Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (78 page)

“O, O, O, Dick — Dick!” she cried, trotting after him like a pet lamb, and really seriously alarmed at last, “you’ll kill me!  My impulses are bad — miserably wicked, — and I can’t help it; forgive me, Dick!  And I love you always; and those 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 standing so rooted to the road that he was apparently not even going home.

“Why this,” she said, drying the beginning of a new flood of tears she had been going to shed, “this is the serious part.  Father has told Mr. Shiner 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!”

CHAPTER IV:

AN ARRANGEMENT

“That
is
serious,” said Dick, more intellectually than he had spoken for a long time.

The truth was that Geoffrey knew nothing about his daughter’s continued walks and meetings with Dick.  When a hint that there were symptoms of an attachment between 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. Shiner resumed his old position in Geoffrey’s brain by mere flux of time.  Even Shiner began to believe that Dick existed for Fancy no more, — though that remarkably easy-going man had taken no active steps on his own account as yet.

“And father has not only told Mr. Shiner that,” continued Fancy, “but he has written me a letter, to say he should wish me to encourage Mr. Shiner, if ‘twas convenient!”

“I must start off and see your father at once!” said Dick, taking two or three vehement steps to the south, recollecting that Mr. Day lived to the north, and coming back again.

“I think we had better see him together.  Not tell him what you come for, or anything 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 something to eat and drink, and let him guess what your coming signifies, without saying it in so many words.”

“We’ll do it, dearest.  But I shall ask him for you, flat and plain; not wait for 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 shirt and collar, and black my boots as if ‘twas a Sunday.  ‘Twill have a good appearance, 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, fearing she had hurt his feelings.  “‘Tis a very nice waistcoat, but what I meant was, that though it is an excellent waistcoat 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 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 lining you could wish to see on the king’s waistcoat himself.”

“
I
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 frock you wore last week.”

“Doesn’t set well round the neck.  I couldn’t wear that.”

“But I shan’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 mid meet in your journey might notice the set of it, I suppose.  Fancy, men in love don’t think so much about how they look to other 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 hollyhocks in flower, round which a crowd of butterflies had gathered like female idlers 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 Tallor, who lives near our house, has had one made almost like it (only in pattern, though of miserably cheap stuff), and I couldn’t wear it on that account.  Dear me, I am afraid I can’t go now.”

“O yes, you must; I know you will!” said Dick, with dismay.  “Why not wear what you’ve got on?”

“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?”

“O no; 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 THE FOURTH — AUTUMN

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 her contemplated visit to her father, and for some reason connected with cleaning the school the children had been given this Friday afternoon for pastime, 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 holiday afternoon of it, and am come for you to go nutting with me!”

She was sitting by the parlour window, with a blue frock lying across her lap and scissors in her hand.

“Go nutting!  Yes.  But I’m afraid I can’t go for an hour or so.”

“Why not?  ‘Tis the only spare afternoon we may both have together for weeks.”

“This dress of mine, that I am going to wear on Sunday at Yalbury; — I find it fits 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 walking-stick he had cut from the hedge as he came along.  Fancy talked and answered 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, examined 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 kitchen and scullery, and so thoroughly studied the principle upon which the pump was constructed 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 several weeds, and came in again.  The clock struck five, and still the snipping and sewing went on.

Dick attempted to kill a fly, peeled all the rind off his walking-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 rigid gaze.  Then an idea seemed to cross his brain.

“Fancy.”

“Yes.”

“I thought you said you were going to wear your gray gown all day to-morrow on your trip to Yalbury, and in the evening 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 at Yalbury Sunday to see it.”

“No, but I shall walk to Longpuddle church in the afternoon with father, and such lots of people will be looking at me there, you know; and it did set so badly round the neck.”

“I never noticed it, and ‘tis like nobody 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, certainly.  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.”

“I see, I see,” said Dick, in a voice in which the tones of love were decidedly inconvenienced 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 gown there is not the slightest necessity for wearing, simply, in fact, to appear more striking than usual in the eyes of Longpuddle young men; and I not there, either.”

“Then there are three dresses good enough for my eyes, but neither is good enough for the youths of Longpuddle,” he said.

“No, not that exactly, Dick.  Still, you see, I do want — to look pretty to them — there, that’s honest!  But I sha’n’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 mid as well.”

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 frocks; 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, “is her hair and complexion.  What she loves next best, her gowns and hats; what she loves next best, myself, perhaps!”

Suffering great anguish at this disloyalty in himself and harshness to his darling, yet disposed to persevere in it, a horribly cruel thought crossed his mind.  He would not call for her, as he had promised, 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 up the lane for nearly two miles, till a winding path called Snail-Creep 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 Grey’s Wood.

Never man nutted as Dick nutted that afternoon.  He worked like a galley slave.  Half-hour after half-hour passed away, and still he gathered 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, containing quite two pecks of the finest produce of the wood, about as much use to him as two pecks of stones from the road, strolled down the woodland track, crossed the highway and entered the homeward lane, 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 Longpuddle young men’s account would have clarified Dick’s brain entirely, and made him once more a free man.

But Venus had planned other developments, at any rate for the present.  Cuckoo-Lane, the way he pursued, passed over a ridge which rose keenly against the sky about fifty yards in his van.  Here, upon the bright after-glow about the horizon, was now visible an irregular shape, which at first he conceived to be a bough standing a little beyond the line of its neighbours.  Then it seemed to move, and, as he advanced still further, there was no doubt that it was a living being sitting in the bank, head bowed on hand.  The grassy margin entirely prevented his footsteps from being heard, and it was not till he was close that the figure recognized him.  Up it sprang, and he was face to face with Fancy.