Jim !' * What was his age when 'a died ?' ' Four hours and twenty minutes, poor Jim. 'A was born as might be at night; and 'a didn't last as might be till the morn- ing. No, 'a didn't last. Mother called en Jim on the day that would ha' been his christening day if he had lived; and she's always thinking about en. You see he died so very young.' 'Well, 'twas rather youthful,' said Mi- chael. ^ Now to my mind that woman is very imaginative on the subject of children?' said the tranter, his eye precisely sweeping hia audience as he spoke. * Ah, well she maybe,' said Leaf. ' She had twelve regularly one after another, and 126 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, they all, except myself, died very young; either before they was born or just after- wards/ ' Pore feller too. I suppose th'st want to come wi' us ?' the tranter murmured. *Well, Leaf, you shall come wi' us as yours is such a melancholy family,' said old William rather sadly. * I never see such a melancholy family as that afore in my life,' said Reuben. * There's Leafs mother, pore woman I Every morning I see her eyes mooning out through the panes of glass like a pot-sick winder- flower; and as Leaf sings a very high treble, and we don't know what we should do without en for upper G, we'll let en come as a trate, pore feller.* ^ Ay, we'll let en come 'a b'lieve,' said Mr. Penny, looking up, as the pull happened to be at that moment. ' Now,' continued the tranter, dispersing by a new tone of voice this digression about Leaf; ' as to going to see the pa'son, one of us might just call and ask en his maning, and 'twould be just as well done; but it A TURN IN THE DISCUSSION. 1^7 will add a bit of a flourish to the cause if the quire waits on him as a body. Then the great thing to mind is, not for any of our fellers to be nervous ; so before starting we'll one and all come to my house and have a rasher of bacon; then every man- jack het a pint of cider into his inside ; then we'll warm up an extra drop wi' some mead and a bit of ginger ; every man take a thimbleful — just a glimmer of a drop, mind ye, no more, to finish off his inner man — and march off to Pa'son Mayble. Why, sonnies, a man's not himself till he is forti- fied wi' a bit and a drop ? We shall be able to look any gentleman in the face then with- out sin or shame.' Mail just recovered from a deep medita- tion and downward glance into the earth in time to give a cordial approval to this line of action, and the meeting adjourned. 1,78 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. CHAPTER lY. THE INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR. At six o'clock the next day, the whole body of men in the choir emerged from the tranter's door, and advanced with a firm step down the lane. This dignity of march gra- dually became obliterated as they went on, and by the time they reached the hill be- hind the vicarage, a faint resemblance to a flock of sheep might have been discerned in the venerable party. A word from the tranter, however, set them right again ; and as they descended the hill, the regular tramp, tramp, tramp of the united feet was clearly audible from the vicarage garden. At the opening of the gate there was ano- ther short interval of irregular shuffling, caused by a rather peculiar habit the gate had, when swung open quickly, of striking ao^ainst the bank and slammino^ back into the opener's face. ' Now keep step again, will ye?' said the tranter solemnly. ^ It looks better, and INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR, 129 more becomes the high class of errand which has brou^^ht us here.' Thus they advanced to the door. At Reuben's ring the more modest of the group turned aside, adjusted their hats, and looked critically at any shrub that hap- pened to lie in the line of vision; endea- vouring thus to give any one who chanced to look out of the windows the impression that their request, whatever it was going to be, was rather a casual thought occurring whilst they were inspecting the vicar's shrubbery and grass-plot than a predeter- mined thing. The tranter, who, coming frequently to the vicarage with luggage, coals, firewood, &c., had none of the awe for its precincts that filled the breasts of most of the others, fixed his eyes with much strong feeling on the knocker during this interval of w^aiting. The knocker hav- ing no characteristic worthy of notice, he relinquished it for a knot in one of the door-panels, and studied the winding lines of the grain. I50 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ^ 0, sir, please, here's tranter Dewy, and old William Dewy, and young Richard Dewy, 0, and all the quire too, sir, except the boys, a-come to see you !* said Mr. May- bold's maid-servant to Mr. Maybold, the pupils of her eyes dilating like circles in a pond ' All the choir?* said the astonished vicar (who may be shortly described as a good- looking young man with courageous eyes, timid mouth, and neutral nose), looking fixedly at his parlour-maid after speaking, hke a man who fancied he had seen her face before but couldn't recollect where. ' And they looks very firm, and tranter Dewy do turn neither to the right hand nor to the left, but looked quite straight and solemn with his mind made up !' ' 0, all the choir,' repeated the vicar to himself, trying by that simple device to trot out his thoughts on what the choir could come for. 'Yes ; every man -jack of 'em, as I be alive !' (The parlour-maid was rather local in manner, having in fact been raised in the INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAk. 131 Bame village.) * Really, sir, 'tis thoughted by many in town and country that — ' ' Town and country ! — Heavens, I had no idea that I was public property in this way!' said the vicar, his face acquiring a hue somewhere between that of the rose and the peony. * Well, "It is thought in town and country that — " ' * It is thought that you are going to get it hot and strong ! — excusen my incivility, sir.' The vicar suddenly recalled to his recol- lection that he had long ago settled it to be decidedly a mistake to encourage his ser- vant Jane in giving personal opinions. The servant Jane saw by the vicar's face that he suddenly recalled this fact to his mind ; and removing her forehead from the edge of the door, and rubbing away the indent that edge had made, vanished into the passage as Mr. Maybold remarked, ' Show them in, Jane.' A few minutes later a shuffling and jostling (reduced to as refined a form as was compatible with the nature of shuffles and jostles) was heard in the passage; then 132 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, an earnest and prolonged wiping of shoes, conveying the notion that volumes of mud had to be removed ; but the roads being so clean that not a particle of dirt appeared on the choir's boots (those of all the elder members being newly oiled, and Dick's brightly polished), this wiping must be set down simply as a desire to show that these respectable men had no intention or wish to take a mean advantage of clean roads for curtailing proper ceremonies. Next there came a powerful whisper from the same quarter : — * Now stand stock-still there, my sonnies, one and all ! and don't make no noise ; and keep your backs close to the wall, that com pany may pass in and out easy if they want to without squeezing through ye : and we two be enough to go in.' The voice was the tranter's. ' I wish I could go in, too, and see the sight !' said a reedy voice — that of Leaf. ' 'Tis a pity Leaf is so terrible silly, or else he might,' another said. ' I never in my life seed a quire go into INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR. 133 a study to have it out about the playing and singing,' pleaded Leaf; 'and I should like, too, to see it just once !' ' Very well; we'll let en come in,' said the tranter feelingly. * You'll be like chips in porridge, Leaf — neither good nor hurt. All right, my sonny, come along ;' and im- mediately himself, old William, and Leaf appeared in the room. ' We've took the liberty to come and see ye, sir,' said Reuben, letting his hat hang in his left hand, and touching with his right the brim of an imaginary one on his head. * We've come to see ye, sir, man and man, and no offence, I hope?' ' None at all,' said Mr. Maybold. ' This old aged man standing by my side is father ; William Dewy by name, sir.' ' Yes ; I see it is,' said the vicar, nod - ding aside to old William, who smiled. ' I thought ye mightn't know en with- out his bass-viol,' said the tranter apologeti- cally. ' You see, he always wears his best clothes and his bass-viol a- Sundays, and it do make such a difference in a old man's look.' 134 UADER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ' And who's that young man?' the vicar said. ' Tell the pa'son yer name,' said the tranter, turning to Leaf, who stood with his elbows nailed back to a bookcase. 'Please, Thomas Leaf, your holiness!' said Leaf, trembling. ' I hope you'll excuse his looks being so very thin,' continued the tranter deprecat- ingly, turning to the vicar again. ' But 'tisn't his fault, pore feller. He's rather silly by nater, and could never get fat ; though he's a excellent tribble, and so we keep him on.' ' I never had no head, sir,' said Leaf, eagerly grasping at this opportunity for being forgiven his existence. * Ah, poor young man!' said Mr. May- bold. 'Bless you, he don't mind it a bit, if you don't, sir,' said the tranter assuringly. ' Do ye, Leaf?' ' Not I — not a morsel — hee, hee ! I was afeard it mightn't please your holiness, sir, that's all.' The tranter, finding Leaf get on so very INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR. 135 well through his negative qualities, was tempted in a fit of generosity to advance him still higher, by giving him credit for positive ones. * He's very clever for a silly chap, good-now, sir. You never knowed a young feller keep his smock-frocks so clane ; very honest too. His ghastly looks is all there is against en, pore feller ; but we can't help our looks, you know, sir.' ' True : we cannot. You live with your mother, I think. Leaf?' The tranter looked at Leaf to express that the most friendly assistant to his tongue could do no more for him now, and that he must be left to his own resources. ' Yes, sir : a widder, sir. Ah, if bro- ther Jim had lived she'd have had a clever son to keep her without work !^ 'Indeed! poor woman. Give her this half-crown. I'll call and see your mother.' ' Say, " Thank you, sir," ' the tranter whispered imperatively towards Leaf. ' Thank you, sir !' said Leaf. * That's it, then; sit down, Leaf,' said Mr. Maybold. 136 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, * Y-yes, sir I' The tranter cleared his throat after this accidental parenthesis about Leaf, rectified his bodily position, and began his speech. ^Mr. Mayble,' he said, 'I hope you'll excuse my common way, but I always like to look things in the face.' Eeuben made a point of fixing this sen- tence in the vicar's mind by giving a smart nod at the conclusion of it, and then gazing hard out of the window. Mr. Maybold and old William looked in the same direction, apparently under the impression that the things' faces alluded to were there visible. ' What I have been thinking' — the tran- ter Implied by this use of the past tense that he was hardly so discourteous as to be positively thinking it then — 'is that the quire ought to be gie'd a little time, and not done away wi' till Christmas, as a fair thing between man and man. And, Mr. Mayble, I hope you'll excuse my common way?' 'I wHl, I will. Till Christmas,^ the INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR. 137 vicar murmured, stretching the two words to a great length, as if the distance to Christmas might be measured in that way. * "Well, I want you all to understand that I have no personal fault to find, and that I don't wish to change the church music in a forcible way, or in a way which should hurt the feelings of any parishioners. Why I have at last spoken definitely on the sub- ject is that a player has been brought un- der — I may say pressed upon — my notice several times by one of the churchwardens. And as the organ I brought with me is here waiting' (pointing to a cabinet- organ stand- ing in the study), 'there is no reason for longer delay. ^ ' "We made a mistake I suppose then, sir ? But we understood the young lady didn't w^ant to play particularly?' The tranter arranged his countenance to signify that he did not want to be inquisitive in the least. ' No, nor did she. Nor did I definitely wish her to just yet; for your playing is very good. But as I said, one of the church- wardens has been so anxious for a change, 138 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. that as matters stand, I couldn't consistently refuse my consent.' Now for some reason or other, the vicar at this point seemed to have an idea that he had prevaricated ; and as an honest vicar, it was a thing he determined not to do. He corrected himself, blushing as he did so, though why he should blush was not known to Reuben. ' Understand me rightly,' he said : ' the churchwarden proposed it to me, but I had thought myself of getting — Miss Day to play.' * Which churchwarden might that be who proposed her, sir ? — excusing m.^ com- mon way.' The tranter intimated by his tone, that so far from being inquisitive he did not even wish to ask a single question. ' Mr. Shinar, I believe.' * Clk, my sonny ! — beg your pardon, sir, that's only a form of words of mine, sir, and slipped out accidental — sir, he nourishes enmity against us for some reason or ano- ther ; perhaps because we played rather hard upon en Christmas night. I don't know, INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR. 139 but 'tis certain-sure that Viv. Shinar's rale love for music of a particular kind isn't his reason. He've no more ear than that chair. But let that pass.* ' I don't think you should conclude that, because Mr. Shinar wants a different music, he has any ill-feeling for you. I myself, I must own, prefer organ-music to any other I consider it most proper, and feel justified in endeavouring to introduce it ; but then, although other music is better, I don't say yours is not good.' ^ Well then, Mr. Mayble, since death's to be, we'll die like men any day you names, (excusing my common way).' Mr. Maybold bowed his head. *A11 we thought was, that for us old ancient singers to be finished off quietly at no time in particular, as now, in the Sun- days after Easter, would seem rather mean in the eyes of other parishes, sir. But if we fell glorious with a bit of a flourish at Christ- mas, we should have a respectable end, and not dwindle away at some nameless paltry second -Sunday -after or Sunday -next -be- 140 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, fore something, that's got no name of his own.' * Yes, yes, that's reasonable ; I own it's reasonable.' ' You see, Mr. Mayble, we've got — do I keep you inconveniently long, sir ?' ' No, no.' * We've got our feelings — father there especially, Mr. Mayble.' The tranter, in his eagerness to explain, had advanced his person to within six inches of the vicar's. ' Certainly, certainly !' said Mr. May bold, retreating a little for convenience of seeing. ' You are all enthusiastic on the subject, and I am all the more gratified to find you so. A Laodicean lukewarmness is worse than wrongheadedness itself* ' Exactly, sir. In fact now, Mr. Mayble,* Keuben continued, more impressively, and advancing a little closer still to the vicar, ' father there is a perfect figure of wonder, in the way of being fond of music !' The vicar drew back a little farther, the tranter suddenly also standing back a foot INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR. 141 or two, to throw open the view of his father, and pointing to him at the same time. Old William moved uneasily in the large chair, and constructing a minute smile on the mere edge of his lips, for good-manners, said he was indeed very fond of tunes. ' Now, sir, you see exactly how it is,' Reuben continued, appealing to Mr. May- bold' s sense of justice by looking sideways into his eyes. The vicar seemed to see how it was so well, that the gratified tranter walked up to him again with even vehement eager- ness, so that his waistcoat-buttons almost rubbed against the vicar's as he continued : 'As to father, if you or I, or any man or woman of the present generation, at the time music is playing, was to shake your fist in fathei's face, as might be this way, and say, " Don't you be delighted with that music !" ' — the tranter went back to where Leaf was sitting, and held his fist so close to Leaf's face, that the latter pressed his head back against the wall ; ' All right. Leaf, my sonny, I won't hurt you; 'tis just to show my maning to Mr. Mayble. — As I i42 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. was saying, if you or I, or any man, was to shake your fist in father's face this way, and say, "William, your life or your music !" he'd say, " My life !" Now that's father's nater all over; and you see, sir, it must hurt the feelings of a man of that kind, for him and his bass-viol to be done away wi' neck and crop.' The tranter went back to the vicar'8 front, and looked earnestly at a very minute point in his face. * True, true, Dewy,' Mr. Maybold ans- wered, trying to withdraw his head and shoulders without moving his feet; but finding this impracticable, edging back ano- ther inch. These frequent retreats had at last jammed Mr. Maybold between his easy- chair and the edge of the table. And at the moment of the announce- ment of the choir, Mr. Maybold had just re-dipped the pen he was using; at their entry, instead of wiping it, he had laid it on the table with the nib overhanging. At the last retreat his coat-tails came in con- tact with the pen, and down it rolled, first INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR. 143 against the back of the chair ; thence turn- ing a summersault into the seat; thence rolling to the floor with a rattle. The vicar stooped for his pen, and the tranter, wishing to show that, however great their ecclesiastical differences, his mind was not so small as to let this affect his social feelings, stooped also. * And have you anything else you want to explain to me, Dewy?' said Mr. Maybold from under the table. * Nothing, sir. And, Mr. Mayble, you be not offended? I hope you see our desire is reason ?' said the tranter from under the chair. * Quite, quite ; and I shouldn't think of refusing to listen to such a reasonable re- quest,* the vicar replied. Seeing that Reu- ben had secured the pen, he resumed his vertical position, and added, 'You know, Dewy, it is often said how difficult a matter it is to act up to our convictions and please all parties. It may be said with equal truth, that it is difficult for a man of any appreciativeness to have convictions at all. Now in my case, I see right in you, and r44 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, rigHt in Shinar. I see that violins are good, and that an organ is good ; and when we introduce the organ, it will not be that fiddles were bad, but that an organ was better. That you'll clearly understand, Dewy ? * I will ; and thank you very much for such feelings, sir. Piph-h-h-h! How the blood do get into my head to be sure, when- ever I quat down like that!* said Reuben, having also risen to his feet, sticking the pen vertically in the inkstand and almost through the bottom, that it might not roll down again under any circumstances whatever. Now the ancient body of minstrels in the passage felt their curiosity surging higher and higher as the minutes passed. Dick, not having much affection for this errand, soon grew tired, and went away in the direction of the school. Yet their sense of propriety would probably have restrained them from any attempt to discover what was going on in the study, had not the vicar's pen fallen to the floor. The convic- tion that the movement of chairs, &c. neces- INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR. 145 sitated by the search, could only have been caused by the catastrophe of a bloody fight, overpowered all other considerations ; and they advanced to the door, which had only just fallen to. Thus, when Mr. May- bold raised his eyes after the stooping, he beheld glaring through the door Mr. Penny in full-length portraiture. Mail's face and shoulders above Mr. Penny's head, Spinks's forehead and eyes over Mail's crown, and a fractional part of Bowman's countenance under Spinks's arm — crescent-shaped por- tions of other heads and faces being visible behind these — the whole dozen and odd eyes bristling with eager inquiry. Mr. Penny, as is the case with excitable bootmakers and men, on seeing the vicar look at him, and hearing no word spoken, thought it incumbent upon himself to say something of any kind. Nothing suggested itself till he had looked for about half a minute at the vicar. ' You'll excuse my naming it, sir,' he said, regarding with much commiseration the mere surface of the vicar's fia-ce; 'but 146 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. perhaps you don't know, sir, that your chin have bust out a-bleeding where you cut yourself a-shaving this morning, sir/ ' Now, that was the stooping, depend upon't, Mr. Mayble,' the tranter suggested, also looking with much interest at the vicar's chin. ' Blood always will bust out again if you hang down the member that ha' been bleeding.' Old William raised his eyes and watched the vicar's bleeding chin likewise ; and Leaf advanced two or three paces from the book- case, absorbed in the contemplation of the same phenomenon, with parted lips and de- lighted eyes. ' Dear me, dear me !' said Mr. Maybold hastily, looking very red, and brushing hib chin with his hand, then taking out his handkerchief and wiping the place. ' That's it, sir ; all right again now, 'a b'lieve — a mere nothing,' said Mr. Penny. * A little bit of fur off your hat will stop it in a minute if it should bust out again.* * ril let ye have a bit of fur off mine/ INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR, 147 said Reuben, to show his good feeling; 'my hat isn't so new as yours, sir, and 'twon't hurt mine a bit.' * No, no ; thank you, thank you,' Mr. Maybold again nervously replied. ' 'Twas rather a deep cut seemingly, sir?' said Reuben, thinking these the kind- est and best remarks he could make. * 0, no; not particularly.' 'Well, sir, your hand will shake some- times a-shaving, and just when it comes into your head that you may cut yourself, there's the blood.' ' I have been revolving in my mind that question of the time at which we make the change,' said Mr. Maybold, ' and I know you'll meet me half-way. I think Christ- mas-day as much too late for me as the present time is too early for you. I sug- gest Michaelmas or thereabout as a con- venient time for both parties; for I think your objection to a Sunday which has no name is not one of any real weight.' ' Very good, sir. I suppose martel men mustn't expect their own way entirely; and T4S UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. I express in all our names that we'll make shift and be satisfied with what you say.' The tranter touched the brim of his ima- ginary hat again, and all the choir did the same. ^ About Michaelmas, then, as far as you be concerned, sir, and then we make room for the next generation.' ^ About Michaelmas/ said the vicar CHAPTER V. EETURNING HOMEWARD. * *A TOOK it very well, then ?' said Mail, as they all walked up the hill. ^ He behaved like a man, 'a did so,' said the tranter. ^ Supposing this tree here was Pa'son Mayble as might be, and here be I standing, and that large stone is father sit- ting in the easy-chair. " Dewy," says he, " I don't wish to change the church music in a forcible way." ' * Now, that was very nice o' the man.' * Proper nice — out and out nice. The fact is,' said Reuben confidentially, ' 'tis RETURNING HOMEWARD. 149 how you take a man. Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed : kings must be managed ; for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal.' "Tis truly !' murmured the husbands. ' Pa'son Mayble and I were as good friends all through it as if we'd been sworn brothers. Ay, the man's well enough; 'tis what's in his head that spoils him.' * There's really no believing half you hear about people nowadays.' ' Bless ye, my sonnies ! 'tisn't the pa'son's move at all. That gentleman over there' (the tranter nodded in the direction of Shinar's farm) * is at the root of the mischief.' 'What I Shinar?' ' Ay ; and I see what the pa'son don't see. Why, Shinar is for putting forward that young woman that only last night I was saying was our Dick's sweetheart, but I suppose can't be, and making much of her in the sight of the congregation, and think- ing he'll win her by showing her off: well, perhaps 'a will.' I50 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. * Then the music is second to the wo- man, the other churchwarden is second to Shinar, the pa'son is second to the church- wardens, and God A'mighty is nowhere at all/ * That's true; and you see,' continued Reuben, 'at the very beginning it put me in a stud as to how to quarrel wi' en. In short, to save my soul, I couldn't quarrel wi' such a civil man without belying my conscience. Says he to father there, in a voice as quiet as a lamb's, " William, you are a old aged man, WiUiam, as all shall be," says he, *' and sit down in my easy-chair, and rest yourself." And down father set. I could fain ha' laughed at thee, father ; for thou'st take it so unconcerned at first, and then looked so frioi;htened when the chair-bottom sunk in.' 'Ye see,' said old William, hastening to explain, ' I was alarmed to find the bot- tom gie way — what should I know o' spring bottoms? — and thought I had broke it down : and of course as to breaking do^Mi a man's chair, I didn't wish any such thing.' ' And, naibours, when a feller, ever so RETURNING HOMEWARD. 151 mucn up for a miff, d'see his own father sitting in his enemy's easy-chair, and a pore chap like Leaf made the best of, as if he almost had brains — why, it knocks all the wind out of his sail at once : it did out of mine.' 'If that young figure of fun — Fance Day, I mean,' said Bowman, ' hadn't been so mighty forward wi' showing herself off to Shinar and Dick and the rest, 'tis my belief we should never ha' left the gal- lery.' ' 'Tis my belief that though Shinar fired the bullets, the parson made 'em,' said Mr. Penny. ' My wife sticks to it that he's in love wi' her.' * That's a thing we shall never know. I can't translate her, nohow.' * Thou'st ought to be able to translate such a little chiel as she,' the tranter ob- served. ' The littler the maid, the bigger the riddle, to my mind. And coming of such a stock, too, she may well be a twister.' 'Yes; Geoffrey Day is a clever man if 152 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ever there was one. Never says anything not he.' ^ JS ever.' * You might live wi' that roan, my son- nies, a hundred years, and never know there was anything in him.' 'Ay ; one o' these up-country London ink-bottle fellers would call Geoffrey a fool.' * Ye never find out what's in that man: never. Silent? ah, he is silent ! He can keep silence well. That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.' ' There's so much sense in it. Every moment of it is brimming over with sound understanding.' ' 'A can keep a very clever silence — very clever truly,' echoed Leaf. ' 'A looks at me as if 'a could see my thoughts running round like the works of a clock.' ' Well, all will agree that the man can pause well in conversation, be it a long time or be it a short time. And though we can't expect his daughter to inherit his silence, she may have a few dribblets from his sense.' YALBURY WOOD, 153 ' And his pocket, perhaps/ Yes; the nine hundred pound that everybody says he's worth; but 1 call it four hundred and fifty ; for I never beUeve more than half I hear/ * Well, 'tis to be believed he've made a pound or two, and I suppose the maid will have it, since there's nobody else. But 'tis rather sharp upon her, if she's born to for- tune, to make her become as if not born for it, by using her to work so hard/ ' 'Tis all upon his principle. A long- headed feller I' ' Ah,' murmured Spinks, ' 'twould be sharper upon her if she were born for for- tune, and not to it I I suffer from that affliction.' CHAPTEE VI. YALBURY WOOD AND THE KEEPER'S HOUSE. A MOOD of blitheness rarely experienced even by young men was Dick's on the fol- lowing Monday morning. It was the week after the Easter holidays, and he was jour- T54 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. neying along with Smart the mare and the light spring-cart, watching the damp slopes of the hill- sides as they streamed in the warmth of the sun, which at this unsettled season shone on the grass with the fresh- ness of an occasional inspector rather than as an accustomed proprietor. His errand was to fetch Fancy, and some additional household goods, to her dwelling at Mell- stock. The distant view was darkly shaded with clouds ; but the nearer parts of the landscape were whitely illumined by the visible rays of the sun streaming down across the heavy gray shade behind. The tranter had not yet told his son of the state of Shinar's heart, that had been suggested to him by Shinar's movements. He preferred to let such delicate affairs right themselves ; experience having taught him that the uncertain phenomenon of love, as it existed in other people, was not a groundwork upon which a single action of his own life could be founded. The game-keeper, Geoffrey Day, lived in the depths of Yalbury Wood ; but the wood YALBURY WOOD. 155 was intersected by a lane at a place not far from the house, and some trees had of late years been felled, vo give the solitary cot- tager a glimpse of the occasional passers-by. It was a satisfaction to walk into the keeper^s house, even as a stranger, on a fine spring morning like the present. A curl of wood- smoke came from the chimney, and drooped over the roof like a blue feather in a lady's hat; and the sun shone obliquely upon the patch of grass in front, which reflected its brightness through the open doorway and up the staircase opposite, lighting up each riser with a shiny green radiance, and leaving the top of each step in shade. The window-sill of the front room was between four and ^\^ feet from the floor, dropping inwardly to a broad low bench, over which, as well as over the whole sur- face of the wall beneath, there always hung a deep shade, which was considered objec- tionable on every ground save one, namely, that the perpetual sprinkling of seeds and water by the caged canary abovs was not 156 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. noticed as an eyesore by visitors. The window was set with thickly -leaded dia- mond glazing, formed, especially in the lower panes, of knotty glass of various shades of green. Nothing was better known to Fancy than the extravagant manner in which these circular knots or eyes distorted everything seen through them from the outside — lifting hats from heads, shoulders from bodies ; scattering the spokes of cart- wheels, and bending the straight fir-trunks into semicircles. The ceiling was carried by a huge beam traversing its midst, from the side of which projected a large nail, used solely and constantly as a peg for Geoffrey's hat; the nail was arched by a rainbow - shaped stain, imprinted by the brim of the said hat when it was hung there dripping wet. The most striking point about the room was the furniture. This was a repetition upon inanimate objects of the old principle introduced by Noah, consisting for the most part of two articles of every sort. The duplicate system of furnishing owed its YALBURY WOOD. 157 existence to the forethought of Fancy's mo- ther, exercised from the date of Fancy's birthday onwards. The arrangement spoke for itself; nobody who knew the tone of the household could look at the goods without being aware that the second set was a pro- vision for Fancy, when she should marry and have a house of her own. The most noticeable instance was a pair of green- faced eight-day clocks, ticking alternately, which were severally two and half minutes and three minutes striking the hour of twelve, one proclaiming, in Italian flour- ishes, Thomas Wood as the name of its maker, and the other — arched at the top and altogether of more cynical appearance — that of Ezekiel Sparrowgrass. These were two departed clockmakers of Casterbridge, whose desperate rivalry throughout their lives was nowhere more emphatically per- petuated than here at Geoffrey's. These chief specimens of the marriage provision were supported on the right by a couple of kitchen dressers, each fitted complete with their cups, dishes, and plates, in their turn 158 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. followed by two dumb-waiters, two family Bibles, two warming-pans, and two inter- mixed sets of chairs. But tbe position last reacted — the chimney-corner — was, after all, the most attractive side of the parallelogram. It was large enough to admit, in addition to Geoffrey himself, Geoffrey's wife, her chair, and her work-table, entirely within the line of the mantel, without danger or even in- convenience from the heat of the fire; and was spacious enough overhead to allow of the insertion of wood poles for the hanging of bacon, which were cloaked with long shreds of soot, floating on the draught hke the tattered banners on the walls of ancient aisles. These points were common to most chimney-corners of the neighbourhood ; but one feature there was which made Geof- frey's fireside not only an object of interest to casual aristocratic visitors — to whom every cottage fireside was more or less a curiosity — but the admiration of friends who were accustomed to fireplaces of the YALBURY WOOD. 159 ordinary hamlet model. This peculiarity- was a little window in the chimney-back, almost over the fire, around which the smoke crept caressingly when it left the per- pendicular course. The window-board was curiously stamped with black circles, burnt thereon by the heated bottoms of drinking- cups, which had rested there after pre- viously standing on the hot ashes of the hearth for the purpose of warming their contents, the result giving to the ledge the look of an envelope which has passed through innumerable post-offices. Fancy was gliding about the room pre- paring dinner, her head inclining now to the right, now to the left, and singing the tips and ends of tunes that sprang up in her- mind like mushrooms. The footsteps of Mrs. Day could be heard in the room overhead. Fancy went finally to the door. ' Father ! Dinner.' A tall spare figure was seen advancing by the window with periodical steps, and the keeper entered from the garden. He appeared to be a man who was always look- i6o UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ing down, as if trying to recollect some- thing he said yesterday. The surface of his face was fissured rather than wrinkled, and over and under his eyes were folds which seemed as a kind of exterior eyelids. His nose had been thrown backwards by a blow in a poaching fray, so that when the sun was low and shining in his face, people could see far into his head. There was in him a quiet grimness, which would in his moments of displeasure have become surliness, had it not been tempered by honesty of soul, and which was often wrong- headedness because not allied with sub- tlety. Although not an extraordinarily taci- turn man among friends slightly richer than he, he never wasted words upon out- siders, and to his trapper Enoch his ideas were seldom conveyed by any other meaos than nods and shakes of the head. Their long acquaintance with each other's ways, and the nature of their labours, rendered words between them almost superfluous as vehicles of thought, whilst the coincid- VALBURY WOOD. i6i ence of their horizons, and the astonishing equality of their social views, by startling the keeper from time to time as very dam- aging to the theory of master and man, strictly forbade any indulgence in words as courtesies. Behind the keeper came Enoch (who had been assisting in the garden) at the well-considered chronological distance of three minutes — an interval of non-appear- ance on the trapper's part not arrived at without some reflection. Four minutes had been found to express indifference to indoor arrangements, and simultaneousness had implied too great an anxiety about meals. ' A little earlier than usual. Fancy,' the keeper said, as he sat down and looked at the clocks. ' That Ezekiel Sparrowgrass o' thine is tearing on afore Thomas Wood again.' ' I kept in the middle between them, said Fancy, also looking at the two clocks. ' Better stick to Thomas,' said her fii- 1 62 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ther. ' There's a healthy beat in Thomas that would lead a man to swear by en off- hand. He is as true as the Squire's time. How is it your stap-mother isn't here?' As Fancy was about to reply, the rattle ofwhet^ls was heard, and 'We^-hey, Smart!* in Mr. Eichard Dewy's voice rolled into the cottage from round the corner of the house. ' Hullo ! there's Dewy's cart come for thee, Fancy — Dick driving — afore time, too. Well, ask the lad to have a bit and a drop with us.' Dick on entering made a point of im- plying by his general bearing that he took an interest in Fancy simply as in one of the same race and country as himself; and they all sat down. Dick could have wished her manner had not been so en- tirely free from all apparent consciousness of those accidental meetings of theirs ; but he let the thought pass. Enoch sat dia- gonally at a table afar off, under the corner cupboard, and drank his cider from a long perpendicular pint cup, having tall fir-trees YALBURY WOOD. 163 done in brown on its sides. He tiirew occasional remarks into the general tide of conversation, and with this advantage to himself, that he participated in the plea- sures of a talk (slight as it was) at meal- times, without saddling himself with the responsibility of sustaining it. *Why don't your stap- mother come down, Fancy? said Geoffrey. 'You'll ex- cuse her, Mister Dick, she's a little quare sometimes.* *0 yes, — quite,' said Richard, as if he were in the habit of excusing several people every day. ' She d'belong to that class of woman- kind that become second wives : a rum class rather.' ' Indeed,' said Dick, with sympathy for an indefinite something. ' Yes ; and 'tis trying to a female, espe- cially if you've been a first wife, as she hev.' ' Very trpng it must be.' ' Yes : you see her first husband was a young man, who let her go too far ; in fact, i64 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, she used to kick up Bob's- a -dying at the least thing in the world. And when I'd mar- ried her and found it out, I thought, thinks I, "'Tis too late now to begin to cure ye;" and so I let her bide. But she's quare, — very quare, at times !' ' I'm sorry to hear that.' * Yes : there ; wives be such a provoking class of society, because though they be never right, they be never more than half wrong.* Fancy seemed uneasy under the infliction of this household moralising, which might tend to damage the airy-fairy nature that Dick, as maiden shrewdness told her, had accredited her with. Her dead silence im- pressed Geoffrey with the notion that some- thing in his words did not agree with her educated ideas, and he changed the conver- sation. ' Did Fred Shinar send the cask o' drink, Fancy ? ' I think he did : yes, he did.' * Nice solid feller, Fred Shinar I' said Geoffrey to Dick as he helped himself to gravy, bringing the spoon round to his plate YALBURY WOOD. 165 by way of the potato-dish, to obviate a stain on the cloth in the event of a spill. Geoffrey's eyes had been fixed upon his plate for the previous four or five minutes, and in removing them he had only carried them to the spoon, which, from its fulness and the distance of its transit, necessitated a steady watching through the whole of the route. Just as intently as the keeper's eyes had been fixed on the spoon, Fancy's had been fixed on her father's, without premedi- tation or the slightest phase of furtiveness ; but there they were fastened. This was the reason why : Dick was sitting next to her on the right side, and on the side of the table opposite to her father. Fancy had laid her right hand lightly down upon the table-cloth for an in- stant, and to her alarm Dick, after dropping his fork and brushing his forehead as a rea- son, flung down his own left hand, overlap- ping a third of Fancy's with it, and keeping it there. So the innocent Fancy, instead of pulling her hand from the trap, settled her eyes on her father's, to guard against his dis- i66 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. covery of this perilous game of Dick's. Dick finished his mouthful; Fancy finished her crumb, and nothing was done beyond watch- ing Geoffrey ^s eyes. Then the hands slid apart ; Fancy's going over six inches of cloth, Dick's over one. Geoffrey's eye had risen. ' I said Fred Shinar is a nice solid feller/ he repeated, more emphatically. * He is; yes, he is,' stammered Dick ; 'but to me he is little more than a stranger.' * True. There, I know en as well as any man can be known. And you know en very well too, don't ye. Fancy ?' Geoffrey put on a tone expressing that these words signified at present about one hundred times the amount of meaning they conveyed literally. Dick looked anxious. 'Will you pass me some bread?' said Fancy in a flurry, the red of her face be- coming slightly disordered, and looking as solicitous as a human being could look about a piece of bread. 'Ay, that I will,' replied the unconscious Geoffrey. 'Ay,' he continued, returning to YALBURY WOOD. 167 the displaced idea, ' we be likely to remain friendly wi' Mr. Shinar if the wheels d'run smooth/ ^An excellent thing — a very capital thing, as I should say,' the youth answered with exceeding relevance, considering that his thoughts, instead of following Geof- frey's remark, were nestling at a distance of about two feet on his left the whole time. *A young woman's face will turn the north wind. Master Richard; my heart if *twon't.* Dick looked more anxious and was attentive in earnest at these words. ' Yes ; turn the north wind,' added Geoffrey after an emphatic pause. * And though she's one of my own flesh and blood ' * Will you fetch down a bit of raw-mil' cheese from pantry-shelf,' Fancy interrupted, as if she were famishing. * Ay, that I will, chiel, chiel, says I, and Mr. Shinar only asking last Saturday night .... cheese you said, Fancy ?' Dick controlled his emotion at these mysterious allusions to Mr. Shinar, — the better enabled to do so by perceiving that r68 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. Fancy's heart went not with her father's — and spoke like a stranger to the affairs of the neighbourhood. ' Yes, there's a great deal to be said upon the power of maiden faces in settling your courses,' he said as the keeper retreated for the cheese. 'The conversation is taking a very strange turn : nothing that / have ever done war- rants such things being said,' murmured Fancy with emphasis, just loud enough to reach Dick's ears. ' You think to yourself, 'twas to be,' cried Enoch from his distant corner, by way of filling up the vacancy caused by Geoffrey's momentary absence. 'And so you marry her, Master Dewy, and there's an end o't.' ' Pray don't say such things, Enoch,' said Fancy severely, upon which Enoch relapsed into servitude. ' If we are doomed to marry, we marry ; if we are doomed to remain single, we do/ replied Dick. Geoffrey had by this time sat down again, and he now made his lips thin by severely straining them across his gums, and looked YALBURY WOOD. 169 out of the fireplace window to the end of the paddock with solemn scrutiny. ' That's not the case with some folk,' he said at length, as if he read the words on a board at the farther end of the paddock. Fancy looked interested, and Dick said, *No? ' There's that wife o' mine. It was her doom not to be nobody's wife at all in the wide universe. But she made up her mind that she would, and did it twice over. Doom? Doom is nothing beside a elderly woman — quite a chiel in her hands.' A movement was now heard along the upstairs passage and footsteps descending. The door at the foot of the stairs opened and the second Mrs. Day appeared in view, looking fixedly at the table as she advanced towards it, with apparent obliviousness of the presence of any other human being than herself. In short, if the table had been the personages, and ihe persons the table, her glance would have been the most natural imaginable. She showed herself to possess an ordi- 170 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. nary woman's face, iron-gray hair, hardly any hips, and a great deal of cleanliness in a broad white apron-string, as it appeared upon the waist of her dark stuff dress. ' People will run away with a story now, I suppose,' she began saying, 'that Jane Day's tablecloths be as poor and ragged as any union beggar's !' Dick now perceived that the tablecloth was a little the worse for wear, and reflect- ing for a moment, concluded that 'people' in step-mother language probably meant himself On lifting his eyes he found that Mrs. Day had vanished again upstairs, and presently returned with an armful of new damask- linen tablecloths, folded square and hard as boards by long compression. These she flounced down into a chair; then took one, shook it out from its folds, and spread it on the table by instalments, transferring the plates and dishes one by one from the old to the new cloth. ' And I suppose they'll say, too, that she hasn't a decent knife and fork in her house !' 'I shouldn't say any such ill-natured YALBURY WOOD. 171 thing, I am sure — ' began Dick. But Mrs. Day had vanished into the next room. Fancy appeared distressed. ' Very strange woman, isn't she ? said Geoffrey, quietly going on with his dinner. ' But 'tis too late to attempt curing. My heart ! 'tis so growed into her that 'twould kill her to take it out. Ay, she's very quare: you'd be amazed to see what valu- able goods we've got stowed away upstairs.' Back again came Mrs. Day with a box of bright steel horn - handled knives, silver forks, carver, and all complete. These were wiped of the preservative oil which coated them, and then a knife and fork were laid down to each individual with a bang, the carving knife and fork thrust into the meat dish, and the old ones they had hitherto used tossed away. Geofirey placidly cut a slice with the new knife and fork, and asked Dick if he wanted any more. The table had been spread for the mixed midday meal of dinner and tea, which is common among cottagers. 'The 172 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. parishioners about here/ continued Mrs Day, not looking at any living being, but snatching up the brown delf tea-things, ' be the laziest, gossipest, poachest, jailest set of any ever I come among. And they'll talk about my teapot and tea-things next, I suppose!' She vanished with the teapot, cups, and saucers, and reappeared with a tea-service in white china, and a packet wrapped in brown paper. This was re- moved, together with folds of tissue-paper underneath; and a brilliant silver teapot appeared. ' I'll help to put the things right,' said Fancy soothingly, and rising from her seat. ^I ought to have laid out better things, I suppose. But' (here she enlarged her looks so as to include Dick) 'I have been away from home a good deal, and I make shocking blunders in my housekeep- ing.' Smiles and suavity were then dis- pensed all around by the bright little bird. After a little more preparation and modification, Mrs. Day took her seat at the head of the table, and during the latter or DICK MAKES HIMSELF USEFUL. 173 tea division of the meal, presided with much composure. It may cause some sur- prise to learn that, now her vagary was over, she showed herself to be an excellent person with much common sense, and even a religious seriousness of tone on matters pertaining to her afflictions. CHAPTER VII. DICK MAKES HIMSELF USEFUL. The effect of Geoffrey's incidental allu- sions to Mr. Shinar was to restrain a consi- derable quantity of spontaneous chat that would otherwise have burst from young Dewy along the drive homeward. And a certain remark he had hazarded to her, in rather too blunt and eager a manner, kept the young lady herself even more silent than Dick. On both sides there was an unwillingness to talk on any but the most trivial subjects, and their sentences rarely took a larger form tnan could be expressed in two or three words. /74 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. Owing to Fancy being later in the day than she had promised, the charwoman had given up expecting her ; whereupon Dick could do no less than stay and see her comfortably tided through the disagreeable time of entering and establishing herself in an empty house after an absence of a week. The additional furniture and utensils that had been brought (a canary and cage among the rest) w^ere taken out of the vehicle, and the horse was unharnessed and put in the school plot, where there was some tender grass. Dick lighted the fire; and activity began to loosen their tongues a little. ' There !' said Fancy, ' we forgot to bring the fire-irons !' She had originally found in her house, to bear out the expression * nearly fur- nished' which the school-manager had used in his letter to her, a table, three chairs, a fender, and a piece of carpet. This * nearly* had been supplemented hitherto by a kind friend, who had lent her fire - irons and crockery until she should fetch some from home. DICK MAKES HIMSELF USEFUL. 175 Dick attended to the young lady's fire, using his whip-handle for a poker till it was spoilt, and then flourishing a hurdle stick for the remainder of the time. ' The kettle boils ; now you shall have a cup of tea,' said Fancy, diving into the hamper she had brought. ' Thank you,' said Dick, whose drive had made him ready for a cup, especially in her company. * Well, here's only one cup and saucer, as I breathe ! Whatever could mother be thinking about ? Do you mind making shift, Mr. Dewy ?' * Not at all, Miss Day,' said that civil person. * And only having a cup by itself? or a saucer by itself?' ' Don't mind in the least.* ' Which do you mean by that ?' 'I mean the cup, if you like thb saucer.' ' And the saucer, if I like the cup ?' ' Exactly, Miss Day.' * Thank you, Mr. Dewy, for I like the 176 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. cup decidedly. Stop a minute ; there are no spoons now !' She dived into the ham- per again, and at the end of two or three minutes looked up and said, ' I suppose you don't mind if I can't find a spoon?' ' Not at all,' said the agreeable Richard 'The fact is, the spoons have slipped down somewhere; right under the other things. yes, here's one, and only one. You would rather have one than not, I suppose, Mr. Dewy?' 'Rather not. I never did care much about spoons.' *Then I'll have it. I do care about them. You must stir up your tea with a knife. Would you mind lifting the kettle ofi^, that it may not boil dry?' Dick leaped to the fireplace, and ear- nestly removed the kettle. ' There I you did it so wildly that you have made your hand black. We always use kettle-holders; didn't you learn house- wifery as far as that, Mr. Dewy? Well, never mind the soot on your hand. Comr here. I am going to rinse mine, too.' DICK MAKES HIMSELF USEFUL. 177 They went to a basin she had placed in the back room. ^This is the only basin I have/ she said. *Turn up your sleeves, and by that time my hands will be washed, and you can come.' Her hands were in the water now. ' 0, how vexing I' she exclaimed. ' There's not a drop of water left for you, unless you draw it, and the well is I don't know how many feet deep ; all that was in the pitcher I used for the kettle and this basin. Do you mind dipping the tips of your fingers in the same f ^ Not at all. And to save time I won't wait till you have done, if you have no objection ?' Thereupon he plunged in his hands, and they paddled together. It being the first time in his life that he had touched female fingers under water, Dick duly registered the sensation as rather a nice one. ' Really, I hardly know which are my own hands and which are yours, they have got so mixed up together,' she said, with drawing her own very suddenly. 178 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. * It doesn't matter at all/ said Dick, ' at least as far as I am concerned.' ^ There ! no towel I Whoever thinks of a towel till the hands are wet ?' 'Nobody.' * " Nobody." How very dull it is when people are so friendly I Come here, Mr. Dewy. Now do you think you could lift the lid of that box with your elbow, and then, with something or other, take out a towel you will find under the clean clothes ? Be sure don't touch any of them with your wet hands, for the things at the top are all Starched and Ironed.' Dick managed, by the aid of a knife and fork, to extract a towel from under a muslin dress without wetting the latter ; and for a moment he ventured to assume a tone of criticism. ' I fear for that dress,' he said, as they wiped their hands together. * What ?' said Miss Day, looking into the box at the dress alluded to. * 0, I know what you mean — that the vicar will never let me wear muslin T DICK MAKES HIMSELF USEFUL. 179 'Yes; ' Well, I know it is condemned by all parties in the church as flaunting, and un- fit for common wear for girls below clerical condition; but we'll see/ ' In the interest of the church, 1 hope you don't speak seriously.' ' Yes, I do ; but we'll see.' There was a comely determination on her lip, very plea- sant to a beholder who was neither bishop, priest, nor deacon. 'I think I can manage any vicar's views about me if he's under forty.' Dick rather wished she had never thought of managing vicars. ' I certainly shall be glad to get some of your delicious tea,' he said in rather a free way, yet modestly, as became one in a posi- tion between that of visitor and inmate, asd looking wistfully at his lonely saucer. ' So shall I. Now is there anything else we want, Mr. Dewy ?' ' I really think there's nothing else, Miss Day.' She prepared to sit down, looking mus- i8o UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ingly out of the window at Smart's enjoy- ment of the rich grass. * Nobody seems to care about me/ she murmured, with large lost eyes fixed upon the sky beyond Smart. 'Perhaps Mr. Shinar does,' said Dick, in the tone of a slightly injured man. ' Yes, I forgot — he does, I know.' Dick precipitately regretted that he had suggested Shinar, since it had produced such a miser- able result as this. * I'll warrant you'll care for somebody very much indeed another day, won't you, Mr. Dewy ?' she continued, looking very feelingly into the mathematical centre of his eyes. ^Ah, I'll warrant I shall,' said Dick, feelingly too, and looking back into her dark pupils, whereupon they were turned aside. * I meant,' she went on, preventing him from speaking just as he was going to nar- rate a forcible story about his feelings ; ^ I meant that nobody comes to see if I have returned — not even the vicar ' DICK MAKE6 HIMSELh USEFUL. i8i ' If you want to see him, I'll call at the vicarage directly we have had some tea.' ' No, no ! Don't let him come down here, whatever you do, whilst I am in such a state of disarrangement. Yicars look so miserable and awkward when one's house is in a muddle ; walking about, and making impossible suggestions in quaint academic phrases tiU your flesh creeps and you wish them dead. Do you take sugar ?' Mr. Maybold was at this instant seen coming up the path. ' There ! That's he coming ! How I wish you were not here 1 — that is, how awkward — dear, dear !' she exclaimed, with a quick ascent of blood to her face, and irritated with Dick rather than the vicar, as it seemed. ^ Pray don't be alarmed on my account. Miss Day — good-afternoon!' said Dick in a hufl^, putting on his hat, and leaving the room hastily by the back-door. The horse was put in, and on mounting the shafts to start, he saw through the win- dow the vicar standing upon some books i82 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, piled in a chair, and driving a nail into the wall ; Fancy, with a demure glance, holding the canary-cage up to him, as if she had never in her life thought of anything but vicars and canaries. CHAPTER YIII. DICK MEETS HIS FATHER. For several minutes Dick drove along homeward, with the inward eye of reflection so anxiously set on his passages at arms with Fancy, that the road and scenery were as a thin mist over the real pictures of his mind. Was she a coquette ? The balance between the evidence that she did love him and that she did not was so nicely struck, that his opinion had no stability. She had let him put his hand upon hers; she had allowed her eyes to drop plump into the depths of his — his into hers — three or four times : her manner had been very free with DICK MEETS HIS FATHER. 183 regard to the basin aiid towel ; she had ap- peared vexed at the mention of Shinar. On the other hand, she had driven him about the house like a quiet dog or cat, said Shinar cared for her, and seemed anxious that Mr. Maybold should do the same. Thinking thus as he turned the corner at Mellstock Cross, sitting on the front board of the spring cart — his legs on the outside, and his whole frame jigging up and down like a candle -flame to the time of Smart's trotting — who should he see commg down the hill but his father in the light wagon, quivering up and down on a smaller scale of shakes, those merely caused by the stones in the road. They were soon cross- ing each other's front. * Weh-hey I' said the tranter to Smiler. *Weh-hey!' said Dick to Smart, in an echo of the same voice. ' Th'st hauled her over, I suppose?' Reu- ben inquired peaceably. ' Yes,' said Dick, with such a clinching period at the end that it seemed he was never going to add another word. Smiler, 1 84 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. thinking this the close of the conversation, prepared to move on. *Weh-hey!' said the tranter. 'I tell thee what it is, Dick. That there maid is taking up thy thoughts more than's good for thee, my sonny. Thou'rt never happy now unless th'rt making thyself miserable about her in one way or another.* * I don't know about that, father,* said Dick rather stupidly. ' But I do— Wey, SmHer!— 'Od rot the women, 'tis nothing else wi' 'em nowadays but getting young men and leading 'em astray.' * Pooh, father ! you just repeat what all the common world says ; that's all you do.' * The world's a very sensible feller on things in jineral, Dick ; a very sensible party mdeed.' Dick looked into the distance at a vast expanse of mortgaged estate. 'I wish I was as rich as a lord when he^s as poor as a crow,' he murmured; 'I'd soon ask Fancy something.' * I wish so too, wi' all my heart, sonny ; DICK MEETS HIS FATHER. 185 that I do. Well, mind what beest about, that's all.' Smart moved on a step or two. * Sup- posing now, father — We-hey, Smart ! — I did think a little about her, and I had a chance, which I hadn't; don't you think she's a very good sort of— of — one ?' ' Ay, good ; she's good enough. When you've made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand — she's as good as any other; they be all alike in the groundwork : 'tis only in the flourishes there's a difference. She's good enough ; but I can't see what the nation a young feller like you — wi' a comfortable house and home, and father and mother to take care o' thee, and who sent 'ee to a school so good that 'twas hardly fair to the other children — should want to go hollering after a young woman for, when she's quietly making a husband in her pocket, and not troubled by chick nor chiel, to make a poverty-stric' wife and family of her, and neither hat, cap, wig, nor waistcoat to set 'em up wi': be drowned if I can see i86 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, it, and that's the long and short o't, my sonny !' Dick looked at Smart's ears, then up the hill ; but no reason was suggested by any object that met his gaze. 'For about the same reason that you did, father, I suppose.' 'Dang it, my sonny, thou'st got me there !' and the tranter gave vent to a grim admiration, with the mien of a man who was too magnanimous not to appreciate a slight rap on the knuckles, even if they were his own. 'Whether or no,' said Dick, 'I asked her a thing going along the road.' ' Come to that, is it ? Turk ! won't thy mother be in a taking ! Well, she's ready, I don't doubt?' ' I didn't ask her anything about having me ; and if you'll let me speak, I'll tell *ee what I want to know. I just said, Did she care about me ?' 'Piph-ph-ph!' * And then she said nothing for a quar- ter of a mile, and then she said she didn't DICK MEETS HIS FATHER. 187 know Now, what I want to know is, what was the meaning of that speech ?' The latter words were spoken resolutely, as if be didn't care for the ridicule of all the fathers in creation. * The maning of that speech is,' the tran- ter replied deliberately, Hhat the maning is rather hid at present. Well, Dick, as an honest father to thee, I don't pretend to deny what you d'know well enough; that is, that her father being rather better in the world than we, I should welcome her ready enough if it must be somebody.' ^But what d'ye think she really did mean?' said Dick. * I'm afeard I ben't o* much account in guessing, especially as I was not there when she said it, and seeing that your mother was the only woman I ever cam into such close quarters as that wi'.' * And what did mother say to you when you asked her?' said Dick musingly. * I don't see that that will help ye/ * The principle is the same.' ' Well— ay : what did she say ? Let's see. 1 88 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. I was oiling my working- day boots without taking 'em off, and wi' my head hanging down, when she just brushed on by the garden hatch like a flittering leaf. " Ann,'^ I said, says I, and then, — but, Dick, I be afeard ^twill be no help to thee; for we were such a rum couple, your mother and I, leastways one half was, that is myself-— and your mother's charms was more in the manner than the material.' ' Never mind ! " Ann," said you.* '^'Ann," said I, as I was saying . . . " Ann,'' I said to her when I was oiling my working-day boots wi' my head hanging down, ''Woot hae me?" .... What came next I can't quite call up at this distance o' time. Perhaps your mother would know, — she's a better memory for her little tri- umphs than I. However, the long and the short o' the story is that we were married somehow, as I found afterwards. 'Twas on White Tuesday, — Mellstock Club walked the same day, every man two and two, and a fine day 'twas, — hot as fire, — the sun did strik' down upon my back going to church ! DICK MEETS HIS FATHER. 189 I well can mind what a bath o' sweating I was in, body and mind I But Fance will ha' thee, Dick — she won't walk wi' another chap — no such good luck.' ^ 1 don't know about that,' said Dick, whipping at Smart's flank in a fanciful way, which, as Smart knew, meant nothing in connection with going on. ^ There's Pa'son Maybold, too — that's all against me.' 'What about he ? She's never been stuff- ing into thy innocent heart that he's in love wi' her? Lord, the vanity o' maidens!' * No, no. But he called, and she looked at him in such a way, and at me in such a way — quite different the ways were, — and as I was coming off, there was he hanging up her birdcage.' ^ Well, why shouldn't the man hang up her birdcage ? Turk seize it all, what's that got to do wi' it? Dick, that thou beest a white -lyvered chap I don't say, but if thou beestn't as mad as a cappel-faced bull, let me smile no more.' '0, ay.' * And what's think now, Dick? I90 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ' I don't know.' ' Here's another pretty kettle o' fish for thee. Who d'ye think's the bitter weed in our being turned out? Did our party tell'ee?' ' No. Why, Pa'son Maybold, I suppose.' * Shinar, — because he's in love with thy young woman, and d'want to see her young figure sitting up at that quare instrume't, and her young fingers rum-strumming upon the keys.* A sharp ado of sweet and bitter was going on in Dick during this communication from his father. * Shinar s a fool I — ^no, that's not it; I don^t believe any such thing, father. Why, Shinar would never take a determined step like that, unless she'd been a little made up to, and had taken it kindly. Pooh!' 'Who's to say she didn't?' 'I do.' ' The more fool you.' ' Why, father of me ?' ' Has she ever done more to thee T 'No.' ' Then she has done as much to he — rot DICK MEETS HIS FATHER. loi 'em ! Now, Dick, this is how a maiden is. Shell swear she's djdng for thee, and she is dying for thee, and she will die for theej but she'll fling a look over t'other shoulder at another young feller, though never leav- ing off dying for thee just the same.' * She's not dying for me, and so she didn't fling a look at him.' ' But she may be dying for him, for she looked at thee.' *I don't know what to make of it at all,' said Dick gloomily. * All I can make of it is,' the tranter said, raising his whip, arranging his different joints and muscles, and motioning to the horse to move on, * that if you can't read a maid's mind by her motions, nater d'seem to say thou'st ought to be a bachelor. Clk, elk ! Smiler !' And the tranter moved on. Dick held Smart's rein firmly, and the whole concern of horse, cart, and man re- mained rooted in the lane. How long this condition would have lasted is unknown, had not Dick's thoughts, after adding up numer- ous items of misery, gradually wandered 192 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. round to the fact, that as somethmg must be done, it could not be done by staying there all night. Reaching home he went up to his bed- room, shut the door as if he were going to be seen no more in this life, and taking a sheet of paper and uncorking the ink-bottle, he began a letter. The dignity of the writer's mind was so powerfully apparent in every line of this effusion, that it obscured the logical sequence of facts and intentions to such an appreciable degree that it was not at all clear to a reader whether he there and then left off loving Miss Fancy Day; whether he had never loved her seriously, and never meant to ; whether he had been dying up to the present moment, and now intended to get well again ; or whether he had hitherto been in good health, and intended to die for her forthwith. He put this letter in an envelope, sealed it up, directed it in a stern handwriting of straight firm dashes — easy flourishes being rigorously excluded. He walked with it in his pocket down the lane in strides not an DICK MEETS HIS FATHER. 19.^ inch less than three feet and a half long. Reaching her gate he put on a resolute ex- pression — then put it off again, turned back homeward, tore up his letter, and sat down. That letter was altogether in a wrong tone — that he must own. A heartless man- of- the- world tone was what the juncture re- quired. That he rather wanted her, and ra- ther did not want her — the latter for choice ; but that as a member of society he didn't mind making a query in plain terms, which could only be answered in the same plain terms : did she mean anything by her bear- ing towards him, or did she not ? This letter was considered so satisfactory in every way that, being put into the hands of a little boy, and the order given that he was to run with it to the school, he was told ivi addition not to look behind him if Dick called after him to bring it back, but to run along with it just the same. Having taken this precaution against vacillation, Dick watched his messenger down the road, and turned into the house whistling an air in such ghastly jerks and starts, that whisthng 194 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. seemed to be the act the very farthest re- moved from that which was instinctive in such a youth. The letter was left as ordered : the next morning came and passed — and no answer. The next. The next. Friday night came. Dick resolved that if no answer or sign were given by her the next day, on Sunday he would meet her face to face, and have it all out by word of mouth. 'Dick,' said his father, coming in from I the garden at that moment — in each hand a hive of bees tied in a cloth to prevent their egress — ' I think you'd better take these two swarms of bees to Mrs. Maybold's to-morrow, instead o' me, and I'll go wi' Smiler and the wagon.' It was a relief; for Mrs. Maybold, the vicar's mother, who had just taken into her head a fancy for keeping bees (pleasantly disguised under the pretence of its being an economical wish to produce her own honey), lived at a watering-place fourteen miles off, and the business of transporting the hives thither would occupy the whole day, and to DICK MEETS HIS FATHER. 195 some extent annihilate the vacant time be- tween this evening and the coming Sunday. The best spring-cart was washed throughout, the axles oiled, and the bees piaced therein for the journey. Tart III Summer. Chapter I. Driving out of Budmouth. An easy bend of neck and graceful set of head ; full and wavy bundles of dark- brown hair ; light fall of little feet ; pretty devices on the skirt of the dress ; clear deep eyes ; in short, a bunch of sweets : it was Fancy ! Dick's heart went round to her with a rush. The scene was the corner of the front street at Budmouth, at which point the angle of the last house in the row cuts per- pendicularly a wide expanse of nearly mo- tionless ocean — to-day, shaded in bright tones of green and opal. Dick and Smart had just emerged from the street, and there, against the brilliant sheet of liquid colour, stood Fancy Day; and she turned and re- cognised him. DRIVING OUT OF BUDMOUTH. 197 Dick suspended his thoughts of the let- ter and wonder at how she came there by driving close to the edge of the parade — displacing two chairmen, who had just come to life for the summer in new clean shirts and revivified clothes, and being almost displaced in turn by a rigid boy advancing with a roll under his arm, and looking nei- ther to the right nor the left — and asking if she were going to Mellstock that night. * Yes, I^m waiting for the carrier,* she replied, seeming, too, to suspend thoughts of the letter. * Now I can drive you home nicely, and you save an hour. Will you come with me? As Fancy's power to will anything seemed to have departed in some myste- rious manner at that moment, Dick settled the matter by getting out and assisting her into the vehicle without another word. The temporary flush upon her cheek changed to a leeser hue, which was perma- nent, and at length their eyes met; there was present between them a certain feeling 198 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. of embarrassment, which arises at such mo- ments when all the instinctive acts dictated by the position have been performed. Dick, being engaged with the reins, thought less of this awkwardness than did Fancy, who had nothing to do but to feel his presence, and to be more and more conscious of the fact, that by accepting a seat beside him in this way she succumbed to the tone of his note. Smart jogged along, and Dick jogged, and the helpless Fancy necessarily jogged, too; and she felt that she was in a measure captured and made a prisoner. * I am so much obliged to you for your company, Miss Day.' To Miss Day, crediting him with the same consciousness of mastery — a con- sciousness of which he was perfectly inno- cent — this remark sounded like a magnani- mous intention to soothe her, the captive. 'I didn't come for the pleasure of ob- liging you with my company,^ she said. The answer had an unexpected manner of incivility in it that must have been rather surprising to young Dewy. At the same DRIVING OUT 01 BUDMOUTH, 199 time it may be observed, that when a young woman returns a rude answer to a youno^ man's civil remark, her heart is in a state which argues rather hopefully for his case than otherwise. There was silence between them till they had passed about twenty of the equi- distant elm- trees that ornamented the road leading up out of the town. ' Though I didn't come for that purpose either, I would have,' said Dick at the twenty-first tree. 'Now, Mr. Dewy, no flirtation, because it's wrong, and I don't wish it.' Dick seated himself afresh just as he had been sitting before, and arranged his looks very emphatically, then cleared his throat. ' Really, anybody would think you had met me on business and were just going to begin,' said the lady intractably. ' Yes, they would.' ' Why, you never have, to be sure !' This was a shaky beginning. He chopped round, and said cheerily, as a man who 200 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, had resolved never to spoil his jollity by loving one of womankind, 'Well, how are you getting on, Miss Day, at the present time? Gaily, I don't doubt for a moment.' * I am not gay, Dick ; you know that.* 'Gaily doesn't mean decked in gay dresses.' ' I didn't suppose gaily was gaily dressed. Mighty me, what a scholar you've grown!' 'Lots of things have happened to you this spring, I see.' 'What have you seen?' ' 0, nothing ; I've heard, I mean I' ' What have you heard ?' ' The name of a pretty man, with brass studs and a copper ring and a tin watch- chain, a little mixed up with your own. That's all.' 'That's a very unkind picture of Mr. Shinar, for that's who you mean. The studs are gold, as you know, and it's a real silver chain ; the ring I can't con- scientiously defend, and he only wore it once. DRIVING OUT OF BUDMOUTH. 201 * He might have worn it a hundred times without showing it half so much/ 'Well, he's nothing to me,' she serenely observed. ' Not any more than I am ?' ' Now, Mr. Dewy,' said Fancy severely, * certainly he isn't any more to me than you are !' ' Not so much?' She looked aside to consider the precise compass of that question. 'That I can't ex- actly answer,' she replied with soft archness. As they were going rather slowly, ano- ther spring-cart, containing a farmer, farm- er's wife, and farmer's man, jogged past them; and the farmers wife and farmer's man eyed the couple very curiously. The farmer never looked up from the horse's tail. 'Why can't you exactly answer?' said Dick, quickening Smart a little, and jogging on just behind the farmer and farmer's wife and man. As no answer came, and as their eyes had nothing else to do, they both contemplated the picture presented in front, and noticed ^02 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, how the farmer's wife sat flattened between the two men. who bulged over each end of the seat to give her room, till they almost sat upon their respective wheels ; and they looked too at the farmer's wife's silk mantle, inflating itself between her shoulders like a balloon, and sinking flat again, at each jog of the horse. The farmer's wife, feelino: their eyes sticking into her back, looked over her shoulder. Dick dropped ten yards farther behind. ' Fancy, why can't you answer ?' he re- peated. ' Because how much you are to me de- pends upon how much I am to you,' said she in low tones. 'Everything,' said Dick, putting his hand towards hers, and casting emphatic eyes upon the upper curve of her cheek. ' Now, Richard Dewy, no touching me. I didn't say in what way your thinking of me affected the question — perhaps inversely, don't you see? No touching, sir! Look; goodness me, don't, Dick !' The cause of her sudden start was the DRIVING OUT OF BUDMOUTH, 203 unpleasant appearance over Dick's right shoulder of an empty timber-wagon and four journeymen-carpenters reclining in lazy postures inside it, their eyes directed up- wards at various obHque angles into the surrounding world, the chief object of their existence being apparently to criticise to the very backbone and marrow every animate object that came within the compass of their vision. This difficulty of Dick's was over- come by trotting on till the wagon and car- penters were beginning to look reduced in size and rather misty, by reason of a film of dust that accompanied their wagon-wheels, and rose around their heads like a fog. ' Say you love me. Fancy.' 'No, Dick, certainly not; 'tisn't time to do that yet.' 'Why, Fancy? ' " Miss Day" is better at present— don t mind my saying so; and I ought not to have called you Dick.' ' Nonsense ! when you know that I would do anything on earth for your love. Why, you make any one think that loving is a 204 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. thing that can be done and undone, and put on and put off at a mere whim.' ' No, no, I don't,^ she said gently ; * but there are things which tell me I ought not to give way to much thinking about you, even if — ' ' But you want to, don't you ? Yes, say you do; it is best to be truthful, Fancy. Whatever they may say about a woman's right to conceal where her love lies, and pretend it doesn't exist, and things Hke that, it is not best ; I do know it, Fancy. And an honest woman in that, as well as in all her daily concerns, shines most brightly, and is thought most of in the long-run.' ^Well then, perhaps, Dick, I do love you a little,' she whispered tenderly ; ' but I wish you wouldn't say any more now.' *I won't say any more now, then, if you don't like it. But you do love me a little, don't you?' *Now you ought not to want me to keep saying things twice; I can't say any more now, and you must be content with what you have.' FARTHER ALONG THE ROAD. 205 * I may at any rate call you Fancy ? There's no harm in thai.' * Yes, you may.' ' And you'll not call me Mr. Dewy any more ?' * Very well.' CHAPTEE IL FARTHER ALONG THE ROAD. Dick's spirits having risen in the course of these admissions of his sweetheart, he now touched Smart with the whip ; and on Smart's neck, not far behind his ears. Smart, who had been lost in thought for some time, never dreaming that Dick could reach so far with a whip which, on tVis particular journey, had never been ex- tended farther than his flank, tossed his head, and scampered along with exceeding briskness, ^vhich was very pleasant to the young couple behind him till, turning a bend in the road, they came instantly upon the 2o6 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. farmer, farmer's man, and farmer's wife with the flapping mantle, all jogging on just the same as ever. ' Bother those people ! Here we are upon them again.' ' Well, of course. They have as much right to the road as we.' ' Yes, but it is provoking to be over- looked so. I like a road all to myself. Look what a lumbering affair theirs is !' The wheels of the farmer's cart, just at that moment, jogged into a depression run- 'ning across the road, giving the cart a twist, whereupon all three nodded to the left, and on coming out of it all three nodded to the right, and went on jerking their backs in and out as usual. ' We'll pass them when the road gets wider.' When an opportunity seemed to offer itself for carrying this intention into effect, they heard light flying wheels behind, and on quartering, there whizzed along past them a brand-new gig, so brightly polished that the spokes of the wheels sent forth a continual quivering light at one point in FARTHER ALONG THE ROAD. 207 their circle, and all the panels glared like mirrors in Dick and Fancy's eyes. The driver, and owner as it appeared, was really a handsome man ; his companion was Shinar. Both turned round as they passed Dick and Fancy, and stared steadily in her face till they were obliged to attend to the operation of passing the farmer. Dick glanced for an instant at Fancy while she was undergoing their scrutiny ; then re- turned to his driving with rather a sad countenance. ' Why are you so silent?' she said, after a while, mth real concern. ' Nothing.' * Yes, it is, Dick. I couldn't help those people passing.' ' 1 know that.' 'You look offended with me. "What have I done?' * I can't tell without offending you.' * Better out.' 'Well,' said Dick, who seemed longing to tell, even at the risk of offending her, * I was thinking how different you in love 2o8 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. are from me in love. Whilst those men were staring, you dismissed me from your thoughts altogether, and — ' 'You can't offend me farther now; tell all; ' And showed upon your face a flattered consciousness of being attractive to them.' * Don't be silly, Dick ! You know very well I didn't.' Dick shook his head sceptically, and smiled. * Dick, I always believe flattery if pos- sible — and it was possible then. Now there's an open confession of weakness. But I showed no consciousness of it.' Dick, perceiving by her look that she would adhere to her statement, charitably forbore saying anything that could make her prevaricate. The sight of Shinar, too, had recalled another branch of the subject to his mind; that which had been his greatest trouble till her company and words had obscured its probability. ' By the way, Fancy, do you know why our choir is to be dismissed ?' FARTHER ALONG THE ROAD, 209 'No: except that it is Mr. Maybold's wish for me to play the organ.' 'Do you know how it came to be his wish? 'That I don V 'Mr. Shinar, being churchwarden, has persuaded the vicar; who, however, was willing enough before. Shinar, I know, is crazy to see you playing every Sunday; I suppose he'll turn over your music, for the organ will be close to his pew. But — 1 know you have never encouraged him?' ' Never once !' said Fancy emphatically, and with eyes full of earnest truth. ' I don't like him indeed, and I never heard of his doing this before I I have always felt that I should like to play in a church, but I never wished to turn you and your choir out; and I never even said that I could play till I was asked. You don't think for a moment that I did, surely, do you ?' ' I know you didn't. Fancy.' ' Or that I care the least morsel of a bit for him?' ' I know you don't.' aio UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. The distance between Budmouth and Mellstock was eighteen miles, and there being a good inn six miles out of Bud- mouth, Dick's custom in driving thither was to divide his journey into three stages by resting at this inn, going and coming, and not troubling the Budmouth stables at all, whenever his visit to the town was a mere call and deposit, as to-day. Fancy was ushered into a little tea- room, and Dick went to the stables to see to the feeding of Smart. In face of the significant twitches of feature that were visible in the ostler and odd men idling around, Dick endeavoured to look uncon- scious of the fact that there was any senti- ment between him and Fancy beyond a tranter's desire to carry a passenger home. He presently entered the inn and opened the door of Fancy's room. * Dick, do you know, it has struck me that it is rather awkward, my being here alone with you like this. I don't think you had better come in with me.' * That's rather unpleasant.' FARTHER ALONG THE ROAD. 211 'Yes, it is, and I wanted you to have some tea as well as myself too, because you must be tired/ ' Well, let me have some with you, thea I was denied once before, if you recollect. Fancy.' 'Yes, yes, never mind! And it seems unfriendly of me now, but I don't know what to do.' ' It shall be as you say, then,' said Dick, beginning to retreat with a dissatisfied wrinkling of face, and giving a farewell glance at the cosy tea-tray. ' But you don't see how it is, Dick, when you speak like that,' she said, with more earnestness than she had ever shown be- fore. * You do know, that even if I care very much for you, I must remember that I have a difficult position to maintain. The vicar would not like me, as his school- mistress, to indulge in iite-a-tetes anywhere with anybody.' 'But I am not any body!' exclaimed Dick. ' No, no, I mean with a young man ;' and 212 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, she added softly, 'unless I were really engaged to be married to him.' 'Is that all? then, dearest, dearest, why we'll be engaged at once, to be sure we will, and down I sit! There it is, as easy as a glove !' ' Ah I but suppose I won't I And, good- ness me, what have I done!' she faltered, getting very red and confused. ' Positively, it seems as if I meant you to say that!' ' Let's do it ! I mean get engaged,' said Dick. ' Now, Fancy, will you be my wife ?* ' Do you know, Dick, it was rather un- kind of you to say what you did coming along the road,' she remarked, as if she had not heard the latter part of his speech; though an acute observer might have noticed about her breast, as the word 'wife' fell from Dick's lips, soft motions consisting of a silent escape of pants, with very short rests between each. 'What did I say? ' About my trying to look attractive to those men in the gig.' ' You couldn't help looking so, whether FARTHER ALONG THE ROAD. 213 you tried or no. And, Fancy, you do care for me?^ 'Yes.' *"^'ery much?* 'Yes.^ * And you'll be my own wife?' Her heart grew boisterous, adding to And withdrawing from the cheek varying tones of red to match each varying thought. Dick looked expectantly at the ripe tint of her delicate mouth, waiting for what was coming forth. ' Yes — if father will let me.* Dick drew himself close to her, com- pressing his lips and pouting them out, as if he were about to whistle the softest melody known. ' no !' said Fancy solemnly ; and tliC modest Dick drew back a little. * Dick, Dick, kiss me, and let me go instantly! here's somebody coming!' she ex- claimed. Half an hour afterwards Dick emerged from the inn, and if Fancy's lips hac? been fi4 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. real cherries, Dick^s would have appeared deeply stained. The landlord was standing in the yard. *Heu-heu! hay-hay, Master Dewy ! Ho- ho !' he laughed, letting the laugh slip out gently and by degrees, that it might make little noise in its exit, and smiting Dick under the fifth rib at the same time. ' This will never do, upon my life. Master Dewy ! calling for tay for a passenger, and then going in and sitting down and having some tool' *But surely 3"ou know?* said Dick, with great apparent surprise. 'Yes, yes! Ha-ha!' smiting the landlord under the ribs in return. *Why, what? Yes, yes; ha-ha!* * You know, yes ; ha-ha, of course !* ^ Yes, of course ! But — that is — I don*t.* ' Why about — between that young lady and me?' nodding to the window of the room that Fancy occupied. 'No; not I!* bringing his eyes into mathematical circles. ' And you don't !* FARTHER ALONG THE ROAD. 215 ^ Not a word, I'll take my oath !' * But you laughed, when I laughed.* * Ay, that was me sympathy ; so did you when I laughed !* ^Really, you don't know? Goodness — not knowing that!* *ril take my oath I don't!* ^ yes,* said Dick, with frigid rhetoric of pitying astonishment, ^ we*re engaged to be married, you see, and I naturally look after her.* ^ Of course, of course ! I didn't know that, and I hope ye'll excuse any little frec> dom of mine. But it is a very odd thing; I was talking to your father very intimate about family matters, only last Friday in the world, and who should come in but keeper Day, and we all then fell a-talking o* family matters ; but neither one o' them said a mortal word about it ; known me too so many years, and I at your father*s own wedding. *Tisn*t what I should have ex- pected from a old naibour.' ' Well, to tell the truth, we hadn't told 2i6 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. father of the engagement at that time ; in fact, *twasn't settled.' ' Ah ! the business was done Sunday. Yes, yes, Sunday's the courting day. Heu- heu!^ 'No, *twasn't done Sunday in particu- lar.' ^ After school-hours this week? Well, a very good time, a very proper good time.* * no, *twasn't done then.' * Coming along the road to-day then, I suppose?' ' Not at all; I wouldn't think of getting engaged in a cart.' 'Dammy — might as well have said at once, the vohen be bio wed I Anyhow, 'tis a fine day, and I hope next time youll come as one.' Fancy was duly brought out and as- sisted into the vehicle, and the newly- affianced youth and maiden passed over the bridge, and vanished in the direction of Mellstock. A CONFESSION. aiy CHAPTER III. A CONFESSION. It was a morning of the latter sum- mer-time; a morning of lingering dews, when the grass is never dry in the shade Fuchsias and dahlias were laden till eleven D'clock with small drops and dashes of water, changing the colour of their sparkle at every movement of the air, or hanging on tmgs like small silver fruit. The threads of garden spiders appeared thick and pol- ished. In the dry and sunny places, dozens of long-legged crane-flies whizzed off the grass at every step the passer took. Fancy Day and her friend SiLsan Dewy were in such a spot as this, pulling down a bough laden with early apples. Three months had elapsed since Dick and Fancy had journeyed together from Budmouth, and the course of their love had run on vigorously during the whole time. There had been just enough difficulty attending «i8 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE its development, and just enough JBnesse required in keeping it private, to lend the passion an ever-increasing freshness on Fancy's part, whilst, whether from these accessories or not, Dick's heart had been at all times as fond as could be desired. But there was a cloud on Fancy's horizon now. ' She is so well off — better than any of us,' Susan De^vy was saying. ^ Her father farms five hundred acres, and she might marry a doctor or curate or anything of that kind if she contrived a little.' * I don t think Dick ought to have gone to that gipsy-party at all when he knew I couldn't go,' replied Fancy uneasily. ' He didn't know that you would not be there till it was too late to decline the in- vitation,* said Susan. 'And what was she like? Tell me.' *Well, she was rather pretty, I must own.' ' Tell straight on about her, can't you ! Come, do, Susan. How many times did you s^y he danced with her?' *Once.' A CONFESSION. ajg 'Twice, I think you said?' ' Indeed I'm sure I didn't/ ' Well, and he wanted to again, I expect.' ' No; I don't think he did. She wanted to dance with him again badly enough, I know. Everybody does with Dick, because he's so handsome and such a clever courter.' ' 0, 1 wish ! — How did you say she wore her hair?' 'In long curls, — and her hair is light, and it curls without being put in paper: that's how it is she's so attractive.' ' She's trying to get him away ! yes, yes, she is ! And through keeping this miserable school I mustn't wear my hair in curls ! But I will; I don't care if I leave the school and go home, I will wear my curls ! Look, Su- san, do : is her hair as soft and long as this ?' Fancy pulled from its coil under her hat a twine of her own hair, and stretched it down her shoulder to show its length, eagerly looking at Susan to catch her opinion from her eyes, ' It is about the same length as that, I think/ said Miss Dewy. 220 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, Fancy paused hopelessly. ' I wish mine was lighter, like hers !' she contmued mourn- fully. ' But hers isn't so soft, is it? Tell me, now.* * I don't know.* Fancy abstractedly extended her vision to survey a yellow butterfly and a red-and- black butterfly, that were flitting along in company, and then became aware that Dick was advancing up the garden. ' Susan, here's Dick coming ; I suppose that's because we've been talking about him.' ' Well, then, I shall go indoors now — you won't want me;' and Susan turned practically and walked off. Enter the single-minded Dick, whose only fault at the gipsying, or picnic, had been that of loving Fancy too exclusively, and depriving himself of the innocent plea- sure the gathering might have afforded him, by sighing regretfully at her absence, — who had danced with the rival in sheer despair of ever being able to get through that stale, flat, and unprofitable afternoon in any other way ; but this she would not believe A confessioa: 221 Fancy had settled her plan of emotion. To reproach Dick ? no, no. ' I am in great trouble,' said she, taking:; what was intended to be a hopelessly melancholy sur- vey of a few small apples lying under the tree ; yet ft critical ear might have noticed in her voice a tentative tone as to the effect of the words upon Dick when she uttered them. * What are you in trouble about ? Tell me of it,' said Dick earnestly. * Darling, I will share it with you and help you.' * No, no : you can't ! Nobody can!' ^ Why not? You don^t deserve it, what- ever it is. Tell me, dear.' ^ 0, it isn't what you think ! It is dread- ful : my own sin I' ^ Sin, Fancy ! as if you could sin ! I know it can't be.' *'Tis, 'tis!' said the young lady, in a pretty little frenzy of sorrow. ^ I have done wrong, and I don't like to tell it ! Nobody will forgive me, nobody ! and you above all will not ! . . . . I have allowed myself to — *What, — not flirt!' he said, controlling 222 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. his emotion as it were by a sudden pressure inward from his surface. ^And you said only the day before yesterday that you hadn't flirted in your life !' ^Yes, I did; and that was a wicked story ! I have let another love me, and — ' ' Good G— ! Well, I'll forgive you,— yes, if you couldn't help it, — yes, I will!' said the now miserable Dick. 'Did you encourage him?' ' 0, 0, 0,-1 don't know,— yes— no. 0, I think so!' ' Who was it?' A pause. 'Tell me!' 'Mr. Shinar.' After a silence that was only disturbed by the fall of an apple, a long-checked sigh from Dick, and a sob from Fancy, he said with real austerity, ' Tell it all; — every word!' ' He looked at me, and I looked at him, and he said, "Will you let me show you how to catch bullfinches down here by the stream?'' And I — wanted to know very A CONFESSION. 223 much — I did so long to have a bullfinch I I couldn't help that!— and I said, ''Yes!" and then he said, '' Come here." And I went with him down to the lovely river, and then he said to me, '' Look and see how I do it, and then you'll know : I put this birdlime round this twig, and then I go here,'' he said, ''and hide away under a bush; and presently clever Mister Bird comes and perches upon the twig, and flaps his wings, and you've got him before you can say Jack" — something; 0, 0, 0, I forget what !' * Jack Sprat,' mournfully suggested Dick through the cloud of his misery. ' No, not Jack Sprat,' she sobbed. ' Then 'twas Jack Robinson !' he said, with the emphasis of a man who had resolved to discover every iota of the truth, or die. ' Yes, that was it ! And then I put my hand upon the rail of the bridge to get across, and— That's all.' ' Well, that isn't much, either,' said Dick critically, and more cheerfully. * Not that I see what business Shinar has to take upoD 224 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, himself to teach you anything. But it seems — it seems there must have been more than that to set you up in such a dread- ful taJdng ?' He looked into Fancy's eyes. Misery of miseries ! — ^guilt was written there still. ^Now, Fancy, you've not ;-old me all!' said Dickj rather sternly for a quiet young man. '' 0, don't speak so cruelly ! I am afraid to tell now! If you hadn't been harsh, I was going 01 to teU all ; now I can't!' * Come, dt?ar Fancy, tell : come. I'll forgive; I must, — by heaven and earth, I must, whether I will or no; I love you so!' ^Well, when I put my hand on the bridge, he touched it — ' ' A scamp !' said Dick, grinding an ima- ginary human frame to powder. ' And then he looked at mc, and at last he said, ^^Are you in love with Dick Dewy?" And I said, '^Perhaps I am!" and then he said, '' I wish you weren't then, for I want to marry you, with all my soul." ' 'There's a villain now! Want to marry A CONFESSION. 225 you !' And Dick quivered with the bitterness of satirical laughter. Then suddenly remem- bering that he might be reckoning without his host : ' Unless, indeed, you are willing to have him, — perhaps .you are,' he said, with the wretched indifference of a castaway. * No, indeed I am not !' she said, her sobs just beginning to take a favourable turn to- wards cure. ^ Well, then,* said Dick, coming a little to his senses, * you've been exaggerating very much in giving such a dreadful begin- ning to such a mere nothing. And I know what youVe done it for, — -just because of that gipsy-party !' He turned away from her and walked five paces decisively, as if he were alone in a strange country and had never known her. ^ You did it to make me jealous, and I won't stand it!' He flung the words to her over his shoulder and then stalked on, apparently very anxious to walk to the colonies that very minute. '0, 0, 0, Dick— Dick!' she cried, trot- ting after him like a pet lamb, and really seriously alarmed at last, * you'll kill me! 226 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. My impulses are bad — ^miserably wicked, — and I can't help it; forgive me, Dick! And I love you always; and tbose times when you look silly and don't seem quite good enough for me, — just the same, I do, Dick! And there is something more serious, though not concerning that walk with him.' *Well, what is it? said Dick, altering his mind about walking to the colonies ; in fact, passing to the other extreme, and stand- ing so rooted to the road that he was appa- rently not even going home. ' Why this,* she said, drying the begin- ning of a new flood of tears she had been going to shed, ' this is the serious part. Fa- ther has told Mr. Shinar that he would like him for a son-in-law, if he could get me ; — that he has his right hearty consent to come courting me I' AN ARRANGEMENT. 227 CHAPTER IV. AN ARRANGEMENT. 'That is serious/ said Dick, more in- tellectually than he had spoken for a long time. The truth was that Geoffrey knew no- thing about his daughter's continued walks and meetings with Dick. When a hint that there were symptoms of an attachment be- tween them had first reached Geoffrey's ears, he stated so emphatically that he must think the matter over before any such thing could be allowed that, rather unwisely on Dick's part, whatever it might have been on the lady's, the lovers were careful to be seen together no more in public; and Geoffrey, forgetting the report, did not think over the matter at all. So Mr. Shinar resumed his old position in Geoffrey's brain by mere flux of time. Even Shinar began to believe that Dick existed for Fancy no more,— though that remarkably easy-going man had taken 2 28 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. no active steps on his own account as yet. 'And father has not only told Mr. Shinar that,' continued Fancy, ' but he has written me a letter, to say he should wish me to encourage Mr. Shinar, if 'twas con- venient!' 'I must start off and see your father at once !' said Dick, taking two or three vehement steps to the east, recollecting that Mr. Day lived to the west, and coming back again. ' I think we had better see him together. Not tell him what you come for, or any- thing of the kind, until he likes you, and so win his brain through his heart, which is always the way to manage people. I mean in this way : I am going home on Saturday week to help them in the honey-taking. You might come there to me, have some- thing to eat and drink, and let him guess what your coming signifies, without saying it in so majiy words.' ^ We'll do it, dearest. But I shall ask him for you, flat and plain; not wait for AN ARRANGEMENT. 225 his guessing.* And the lover then stepped close to her, and attempted to give her one little kiss on the cheek, his lips alighting, however, on an outlying tract of her back hair, by reason of an impulse that had caused her to turn her head with a jerk. 'Yes, and I'll put on my second-best suit and a clean collar, and black my boots as if 'twas a Sunday. 'Twill have a good ap- pearance, you see, and that's a great deal to start with.' ' You won't wear that old waistcoat, will you, Dick?' 'Bless you, no! Why I— ^ 'I didn't mean to be personal, dear Dick,' she said apologetically, fearing she had hurt his feelings. "Tis a very nice waistcoat, but what I meant was, that though it is an excellent w^aistcoat for a settled-down man, it is not quite one for' (she waited, and a blush expanded over her face, and then she went on again) — 'for going courting in.' ' No, I'll wear my best winter one, with the leather lining, that mother made. It is 230 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, a beautiful, handsome waistcoat inside, yes, as ever anybody saw. In fact, only the other day, I unbuttoned it to show a chap that very lining, and he said it was the strongest, handsomest linmg you could wish to see on the king's waistcoat himself.' ' / don't quite know what to wear,' she said, as if her habitual indifference alone to dress had kept back so important a subject till now. 'Why, that blue dress you wore last week.' * Doesn't set well round the neck. I couldn't wear that.' 'But I sha'n't care.' ' No, you won't mind.' ' Well, then it's all right. Because you only care how you look to me, do you, dear? I only dress for you, that's certain.' ' Yes, but you see I couldn't appear in it again very well.' ' Any strange gentleman you may meet in your journey might notice the set of it, I suppose. Fancy, men in love don't think so much about how they appear to other AN A RRANGEMENT, 23 t women.' It is difficult to say whether a tone of playful banter or of gentle reproach prevailed in the speech. ' Well then, Dick,' she said, with good- humoured frankness, ' I'll own it. I shouldn't like a stranger to see me dressed badly, even though I am in love. 'Tis our nature, I suppose.' * You perfect woman !' ' Yes; if you lay the stress on " woman,'** she murmured, looking at a group of holly- hocks in flower, round which a crowd of butterflies had gathered like females round a bonnet-shop. 'But about the dress. Why not wear the one you wore at our party ?* * That sets well, but a girl of the name of Bet Taylor, who lives near our house, has had one made almost like it (only in pat- tern, though of miserably cheap stuff), and I couldn't wear it on that account. Dear me, I am afraid I can't go now.' '0 yes, you must; I know you will!* said Dick, with dismay. 'Why not wear what you've got on?' 233 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, 'What! this old one! After all, I think that by wearing my gray one Saturday, I can make the blue one do for Sunday. Yes, I will. A hat or a bonnet, which shall it be? Which do I look best in?' ' Well, I think the bonnet is nicest, more quiet and matronly.' 'What's the objection to the hat? Does it make me look old?' 'Ono; the hat is well enough; but it makes you look rather too — you won't mind me saying it, dear?' ' Not at all, for I shall wear the bonnet/ ^ — Rather too coquettish and flirty for an engaged young woman.' She reflected a minute. * Yes, yes. Still, after all, the hat would do best; hats are best, you see. Yes, I must wear the hat, dear Dicky, because I ought to wear a hat, you know.' Part IV. ^utumn. Chapter I. Going Nutting. Dick, dressed in his 'second-best' suit, burst into Fancy's sitting-room with a glow of pleasure on his face. It was two o'clock on Friday, the day before Fancy's contemplated visit to her father, and for some reason connected with cleaning the school, the children had had given them this Friday afternoon for pas- time, in addition to the usual Saturday. 'Fancy ! it happens just right that it is a leisure half day with you. Smart is lame in his near-foot-afore, and so, as I can't do anything, I've made a hohday afternoon of it, and am come for you to go nutting with me!' She v\'as sitting by the v/indow, with a 234 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, blue dress lying across her lap, and the scissors in her hand. 'Go nutting! Yes. But Tm afraid I can't go for an hour or so.' ' Why not? 'Tia the only spare after- noon we may both have together for weeks.' ' This dress of mine, that I am going to wear on Sunday at Yalbury ;— I find it sets so badly that I must alter it a little, after all. I told the dressmaker to make it by a pattern I gave her at the time; instead of that, she did it her own way, and made me look a perfect fright.* 'How long will you be?* he inquired, looking rather disappointed. 'Not long. Do wait and talk to me; come, do, dear.* Dick sat down. The talking progressed very favourably, amid the snipping and sewing, till about half-past two, at which time his conversation began to be varied by a slight tapping upon his toe with a walk- insr-stick he had cut from the hedo;e as he came along. Fancy talked and answered GOING NUTTING. 235 him, but sometimes the answers were so negligently given, that it was evident her thoughts lay for the greater part in her lap with the blue dress. The clock struck three. Dick arose from his seat, walked round the room with his hands behind him, examining all the furniture, then sounded a few notes on the harmonium, then looked inside all the books he could find, then smoothed Fancy's head with his hand. Still the snipping and sewing went on. The clock struck four. Dick fidgeted about, yawned privately ; counted the knots in the table, yawned publicly ; counted the flies on the ceiling, yawned horribly; went into the scullery, and so thoroughly studied the principle upon which the pump was con- structed, that he could have delivered a lecture on the subject. Stepping back to Fancy, and finding still that she had not done, he went into her garden and looked at her cabbages and potatoes, and reminded himself that they seemed to him to wear a decidedly feminine aspect; then pulled up 236 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. several weeds, and came in again. The clock struck five, and still the snipping and sew- ing went on. Dick attempted to kill a fly, peeled all the rind oiF his wallving-stick, then threw the stick into the scullery because it was spoilt, produced hideous discords from the harmonium, and accidentally overturned a vase of flowers, the water from which ran in a rill across the table and dribbled to the floor, where it formed a lake, the shape of which, after the lapse of a few minutes, he began to modify considerably with his foot, till it was like a map of England and Wales. ' Well, Dick, you needn't have made quite such a mess.' ' Well, I needn't, I suppose.' He walked up to the blue dress, and looked at it with a rio'id craze. Then an idea seemed to cross his brain. ' Fancy.' 'Yes.'' ' I thought you said you were going to wear the gray dress all day to-morrow on your trip to Yalbury, and in the evening GOING NUTTING. 237 too, when I shall be with you, and ask your father for you.' ' So I am.' * And the blue one only on Sunday?* *And the blue one Sunday.' * Well, dear, I sha'n't be there Sunday to see it/ 'No, but such lots of people ^vill be looking at me Sunday, you know, and it did set so badly round the neck.' 'I never noticed it, and probably no- body else would.' ' They might.* ' Then why not wear the gray one on Sunday as well? Tis as pretty as the blue one.' 'I might make the gray one do, cer- tainly. But it isn't so good; it didn't cost half so much as this one, and besides, it would be the same I wore Saturday.' ' Then wear the striped one, dear.' ' I might.' ' Or the dark one.' ' Yes, I might ; but I want to wear a fresh one they haven't seen.' 238 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ' I see, I see/ said Dick, in a voice in which the tones of love were decidedly in- convenienced by a considerable emphasis, his thoughts meanwhile running as follows : 'I, the man she loves best in the world, as she says, am to understand that my poor half-holiday is to be lost, because she wants to wear on Sunday a dress there is not the slightest necessity for wearing, simply, in fact, to appear more striking than usual in the eyes of Yalbury young men ; and I not there, either/ ' Then there are three dresses good enough for my eyes, but neither is good enough for the youth of Yalbury,' he said. ^ No, not that exactly, Dick. Still, you see, I do want — to look pretty to them — there, that's honest. But I shan't be much longer.' 'How much?' ' A quarter of an hour.' ^ Very well ; I'll come in in a quarter of an hour.' ^ Why go away?* * I may as well' GOING NUTTING. 239 He went out, walked down the road, and sat upon a gate. Here he meditated and meditated, and the more he meditated the more decidedly did he begin to fume, and the more positive was he that his time had been scandalously trifled with by Miss Fancy Day — that, so far from being the simple girl who had never had a sweetheart before, as she had solemnly assured him time after time, she was, if not a flirt, a woman who had had no end of admirers; a girl most certainly too anxious about her dresses ; a girl whose feelings, though warm, were not deep; a girl who cared a great deal too much how she appeared in the eyes of other men. ' What she loves best in the world,* he thought, with an incipient spice of his father's grimness, ' are her hair and complexion. What she loves next best, her dresses ; what she loves next best, myself, perhaps.' Suffering great anguish at this dis- loyalty in himself, and harshness to his darling, yet disposed to persevere in it, a horribly cruel thought crossed his mind. «4o UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. He would not call for her, as lie had pro- mised, at the end of a quarter of an hour ! Yes, it would be a punishment she well deserved ! Although the best part of the afternoon had been wasted, he would go nutting as he had intended, and go by himself He leaped over the gate, and pushed along the path for nearly two miles, till it sloped up a hill, and entered a hazel copse by a hole like a rabbit's burrow. In he plunged, vanished among the bushes, and in a short time there was no sign of his existence upon earth, save an occasional rustling of boughs and snapping of twigs in divers points of the wood. Never man nutted as Dick nutted that day. He worked like a galley slave. Hour after hour passed away, and still he ga- thered without ceasing. At last, when the sun had set, and bunches of nuts could not be distinguished from the leaves which nourished them, he shouldered his bag, con- taining about two pecks of the finest pro- liuce of the wood, and which were about as GOING NUTTING, 241 much use to him as two pecks of stones from the road, and strolled along a bridle- path leading into open ground, whistling as he went. Probably, Miss Fancy Day never before or after stood so low in Mr. Dewy's opinion as on that afternoon. In fact, it is just possible that a few more blue dresses on the Yalbury young men's account would have clarified Dick's brain entirely, and made him once more a free man. But Venus had planned other develop- ments, at any rate for the present. The path he pursued passed over a ridge which rose keenly against the western sky, about fifty yards in his van. Here, upon the bright after-glow about the horizon, was now visible an irregular outline, which at first he conceived to be a bush standing a little beyond the line of its neighbours. Then it seemed to move, and as he ad- vanced still farther, there was no doubt that it was a living being of some species or other. The grassy path entirely prevented his footsteps from being heard, and it was 242 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. not till he was close, that the fiofure recog:- nised him. Up it sprang, and he was face to face with Fancy. ^Dick, Dick! 0, is it you, Dick!' 'Yes, Fancy,' said Dick, in a rather repentant tone, and lowering his nuts. She ran up to him, flung her parasol on the grass, put her little head against his breast, and then there began a narrative, disjointed by such a hysterical weeping as was never surpassed for intensity in the whole history of love. * Dick,* she sobbed out, ' where have you been away from me! 0, I have suf- fered agony, and thought you would never come any more! 'Tis cruel, Dick; no 'tisn't, it is justice! I've been walking miles and miles up and down this wood, trying to find you, till I was wearied and worn out, and I could walk no farther. Dick, directly you were gone, I thought I had offended you, and I put down the dress ; 'tisn't finished now, Dick, and I never will finish it, and I'll wear an old one Sunday I Yes, Dick, I will, because I don't care what I GOING NUTTING. 243 wear when you are not by my side — ha, you think I do, but I don't ! — and I ran after you, and I saw you go up the hill and not look back once, and then you pluns^ed in, and I after you ; but I was too far behind. 0, I did wish the horrid bushes had been cut down, so that I could see your dear shape again! And then I called out to you, and nobody answered, and I was afraid to call very loud, lest anybody else should hear me. Then I kept wandering and wandering about, and it was dreadful misery, Dick. And then I shut my eyes and fell to picturing you looking at some other woman, very pretty and nice, but with no affection or truth in her at all, and then imagined you saying to yourself, *' Ah, she's as good as Fancy, for Fancy told me a story, and was a flirt, and cared for herself more than me, so now I'll have this one for my sweetheart." 0, you won't, will you, Dick, for I do love you so!' It is scarcely necessary to add that Dick renounced his freedom there and then, and kipsed her ten times over, and promised 244 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. that no pretty woman of tlie kind alluded to should ever engross his thoughts ; in short, that though he had been vexed with her, all such vexation was past, and that henceforth and for ever it was simply Fancy or death for him. And then they set about proceeding homewards, very slowly on account of Fancy's weariness, she leaning upon his shoulder, and in addition receiving support from his arm round her waist ; though she had sufficiently recovered from her desperate condition to sing to him, ' Why are you wandering here, I pray ?' during the latter part of their walk. Nor is it necessary to describe in detail how the bag of nuts was quite forgotten until three days later, when it was found by an under- keeper and restored empty to Mrs. Dewy, her initials being marked thereon in red cot- ton; and how she puzzled herself till her head ached, upon the question of how on earth her meal-bag could have got into Mellstock copse. HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS. 245 CHAPTER II. HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS. Saturday evening saw Dick Dewy jour- neying on foot to Yalbury Wood, according to the arrangement with Fancy. The landscape was concave, and at the going down of the sun everything suddenly assumed a uniform robe of shade. The even- ino^ advanced from sunset to dusk lono^ be- fore Dick's arrival, and his progress during the latter portion of his walk through the trees was indicated by the flutter of terrified birds that had been roosting over the path. And in crossing the glades, masses of hot dry air, that had been formed on the hills during the day, gi^eeted his cheeks alter- nately with clouds of damp night air from the valleys. He reached the keeper's house, where the grass-plot and the garden in front appeared light and pale against the unbroken darkness of the grove from which he had emerged, and paused at the garden gate. 246 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. He had scarcely been there a minute when he beheld a sort of procession advanc- ing from the door in his front. It consisted first of Enoch the trapper, carrying a spade on his shoulder and a lantern dangling in his hand ; then came Mrs. Day, the light of the lantern revealing that she bore in her arms curious objects about a foot long, in the form of Latin crosses (made of lath and brown paper dipped in brimstone, — called matches by bee-fanciers) ; next came Miss Day, with a shawl thrown over her head ; and behind all, in the gloom, Mr. Frederic Shinar. Dick, in his consternation at finding Shinar present, was at a loss how to pro- ceed, and retired under a tree to collect his thoughts. ' Here I be, Enoch,' said a voice ; and the procession advancing farther, the lantern's rays illuminated the figure of Geofirey, awaiting their arrival beside a row of bee- hives, in front of the path. Taking the spade from Enoch, he proceeded to dig two holes in the earth beside the hives, the others standing round in a circle, except Mrs. Day, HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS. 247 who deposited her matches in the fork of an apple-tree and returned to the house. The party remaining were now lit up in front by the lantern in their midst, their shadows ra- diating each way upon the garden-plot like the spokes of a wheel. An apparent embar- rassment of Fancy at the presence of Shinar caused a silence in the assembly, during which the preliminaries of execution were arranged, the matches fixed, the stake kin- dled, the two hives placed over the two holes, and the earth stopped round the edges. Geoffrey then stood erect, and rather more, to straighten his backbone after the dig- ging- ' They were a peculiar family,' said Mr. Shinar, regarding the hives reflectively. Geoffrey nodded. * Those holes will be the grave of thou- sands!' said Fancy. ^I think 'tis rather a cruel thing to do.' Her father shook his head. ^ No,* he said, tapping the hives to shake the dead bees from their cells, ^ if you suffocate 'em this way, they only die once : if you fumigate 'em 248 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. in the new way, they come to life again, and BO the pangs o' death be twice upon em/ 'I incline to Fancy's notion/ said Mr. Shinar, laughing lightly. * The proper way to take honey, so that the bees be neither starved nor murdered, is not so much an amusing as a puzzling matter,' said the keeper steadily. ^ I should like never to take it from them,' said Fancy. 'But 'tis the money,' said Enoch mus- ingly. * For without money man is a shad- der!' The lantern-light had disturbed several bees that had escaped from hives destroyed some days earlier, and who were now getting a living as marauders about the doors of other hives. Several flew round the head and neck of Geoffrey; then darted upon him with an irritated bizz. Enoch threw down the lantern, and ran off and pushed his head into a currant bush; Fancy scudded up the path; and Mr. Shinar floundered away helter-skelter among the cabbages. Geoffrey stood his ground un- HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS, 249 moved, and firm as a rock. Fancy was the first to return, followed by Enoch picking up the lantern. Mr. Shinar still remained invisible. ' Have the craters stung ye?' said Enoch to Geofirey. * No, not much — only a little here and there,* he said with leisurely solemnity, shaking one bee out of his shirt sleeve, pull- ing another from among his hair, and two or three more from his neck. The others looked on during this proceeding with a complacent sense of being out of it, — much as a European nation in a state of internal commotion is watched by its neighbours. 'Are those all of them, father?' said Fancy, when Geoffrey had pulled away five. ' Almost all, — though I feel a few more sticking into my shoulder and side. Ah! there's another just begun again upon my backbone. You lively young martels, how did you get inside there? However, they can't sting me many times more, poor things, for tbey must be getting weak. They 250 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. may as well stay in me till bedtime now, I suppose/ As he himself was the only person af- fected by this arrangement, it seemed satis- factory enough; and after a noise of feet kicking against cabbages in a blundering progress among them, the voice of Mr. Shinar was heard from the darkness in that direc- tion. * Is all quite safe again ?^ No answer being returned to this query, he apparently assumed that he might ven- ture forth, and gradually drew near the lantern again. The hives were now removed from their position over the holes, one being handed to Enoch to carry indoors, and one being taken by Geoffrey himself. * Bring hither the lantern. Fancy: the spade can bide.' Geoffrey and Enoch then went towards the house, leaving Shinar and Fancy stand- ing side by side on the garden-plot. 'Allow me,' said Shinar, stooping for the lantern and seizing it at the same time with Fancy. HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS. 25? 'I can carry it/ said Fancy, religiously repressing all inclination to trifle. She had thoroughly considered that subject after the tearful explanation of the bird-catching ad- venture to Dick, and had decided that it would be dishonest in her, as an engaged young woman, to trifle with men's eyes and hands any more. Finding that Shinar still retained his hold of the lantern, she relin- quished it, and he, having found her retain- ing it, also let go. The lantern fell, and was extinguished. Fancy moved on. * Where is the path ?' said Mr. Shinar. 'Here,' said Fancy. 'Your eyes will get used to the dark in a minute or two.' ' Till that time will ye lend me your hand?' Fancy gave him the extreme tips of her fingers, and they stepped from the plot into the path. *You don't accept attentions very freely.' ' It depends upon who offers them/ ' A fellow like me, for instance/ A dead silence, 252 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. * Well, what do you say, Missie ? ^It then depends upon how they are offered.* ' Not wildly, and yet not indifferently ; not intentionally, and yet not by chance; not actively nor idly ; quickly nor slowly/ ' How then ?' said Fancy. ' Coolly and practically,' he said. ' How would that kind of love be taken?' ' Not anxiously, and yet not carelessly ; neither quickly nor slowly; neither redly nor palely; not religiously nor yet quite wickedly.' * Well, how?' 'Notatall.' Geoffrey Day's storehouse at the back of his dwelling was hung with bunches of dried horehound, mint, and sage; brown-paper bags of thyme and lavender; and long ropes of clean onions. On shelves were spread large red and yellow apples, and choice selec- tions of early potatoes for seed next year; — vulgar crowds of commoner kind lying be- neath in heaps. A few empty beehives wer© HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS. 253 clustered around a nail in one corner, under which stood two or three barrels of new cider of the first crop, each bubbling and squirt- ing forth from the yet open bunghole. Fancy was now kneeHng beside the two inverted hives, one of which rested against her lap, for convenience in operating upon the contents. She thrust her sleeves above her elbows, and inserted her small pink hand edgewise between each white lobe of honey- comb, performing the act so adroitly and gently as not to unseal a single cell. Then cracking the piece off at the crown of the hive by a slight backward and forward movement, she lifted each portion as it was loosened into a large blue platter, placed on a bench at her side. ' Bother them little martels !' said Geof- frey, who was holding the light to her, and giving his back an uneasy twist. ^ I really think I may so well go indoors and take *em out, poor things ! for they won't let me alone. There's two a-stinging wi' all their might now. I'm sure I wonder their strength can last so long.' 254 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. 'AH right, friend; I'll hold the candle whilst you are gone,* said Mr. Shinar, lei- surely taking the light, and allowing Geof- frey to depart, which he did with his usual long paces. He could hardly have gone round to the cottage-door when other footsteps were heard approaching the outhouse ; the tip of a finger appeared in the hole through which the wood latch was lifted, and Dick Dewy came in, having been all this time walking up and down the wood, vainly waiting for Shinar's departure. Fancy looked up and welcomed him rather confusedly. Shinar grasped the can- dlestick more firmly, and, lest doing this in silence should not imply to Dick with suffi- cient force that he was quite at home and cool, he sang invincibly, ' " King Arthur he had three sons.*** * Father here ? said Dick. * Indoors, I think,* said Fancy, looking pleasantly at him. Dick surveyed the scene, and did not HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS. 255 seem inclined to hurry off just at that mo- ment. Shinar went on singing, * " The miller was drown'd in his pond, The weaver was hung in his yarn, And the d — ran away with the little tailor, With the broadcloth under his arm.'" * That's a terrible crippled rhyme, if that's your rhyme !' said Dick, with a grain of superciliousness in his tone, and elevating his nose an inch or thereabout. 'It's no use your complaining to me about the rhyme!' said Mr. Shinar. 'You must go to the man that made it.' Fancy by this time had acquired confi- dence. ' Taste a bit, Mr. De^vy,' she said, hold- ing up to him a small circular piece of honeycomb that had been the last in the row of lobes, and remaining still on her knees, and flino^ino^ back her head to look in his face ; ' and then I'll taste a bit too.' ' And I, if you please,' said Mr. Shinar. Nevertheless the farmer looked superior, as if he could even now hardly join the trifling from very importance of station; and 256 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. after receiving the honeycomb from Fancy, he turned it over in his hand till the cells began to be crushed, and the liquid honey ran down from his fingers in a thin string. Suddenly a faint cry from Fancy caused them to gaze at her. 'What's the matter, dear?' said Dick. ' It is nothing, but O-o ! a bee has stung the inside of my lip ! He was in one of the cells I was eating!' 'We must keep down the swelling, or it may be serious !' said Shinar, stepping up and kneeling beside her. ' Let me see it.' 'No, no!' ' Just let me see it,' said Dick, kneeling on the other side ; and after some hesitation she pressed down her lip mth one finger to show the place. 'I hope 'twill soon be better. I don't mind a sting in ordinary places, but it is so bad upon your lip,' she added with tears in her eyes, and ^\T:ithing a little from the pain. Shinar held the light above his head and pushed his face close to Fancy's, as if the lip had been shown exclusively to him- HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS. 257 self, upon which Dick pushed closer, as if Shinar were not there at all. * It is swelling,' said Dick to her right aspect. *It isn't swelling,' said Shinar to her left aspect. ' Is it dangerous on the lip ?' cried Fancy. ' I know it is dangerous on the tongue.' '0 no, not dangerous!' answered Dick. * Rather dangerous,' had answered Shi- nar simultaneously. 'It doesn't hurt me so much now,' said Fancy, turning again to the hives. * Hartshorn and oil is a g-ood thino: to put to it. Miss Day,' said Shinar with great concern. * Sweet oil and hartshorn I've found to be a good thing to cure stings. Miss Day,' said Dick with greater concern. 'We have some mixed indoors; would you kindly run and get it for me ?' she said. Now, whether by inadvertence, or whe- ther by mischievous intention, the individa- ality of the you was so carelessly denoted that both Dick and Shinar sprang to their 358 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, feet like twin acrobats, and marched abreast to the door ; both seized the latch and lifted it, and continued marching on, shoulder to shoulder, in the same manner to the dwell- ing-house. Not only so, but entering the room, they marched as before straight up to Mrs. Day's chair, letting the door in the old oak partition slam so forcibly, that the rows of pewter on the dresser rang like a bell. 'Mrs. Day, Fancy has stung her lip, and wants you to give me the hartshorn, please,' said Mr. Shinar, very close to Mrs. Day's face. ' 0, Mrs. Day, Fancy has asked me to bring out the hartshorn, please, because she has stung her lip !' said Dick, a little closer to Mrs. Day's face. 'Well, men alive! that's no reason why you should eat me, I suppose!' said Mrs. Day, drawing back. She searched in the comer-cupboard, produced the bottle, and began to dust the cork, the rim, and every other part very carefully, Dick's hand and Shinar's hand waiting side by side. HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS. 259 'Which is head man?' said Mrs. Day. * Now, don't come mumbudgeting so close again. Which is head man ?' Neither spoke; and the bottle was in- clined towards Shinar. Shinar, as a high- class man, would not look in the least tri- umphant, and turned to go off with it as Geoffrey came downstairs after the search in his linen for concealed bees. '0— that you. Master De^vy? Dick assured the keeper that it was; and the young man then determined upon a bold stroke for the attainment of his end, forgetting that the worst of bold strokes is the disastrous consequences they involve if they fail. ' I've come o' purpose to speak to you very particularly, Mr. Day,' he said, with a crushing emphasis intended for the ears of Mr. Shinar, who was vanishing round the door-post at that moment. * Well, I've been forced to go upstairs and unrind myself, and shake some bees out o' me,' said Geoffrey, walking slowly towards the open door, and standing oa 26o UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, the threshold. 'The young rascals got into my shirt and wouldn't be quiet no- how.' Dick followed him to the door. ' I've come to speak a word to you,' he repeated, looking out at the pale mist creeping up from the gloom of the valley. ' You may perhaps guess what it is about.' The keeper lowered his hands into the extreme depths of his pockets, twirled his eyes, balanced himself on his toes, looked perpendicularly downward as if his glance were a plumb-line, then scrupulously hori- zontal, gradually collecting together the cracks that lay about his face till they were all in the neighbourhood of his eyes. ' Maybe I don t know,' he replied. Dick said nothing ; and the stillness was disturbed only by some small bird that was being killed by an owl in the adjoining copse, whose cry passed into the silence without mingling with it. ' I've left my hat in the chammer/ said Geoffi-ey; 'wait while I step up and gej HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS. 261 * I'll be in the garden,' said Dick. He went round by a side wicket into the garden, and Geoffrey went upstairs. It was the custom in Mellstock and its vicinity to discuss matters of pleasure and ordinary business inside the house, and to reserve the garden for very important affairs: a custom which, as is supposed, originated in the desirability of getting away at such times from the other members of the fa- mily, when there was only one room for living in, though it was now quite as fre- quently practised by those who suffered from no such limitation to the size of their domiciles. The keeper's form appeared in the dusky garden, and Dick walked towards him. The keeper paused, turned, and leant over the rail of a piggery that stood on the left of the path, upon which Dick did the same; and they both contemplated a Avhitish sha- dowy form that was moving about and grunting among the straw of the interior. * IVe come to ask for Fancy,' said Dick. * I'd as lief you hadn't.' 262 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. 'Why should that be, Mr. Day?' 'Because it makes me say that youVe come to ask for what ye be'n't likely to have. Have ye come for anything else?* 'Nothing/ * Then I'll just tell ye youVe come on a very foolish errand. D'ye know what her mother was?* 'No.' * A governess in a county family, who was foolish enough to marry the keeper of the same establishment. D'ye think Fancy picked up her good manners, the smooth turn of her tongue, her musical skill, and her knowledge of books, in a homely hole like this?' 'No.' ' D'ye know where?' 'No.' ' Well, when I went a- wandering after her mother's death, she lived with her aunt, who kept a boarding-school, till her aunt married Lawyer Green — a man as sharp as a needle — and the school was broken up. Did ye know that then she went to the HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS. 263 training-school, and that her name stood first among the Queen's scholars of her year?' ^ I've heard so.' ^ And that when she sat for her certifi- cate as Government teacher, she had the highest of the first class ?' *Yes.' ' Well, and do ye know what I live in such a miserly way for when I've got enough to do without it, and why I make her work as a schoolmistress instead of liv- ing here?* 'No/ * That if any gentleman, who sees her to be his equal in polish, should want to marry her, and she want to marry him, he sha'n't be superior to her in pocket. Now do ye think after this that you be good enough for her?' ' No; ' Then good-night t'ye. Master Dewy.' ' Good-night, Mr. Day.' Modest Dick's reply had faltered upon his tongue, and he turned away wondering «64 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, at his presumption in asking for a woman whom he had seen from the beginning to be so superior to him. CHAPTER III. FANCY IN THE RAIN. The next scene is a tempestuous after- noon in the following month, and Fancy Day is discovered walking from her father's home towards Mellstock. A single vast gray cloud covered all the country, from which the small rain and mist had just begun to blow down in wavy sheets, alternately thick and thin. The trees of the old brown plantation writhed like miserable men as the air wended its way swiftly among them; the lowest portions of their trunks, that had hardly ever been known to move, were visibly rocked by the fiercer gusts, dis- tressing the mind by its painful unwonted- ness, as when a strong man is seen to shed FANCY IN THE RAIN. 265 tears. Low-hanging boughs went up and down ; high and erect boughs went to and fro ; the blasts being so irregular, and divided into so many cross-currents, that neighbouring branches of the same tree swept the skies in independent motions, crossed each other, passed, or became en- tangled. Across the open spaces flew flocks of green and yellowish leaves, which, after travelling a long distance from their pa- rent trees, reached the ground, and lay there with their under-sides upward. As the rain and wind increased, and Fancy's bonnet -ribbons leapt more and more snappishly against her chin, she paused to consider her latitude, and the distance to a place of shelter. The nearest house was Elizabeth Endorfield's, whose cottage and garden stood at the junction of the lane with the high road. Fancy hastened onward, and in five minutes en- tered a gate, which shed upon her toes a flood of water-drops as she opened it. ^ Come in, chiel!' a voice exclaimed, be- fore Fancy had knocked: a promptness 266 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, that would have surprised her, had she not known that Mrs. Endorfield was an exceedingly and exceptionally sharp wo- man in the use of her eyes and ears. Fancy went in and sat down. Eliza- beth was paring potatoes for her husband's supper. Scrape, scrape, scrape ; then a toss, and splash went a potato into a bucket of water. Now, as Fancy listlessly noted these proceedings of the dame, she began to re- consider an old subject that lay uppermost in her heart. Since the interview between her father and Dick, the days had been melancholy days for her. Geoffrey's firm opposition to the notion of Dick as a son- in-law was more than she had expected. She had frequently seen her lover since that time, it is true, and had loved him more for the opposition than she would have otherwise dreamt of doing — which was a happiness of a certain kind. Yet, though love is thus an end in itself, it must be believed to be the means to another end if FAAXY IN THE RAIN, 267 it is to assume the rosy hues of an unal- loyed pleasure. And such a belief Fancy and Dick were emphatically denied just row. Elizabeth Endorfield had a repute among women which was in its nature something between distinction and notoriety. It was founded on the following items of character. She was shrewd and penetrating ; her house stood in a lonely place ; she never went to church ; she always retained her bonnet in- doors; and she had a pointed chin. Thus far her attributes were distinctly Satanic; and those who looked no further called her, in plain terms, a witch. But she was not gaunt, nor ugly in the upper part of her face, nor particularly strange in manner; so that, when her more intimate acquaint- ances spoke of her, the term was softened, and she became simply a Deep Body, who was as long-headed as she was high. It may be stated that Elizabeth belonged to a class of people who were gradually losing their mysterious characteristics under the administration of the young vicar ; though, during the long reign of Mr. Grinham, the 268 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, parish of Mellstock had proved extremely favourable to the growth of witches. While Fancy was revolving all this in her mind, and putting it to herself whe- ther it was worth while to tell her troubles to Elizabeth, and ask her advice in getting out of them, the witch spoke. ' You are down — proper down/ she said suddenly, dropping another potato into the bucket. Fancy took no notice. ' About your young man.' Fancy reddened. Elizabeth seemed to be watching her thoughts. Really, one would almost think she must have the powers people ascribed to her. ^Father not in the humour for't, hey?' Another potato was finished and flung in. ' Ah, I know about it. Little birds tell me things that people don't dream of my know- ing.' Fancy was desperate about Dick, and here was a chance — 0, such a wicked chance! — of getting help; but what was goodness beside love ! FANCY IN THE RAIN. 269 ' I wish you'd tell me how to put him in the humour for it?^ she said. * That I could soon do,' said the witch quietly. 'Really? 0, do; anyhow — I don't care — so that it is done! How could I do it, Mrs. Endorfield?' ' Nothing so mighty wonderful in it.' 'WvU, buthow? *By witchery, of course!' said Eliza- beth. 'No!' said Fancy. * Tis, I assure ye. Didn t you ever hear I was a witch?' * Well,' said Fancy hesitatingly, ' I have heard you called so.' 'And you believed it?' ' I can't say that I did exactly believe it, for 'tis very horrible and wicked; but, 0, how I do wish it was possible for you to be one !' ' So I am. And I'll tell ye how to be- witch your father, to let you marry Dick Pe^v}^' * Will it hurt him, pogr thing f 270 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. * Hurt who? * Father.' * No ; the charm is worked by common sense, and the spell can only be broke by your acting stupidly/ Fancy looked rather perplexed, and Eliza- beth went on : * This fear of Lizz — whatever 'tis — By great and small ; She makes pretence to common sense, And that's alL You must do it like this.' The witch laid down her knife and potato, and then poured into Fancy's ear a long and de- tailed Hst of directions, glancing up from the corner of her eye into Fancy's face with an expression of sinister humour. Fancy's face brightened, clouded, rose and sank, as the narrative proceeded. * There,' said Elizabeth at length, stoo})ing for the knife and another potato, ' do that, and you'll have him by-long and by-late, my dear.* * And do it I v/ili !' said Fancy. She then turned her atteation to the THE SPELL. 271 external world once more. The rain con- tinued as usual, but the wind had abated considerably during the discourse. Judg- ing that it was now possible to keep an umbrella erect, she pulled her hood again over her bonnet, bade the witch goad-bye, and went her way. CHAPTER IV. THE SPELL. Mrs. Endorfield's advice was duly fol- lowed. * I be proper sorry that your daughter isn't so well as she might be,' said a M ell- stock man to Geoffrey one morning. ' But is there anything in it ?' said Geof- frey uneasily. He shifted his hat slightly to the right. ' I can't understand the re- port. She didn't complain to me at all, when I seed her.* ' No appetite at all, they say.' Geoffrey called at the school that after- 272 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, noon. Fancy welcomed him as usual, and asked him to stay and take tea with her. ^ I be'n't much for tea, this time o' day/ he said, but stayed. Durinix the meal he watched her nar- rowly. And to his great consternation discovered the following unprecedented change in the healthy girl — that she cut herself only a diaphanous slice of bread- and-butter, and laying it on her plate, passed the meal in breaking it into pieces, but eating no more than about one-tenth of the slice. Geoffrey hoped she would say something about Dick, and finish up by weeping, as she had done after the decision against him a few days subsequent to the interview in the garden. But nothing was said, and in due time Geoffrey departed again for Yalbury Wood. * Tis to be hoped poor Miss Fancy will be able to keep on her school,' said Geof- frey's man Enoch to Geoffrey the following week, as they were shovelling up ant-hills in the wood. Geoffrey stuck in the shovel, swept seven THE SPELL. 273 Or eight ants from his sleeve, and killed another that was prowling round his ear, then looked perpendicularly into the earth, waiting for Enoch to say more. 'Well, why shouldn't she ?' said the keeper at last. 'The baker told me yesterday,^ con- tinued Enoch, shaking out another emmet that had run merrily up his thigh, ' that the bread he've left at that there school-house this last month would starve any mouse in the three creations; that 'twould so. And afterwards I had a pint o' small at the Old Souls, and there I heard more.' 'What might that ha' been?' ' That she used to have half a pound o' the best rolled butter a week, regular as clockwork, from Dairyman Quenton's; but now the same quantity d'last her three weeks, and then 'tis thoughted she throws it away sour.' ' Finish doing the emmets, and carry the bag home-along.' The keeper resumed his gun, tucked it under his arm, and went on without whistling to the dogs, who however followed, with a bearing meant 274 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, to imply that they did not expect any such attentions when their master was re- flecting. On Saturday morning a note came from Fancy. He was not to trouble about send- ing her the couple of early young rabbits, as was intended, because she feared she should not want them. Later in the day, Geoffrey went to Casterbridge, and called upon the butcher who served Fancy with fresh meat, which was put down to her father's account. 'IVe called to pay up our little bill, naibour Sabley, and you can gie me the chiel's account at the same time/ Mr. Sabley turned round three quarters of a circle in the midst of a heap of joints, altered the expression of his face from meat to money, went into a little office consisting only of a door and a window, looked very vigorously into a book which possessed length but no breadth; and then, seizing a piece of paper and scribbling thereupon, handed the bill. Probably it was the first time in the THE SPELL. 275 history of commercial transactions that the quality of shortness in a butcher's bill was a cause of tribulation to the debtor. 'Why, this isn't all she've had in a whole month !' said Geoffrey. * Every mossel,' said the butcher — * (now, Dan, take that leg and shoulder to Mrs. White's, and this eleven pound here to Mr. Martins) — you've been trating her to smaller joints lately, to my thinking, Mr. Day?' ' Only two or three little scram rabbits this last week, as I be alive — I wish I had.* 'Well, my wife said to me — (Dan! not too much, not too much at a time; better go twice) — my wife said to me as she posted up the books : " Sabley," she ses, "Miss Day must have been affronted this summer dur- ing that hot muggy weather that spoilt so much for us; for depend upon't," she ses, " she've been trying Joe Grimmett unknown to us : see her account else." 'Tis little, of course, at the best of times, being only for one, but now 'tis next kin to nothing.' ' I'll inquire,' said Geoffrey deapondingly 276 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, He returned by way of Mellstock, and called upon Fancy, in fulfilment of a pro- mise. It being Saturday, the cbildren were enjoying a holiday, and on entering the residence Fancy was nowhere to be seen. Nan, the charwoman, was sweeping the kitchen. ' Where's my da'ter ?' said the keeper. 'Well, you see she was tired with the week's work, and this morning she said, "Nan, I sha'n't get up till the evening." You see, Mr. Day, if people don't eat, they can't work; and as she've gie'd up eating, she must gie up working.* 'Have ye carried up any dinner to her? ' No ; she don't want any. There, we all know that such things don't come without good reason — not that I wish to say any- thing about a broken heart, or anything of the kind.* Geoflfrey's own heart felt inconveniently large just then. He went to the staircase and ascended to his daughter's door. 'Fancy!* THE SPELL. 277 ' Come in, father/ To see a person in bed from any cause whatever, on a fine afternoon, is depressing enough ; and here was his only child Fancy, not only in bed, but looking very pale. Geoffrey was visibly disturbed. ' Fancy, I didn't expect to see thee here, chiel,' he said. * What's the matter ?' ' I'm not well, father.' 'How's that?' ' Because I think of things.' ' What things can you have to think o' 80 martel much?' ' You know, father.' * You think I've been cruel to thee in saying that that penniless Dick o' thine sha'n't marry thee, I suppose?' No answer. ' Well, you know, Fancy, I do it for the best, and he isn't good enough for thee. You know that well enough.' Here he again looked at her as she lay. 'Well, Fancy, I can't let my only chiel die ; and if you can't live without en, you must ha' en, I suppose/ ayS UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. '0, I don't want him like that; all against your will, and everything so dis- obedient!' sighed the invalid. 'No, no, 'tisn't against my will. My ♦ash is, now I d'see how 'tis hurten thee to live without en, that he shall marry thee as soon as we've considered a little. That's my wish flat and plain, Fancy. There, never cry, my little maid ! You ought to ha' cried afore; no need o' crying now 'tis all over. Well, howsoever, try to stap over and see me and mother-law to-morrow, and ha' a bit of dinner wi' us.* 'And— Dick too? ' Ay, Dick too, 'far's I know.* *And when do you think you'll have considered, father, and he may marry me ?' she coaxed. * Well, there, say next Midsummer ; that's not a day too long to wait.' On leaving the school, Geoffrey went to the tranter's. Old William opened the door. *Is your grandson Dick in 'ithin, Wil« liaia ?* THE SPELL. 279 * No, not just now, Geoffrey. Though he've been at home a good deal lately.' *0, how's that? 'What wi* one thing, and what wi' 'tother, he's all in a mope, as m't be said. Don't seem the feller 'a used to. Ay, 'a will sit studding and thinking as if 'a were going to turn chapel-member, and then 'a don't do nothing but traypsing and wamb- ling about. Used to be such a chatty feller, too, Dick did; and now 'a don't spak at all. But won't ye stap inside? Reuben will be home soon, 'a b'lieve.' ' No, thank you, I can't stay now. Will ye just ask Dick if he'll do me the kindness to stap over to Yalbury to-morrow with my da'ter Fancy, if she's well enough? I don't like her to come by herself, now she's not so terrible topping in health.' 'So I've heard. Ay, sure, 111 tell'n without fail* «8o UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, CHAPTER y. AFTER GAINING HER POINT. The visit to Geoffrey passed off as de- lightfully as a visit might have been ex- pected to pass off when it was the first day of smooth experience in a hitherto obstructed love-course. And then came a series of several happy days, of the same undisturbed serenity. Dick could court her when he chose; stay away when he chose, — which was never ; walk with her by winding streams and waterfalls and autumn scenery till dews and twilight sent them home. And thus they drew near the day of the Harvest Thanksgiving, which was also the time chosen for opening the organ in Mell- stock Church. It chanced that Dick on that very day was called away from Mellstock. A young acquaintance had died of consumption at Stoneley, a neighbouring village, on the previous Monday, and Dick, in fulfilment of a long-standing promise, was to assist in AFTER GAIMNG HER POINT, 281 carryino; him to the grave. When, on Tues- day, Dick went towards the school to ac- quaint Fancy of the fact, it is difficult to say whether his own disappointment, at being denied the sight of her triumphant debut as organist, was greater than his vexation that his pet should on this great occasion be deprived of the pleasure of his presence. However, the intelligence was communi- cated. She bore it as she best could, not without many expressions of regret, and convictions that her performance would be nothing to her now. Just before eleven o*clock on Sunday he set out upon his sad errand. The funeral was to be immediately after the morning service, and as there were four good miles to walk, it became necessary to start compara- tively early. Half an hour later would cer- tainly have answered his purpose quite as well, yet nothing would content his ardent mind but that he must go a mile out of his way, in the direction of the school, in the hope of getting a glimpse of his Love as she started for church. 282 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. Striking into the path between the church and the school, he proceeded to- wards the latter spot, and arrived opposite her door as his goddess emerged. If ever a woman looked a divinity, Fancy Day appsared one that morning as she floated down those school steps, in the form of a nebulous collection of colours inclining to blue. With an audacity unparalleled in the whole history of schoolmistresses — partly owing, no doubt, to papa's respectable accumulation of cash, which rendered her profession not altogether one of necessity — she had actually donned a hat and feather, and lowered her hitherto plainly looped-up hair, which now fell about her shoulders in a profusion of curls. Poor Dick was aston- ished: he had never seen her look so dis- tractingly beautiful before, save on Christ- mas-eve, when her hair was in the same luxuriant condition of freedom. But his first burst of delighted surprise was fol- lowed by less comfortable feelings, as soon as his brain recovered its power to think. Fancy had blushed; — was it with con- AFTER GAINING HER POINT, 283 fusion? She had also hi voluntarily pressed back her curls. She had not expected him. ' Fancy, you didn't know me for a mo- ment in my funeral clothes, did you?' ' Good-morning, Dick — no, really I didn't recognise you for an instant/ He looked again at the gay tresses and hat. ' You've never dressed so charmingly before, dearest.' 'I like to hear you praise me in that way, Dick,* she said, smiling archly. ' It is meat and drink to a woman. Do I look nice really?* 'Fancy, — fie! you know it. Did you remember, — I mean didn't you remember about my going away to-day ?' * Well, yes, I did, Dick ; but, you know, I wanted to look well ; — forgive me.' 'Yes, darling; yes, of course, — there's nothing to forgive. No, I was only think- ing that when we talked on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday about my absence to-day, and I regretted it so, you said, Fancy, so did you regret it, and 284 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. almost cried, and said it would be no plea- sure to you to be the attraction of the church to-day, since I could not be there.' * My dear one, neither will it be so much pleasure to me But I do take a little delight in my life, I suppose,' she pouted. * Apart from mine?' She looked at him with perplexed eyes. ' I know you are vexed -with me, Dick, and it is because the first Sunday I have curls and a hat and feather since I have been here happens to be the very day you are away and won't be with me. Yes, say it is, for that is it 1 And you think that all this week I ought to have remembered you wouldn't be here, and not have cared to be better dressed than usual. Yes, you do, Dick, and it is rather unkind V 'No, no,' said Dick earnestly and simply, * I didn't think so badly of you as that. I only thought that, if you had been going away, I shouldn't have adopted new attrac- tions for the eyes of other people. But then of course you and I are different naturally. * Well, perhaps we are/ AFTER GAINING HER POINT. 285 ' Whatever will the vicar say, Fancy ?' * I don't fear what he says in the least I* she answered proudly. * But he won't say anything of the sort you think. No, no.' 'He can hardly have conscience to, in- deed.' 'Now come, you say, Dick, that you quite forgive me, for I must go,' she said with sudden gaiety, and skipped backwards into the porch. ' Come here, sir ; — say you forgive me, and then you shall kiss me; — you never have yet when I have worn curls, you know. Yes, in the very middle of my mouth, where you want to so much, — yes, you may.' Dick followed her into the inner corner, where he was not slow in availing himself of the privilege offered. ' Now that's a treat for you, isn't it?' she continued. ' Good-bye, or I shall be late. Come and see me to-morrow : you'll be tired to-night.' Thus they parted, and Fancy proceeded to the church. The organ stood on one side of the chancel, close to and under the im- 286 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. mediate eye of the vicar when he was in the pulpit, and also in full view of the whole congregation. Here she sat down, for the first time in such a conspicuous position, her seat having previously been in a remote spot in the aisle. ^ Good heavens— disgrace- ful I Curls and a hat and feather !' said the daughters of the small gentry, who had either only curly hair without a hat and feather, or a hat and feather without curl- ing hair. 'A bonnet for church always I' said sober matrons. That Mr. Maybold was conscious of her presence close beside him during his ser- mon; that he was not at all angry at her development of costume; that he admired her, she perceived. But she did not see that he loved her during that sermon-time as he had never loved a woman before ; that her proximity was a strange delight to him ; and that he gloried in her musical success that morning in a spirit quite beyond a mere cleric's glory at the inauguration of a new order of things. The old choir, with humbled hearts, no AFTER GAINING HER POINT. 287 longer took their seats in the gallery as heretofore (which was now given up to the school-children who were not singers, and a pupil-teacher), but were scattered about with their wives in different parts of the church. Having nothing to do with con- ducting the service for almost the first time in their lives, they all felt awkward, out of place, abashed, and inconvenienced by their hands. The tranter had proposed that they should stay away to-day and go nutting, but grandfather William would not hear of such a thing for a moment. ^No,' he replied reproachfully, and quoted a verse : " Though this has come upon us, let not our hearts be turned back, or our steps go out of the way." ' So they stood and watched the curls of hair trailing down the back of the successful rival, and the waving of her feather, as she swayed her head. After a few timid notes and uncertain touches her playing became markedly correct, and towards the end full and free. But, whether from prejudice or unbiassed judgment, the venerable body of musicians could not help thinking that 288 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, the simpler notes they had been wont to bring forth were more in keeping with the simplicity of :heir old church than the crowded chords and interludes it was her pleasure to produce. CHAPTER VI. INTO TEMPTATION. The day was done, and Fancy was again in the school-house. About five o'clock it began to rain, and in rather a dull frame of mind she wandered into the schoolroom, for want of something better to do. She was thinking — of her lover Dick Dewy? not precisely. Of how weary she was of living alone : how unbearable it would be to return to Yalbury under the rule of her strange- tempered step-mother ; that it was far better to be married to anybody than do that; that eight or nine long months had yet to be lived through ere the wedding could take place. INTO TEMPTATION, 2S9 At the end of the room was a high win- dow, upon the sill of which she could sit by first mounting a desk and using it as a footstool. As the evening advanced, here she perched herself, as was her custom on such wet and gloomy occasions, put on a light shawl and bonnet, opened the window, and looked out at the rain. The window overlooked a field and foot- path across it, and it was the position from which she used to survey the crown of Dick's hat in the early days of their ac- quaintance and meetings. Not a living soul was now visible anywhere ; the rain kept all people indoors who were not forced abroad by necessity, and necessity was less impor- tunate on Sundays than during the week. Sitting here and thinking again — of her lover, or of the sensation she had created at church that day? — well, it is unknown — thinkino^ and thinkinor she saw a dark mas- culine figure arising into distinctness at the farther end of the path — a man without an umbrella. Nearer and nearer he came, and she perceived that he was in deep mourn- 290 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ing, and then that it was Dick. Yes, in the fondness and foolishness of his young heart, after walking four miles, in a drizzling rain without overcoat oi umbrella, and in face of a remark from his love that he was not to come because he would be tired, he had made it his business to wander this mile out of his way again, from sheer love of spend- ing ten minutes in her beloved presence. ' Dick, how wet you are !' she said, as he drew up under the window. ' Why, your coat shines as if it had been var- nished, and your hat — my goodness, there's a streaming hat !' * 0, I don't mind, darling !' said Dick cheerfully. ' Wet never hurts me, though I am rather sorry for my best clothes. However, it couldn't be helped; they lent all the umbrellas to the women.' 'And look, there's a nasty patch of something just on your shoulder.' 'Ah, that^s japanning; it rubbed off the clamps of poor Jack^s coffin when we low- ered him from our shoulders upon the bier ! I don't care about that, for 'twas INTO TEMPTATION. 291 the last deed 1 could do for him ; and 'tis hard if you can't afford a coat to an old friend/ Fancy put her hand to her mouth for half a minute. Underneath the palm of that little hand there existed for that half-mi- nute a little yawn. 'Dick, I don't like you to stand there in the wet. Go home and change your things. Don't stay another minute.' ' One kiss after coming so far,' he pleaded. * If I can reach, then.' He looked rather disappointed at not being invited round to the door. She left her seated position and bent herself down- wards, but not even by standing on the plinth was it possible for Dick to get his mouth into contact with hers as she held it. By great exertion she might have reached a little lower ; but then she would have exposed her head to the rain. ' Never mind, Dick ; kiss my hand,' she said, flinguag it down to him. ' Now, good- bye/ ^ Good-bye.' 292 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. He walked slowly away, turning and turning again to look at her till he was out of sight. During the retreat she said to her- self, almost involuntarily, and still conscious of that morning's triumph, ' I like Dick, and I love him ; but how poor and mean a man looks in the rain, with no umbrella, and wet through !' As he vanished, she made as if to de- scend from her seat; but glancing in the other direction she saw another form coming along the same path. It was also that of a man. He, too, was in black from top to toe ; but he carried an umbrella. He drew nearer, and the direction of the rain caused him so to slant his um- brella, that from her height above the ground his hefid was invisible, as she was also to him. He passed in due time directly beneath her, and in looking down upon the exterior of his uaibrella her feminine eyes instinctively perceived it to be of superior silk, and of elegant make. He reached the angle of the building, and Fancy suddenly lost sight of hipa. Instead of pursuing th^ INTO TEMPTATION. 293 straight path, as Dick had done, he had turned sharply round to her own door. She jumped to the floor, hastily flung off her shawl and bonnet, smoothed and patted her hair till the curls hung in pass- able condition, and listened. No knock. Nearly a minute passed, and still there was no knock. Then there arose a soft series of raps, no louder than the tapping of a dis- tant woodpecker, and barely distinct enough to reach her ears. She composed herself and flung open the door. In the porch stood Mr. Maybold. There was a warm flush upon his face, and a bright flash in his eyes, which made him look handsomer than she had ever seen him before. * Good-evening, Miss Day.' ^ Good-evening, Mr. Maybold,* she said, in a strange state of mind. She had noticed, beyond the ardent hue of his face, that his voice had a singular tremor in it, and that his hand shook like an aspen leaf when he laid his umbrella in the comer of the porch. Without another word being spoken by either ^94 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. he came into the schoolroom, shut the door, and moved close to her. Once inside, the expression of his face was no more dis- cernible, by reason of the increasing dusk of evening. *I want to speak to you,' he then said; * seriously — on a perhaps unexpected subject, but one which is all the world to me — I don't know what it may be to you, Miss Day.' No reply. * Fancy, I have come to ask you if you will be my wife ?^ As a person who has been idly amusing himself mth rolling a snowball might start at finding he had set in motion an ava- lanche, so did Fancy start at these words from the vicar. And in the dead silence which followed them, the breathings of the man and of the woman could be distinctly and separately heard; and there was this difference between them — his respirations gradually grew quieter and less rapid after the enunciation ; hers, from having been low and regular, increased in quickness and force, till she almost panted. INTO TEMPTATION. 295 'I cannot, I cannot, Mr. Maybold — I cannot. Don't ask me !' she said. ' Don't answer in a hurry !' he entreated. 'And do listen to me. This is no sudden feehng on my part. I have loved you for more than six months ! Perhaps my late interest in teaching the children here has not been so single-minded as it seemed. You will understand my motive — like me better, perhaps — for honestly telling you that I have struggled against my emotion con- tinually, because I have thought that it was not well for me to love you ! But I resolve to struggle no longer; I have ex- amined the feeling ; and the love I bear you is as genuine as that I could bear any wo- man! I see your great beauty; I respect your natural talents, and the refinement they have brought into your nature — they are quite enough, and more than enough for me ! They are equal to anything ever required of the mistress of a quiet parson- age-house — the place in which I shall pass my days, wherever it may be situated. Fancy, I have watched you, criticised you 296 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. even severely, brought my feelings to the light of judgment, and still have found them rational, and such as any man might have expected to be inspu'ed with by a wo- man like you ! So there is nothing hurried, secret, or untoward in my desire to make you my wife! Fancy, will you marry me?' No answer was returned. ^ Don't refuse ; don't,^ he implored. 'It would be foolish of you — I mean cruel I Of course we would not live here. Fancy. I have had for a long time the offer of an exchange of livings with a friend in York- shire, but I have hitherto refused on ac- count of my mother. There we would go. Your musical powers shall be still further developed; you shall have whatever piano you like; you shall have anything, Fancy! anything to make you happy — pony-car- riage, flowers, birds, pleasant society; yes, you have enough in you for any society, after a few months of travel with me I Will you. Fancy, marry me?* Another pause ensued, varied only by INTO TEMPTATION. 297 the surging of the rain against the window- panes, and then Fancy spoke, in a faint and broken voice. ' Yes, I will/ she said. * God bless you, my own !* He advanced quickly, and put his arm out to embrace her. She drew back hastily. ' No, no, not now!* she said in an agitated whisper. 'There are things; — but the temptation is, 0, too strong, and I can't resist it; I cant tell you now, but I must tell you ! Don't, please, don't come near me now ! I want to think. I can scarcely get myself used to the idea of what I have promised yet.' The next minute she turned to a desk, buried her face in her hands, and burst into a hys- terical fit of weeping. ' 0, leave me !' she sobbed, 'leave me! 0, leave me!' ' Don't be distressed ; don't, dearest !' It was with visible difficulty that he restrained himself from approaching her. ' You shall tell me at your leisure what it is that grieves you so ; I am happy — beyond all measure happy I — at having your simple promise.' 298 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ' And do leave me now I' *But I must not, injustice to you, leave for a minute, until you are yourself again.' 'There then,' she said, controlling her emotion, and standing up ; 'I am not dis- turbed now.' He reluctantly moved towards the door. 'Good-bye!' he murmured tenderly. 'I'll come to-morrow about this time.* CHAPTER VII. A CRISIS. The next morning the vicar rose early. The first thing he did was to write a long and careful letter to his friend in York- shire. Then, partaking of a little break- fast, he crossed the dale and heath in the direction of Casterbridge, bearing his letter in his pocket, that he might post it at the town office, and obviate the loss of one day in its transmission that would have resulted had he left it for the foot-post throuo^h the villao^e. A CRISIS. 299 It was a foggy morning, and the trees shed in noisy water-drops the moisture they had collected from the thick air, an acorn occasionally falling from its cup to the ground, in company with the drippings. In the heath, sheets of spiders' -web, almost opaque with wet, hung in folds over the furze -bushes, and the ferns appeared in every variety of brown, green, and yellow hues. A low and merry whistling was heard on the other side of the hedge, then the light footsteps of a man going in the same direc- tion as himself. On reaching the gate which divided the two enclosures, the vicar be- held Dick Dewy's open and cheerful face. Dick lifted his hat, and came through the gate into the path the vicar was pur- suing. ' Good-morning, Dewy. How well you are looking I' said Mr. Maybold. ' Yes, sir, I am well — quite well I I am going to Casterbridge now, to get Smart's collar ; we left it there Saturday to be repaired.' 300 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ^I am going to Casterbridge, so we'll walk together/ the vicar said. Dick gave a hop with one foot to put himself in step with Mr. Maybold, who proceeded : 'I fancy I didn't see you at church yesterday, Dewy. Or were you behind the pier ?' 'No: I went to Stoneley. Poor John Dunford chose me to be one of his bearers a long time before he died, and yesterday was the funeral. Of course I couldn't re- fuse, though I should have liked particu- larly to have been at home on this occa- sion.* ' Yes, you should have been. The mu- sical portion of the service was success- ful — very successful indeed; and what is more to the purpose, no ill-feeling whatever was evinced by any of the members of the old choir. They joined in the singing with the greatest good-will.* ''Twas natural enough that I should want to be there, I suppose,' said Dick, smiling a private smile ; ' considering who the organist was.' At this the vicar reddened a little, and A CRISIS. 301 said, ' Yes, yes/ though not pt all com- prehending Dick's true meaning, who, as he received no further reply, continued hesitatingly, and with another smile denot- ing his pride as a lover, * I suppose you know what I mean, sir? You've heard about me and — Miss Day?' The red in Maybold's countenance went away: he turned and looked Dick in the face. * No,* he said constrainedly, * I've heard nothing whatever about you and Miss Day.* 'Why, she's my sweetheart, and we are going to be married next Midsummer. We are keeping it rather close just at pre- sent, because it is a good many months to wait; but it is her father's wish that we don't marry before, and of course we must submit. But the time will soon shp along.* 'Yes, the time will soon slip along. Time glides away every day — yes.' Maybold said these words, but he had no idea of what they were. He was con- scious of a cold and sickly thrill through- 302 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, out him; and all he reasoned was this, that the young creature whose graces had in- toxicated him into making the most im- prudent resolution of his life, was less an angel than a woman. ' You see, sir,' continued the ingenuous Dick, "twill be better in one sense. I shall by that time be the regular manager of a branch of my father's business, which has very much increased lately, and we expect next year to keep an extra couple of horses. We've already our eye on one — brown as a berry, neck like a rainbow, fifteen hands, and not a gray hair in her — offered us at twenty-five want a crown. And to keep pace with the times, I have had some cards printed, and I beg leave to hand you one, sir.' ' Certainly,' said the vicar, mechanically taking the card that Dick offered him. ' I turn in here by the river,' said Dick. ' I suppose you go straight up the town T ^Yes.' ' Good-morning, sir/ ^ Good-morning, Dewy/ A CRISIS. 303 Maybold stood still upon the bridge, holding the card as it had been put into his hand, and Dick's footsteps died away. The vicar's first voluntary action was to read the card : — DEWY AITD SON, Mellstock. N.B. Furniture, Coals, Potatoes, Live and Dead Stock, removed to any distance on the shortest notice. Mr. Maybold leant over the parapet of the bridge and looked into the river. He saw — without heeding — how the water came rapidly from beneath the arches, glided down a little steep, then spread it- self over a pool in which dace, trout, and minnows sported at ease among the long green locks of weed, that lay heaving and sinking with their roots towards the cur- rent. At the end of ten minutes spent leaning thus, he stood erect, drew the let- ter from his pocket, tore it deliberately into such minute fragments that scarcely two syllables remained in juxtaposition, 304 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. and sent the whole handful of shreds flut- tering into the water. Here he watched them eddy, dart, and turn, as they were carried downwards towards the ocean and gradually disappeared from his view. Fin- ally he moved off, and pursued his way at a rapid pace towards Mellstock Vicar- age. Nerving himself by a long and intense effort, he sat down in his study and wrote as follows : * Dear Miss Day, — The meaning of your words, ''the temptation is too strong," of your sadness and your tears, has been brought home to me by an accident. 1 know to-day what I did not know yester- day — that you are not a free woman. * Why did you not tell me — why didn't you ? Did you suppose I knew ? No. Had I known, my conduct in coming to you as I did would have been reprehen- sible. ' But I don't chide you ! perhaps no blame attaches to you — I can't tell. A CR/S/S. 305 Fancy, though my opinion of you is as- sailed and disturbed in a way which cannot be expressed, I love you still, and my word to you holds good yet. But will you, in justice to an honest man who relies upon your word to him, consider whether, under the circumstances, you can honour- ably forsake him? * Yours ever sincerely, * Arthur Maybold.' He rang the bell. ' Tell Charles to take these copybooks and this note to the school at once.' The maid took the parcel and the letter, and in a few minutes a boy was seen to leave the vicarage gate, with the one under his arm, and the other in his hand. The vicar sat with his hand to his brow, watch- ing the lad as he climbed the hill and entered the little field that intervened be- tween that spot and the school. Here he was met by another boy, and after a salutation and pugilistic frisk had passed between the two, the second boy 3o6 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, came on his way to the vicarage, and the other vanished out of sight. The boy came to the door, and a note for Mr. Maybold was brought in. He knew the writing. Opening the envelope with an unsteady hand, he read the subjoined words: ' Dear Mr. Maybold, — I have been think- ing seriously and sadly through the whole of the night of the question you put to me last evening; and of my answer. That answer, as an honest woman, I had no right to give. 'It is my nature — perhaps all women^s — to love refinement of mind and manners ; but even more than this, to be ever fascin- ated with the idea of surroundings more elegant and luxurious than those which have been customary. And you praised me, and praise is life to me. It was alone my sensations at these things which prompted my reply. Ambition and vanity they would be called; perhaps they are so. * After this explanation, I hope you will A CRISIS. 307 generously allow me to withdraw the ans- wer I too hastily gave. *And one more request. To keep the meeting of last night, and all that passed between us there, for ever a secret. Were it to become known, it would for ever blight the happiness of a trusting and gen- erous man, whom I love still, and shall love always. * Yours sincerely, 'Fancy Day/ The last written communication that ever passed from the vicar to Fancy, was a note containing these words only : 'Tell him everything; it is best. He will forgive you.* PartV. Conthmn. Chapter T. * The Knot there's no Untying/ The last day of the story is dated just sub- sequent to that point in the development of the seasons when country people go to bed among nearly naked trees, and awake next morning among green ones ; when the landscape appears embarrassed with the sudden weight and brilliancy of its leaves ; when the night-jar comes and commences for the summer his tune of one note; when the apple-trees have bloomed, and the roads and orchards become spotted T\ith fallen petals; when the faces of the delicate flowers are darkened, and their heads weighed down by the throng of honey-bees, which increase their humming till humming is too mild a term for the all-pervading sound; and when cuckoos, blackbirds, and THE KNOT THERE'S NO UNTYING. 309 sparrows, that have hitherto been merry and respectful neighbours, become noisy and persistent intimates. The exterior of Geoffrey Day's house in Yalbury Wood appeared exactly as was usual at that season, but a frantic barking of the dogs at the back told of unwonted movements somewhere within. Inside the door the eyes beheld a gathering, which was a rarity indeed for the dwelling of the solitary keeper. About the room were sitting and stand- ing, in various gnarled attitudes, our old acquaintance, grandfathers James and Wil- liam, the tranter, Mr. Penny, two or three children, including Jimmy and Charley, besides three or four country ladies and gentlemen who do not require any dis- tinction by name. Geoffrey was seen and heard stamping about the outhouse and among the bushes of the garden, attending to details of daily routine before the proper time arrived for their performance, in order that they might be off his hands for the d^y. He appeared with his shirt-sleeves 3IO UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. rolled up ; his best new nether garments, in which he had arrayed himself that morn- ing, being temporarily disguised under a week-day apron whilst these proceedings were in operation. He occasionally glanced at the hives in passing, to see if the bees were swarming, ultimately rolling down his shirt-sleeves and going indoors, talking to tranter Dewy whilst buttoning the wrist- bands, to save time ; next going upstairs for his best waistcoat, and coming down again to make another remark whilst buttoning that, during the time looking fixedly in the tranter's face, as if he were a looking- glass. The furniture had undergone attenua- tion to an alarming extent, every duplicate piece having been removed, including the clock by Thomas Wood ; Ezekiel Sparrow- grass being at last left sole referee in mat- ters of time. Fancy was stationary upstairs, receiving her layers of clothes and adornments, und answering by short fragments of laughter which had more fidgetiness than mirth ia THE KNOT THERE'S NO UNTYING. 311 them, remarks that were made from time to time by Mrs. Dewy and Mrs. Penny, who were assisting her at the toilet, Mrs. Day having pleaded a queerness in her head as a reason for shutting herselt up in an inner bedroom for the whole morning. Mrs. Penny appeared with nine corkscrew curls on each side of her temples, and a back comb stuck upon her crown like a castle on a steep. The conversation just now going on was concerning the banns, the last pubhca- tion of which had been on the Sunday pre- vious. 'And how did they sound?* Fancy subtly inquired. ' Very beautiful indeed,' said Mrs. Pen- ny. ' I never heard any sound better.' 'But A(?w;f' ' 0, so natural and elegant, didn't they, Reuben!' she cried, through the chinks of the unceiled floor, to the tranter downstairs. ' What's that ?' said the tranter, looking up inquiringly at the floor above him for an answer. 312 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, 'Didn't Dick and Fancy sound well wlien they were called home in church last Sunday?' came downwards again in Mrs. Penny's voice. ' Ay, that they did, my sonnies ! — especi- ally the first time. There was a terrible whispering piece of work in the congre- gation, wasn't there, naibour Penny?' said the tranter, taking up the thread of conver- sation on his own account, and, in order to be heard in the room above, speaking very loudly to Mr. Penny, who sat at the dis- tance of two feet from him, or rather less. ' I never remember seeing such a whis- pering as there was,' said Mr. Penny, also loudly, to the room above. * And such sor- rowful envy on the maidens' faces; really, I never see such envy as there was !' Fancy's lineaments varied in innumer- able little flushes, and her heart palpitated innumerable little tremors of pleasure. ' But perhaps,' she said, with assumed indiffer- ence, ' it was only because no religion was going on just then.' ' 0, no ; nothing to do with that. 'Twas THE KNOT THERE S NO UNTYING. 313 because of your high standing. It was just as if they had one and all caught Dick kiss- ing and coling ye to death, wasn't it, Mrs. Dewy r ' Ay ; that 'twas.' * How people will talk about people I' Fancy exclaimed. ' Well, if you make songs about your- self, my dear, you can't blame other people for singing 'em.^ 'Mercy me! how shall I go through it?' said the young lady again, but merely to those in the bedroom, with a breathing of a kind between a sigh and a pant, round shining eyes, and warm face. ' 0, you'll get through it well enough, child,' said Mrs. Dewy placidly. ' The edge of the performance is taken off at the call- ing home; and when once you get up to the chancel end o' the church, you feel as saucy as you please. I'm sure I felt as brave as a sodger all through the deed — though of course I dropped my face and looked modest, as was becoming to a maid Mind you do that, Fancy,' I- 314 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, ^ And I walked into the church as quiet as a lamb, I'm sure/ subjoined Mrs. Penny. ' There, you see Penny is such a little small man. But certainly, I was flurried in the inside o' me. Well, thinks I, 'tis to be, and here goes I And do you do the same : say, " 'Tis to be, and here goes I" * 'Is there such a wonderful virtue in your '"Tis to be, and here goes!"' inquired Fancy. ' Wonderful I 'Twill carry a body through it all from wedding to churching, if you only let it out with spirit enough.' 'Very well, then,' said Fancy, blush- ing. ' 'Tis to be, and here goes !' ' That's a girl for a husband !' said Mrs Dewy. ' I do hope he'll come in time !' con- tinued the bride -elect, inventing a new cause of affright, now that the other was demolished. ' 'T would be a thousand pities if he didn't come, now you be so brave,* said Mrs. Penny. Grandfather James, having overheard THE KNOT THERE'S NO UNTYING, 315 some of these remarks, said downstairs with mischievous loudness : ' IVe heard that at some weddings the men don t come.' ' They've been known not to, before now, certainly,* said Mr. Penny, cleaning one of the glasses of his spectacles. ' 0, do hear what they are saying down- stairs,' whispered Fancy. ' Hush, hush !' She listened. * They have, haven't they, Geoffrey V continued grandfather James, as GeoflErey entered. ' Have what T said Geoffrey. *The men have been known not to come.' ' That they have,' said the keeper. * Ay ; I've knowed times when the wed- ding had to be put off through his not appearing, being tired of the woman. And another case I knowed when the man was catched in a man- trap crossing Mellstock Wood, and the three months had run out before he got well, and the banns had to bo published over again.* 3i6 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. ' How horrible !' said Fancy. 'They only say it on purpose to tease you, my dear,' said Mrs. Dewy. ^ Tis quite sad to think what wretched shifts poor maids have been put to,' came again from downstairs. ' Ye should hear Clerk Wilkins, my brother-law, tell his experiences in marrying couples these last thirty years: sometimes one thing, some- times another — ^tis quite heart-rending — enough to make your hair stand on end.' 'Those things don't happen very often, I know,' said Fancy, with smouldering un- easiness. 'Well, really 'tis time Dick was here,' said the tranter. 'Don't keep on at me so, grandfather James and Mr. Dewy, and all you down there !' Fancy broke out, unable to endure any longer. ' I am sure I shall die, or do something, if you do.' ' Never you hearken to these old chaps, Miss Day!^ cried Nat Callcome, the best man, who had just entered, and threw his voice upward through the chinks of the THE KNOT THERE S NO UNTYING. 317 floor as the others had done. ' 'Tis all right ; Dick's coming on like a wild feller ; hell be here in a minute. The hive o' bees his mother gie'd en for his new garden irwarmed jist as he was starting, and he said, " I can't afford to lose a stock o' bees ; no, that I can't, though I fain would ; and Fancy wouldn't wish it on any account." So he jist stopped to ting to 'em and shake em. * A genuine wise man,' said Geoffrey. * To be sure, what a day's work we had yesterday!' Mr. Callcome continued, lower- ing his voice as if it were not necessary any longer to include those in the room above among his audience, and selecting a remote comer of his best clean handkerchief for wiping his face. ' To be sure !' ' Things so heavy, I suppose,' said Geof- frey, as if reading through the chimney- window from the far end of the pad- dock. * Ay,* said Nat, looking round the room at points from which furniture had been re- moved. 'And so awkward to carry, too. 3i8 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, Twas athwart and across Dick's garden ; in and out Dick's door; up and down Dick's stairs; round and round Dick's chammers till legs were worn to stumps : and Dick is so particular, too. And the stores of vic- tuals and drink that lad has laid in: why, 'tis enough for Noah's arkl I'm sure I ne^^er wish to see a choicer half-dozen of hams than he's got there in his chimley; and the cider I tasted was a very pretty drop, indeed ; — never could desire a prettier tasted cider.* * They be for the love and the stalled ox both. Ah, the greedy martels I' said grand- father James. *Well, may-be they be. "Surely," says I, "that couple between 'em have heaped up so much furniture and victuals, that anybody would think they were going to take hold the big end of married life first, and begin wi' a grown-up family.'' Ah, what a bath of heat we two chaps were in, to be sure, a-getting that furniture in order !* * I do so wish the room below was ceiled,' THE KNOT THERE'S NO UNTYING. 319 said Fancy, as the dressing went on; *they can hear all we say and do up here/ * Hark ! Who's that T exclaimed a small pupil-teacher, who also assisted this morn- ing, to her great dehght. She ran half-way down the stairs, and peeped round the ban- ister. ' 0, you should, you should, you should I* she exclaimed, scrambling up to the room again. *What? said Fancy. *See the bridesmaids! TheyVe just come ! 'Tis wonderful, really I 'tis wonderful how muslin can be brought to it. There, they don't look a bit like themselves, but like some very rich sisters o' theirs that no- body knew they had I' *Make 'em come up to me, make 'em come up I' cried Fancy ecstatically; and the four damsels appointed, namely. Miss Susan Dewy, Miss Bessie Dewy, Miss Vashti Sniff, and Miss Mercy Onmey, surged upstairs, and floated along the passage. ' I wish Dick would come I' was again the burden of Fancy. The same instant a small twig and flower 320 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, from the creeper outside the door flew in at the open window, and a mascuHne voice said, ' Keady, Fancy dearest ?' ' There he is, he is !' cried Fancy, titter- ing spasmodically, and breathing as it were for the first time that morning. The bridesmaids crowded to the win- dow and turned their heads in the direction pointed out, at which motion eight ear- rings all swung as one : — not looking at Dick because they particularly wanted to see him, but with an important sense of their duty as obedient ministers of the ^vill of that apotheosised being — the Bride. ' He looks very taking !' said Miss Vashti Sniff, a young lady who blushed cream- colour and wore yellow bonnet-ribbons. Dick was advancing to the door in a painfully new coat of shining cloth, prim- rose-coloured waistcoat, hat of the same painful style of newness, and with an extra quantity of whiskers shaved off his face, and his hair cut to an unwonted shortness in honour of the occasion. ' Now I'll run down/ said Fancy, look- THE KNOT THERE'S NO UNTYING. 321 ing at herself over her shoulder in the glass, and flittinjj off. ^0 Dick!' she exclaimed, ' I am so glad you are come ! I knew you would, of course, but I thought, if you shouldn't!' 'Not come, Fancy! Het or wet, blow or snow, here come I to-day ! Why, what's possessing your little soul? You never used to mind such things a bit.* 'Ah, Mr. Dick, I hadn't hoisted my colours and committed myself then !' said Fancy. ' 'Tis a pity I can't marry the whole five of yel' said Dick, surveying them all round. ' Heh-heh-heh !' laughed the four brides- maids, and Fancy privately touched Dick and smoothed him down behind his shoul- der, as if to assure herself that he was there in flesh and blood as her own property. ' Well, whoever would have thought such a thing ?' said Dick, taking off his hat, sink- ing into a chair, and turning to the elder members of the company. The elder members of the company 32 2 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. arranged their eyes and lips to signify that in their opinion nobody could have thought such a thing, whatever it was. 'That my bees should have swarmed just then, of all times and seasons!* con- tinued Dick, throwing a comprehensive glance like a net over the whole auditory. ' And 'tis a fine swarm, too : I haven't seen 6uch a fine swarm for these ten years.' *An excellent sign,' said Mrs. Penny, from the depths of experience. ' An excel- lent sign.' ' I am glad everything seems so right,' said Fancy with a breath of relief. ' And so am I,' said the four bridesmaids with much sjTiipathy. 'Well, bees can't be put oif,' observed grandfather James. ^ Marrying a woman is a thing you can do at any moment; but a swarm of bees won't come for the asking.' Dick fanned himself with his hat. 'I cant think,' he said thoughtfully, 'what- ever 'twas I did to offend Mr. Maybold, — a man I like so much too. He rather took to me when he came first, and used to say he THE KNOT THERE'S NO UNTYING. 323 should like to see me married, and that he'd marry me, whether the young woman I chose lived in his parish or no. I slightly reminded him of it when I put in the banns, but he didn't seem to take kindly to the notion now, and so I said no more. I wonder how it was.' *I wonder,' said Fancy, looking into vacancy with those beautiful eyes of hers — too refined and beautiful for a tranter's wife ; but, perhaps, not too good. 'Altered his mind, as folk will, I sup- pose,' said the tranter. * Well, my sonnies, there'll be a good strong party looking at us to-day as we go along.* 'And the body of the church,' said Geoffrey, 'vdll be Kned with feymells, and a row of young fellers' heads, as far down as the eyes, Avill be noticed just above the sills of the chancel- winders.* ' Ay, you've been through it tmce,' said Reuben, ' and well may know.' 'I can put up with it for once,' said Dick, ' or tmce either, or a dozen times.' ' Dick !' said Fancy reproachfully. 324 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. 'Why, dear, that's nothing,— only just a bit of a flourish. You are as nervous as a cat to-day.' * And th^n, of course, when 'tis all over,* continued the tranter, ^ we shall march two and two round the parish.' *Yes, sure,' said Mr. Penny: 'two and two: every man hitched up to his woman, 'a b'lieve.' ' I never can make a show of myself in that way!' said Fancy, looking at Dick to ascertain if he could. 'I'm agreed to anything you and the company likes, my dear !' said Mr. Richard Dewy heartily. 'Why, we did when we were married, didn't we, Ann?' said the tranter; 'and so do everybody, my sonnies.' ' And so did we,' said Fancy's father. ' And so did Penny and I,' said Mrs. Penny : ' I wore my best Bath clogs, I re- member, and Penny was cross because it made me look so tall.' 'And so did father and mother,' said Miss Mercy Onmey. THE KNOT THERE'S NO UNTYING. 325 ' And I mane to, come next Christmas I* said Nat the bridesman vigorously, and looking towards the person of Miss Yashti Sniff. * Respectable people don't nowadays/ said Fancy. ^ Still, since poor mother did, iwiu; 'Ay,' resumed the tranter, ''twas on a White Tuesday when I committed it. Mell- stock Club walked the same day, and we new-married folk went a-gaying round the parish behind 'em. Everybody used to wear summat white at Whitsuntide in them days. My sonnies, I've got they very white trou- sers that I wore, at home in box now. HaVtl, Ann?' ' You had till I cut 'em up for Jimmy,' said Mrs. Dewy. 'And we ought, by rights, to go round Galligar - lane, by Quenton's,' said Mr. Penny, recovering scent of the matter in hand. 'Dairyman Quenton is a very re- spectable man, and so is Farmer Crocker, and we ought to show ourselves to them.' ' True/ said the tranter, ' we ought to 326 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, go round Galligar - lane to do the thing well. We shall form a very striking object walking along : good-now, naibours ?' * That we shall : a proper pretty sight for the nation,' said Mrs. Penny. 'Hullo I' said the tranter, suddenly catching sight of a singular human figure standing in the doorway, and wearing a long smock-frock of pillow-case cut and of snowy whiteness. ^Why, Leaf I whatever dost thou do here ?' ' I've come to know if so be T can come to the wedding — hee-hee!* said Leaf in an uneasy voice of timidity. ' Now, Leaf,' said the tranter reproach- fully, ' you know we don't want ye here to- day: we've got no room for ye. Leaf.' 'Thomas Leaf, Thomas Leaf, fie upon ye for prying !' said old William. ' I know I've got no head, but I thought, if I washed and put on a clane shirt and smock-frock, I might just call,' said Leaf, turning away disappointed and trembling. 'Pore feller!' said the tranter, turning to Geofirey. 'Suppose we must let en THE KNOT THERE'S NO UNTYING. 327 come? His looks is rather against en, and a is terrible silly; but a have never been in jail, and 'a wont do no harm.' Leaf looked with gratitude at the tranter for these praises, and then anxiously at Geoffrey, to see what effect they would have in helping his cause. *Ay, let en come,' said Geoffrey deci- sively. ^ Leaf, th'rt welcome, 'st know ;' and Leaf accordingly remained. They were now all ready for leaving the house, and began to form a procession in the following order: Fancy and her father, Dick and Susan Dewy, Nat Callcome and Vashti Sniff, Ted Waywood and Mercy On- mey, and Jimmy and Bessy Dewy. These formed the executive, and all appeared in strict wedding attire. Then came the tranter and Mrs. Dewy, and last of all, Mr. and Mrs. Penny; — the tranter conspicuous by his enormous gloves, size eleven and three-quarters, which appeared at a distance like boxing gloves bleached, and sat rather awkwardly upon his brown hands; this hall-mark of respectability having been set 328 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. upon himself to-day (by Fancy's special re- quest) for the first time in his life. ' The proper way is for the bridesmaids to walk together/ suggested Fancy. 'What? 'Twas always young man and young woman, arm in crook, in my time !' said Geoffrey, astounded. ' And in mine !' said the tranter. ' And in ours !' said Mr. and Mrs. Penny. * Never heard o' such a thing as woman and woman!' said old William; who, with grandfather James and Mrs. Day, was to stay at home. ' Whichever way you and the company likes, my dear!' said Dick, who being on the point of securing his right to Fancy, seemed willing to renounce all other rights in the world with the greatest pleasure. The decision was left to Fancy. 'Well, I think I'd rather have it the way mother had it,' she said, and the cou- ples moved along under the trees, every man to his maid. ' Ah !' said grandfather James to grand- father William as they retired, ' I wonder THE KNOT THERE'S NO UNTYING. 329 which she thinks most about, Dick or her wedding raiment!' * Well, 'tis their nater/ said grandfather William. ^ Remember the words of the pro- phet Jeremiah : " Can a maid forget her or- naments, or a bride her attire?" ' Now among dark perpendicular firs, like the shafted columns of a cathedral; now under broad beeches in bright young leaves, they threaded their way: then through a hazel copse, matted with primroses and wild hyacinths, into the high road, which dipped at that point directly into the village of Yalbury; and in the space of a quarter of an hour, Fancy found herself to be Mrs. Richard Dewy, though, much to her sur- prise, feeling no other than Fancy Day still. On the circuitous return walk through the lanes and fields, amid much chattering and laughter, especially when they came to stiles, Dick discerned a brown spot far up a turnip field. 'Why, 'tis Enoch!' he said to Fancy. *I thought I missed him at the house this morning. How is it he's left you T 'He drank too much cider, and it got 33© UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, into his head, and they put him in the stocks for it. Father was obliged to get somebody else for a day or two, and Enoch hasn't had anything to do with the woods since.* ' We might ask him to call down to- night. Stocks are nothing for once, con- sidering 'tis our wedding-day.' The bridal party was ordered to halt. * Eno-o-o-o-ch !' cried Dick at the top of his voice. ' Y-a-a-a-a-a-as I' said Enoch from the distance. * D'ye know who I be-e-e-e-e-e T ' No-o-o-o-o-o-o!' * Dick Dew-w-w-w-wy 1* ^0-h-h-h-h-hI' ' Just a-ma-a-a-a-a-arried P ^O-h-h-h-h-hl' * This is my wife, Fa-a-a-a-a-ancy !' (hold- ing her up to Enoch's view as if she had been a nosegay.) *0-h-h-h-h-hr 'Will ye come down to the party to- ni-i-i-i-i-i-ight !' ' Ca-a-a-a-a-an't I' UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. 331 ' Why n-0-o-o-o-ot ?' * Don't work for the family no-o-o-o-ow I' ^ Not nice of Master Enoch,' said Dick, as they resumed their walk. 'You mustn't blame en,' said Geoffrey; Hhe man's not himself now; he's in his morning frame of mind. When he's had a gallon o' cider or ale, and a pint or two of mead, the man's well enough, and his man- ners be as good as anybody's in the king dom.' CHAPTER II. UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. The point in Yalbury Wood which abutted on the end of Geoffrey Day's pre- mises was closed with an ancient beech-tree, horizontally of enormous extent, though hav- ing no great pretentions to height. Many hundreds of birds had been born amidst the boughs of this single tree ; tribes of rabbits and hares had nibbled at its bark from year to year; quaint tufts of fungi had sprung 332 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, from the cavities of its forks ; and countless families of moles and earthworms had crept about its roots. Beneath its shade spread a carefully-tended grass-plot, its purpose be- ing to supply a healthy exercise-ground for young chicken and pheasants: the hens, their mothers, being enclosed in coops placed upon the same green flooring. All these encumbrances were now re- moved, and as the afternoon advanced, the guests gathered on the spot, where music, dancing, and the singing of songs went forward with great spirit throughout the evening. The propriety of every one was intense, by reason of the influence of Fancy, who, as an additional precaution in this direction, had strictly charged her father and the tranter to carefully avoid saying Hhee' and Hhou' in their conversation, on the plea that those ancient words sounded so very humiliating to persons of decent taste ; also that they w^ere never to be seen drawing the back of the hand across the mouth after drinking, — a local English cus- tom of extraordinary antiquity, but stated UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. 333 by Fancy to be decidedly dying out among the upper classes of society. In addition to the local musicians pre- sent, a man who had a thorough knowledge of the tambourine was invited from the vil- lage of Tantrum Clangley, — a place long celebrated for the skill of its inhabitants as performers on instruments of percussion. These important members of the assembly were relegated to a height of two or three feet from the ground, upon a temporary erection of planks supported by barrels. Whilst the dancing progressed, the older persons sat in a group under the trunk of the beech, — the space being allotted to them somewhat grudgingly by the young ones, who were greedy of pirouetting room, — and fortified by a table against the heels of the dancers. Here the gaffers and gammers, whose dancing days were over, told stories of great impressiveness, and at intervals surveyed the advancing and retiring couples from the same retreat, as people on shore might be supposed to survey a naval en- gagement in the bay beyond ; returning 334 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. again to their tales when the pause was over. Those of the w^hirling throng, who, during the rests between each figure, turned their eyes in the direction of these seated ones, were only able to discover, on ac- count of the music and bustle, that a very striking circumstance was in course of nar- ration — denoted by an emphatic sweep of the hand, snapping of the fingers, close of the lips, and fixed look into the centre of the listener s eye for the space of a quartei of a minute, which raised in that listener such a reciprocating working of face as to sometimes make the distant dancers half wish to know what such an interesting tale could refer to. Fancy caused her looks to wear as much matronly expression as was obtainable out of six hours' experience as a wife, in order that the contrast between her own state of life and that of the unmarried young women present might be duly impressed upon the company : occasionally stealing glances of admiration at her left hand, but this quite privately; for her ostensible bearing con UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, 33.S cerDing the matter was intended to show tliat, though she undoubtedly occupied the most wondrous position in the eyes of the world that had ever been attained, she was almost unconscious of the circumstance, and that the somewhat prominent position in which that wonderfully - emblazoned left hand was continually found to be placed, when handing cups and saucers, knives, forks, and glasses, was quite the result of ac- cident. As to wishing to excite envy in the bosoms of her maiden companions, by the ex- hibition of the shining ring, every one was to know it was quite foreign to the dignity of such an experienced married woman. Dick's imao-ination in the mean time was far less capable of drawing so much wontedness from his new condition. He had been for two or three hours trying to feel himself merely a newly-married man, but had been able to get no farther in the attempt than to realise that he was Dick Dewy, the tranter's son, at a party at the keeper's, dancing and chatting with Fancy Day. Five country dances, including 'Haste 336 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. to the Wedding,' two reels, and three frao;- ments of hornpipes, brought them to the time for supper, which, on account of the dampness of the grass from the immaturity of the summer season, was spread indoors. At the conclusion of the meal, Dick went out to put the horse in; and Fancy, with the elder half of the four bridesmaids, re- tired upstairs to dress for the journey to Dick's new cottage near Mellstock. ' How long will you be putting on your bonnet, Fancy T Dick inquired at the foot of the staircase. Being now a man of busi- ness and married, he was strong on the im- portance of time, and doubled the emphasis of his words in conversing, and added vigour to his nods. ' Only a minute.' ' How long is that ? ' Well, dear, five.' * Ah, sonnies !' said the tranter, as Dick retired, * 'tis a talent of the female race that low numbers should stand for high, more especially in matters of waiting, matters o^ age, and matters of money.' UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. 337 * True, true, upon my body,' said Geof- frey. *Ye spak with feeling, Geoffrey, seem- ingly/ * Anybody that d'know my experience migh^ guess that/ ' What's she doing now, Geoffrey ?' ' Claning out all the upstairs drawers and cupboards, and dusting the second- best chainey — a thing that's only done once a year. "If there's work to be done, I must do it," says she, "wedding or no.^' ' ' Tis my belief she's a very good woman at bottom.' ' She's terrible deep, then/ Mrs. Penny turned round. 'Well, 'tis humps and hollers with the best of us; but still and for all that, Dick and Fancy stand as fair a chance of having a bit of sunsheen as any married pair in the land.' ' Ay, there's no gainsaying it.' Mrs. Dew}" came up, talking to one per- son and looking at another. ' Happy, yes,' she said. ' 'Tis always so when a couple is 338 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, 80 exactly in tune with one another as Dick and she/ * When they be n't too poor to have time to sing,' said grandfather James. *I tell ye, naibours, when the pinch comes,' said the tranter: 'when the oldest daughter's boots be only a size less than her mother's, and the rest o' the flock close be- hind her. A sharp time for a man that, my sonnies; a very sharp time! Chanticleer's comb is a-cut then, 'a b'lieve.' * That's about the form o't,' said Mr. Penny. ' That'll put the stuns upon a man, when you must measure mother and daugh- ter's lasts to tell 'em apart.' 'You've no cause to complain, Reuben, of such a close-coming flock,' said Mrs. Dewy; 'for ours was a straggling lot enough, God knows !' 'I d'know it, I d'know it,' said the tranter. 'You be a well-enough woman, Ann.' Mrs. Dewy put her mouth in the form of a smile, aud put it back again without smiling. UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. 339 * And if they come together, they go to- gether,' said Mrs. Penny, whose family was the reverse of the tranter's ; ' and a little money will make either fate tolerable. And money can be made by our young couple, I know.* ' Yes, that it can !' said the impulsive voice of Leaf, who had hitherto humbly ad- mired the proceedings from a corner. *It can be done — all that's wanted is a few pounds to begin with. That's all ! 1 know a story about it !' * Let's hear thy story. Leaf,' said the tranter. ' I never knowed you were clever enough to tell a story. Silence, all of ye I Mr. Leaf will tell a story.' ' Tell your story, Thomas Leaf,' said grandfather WiUiam in the tone of a school" master. * Once,' said the delighted Leaf, in an uncertain voice, ' there was a man who lived in a house ! Well, this man went thinking and thinking night and day. At last, he said to himself, as I might, " If I had only ten pound, I'd make a fortune." At last by 340 UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, hook or by crook, behold he got the ten pounds !' ' Only think of that !' said Nat Callcome satirically. ^ Silence !' said the tranter. ' Well, now comes the interesting part of the story ! In a little time he made that ten pounds twenty. Then a little time after that he doubled it, and made it forty. Well, he went on, and a good while after that he made it eighty, and on to a hundred. Well, by and by he made it two hundred I Well, you'd never believe it, but — he went on and made it four hundred I He went on, and what did he do? Why, he made it eight hundred I Yes, he did,' continued Leaf, in the highest pitch of excitement, bringing down his fist upon his knee with such force that he quivered with the pain; 'yes, and he went on and made it a thousand !' ' Hear, hear !' said the tranter. ' Better than the history of England, my sonnies T 'Thank you for your story, Thomas Leaf,' said grandfather William; and then Leaf gradually sank into nothingness again. UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. 341 Amid a medley of laughter, old shoes, and elder-wine, Dick and his bride took their departure, side by side in the excel- lent new spring-cart which the young tran- ter now possessed. The moon was just over the full, rendering any light from lamps or their own beauties quite unnecessary to the pair. They drove slowly along Wilderness Bottom, where the lane passed between two copses. Dick was talking to his com- panion. 'Fancy,' he said, ' why we are so happy is because there is such entire confidence between us. Ever since that time you con- fessed to that little flirtation with Shinar by the river (which was really no flirtation at all), I have thought how artless and good you must be to tell me of such a trifling thing, and to be so frightened about it as you were. It has won me to tell you my every movement since then. We'll have no secrets from each other, darling, will we ever? — ^no secret at all.* ^ None trom to-day,/ said iancy. 'Hark I what's tnat? 34* UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. From a neighbouring thicket was sud- denly heard to issue in a loud, musical, and liquid voice, * Tippiwit I swe-e-et I ki-ki-ki I Come hither, come hither, come hither I' '0, 'tis the nightingale,' murmured she, and thought of a secret she should never telL PRINTED BY OARDEN CITY PRESS, I.ETCHWORTH, BNGLAKD. i\PR 1 6 B84 U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES CDDDE1DM2M