Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (73 page)

“Bless ye, my sonnies! ‘tisn’t the pa’son’s move at all.  That gentleman over there” (the tranter nodded in the direction of Shiner’s farm) “is at the root of the mischty.”

“What!  Shiner?”

“Ay; and I see what the pa’son don’t see.  Why, Shiner is for putting forward that young woman that only last night I was saying was our Dick’s sweet-heart, but I suppose can’t be, and making much of her in the sight of the congregation, and thinking he’ll win her by showing her off.  Well, perhaps ‘a woll.”

“Then the music is second to the woman, the other churchwarden is second to Shiner, the pa’son is second to the churchwardens, 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, as all shall be, so sit down in my easy-chair, and rest yourself.’  And down father zot.  I could fain ha’ laughed at thee, father; for thou’st take it so unconcerned at first, and then looked so frightened when the chair-bottom sunk in.”

“You see,” said old William, hastening to explain, “I was scared to find the bottom gie way — what should I know o’ spring bottoms? — and thought I had broke it down: and of course as to breaking down a man’s chair, I didn’t wish any such thing.”

“And, neighbours, when a feller, ever so much up for a miff, d’see his own father sitting in his enemy’s easy-chair, and a poor 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 Shiner and Dick and the rest, ‘tis my belief we should never ha’ left the gallery.”

“‘Tis my belief that though Shiner 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 onriddle her, nohow.”

“Thou’st ought to be able to onriddle such a little chiel as she,” the tranter observed.

“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 ever there was one.  Never says anything: not he.”

“Never.”

“You might live wi’ that man, my sonnies, a hundred years, and never know there was anything in him.”

“Ay; one o’ these up-country London ink-bottle chaps would call Geoffrey a fool.”

“Ye never find out what’s in that man: never,” said Spinks.  “Close? ah, he is close!  He can hold his tongue well.  That man’s dumbness is wonderful to listen to.”

“There’s so much sense in it.  Every moment of it is brimmen over wi’ sound understanding.”

“‘A can hold his tongue very clever — very clever truly,” echoed Leaf.  “‘A do look 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 halt well in his talk, be it a long time or be it a short time.  And though we can’t expect his daughter to inherit his closeness, she may have a few dribblets from his sense.”

“And his pocket, perhaps.”

“Yes; the nine hundred pound that everybody says he’s worth; but I call it four hundred and fifty; for I never believe more than half I hear.”

“Well, 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 been born to fortune, to bring her up as if not born for it, and letting her work so hard.”

“‘Tis all upon his principle.  A long-headed feller!”

“Ah,” murmured Spinks, “‘twould be sharper upon her if she were born for fortune, and not to it!  I suffer from that affliction.”

CHAPTER VI:

YALBURY WOOD AND THE KEEPER’S HOUSE

A mood of blitheness rarely experienced even by young men was Dick’s on the following Monday morning.  It was the week after the Easter holidays, and he was journeying 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 freshness of an occasional inspector rather than as an accustomed proprietor.  His errand was to fetch Fancy, and some additional household goods, from her father’s house in the neighbouring parish to her dwelling at Mellstock.  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 Shiner’s heart that had been suggested to him by Shiner’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.

Geoffrey Day lived in the depths of Yalbury Wood, which formed portion of one of the outlying estates of the Earl of Wessex, to whom Day was head game-keeper, timber-steward, and general overlooker for this district.  The wood was intersected by the highway from Casterbridge to London at a place not far from the house, and some trees had of late years been felled between its windows and the ascent of Yalbury Hill, to give the solitary cottager a glimpse of the 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 five feet from the floor, dropping inwardly to a broad low bench, over which, as well as over the whole surface of the wall beneath, there always hung a deep shade, which was considered objectionable on every ground save one, namely, that the perpetual sprinkling of seeds and water by the caged canary above was not noticed as an eyesore by visitors.  The window was set with thickly-leaded diamond 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 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 existence to the forethought of Fancy’s mother, 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 provision 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 flourishes, Thomas Wood as the name of its maker, and the other — arched at the top, and altogether of more cynical appearance — that of Ezekiel Saunders.  They were two departed clockmakers of Casterbridge, whose desperate rivalry throughout their lives was nowhere more emphatically perpetuated 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 followed by two dumb-waiters, two family Bibles, two warming-pans, and two intermixed sets of chairs.

But the position last reached — 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 inconvenience 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 like 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 Geoffrey’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 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 perpendicular course.  The window-board was curiously stamped with black circles, burnt thereon by the heated bottoms of drinking-cups, which had rested there after previously 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 preparing 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 looking down, as if trying to recollect something 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 wrongheadedness because not allied with subtlety.

Although not an extraordinarily taciturn man among friends slightly richer than himself, he never wasted words upon outsiders, and to his trapper Enoch his ideas were seldom conveyed by any other means 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 coincidence of their horizons, and the astonishing equality of their social views, by startling the keeper from time to time as very damaging 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-appearance 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 Saunders 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 father.  “There’s a healthy beat in Thomas that would lead a man to swear by en offhand.  He is as true as the town time.  How is it your stap-mother isn’t here?”

As Fancy was about to reply, the rattle of wheels was heard, and “Weh-hey, Smart!” in Mr. Richard 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 pot-luck with us.”

Dick on entering made a point of implying 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 entirely free from all apparent consciousness of those accidental meetings of theirs: but he let the thought pass.  Enoch sat diagonally at a table afar off, under the corner cupboard, and drank his cider from a long perpendicular pint cup, having tall fir-trees done in brown on its sides.  He threw occasional remarks into the general tide of conversation, and with this advantage to himself, that he participated in the pleasures 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 excuse her, Mister Dick, she’s a little queer sometimes.”

“O yes, — quite,” said Richard, as if he were in the habit of excusing people every day.

“She d’belong to that class of womankind that become second wives: a rum class rather.”

“Indeed,” said Dick, with sympathy for an indefinite something.

“Yes; and ‘tis trying to a female, especially if you’ve been a first wife, as she hev.”

“Very trying it must be.”

“Yes: you see her first husband was a young man, who let her go too far; in fact, she used to kick up Bob’s-a-dying at the least thing in the world.  And when I’d married her and found it out, I thought, thinks I, ‘‘Tis too late now to begin to cure ‘e;’ and so I let her bide.  But she’s queer, — very queer, at times!”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yes: there; wives be such a provoking class o’ society, because though they be never right, they be never more than half wrong.”