Under the Greenwood Tree

T >> Thomas Hardy >> Under the Greenwood Tree


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.

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 tete-a-tete 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.

"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.