Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (76 page)

“Dick,” said his father, coming in from 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 near the watering-place of Budmouth-Regis, ten miles off, and the business of transporting the hives thither would occupy the whole day, and to some extent annihilate the vacant time between this evening and the coming Sunday.  The best spring-cart was washed throughout, the axles oiled, and the bees placed therein for the journey.

PART THE THIRD — 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 Mary Street in Budmouth-Regis, near the King’s statue, at which point the white angle of the last house in the row cut perpendicularly an embayed and nearly motionless expanse of salt water projected from the outer ocean — to-day lit in bright tones of green and opal.  Dick and Smart had just emerged from the street, and there on the right, against the brilliant sheet of liquid colour, stood Fancy Day; and she turned and recognized him.

Dick suspended his thoughts of the letter and wonder at how she came there by driving close to the chains of the Esplanade — incontinently 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 rattling along with a baker’s cart, and looking neither to the right nor the left.  He asked 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 half an hour.  Will ye come with me?”

As Fancy’s power to will anything seemed to have departed in some mysterious 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 lesser hue, which was permanent, and at length their eyes met; there was present between them a certain feeling of embarrassment, which arises at such moments 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,” he observed, as they drove past the two semicircular bays of the Old Royal Hotel, where His Majesty King George the Third had many a time attended the balls of the burgesses.

To Miss Day, crediting him with the same consciousness of mastery — a consciousness of which he was perfectly innocent — this remark sounded like a magnanimous intention to soothe her, the captive.

“I didn’t come for the pleasure of obliging 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 time it may be observed, that when a young woman returns a rude answer to a young 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 left the sea-front and passed about twenty of the trees that ornamented the road leading up out of the town towards Casterbridge and Mellstock.

“Though I didn’t come for that purpose either, I would have done it,” 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, arranged his looks very emphatically, and cleared his throat.

“Really, anybody would think you had met me on business and were just going to commence,” 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 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?”

“O, nothing; I’ve heard, I mean!”

“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. Shiner, 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 conscientiously defend, and he only wore it once.”

“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 exactly answer,” she replied with soft archness.

As they were going rather slowly, another spring-cart, containing a farmer, farmer’s wife, and farmer’s man, jogged past them; and the farmer’s 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 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, feeling their eyes sticking into her back, looked over her shoulder.  Dick dropped ten yards further behind.

“Fancy, why can’t you answer?” he repeated.

“Because how much you are to me depends 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 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 upwards at various oblique angles into the surrounding world, the chief object of their existence being apparently to criticize to the very backbone and marrow every animate object that came within the compass of their vision.  This difficulty of Dick’s was overcome by trotting on till the wagon and carpenters were beginning to look 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 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.  Whatever they may say about a woman’s right to conceal where her love lies, and pretend it doesn’t exist, and things like 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, dear.  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.”

“I may at any rate call you Fancy?  There’s no harm in that.”

“Yes, you may.”

“And you’ll not call me Mr. Dewy any more?”

“Very well.”

CHAPTER II:

FURTHER 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 this particular journey, had never been extended further than his flank, tossed his head, and scampered along with exceeding briskness, which was very pleasant to the young couple behind him till, turning a bend in the road, they came instantly upon the 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 overlooked 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 running 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 their 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 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 Shiner.  Both turned round as they passed Dick and Fancy, and stared with bold admiration 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 returned to his driving with rather a sad countenance.

“Why are you so silent?” she said, after a while, with real concern.

“Nothing.”

“Yes, it is, Dick.  I couldn’t help those people passing.”

“I 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 are from me in love.  Whilst those men were staring, you dismissed me from your thoughts altogether, and — ”

“You can’t offend me further now; tell all!”

“And showed upon your face a pleased sense of being attractive to ‘em.”

“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 possible —
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 Shiner, 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 quire is to be dismissed?”

“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’t.”

“Mr. Shiner, being churchwarden, has persuaded the vicar; who, however, was willing enough before.  Shiner, 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 — I 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 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, dear.”

“Or that I care the least morsel of a bit for him?”

“I know you don’t.”

The distance between Budmouth and Mellstock was ten or eleven miles, and there being a good inn, ‘The Ship,’ four miles out of Budmouth, with a mast and cross-trees in front, Dick’s custom in driving thither was to divide the 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.