Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (74 page)

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 impressed Geoffrey with the notion that something in his words did not agree with her educated ideas, and he changed the conversation.

“Did Fred Shiner send the cask o’ drink, Fancy?”

“I think he did: O yes, he did.”

“Nice solid feller, Fred Shiner!” said Geoffrey to Dick as he helped himself to gravy, bringing the spoon round to his plate by way of the potato-dish, to obviate a stain on the cloth in the event of a spill.

Now 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 premeditation 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 instant, and to her alarm Dick, after dropping his fork and brushing his forehead as a reason, flung down his own left hand, overlapping 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 discovery of this perilous game of Dick’s.  Dick finished his mouthful; Fancy finished her crumb, and nothing was done beyond watching 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 Shiner 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.”

“O, sure.  Now 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 becoming 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 the displaced idea, “we are likely to remain friendly wi’ Mr. Shiner 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 Geoffrey’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 impressive 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. Shiner only asking last Saturday night . . . cheese you said, Fancy?”

Dick controlled his emotion at these mysterious allusions to Mr. Shiner, — the better enabled to do so by perceiving that 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 ventured, as the keeper retreated for the cheese.

“The conversation is taking a very strange turn: nothing that
I
have ever done warrants 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,” came from Fancy severely, upon which Enoch relapsed into servitude.

“If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be 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 out of the window along the vista to the distant highway up Yalbury Hill.  “That’s not the case with some folk,” he said at length, as if he read the words on a board at the further end of the vista.

Fancy looked interested, and Dick said, “No?”

“There’s that wife o’ mine.  It was her doom 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 the persons the table, her glance would have been the most natural imaginable.

She showed herself to possess an ordinary woman’s face, iron-grey 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 are as poor and ragged as any union beggar’s!”

Dick now perceived that the tablecloth was a little the worse for wear, and reflecting 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 ha’n’t a decent knife and fork in her house!”

“I shouldn’t say any such ill-natured 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 queer: you’d be amazed to see what valuable goods we’ve got stowed away upstairs.”

Back again came Mrs. Day with a box of bright steel horn-handled knives, silver-plated 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.

Geoffrey 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 was common among frugal countryfolk.  “The parishioners about here,” continued Mrs. Day, not looking at any living being, but snatching up the brown delf tea-things, “are the laziest, gossipest, poachest, jailest set of any ever I came 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 removed, 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 housekeeping.”  Smiles and suavity were then dispensed all around by this 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 tea division of the meal, presided with much composure.  It may cause some surprise 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 allusions to Mr. Shiner was to restrain a considerable flow 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 than could be expressed in two or three words.

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 over 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) were taken out of the vehicle, and the horse was unharnessed and put in the plot opposite, where there was some tender grass.  Dick lighted the fire already laid; 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 sitting-room, to bear out the expression ‘nearly furnished’ 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 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 some, 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 the saucer.”

“And the saucer, if I like the cup?”

“Exactly, Miss Day.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dewy, for I like the cup decidedly.  Stop a minute; there are no spoons now!”  She dived into the hamper 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.  O 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 off, that it may not boil dry?”

Dick leapt to the fireplace, and earnestly removed the kettle.

“There! you did it so wildly that you have made your hand black.  We always use kettle-holders; didn’t you learn housewifery as far as that, Mr. Dewy?  Well, never mind the soot on your hand.  Come here.  I am going to rinse mine, too.”

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.  “O, how vexing!” 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 furlongs 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?”

“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, withdrawing her own very suddenly.

“It doesn’t matter at all,” said Dick, “at least as far as I am concerned.”

“There! no towel!  Whoever thinks of a towel till the hands are wet?”

“Nobody.”

“‘Nobody.’  How very dull it is when people are so friendly!  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.  “O, I know what you mean — that the vicar will never let me wear muslin?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I know it is condemned by all orders in the church as flaunting, and unfit for common wear for girls who’ve their living to get; but we’ll see.”

“In the interest of the church, I hope you don’t speak seriously.”