Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (77 page)

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 labouring men idling around, Dick endeavoured to look unconscious of the fact that there was any sentiment 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, dear.”

“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, then.  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.”  Dick began to retreat with a dissatisfied wrinkling of face, and 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 before.  “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 schoolmistress, to indulge in a
tête-à-tête
anywhere with anybody.”

“But I am not
any
body!” exclaimed Dick.

“No, no, I mean with a young man;” and 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! but suppose I won’t!  And, goodness me, what have I done!” she faltered, getting very red.  “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 unkind 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, a soft silent escape of breaths, 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 you tried or no.  And, Fancy, you do care for me?”

“Yes.”

“Very much?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll be my own wife?”

Her heart quickened, adding to and withdrawing from her 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, compressing his lips and pouting them out, as if he were about to whistle the softest melody known.

“O no!” said Fancy solemnly.

The modest Dick drew back a little.

“Dick, Dick, kiss me and let me go instantly! — here’s somebody coming!” she whisperingly exclaimed.

* * *

Half an hour afterwards Dick emerged from the inn, and if Fancy’s lips had been real cherries probably 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 feymel passenger, and then going in and sitting down and having some too, and biding such a fine long time!”

“But surely you 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, 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!” said the innkeeper, bringing his eyes into circles.

“And you don’t!”

“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!”

“I’ll take my oath I don’t!”

“O 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 freedom of mine, Mr. Dewy.  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; knowen me too so many years, and I at your father’s own wedding.  ‘Tisn’t what I should have expected from an old neighbour!”

“Well, to say the truth, we hadn’t told 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 particular.”

“After school-hours this week?  Well, a very good time, a very proper good time.”

“O 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 dog-cart.”

“Dammy — might as well have said at once, the
when
be blowed!  Anyhow, ‘tis a fine day, and I hope next time you’ll come as one.”

Fancy was duly brought out and assisted into the vehicle, and the newly affianced youth and maiden passed up the steep hill to the Ridgeway, and vanished in the direction of Mellstock.

CHAPTER III:

A CONFESSION

It was a morning of the latter summer-time; a morning of lingering dews, when the grass is never dry in the shade.  Fuchsias and dahlias were laden till eleven o’clock with small drops and dashes of water, changing the colour of their sparkle at every movement of the air; and elsewhere hanging on twigs like small silver fruit.  The threads of garden spiders appeared thick and polished.  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 Susan Dewy the tranter’s daughter, 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 its development, and just enough finesse 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 Dewy 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 refuse the invitation,” 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 say he danced with her?”

“Once.”

“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 bad enough, I know.  Everybody does with Dick, because he’s so handsome and such a clever courter.”

“O, I 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, Susan, 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, looking at Susan to catch her opinion from her eyes.

“It is about the same length as that, I think,” said Miss Dewy.

Fancy paused hopelessly.  “I wish mine was lighter, like hers!” she continued mournfully.  “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 pleasure 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.

Fancy had settled her plan of emotion.  To reproach Dick?  O no, no.  “I am in great trouble,” said she, taking what was intended to be a hopelessly melancholy survey of a few small apples lying under the tree; yet a 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 ‘ee and help ‘ee.”

“No, no: you can’t!  Nobody can!”

“Why not?  You don’t deserve it, whatever it is.  Tell me, dear.”

“O, it isn’t what you think!  It is dreadful: my own sin!”

“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 — to — fl — ”

“What, — not flirt!” he said, controlling 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 dismal Dick.  “Did you encourage him?”

“O, — I don’t know, — yes — no.  O, I think so!”

“Who was it?”  A pause.  “Tell me!”

“Mr. Shiner.”

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 much — I did so long to have a bullfinch!  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; O, O, O, 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 Shiner has to take upon himself to teach you anything.  But it seems — it do seem there must have been more than that to set you up in such a dreadful taking?”

He looked into Fancy’s eyes.  Misery of miseries! — guilt was written there still.

“Now, Fancy, you’ve not told me all!” said Dick, rather sternly for a quiet young man.

“O, don’t speak so cruelly!  I am afraid to tell now!  If you hadn’t been harsh, I was going on to tell all; now I can’t!”

“Come, dear 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 imaginary human frame to powder.

“And then he looked at me, 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 you!”  And Dick quivered with the bitterness of satirical laughter.  Then suddenly remembering that he might be reckoning without his host: “Unless, to be sure, 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 towards cure.

“Well, then,” said Dick, coming a little to his senses, “you’ve been stretching it very much in giving such a dreadful beginning to such a mere nothing.  And I know what you’ve done it for, — just because of that gipsy-party!”  He turned away from her and took five paces decisively, as if he were tired of an ungrateful country, including herself.  “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 remotest of the Colonies that very minute.