Kitabı oku: «Under the Greenwood Tree; Or, The Mellstock Quire», sayfa 13

“O Dick!” she exclaimed, “I am so glad you are come! I knew you would, of course, but I thought, Oh if you shouldn’t!”

“Not come, Fancy! Het or wet, blow or snow, here come I to-day! Why, what’s possessing your little soul? You never used to mind such things a bit.”

“Ah, Mr. Dick, I hadn’t hoisted my colours and committed myself then!” said Fancy.

“’Tis a pity I can’t marry the whole five of ye!” said Dick, surveying them all round.

“Heh-heh-heh!” laughed the four bridesmaids, and Fancy privately touched Dick and smoothed him down behind his shoulder, as if to assure herself that he was there in flesh and blood as her own property.

“Well, whoever would have thought such a thing?” said Dick, taking off his hat, sinking into a chair, and turning to the elder members of the company.

The latter arranged their eyes and lips to signify that in their opinion nobody could have thought such a thing, whatever it was.

“That my bees should ha’ swarmed just then, of all times and seasons!” continued Dick, throwing a comprehensive glance like a net over the whole auditory. “And ’tis a fine swarm, too: I haven’t seen such a fine swarm for these ten years.”

“A’ excellent sign,” said Mrs. Penny, from the depths of experience. “A’ excellent sign.”

“I am glad everything seems so right,” said Fancy with a breath of relief.

“And so am I,” said the four bridesmaids with much sympathy.

“Well, bees can’t be put off,” observed the inharmonious grandfather James. “Marrying a woman is a thing you can do at any moment; but a swarm o’ bees won’t come for the asking.”

Dick fanned himself with his hat. “I can’t think,” he said thoughtfully, “whatever ’twas I did to offend Mr. Maybold, a man I like so much too. He rather took to me when he came first, and used to say he should like to see me married, and that he’d marry me, whether the young woman I chose lived in his parish or no. I just hinted to him of it when I put in the banns, but he didn’t seem to take kindly to the notion now, and so I said no more. I wonder how it was.”

“I wonder!” said Fancy, looking into vacancy with those beautiful eyes of hers – too refined and beautiful for a tranter’s wife; but, perhaps, not too good.

“Altered his mind, as folks will, I suppose,” said the tranter. “Well, my sonnies, there’ll be a good strong party looking at us to-day as we go along.”

“And the body of the church,” said Geoffrey, “will be lined with females, and a row of young fellers’ heads, as far down as the eyes, will be noticed just above the sills of the chancel-winders.”

“Ay, you’ve been through it twice,” said Reuben, “and well mid know.”

“I can put up with it for once,” said Dick, “or twice either, or a dozen times.”

“O Dick!” said Fancy reproachfully.

“Why, dear, that’s nothing, – only just a bit of a flourish. You be as nervous as a cat to-day.”

“And then, of course, when ’tis all over,” continued the tranter, “we shall march two and two round the parish.”

“Yes, sure,” said Mr. Penny: “two and two: every man hitched up to his woman, ’a b’lieve.”

“I never can make a show of myself in that way!” said Fancy, looking at Dick to ascertain if he could.

“I’m agreed to anything you and the company like, my dear!” said Mr. Richard Dewy heartily.

“Why, we did when we were married, didn’t we, Ann?” said the tranter; “and so do everybody, my sonnies.”

“And so did we,” said Fancy’s father.

“And so did Penny and I,” said Mrs. Penny: “I wore my best Bath clogs, I remember, and Penny was cross because it made me look so tall.”

“And so did father and mother,” said Miss Mercy Onmey.

“And I mean to, come next Christmas!” said Nat the groomsman vigorously, and looking towards the person of Miss Vashti Sniff.

“Respectable people don’t nowadays,” said Fancy. “Still, since poor mother did, I will.”

“Ay,” resumed the tranter, “’twas on a White Tuesday when I committed it. Mellstock Club walked the same day, and we new-married folk went a-gaying round the parish behind ’em. Everybody used to wear something white at Whitsuntide in them days. My sonnies, I’ve got the very white trousers that I wore, at home in box now. Ha’n’t I, Ann?”

“You had till I cut ’em up for Jimmy,” said Mrs. Dewy.

“And we ought, by rights, after doing this parish, to go round Higher and Lower Mellstock, and call at Viney’s, and so work our way hither again across He’th,” said Mr. Penny, recovering scent of the matter in hand. “Dairyman Viney is a very respectable man, and so is Farmer Kex, and we ought to show ourselves to them.”

“True,” said the tranter, “we ought to go round Mellstock to do the thing well. We shall form a very striking object walking along in rotation, good-now, neighbours?”

“That we shall: a proper pretty sight for the nation,” said Mrs. Penny.

“Hullo!” said the tranter, suddenly catching sight of a singular human figure standing in the doorway, and wearing a long smock-frock of pillow-case cut and of snowy whiteness. “Why, Leaf! whatever dost thou do here?”

“I’ve come to know if so be I can come to the wedding – hee-hee!” said Leaf in a voice of timidity.

“Now, Leaf,” said the tranter reproachfully, “you know we don’t want ’ee here to-day: we’ve got no room for ye, Leaf.”

“Thomas Leaf, Thomas Leaf, fie upon ye for prying!” said old William.

“I know I’ve got no head, but I thought, if I washed and put on a clane shirt and smock-frock, I might just call,” said Leaf, turning away disappointed and trembling.

“Poor feller!” said the tranter, turning to Geoffrey. “Suppose we must let en come? His looks are rather against en, and he is terrible silly; but ’a have never been in jail, and ’a won’t do no harm.”

Leaf looked with gratitude at the tranter for these praises, and then anxiously at Geoffrey, to see what effect they would have in helping his cause.

“Ay, let en come,” said Geoffrey decisively. “Leaf, th’rt welcome, ’st know;” and Leaf accordingly remained.

They were now all ready for leaving the house, and began to form a procession in the following order: Fancy and her father, Dick and Susan Dewy, Nat Callcome and Vashti Sniff, Ted Waywood and Mercy Onmey, and Jimmy and Bessie Dewy. These formed the executive, and all appeared in strict wedding attire. Then came the tranter and Mrs. Dewy, and last of all Mr. and Mrs. Penny; – the tranter conspicuous by his enormous gloves, size eleven and three-quarters, which appeared at a distance like boxing gloves bleached, and sat rather awkwardly upon his brown hands; this hall-mark of respectability having been set upon himself to-day (by Fancy’s special request) for the first time in his life.

“The proper way is for the bridesmaids to walk together,” suggested Fancy.

“What? ’Twas always young man and young woman, arm in crook, in my time!” said Geoffrey, astounded.

“And in mine!” said the tranter.

“And in ours!” said Mr. and Mrs. Penny.

“Never heard o’ such a thing as woman and woman!” said old William; who, with grandfather James and Mrs. Day, was to stay at home.

“Whichever way you and the company like, my dear!” said Dick, who, being on the point of securing his right to Fancy, seemed willing to renounce all other rights in the world with the greatest pleasure. The decision was left to Fancy.

“Well, I think I’d rather have it the way mother had it,” she said, and the couples moved along under the trees, every man to his maid.

“Ah!” said grandfather James to grandfather William as they retired, “I wonder which she thinks most about, Dick or her wedding raiment!”

“Well, ’tis their nature,” said grandfather William. “Remember the words of the prophet Jeremiah: ‘Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?’”

Now among dark perpendicular firs, like the shafted columns of a cathedral; now through a hazel copse, matted with primroses and wild hyacinths; now under broad beeches in bright young leaves they threaded their way into the high road over Yalbury Hill, which dipped at that point directly into the village of Geoffrey Day’s parish; and in the space of a quarter of an hour Fancy found herself to be Mrs. Richard Dewy, though, much to her surprise, feeling no other than Fancy Day still.

On the circuitous return walk through the lanes and fields, amid much chattering and laughter, especially when they came to stiles, Dick discerned a brown spot far up a turnip field.

“Why, ’tis Enoch!” he said to Fancy. “I thought I missed him at the house this morning. How is it he’s left you?”

“He drank too much cider, and it got into his head, and they put him in Weatherbury stocks for it. Father was obliged to get somebody else for a day or two, and Enoch hasn’t had anything to do with the woods since.”

“We might ask him to call down to-night. Stocks are nothing for once, considering ’tis our wedding day.” The bridal party was ordered to halt.

“Eno-o-o-o-ch!” cried Dick at the top of his voice.

“Y-a-a-a-a-a-as!” said Enoch from the distance.

“D’ye know who I be-e-e-e-e-e?”

“No-o-o-o-o-o-o!”

“Dick Dew-w-w-w-wy!”

“O-h-h-h-h-h!”

“Just a-ma-a-a-a-a-arried!”

“O-h-h-h-h-h!”

“This is my wife, Fa-a-a-a-a-ancy!” (holding her up to Enoch’s view as if she had been a nosegay.)

“O-h-h-h-h-h!”

“Will ye come across to the party to-ni-i-i-i-i-i-ight!”

“Ca-a-a-a-a-an’t!”

“Why n-o-o-o-o-ot?”

“Don’t work for the family no-o-o-o-ow!”

“Not nice of Master Enoch,” said Dick, as they resumed their walk.

“You mustn’t blame en,” said Geoffrey; “the man’s not hisself now; he’s in his morning frame of mind. When he’s had a gallon o’ cider or ale, or a pint or two of mead, the man’s well enough, and his manners be as good as anybody’s in the kingdom.”

CHAPTER II: UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE

The point in Yalbury Wood which abutted on the end of Geoffrey Day’s premises was closed with an ancient tree, horizontally of enormous extent, though having no great pretensions to height. Many hundreds of birds had been born amidst the boughs of this single tree; tribes of rabbits and hares had nibbled at its bark from year to year; quaint tufts of fungi had sprung from the cavities of its forks; and countless families of moles and earthworms had crept about its roots. Beneath and beyond its shade spread a carefully-tended grass-plot, its purpose being to supply a healthy exercise-ground for young chickens and pheasants; the hens, their mothers, being enclosed in coops placed upon the same green flooring.

All these encumbrances were now removed, and as the afternoon advanced, the guests gathered on the spot, where music, dancing, and the singing of songs went forward with great spirit throughout the evening. The propriety of every one was intense by reason of the influence of Fancy, who, as an additional precaution in this direction, had strictly charged her father and the tranter to carefully avoid saying ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ in their conversation, on the plea that those ancient words sounded so very humiliating to persons of newer taste; also that they were never to be seen drawing the back of the hand across the mouth after drinking – a local English custom of extraordinary antiquity, but stated by Fancy to be decidedly dying out among the better classes of society.

In addition to the local musicians present, a man who had a thorough knowledge of the tambourine was invited from the village of Tantrum Clangley, – a place long celebrated for the skill of its inhabitants as performers on instruments of percussion. These important members of the assembly were relegated to a height of two or three feet from the ground, upon a temporary erection of planks supported by barrels. Whilst the dancing progressed the older persons sat in a group under the trunk of the tree, – the space being allotted to them somewhat grudgingly by the young ones, who were greedy of pirouetting room, – and fortified by a table against the heels of the dancers. Here the gaffers and gammers, whose dancing days were over, told stories of great impressiveness, and at intervals surveyed the advancing and retiring couples from the same retreat, as people on shore might be supposed to survey a naval engagement in the bay beyond; returning again to their tales when the pause was over. Those of the whirling throng, who, during the rests between each figure, turned their eyes in the direction of these seated ones, were only able to discover, on account of the music and bustle, that a very striking circumstance was in course of narration – denoted by an emphatic sweep of the hand, snapping of the fingers, close of the lips, and fixed look into the centre of the listener’s eye for the space of a quarter of a minute, which raised in that listener such a reciprocating working of face as to sometimes make the distant dancers half wish to know what such an interesting tale could refer to.

Fancy caused her looks to wear as much matronly expression as was obtainable out of six hours’ experience as a wife, in order that the contrast between her own state of life and that of the unmarried young women present might be duly impressed upon the company: occasionally stealing glances of admiration at her left hand, but this quite privately; for her ostensible bearing concerning the matter was intended to show that, though she undoubtedly occupied the most wondrous position in the eyes of the world that had ever been attained, she was almost unconscious of the circumstance, and that the somewhat prominent position in which that wonderfully-emblazoned left hand was continually found to be placed, when handing cups and saucers, knives, forks, and glasses, was quite the result of accident. As to wishing to excite envy in the bosoms of her maiden companions, by the exhibition of the shining ring, every one was to know it was quite foreign to the dignity of such an experienced married woman. Dick’s imagination in the meantime was far less capable of drawing so much wontedness from his new condition. He had been for two or three hours trying to feel himself merely a newly-married man, but had been able to get no further in the attempt than to realize that he was Dick Dewy, the tranter’s son, at a party given by Lord Wessex’s head man-in-charge, on the outlying Yalbury estate, dancing and chatting with Fancy Day.

Five country dances, including ‘Haste to the Wedding,’ two reels, and three fragments of horn-pipes, brought them to the time for supper, which, on account of the dampness of the grass from the immaturity of the summer season, was spread indoors. At the conclusion of the meal Dick went out to put the horse in; and Fancy, with the elder half of the four bridesmaids, retired upstairs to dress for the journey to Dick’s new cottage near Mellstock.

“How long will you be putting on your bonnet, Fancy?” Dick inquired at the foot of the staircase. Being now a man of business and married, he was strong on the importance of time, and doubled the emphasis of his words in conversing, and added vigour to his nods.

“Only a minute.”

“How long is that?”

“Well, dear, five.”

“Ah, sonnies!” said the tranter, as Dick retired, “’tis a talent of the female race that low numbers should stand for high, more especially in matters of waiting, matters of age, and matters of money.”

“True, true, upon my body,” said Geoffrey.

“Ye spak with feeling, Geoffrey, seemingly.”

“Anybody that d’know my experience might guess that.”

“What’s she doing now, Geoffrey?”

“Claning out all the upstairs drawers and cupboards, and dusting the second-best chainey – a thing that’s only done once a year. ‘If there’s work to be done I must do it,’ says she, ‘wedding or no.’”

“’Tis my belief she’s a very good woman at bottom.”

“She’s terrible deep, then.”

Mrs. Penny turned round. “Well, ’tis humps and hollers with the best of us; but still and for all that, Dick and Fancy stand as fair a chance of having a bit of sunsheen as any married pair in the land.”

“Ay, there’s no gainsaying it.”

Mrs. Dewy came up, talking to one person and looking at another. “Happy, yes,” she said. “’Tis always so when a couple is so exactly in tune with one another as Dick and she.”

“When they be’n’t too poor to have time to sing,” said grandfather James.

“I tell ye, neighbours, when the pinch comes,” said the tranter: “when the oldest daughter’s boots be only a size less than her mother’s, and the rest o’ the flock close behind her. A sharp time for a man that, my sonnies; a very sharp time! Chanticleer’s comb is a-cut then, ’a believe.”

“That’s about the form o’t,” said Mr. Penny. “That’ll put the stuns upon a man, when you must measure mother and daughter’s lasts to tell ’em apart.”

“You’ve no cause to complain, Reuben, of such a close-coming flock,” said Mrs. Dewy; “for ours was a straggling lot enough, God knows!”

“I d’know it, I d’know it,” said the tranter. “You be a well-enough woman, Ann.”

Mrs. Dewy put her mouth in the form of a smile, and put it back again without smiling.

“And if they come together, they go together,” said Mrs. Penny, whose family had been the reverse of the tranter’s; “and a little money will make either fate tolerable. And money can be made by our young couple, I know.”

“Yes, that it can!” said the impulsive voice of Leaf, who had hitherto humbly admired the proceedings from a corner. “It can be done – all that’s wanted is a few pounds to begin with. That’s all! I know a story about it!”

“Let’s hear thy story, Leaf,” said the tranter. “I never knew you were clever enough to tell a story. Silence, all of ye! Mr. Leaf will tell a story.”

“Tell your story, Thomas Leaf,” said grandfather William in the tone of a schoolmaster.

“Once,” said the delighted Leaf, in an uncertain voice, “there was a man who lived in a house! Well, this man went thinking and thinking night and day. At last, he said to himself, as I might, ‘If I had only ten pound, I’d make a fortune.’ At last by hook or by crook, behold he got the ten pounds!”

“Only think of that!” said Nat Callcome satirically.

“Silence!” said the tranter.

“Well, now comes the interesting part of the story! In a little time he made that ten pounds twenty. Then a little time after that he doubled it, and made it forty. Well, he went on, and a good while after that he made it eighty, and on to a hundred. Well, by-and-by he made it two hundred! Well, you’d never believe it, but – he went on and made it four hundred! He went on, and what did he do? Why, he made it eight hundred! Yes, he did,” continued Leaf, in the highest pitch of excitement, bringing down his fist upon his knee with such force that he quivered with the pain; “yes, and he went on and made it A THOUSAND!”

“Hear, hear!” said the tranter. “Better than the history of England, my sonnies!”

“Thank you for your story, Thomas Leaf,” said grandfather William; and then Leaf gradually sank into nothingness again.

Amid a medley of laughter, old shoes, and elder-wine, Dick and his bride took their departure, side by side in the excellent new spring-cart which the young tranter now possessed. The moon was just over the full, rendering any light from lamps or their own beauties quite unnecessary to the pair. They drove slowly along Yalbury Bottom, where the road passed between two copses. Dick was talking to his companion.

“Fancy,” he said, “why we are so happy is because there is such full confidence between us. Ever since that time you confessed to that little flirtation with Shiner by the river (which was really no flirtation at all), I have thought how artless and good you must be to tell me o’ such a trifling thing, and to be so frightened about it as you were. It has won me to tell you my every deed and word since then. We’ll have no secrets from each other, darling, will we ever? – no secret at all.”

“None from to-day,” said Fancy. “Hark! what’s that?”

From a neighbouring thicket was suddenly heard to issue in a loud, musical, and liquid voice —

“Tippiwit! swe-e-et! ki-ki-ki! Come hither, come hither, come hither!”

“O, ’tis the nightingale,” murmured she, and thought of a secret she would never tell.