Under the Greenwood Tree, or, the Mellstock quire; a rural painting of the Dutch school / Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928

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Title: Under the Greenwood Tree

Author: Thomas Hardy

Release Date: October 28, 2004  [eBook #2662]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE***





Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk from the 1912
Macmillan and Co. edition.  Proofed by Margaret Rose Price, Dagny and
David Price.





UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE
or
THE MELLSTOCK QUIRE
A RURAL PAINTING OF THE DUTCH SCHOOL
by Thomas Hardy


PREFACE


This story of the Mellstock Quire and its old established west-gallery
musicians, with some supplementary descriptions of similar officials in
Two on a Tower, A Few Crusted Characters, and other places, is intended
to be a fairly true picture, at first hand, of the personages, ways, and
customs which were common among such orchestral bodies in the villages of
fifty or sixty years ago.

One is inclined to regret the displacement of these ecclesiastical
bandsmen by an isolated organist (often at first a barrel-organist) or
harmonium player; and despite certain advantages in point of control and
accomplishment which were, no doubt, secured by installing the single
artist, the change has tended to stultify the professed aims of the
clergy, its direct result being to curtail and extinguish the interest of
parishioners in church doings.  Under the old plan, from half a dozen to
ten full-grown players, in addition to the numerous more or less grown-up
singers, were officially occupied with the Sunday routine, and concerned
in trying their best to make it an artistic outcome of the combined
musical taste of the congregation.  With a musical executive limited, as
it mostly is limited now, to the parson's wife or daughter and the school-
children, or to the school-teacher and the children, an important union
of interests has disappeared.

The zest of these bygone instrumentalists must have been keen and staying
to take them, as it did, on foot every Sunday after a toilsome week,
through all weathers, to the church, which often lay at a distance from
their homes.  They usually received so little in payment for their
performances that their efforts were really a labour of love.  In the
parish I had in my mind when writing the present tale, the gratuities
received yearly by the musicians at Christmas were somewhat as follows:
From the manor-house ten shillings and a supper; from the vicar ten
shillings; from the farmers five shillings each; from each
cottage-household one shilling; amounting altogether to not more than ten
shillings a head annually--just enough, as an old executant told me, to
pay for their fiddle-strings, repairs, rosin, and music-paper (which they
mostly ruled themselves).  Their music in those days was all in their own
manuscript, copied in the evenings after work, and their music-books were
home-bound.

It was customary to inscribe a few jigs, reels, horn-pipes, and ballads
in the same book, by beginning it at the other end, the insertions being
continued from front and back till sacred and secular met together in the
middle, often with bizarre effect, the words of some of the songs
exhibiting that ancient and broad humour which our grandfathers, and
possibly grandmothers, took delight in, and is in these days unquotable.

The aforesaid fiddle-strings, rosin, and music-paper were supplied by a
pedlar, who travelled exclusively in such wares from parish to parish,
coming to each village about every six months.  Tales are told of the
consternation once caused among the church fiddlers when, on the occasion
of their producing a new Christmas anthem, he did not come to time, owing
to being snowed up on the downs, and the straits they were in through
having to make shift with whipcord and twine for strings.  He was
generally a musician himself, and sometimes a composer in a small way,
bringing his own new tunes, and tempting each choir to adopt them for a
consideration.  Some of these compositions which now lie before me, with
their repetitions of lines, half-lines, and half-words, their fugues and
their intermediate symphonies, are good singing still, though they would
hardly be admitted into such hymn-books as are popular in the churches of
fashionable society at the present time.

August 1896.

Under the Greenwood Tree was first brought out in the summer of 1872 in
two volumes.  The name of the story was originally intended to be, more
appropriately, The Mellstock Quire, and this has been appended as a sub-
title since the early editions, it having been thought unadvisable to
displace for it the title by which the book first became known.

In rereading the narrative after a long interval there occurs the
inevitable reflection that the realities out of which it was spun were
material for another kind of study of this little group of church
musicians than is found in the chapters here penned so lightly, even so
farcically and flippantly at times.  But circumstances would have
rendered any aim at a deeper, more essential, more transcendent handling
unadvisable at the date of writing; and the exhibition of the Mellstock
Quire in the following pages must remain the only extant one, except for
the few glimpses of that perished band which I have given in verse
elsewhere.

T. H.
April 1912.




PART THE FIRST--WINTER


CHAPTER I: MELLSTOCK-LANE


To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well
as its feature.  At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan
no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with
itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its
flat boughs rise and fall.  And winter, which modifies the note of such
trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality.

On a cold and starry Christmas-eve within living memory a man was passing
up a lane towards Mellstock Cross in the darkness of a plantation that
whispered thus distinctively to his intelligence.  All the evidences of
his nature were those afforded by the spirit of his footsteps, which
succeeded each other lightly and quickly, and by the liveliness of his
voice as he sang in a rural cadence:

      "With the rose and the lily
         And the daffodowndilly,
   The lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go."

The lonely lane he was following connected one of the hamlets of
Mellstock parish with Upper Mellstock and Lewgate, and to his eyes,
casually glancing upward, the silver and black-stemmed birches with their
characteristic tufts, the pale grey boughs of beech, the dark-creviced
elm, all appeared now as black and flat outlines upon the sky, wherein
the white stars twinkled so vehemently that their flickering seemed like
the flapping of wings.  Within the woody pass, at a level anything lower
than the horizon, all was dark as the grave.  The copse-wood forming the
sides of the bower interlaced its branches so densely, even at this
season of the year, that the draught from the north-east flew along the
channel with scarcely an interruption from lateral breezes.

After passing the plantation and reaching Mellstock Cross the white
surface of the lane revealed itself between the dark hedgerows like a
ribbon jagged at the edges; the irregularity being caused by temporary
accumulations of leaves extending from the ditch on either side.

The song (many times interrupted by flitting thoughts which took the
place of several bars, and resumed at a point it would have reached had
its continuity been unbroken) now received a more palpable check, in the
shape of "Ho-i-i-i-i-i!" from the crossing lane to Lower Mellstock, on
the right of the singer who had just emerged from the trees.

"Ho-i-i-i-i-i!" he answered, stopping and looking round, though with no
idea of seeing anything more than imagination pictured.

"Is that thee, young Dick Dewy?" came from the darkness.

"Ay, sure, Michael Mail."

"Then why not stop for fellow-craters--going to thy own father's house
too, as we be, and knowen us so well?"

Dick Dewy faced about and continued his tune in an under-whistle,
implying that the business of his mouth could not be checked at a
moment's notice by the placid emotion of friendship.

Having come more into the open he could now be seen rising against the
sky, his profile appearing on the light background like the portrait of a
gentleman in black cardboard.  It assumed the form of a low-crowned hat,
an ordinary-shaped nose, an ordinary chin, an ordinary neck, and ordinary
shoulders.  What he consisted of further down was invisible from lack of
sky low enough to picture him on.

Shuffling, halting, irregular footsteps of various kinds were now heard
coming up the hill, and presently there emerged from the shade severally
five men of different ages and gaits, all of them working villagers of
the parish of Mellstock.  They, too, had lost their rotundity with the
daylight, and advanced against the sky in flat outlines, which suggested
some processional design on Greek or Etruscan pottery.  They represented
the chief portion of Mellstock parish choir.

The first was a bowed and bent man, who carried a fiddle under his arm,
and walked as if engaged in studying some subject connected with the
surface of the road.  He was Michael Mail, the man who had hallooed to
Dick.

The next was Mr. Robert Penny, boot- and shoemaker; a little man, who,
though rather round-shouldered, walked as if that fact had not come to
his own knowledge, moving on with his back very hollow and his face fixed
on the north-east quarter of the heavens before him, so that his lower
waist-coat-buttons came first, and then the remainder of his figure.  His
features were invisible; yet when he occasionally looked round, two faint
moons of light gleamed for an instant from the precincts of his eyes,
denoting that he wore spectacles of a circular form.

The third was Elias Spinks, who walked perpendicularly and dramatically.
The fourth outline was Joseph Bowman's, who had now no distinctive
appearance beyond that of a human being.  Finally came a weak lath-like
form, trotting and stumbling along with one shoulder forward and his head
inclined to the left, his arms dangling nervelessly in the wind as if
they were empty sleeves.  This was Thomas Leaf.

"Where be the boys?" said Dick to this somewhat indifferently-matched
assembly.

The eldest of the group, Michael Mail, cleared his throat from a great
depth.

"We told them to keep back at home for a time, thinken they wouldn't be
wanted yet awhile; and we could choose the tuens, and so on."

"Father and grandfather William have expected ye a little sooner.  I have
just been for a run round by Ewelease Stile and Hollow Hill to warm my
feet."

"To be sure father did!  To be sure 'a did expect us--to taste the little
barrel beyond compare that he's going to tap."

"'Od rabbit it all!  Never heard a word of it!" said Mr. Penny, gleams of
delight appearing upon his spectacle-glasses, Dick meanwhile singing
parenthetically--

   "The lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go."

"Neighbours, there's time enough to drink a sight of drink now afore
bedtime?" said Mail.

"True, true--time enough to get as drunk as lords!" replied Bowman
cheerfully.

This opinion being taken as convincing they all advanced between the
varying hedges and the trees dotting them here and there, kicking their
toes occasionally among the crumpled leaves.  Soon appeared glimmering
indications of the few cottages forming the small hamlet of Upper
Mellstock for which they were bound, whilst the faint sound of church-
bells ringing a Christmas peal could be heard floating over upon the
breeze from the direction of Longpuddle and Weatherbury parishes on the
other side of the hills.  A little wicket admitted them to the garden,
and they proceeded up the path to Dick's house.



CHAPTER II: THE TRANTER'S


It was a long low cottage with a hipped roof of thatch, having dormer
windows breaking up into the eaves, a chimney standing in the middle of
the ridge and another at each end.  The window-shutters were not yet
closed, and the fire- and candle-light within radiated forth upon the
thick bushes of box and laurestinus growing in clumps outside, and upon
the bare boughs of several codlin-trees hanging about in various
distorted shapes, the result of early training as espaliers combined with
careless climbing into their boughs in later years.  The walls of the
dwelling were for the most part covered with creepers, though these were
rather beaten back from the doorway--a feature which was worn and
scratched by much passing in and out, giving it by day the appearance of
an old keyhole.  Light streamed through the cracks and joints of
outbuildings a little way from the cottage, a sight which nourished a
fancy that the purpose of the erection must be rather to veil bright
attractions than to shelter unsightly necessaries.  The noise of a beetle
and wedges and the splintering of wood was periodically heard from this
direction; and at some little distance further a steady regular munching
and the occasional scurr of a rope betokened a stable, and horses feeding
within it.

The choir stamped severally on the door-stone to shake from their boots
any fragment of earth or leaf adhering thereto, then entered the house
and looked around to survey the condition of things.  Through the open
doorway of a small inner room on the right hand, of a character between
pantry and cellar, was Dick Dewy's father Reuben, by vocation a
"tranter," or irregular carrier.  He was a stout florid man about forty
years of age, who surveyed people up and down when first making their
acquaintance, and generally smiled at the horizon or other distant object
during conversations with friends, walking about with a steady sway, and
turning out his toes very considerably.  Being now occupied in bending
over a hogshead, that stood in the pantry ready horsed for the process of
broaching, he did not take the trouble to turn or raise his eyes at the
entry of his visitors, well knowing by their footsteps that they were the
expected old comrades.

The main room, on the left, was decked with bunches of holly and other
evergreens, and from the middle of the beam bisecting the ceiling hung
the mistletoe, of a size out of all proportion to the room, and extending
so low that it became necessary for a full-grown person to walk round it
in passing, or run the risk of entangling his hair.  This apartment
contained Mrs. Dewy the tranter's wife, and the four remaining children,
Susan, Jim, Bessy, and Charley, graduating uniformly though at wide
stages from the age of sixteen to that of four years--the eldest of the
series being separated from Dick the firstborn by a nearly equal
interval.

Some circumstance had apparently caused much grief to Charley just
previous to the entry of the choir, and he had absently taken down a
small looking-glass, holding it before his face to learn how the human
countenance appeared when engaged in crying, which survey led him to
pause at the various points in each wail that were more than ordinarily
striking, for a thorough appreciation of the general effect.  Bessy was
leaning against a chair, and glancing under the plaits about the waist of
the plaid frock she wore, to notice the original unfaded pattern of the
material as there preserved, her face bearing an expression of regret
that the brightness had passed away from the visible portions.  Mrs. Dewy
sat in a brown settle by the side of the glowing wood fire--so glowing
that with a heedful compression of the lips she would now and then rise
and put her hand upon the hams and flitches of bacon lining the chimney,
to reassure herself that they were not being broiled instead of smoked--a
misfortune that had been known to happen now and then at Christmas-time.

"Hullo, my sonnies, here you be, then!" said Reuben Dewy at length,
standing up and blowing forth a vehement gust of breath.  "How the blood
do puff up in anybody's head, to be sure, a-stooping like that!  I was
just going out to gate to hark for ye."  He then carefully began to wind
a strip of brown paper round a brass tap he held in his hand.  "This in
the cask here is a drop o' the right sort" (tapping the cask); "'tis a
real drop o' cordial from the best picked apples--Sansoms, Stubbards,
Five-corners, and such-like--you d'mind the sort, Michael?"  (Michael
nodded.)  "And there's a sprinkling of they that grow down by the orchard-
rails--streaked ones--rail apples we d'call 'em, as 'tis by the rails
they grow, and not knowing the right name.  The water-cider from 'em is
as good as most people's best cider is."

"Ay, and of the same make too," said Bowman.  "'It rained when we wrung
it out, and the water got into it,' folk will say.  But 'tis on'y an
excuse.  Watered cider is too common among us."

"Yes, yes; too common it is!" said Spinks with an inward sigh, whilst his
eyes seemed to be looking at the case in an abstract form rather than at
the scene before him.  "Such poor liquor do make a man's throat feel very
melancholy--and is a disgrace to the name of stimmilent."

"Come in, come in, and draw up to the fire; never mind your shoes," said
Mrs. Dewy, seeing that all except Dick had paused to wipe them upon the
door-mat.  "I am glad that you've stepped up-along at last; and, Susan,
you run down to Grammer Kaytes's and see if you can borrow some larger
candles than these fourteens.  Tommy Leaf, don't ye be afeard!  Come and
sit here in the settle."

This was addressed to the young man before mentioned, consisting chiefly
of a human skeleton and a smock-frock, who was very awkward in his
movements, apparently on account of having grown so very fast that before
he had had time to get used to his height he was higher.

"Hee--hee--ay!" replied Leaf, letting his mouth continue to smile for
some time after his mind had done smiling, so that his teeth remained in
view as the most conspicuous members of his body.

"Here, Mr. Penny," resumed Mrs. Dewy, "you sit in this chair.  And how's
your daughter, Mrs. Brownjohn?"

"Well, I suppose I must say pretty fair."  He adjusted his spectacles a
quarter of an inch to the right.  "But she'll be worse before she's
better, 'a b'lieve."

"Indeed--poor soul!  And how many will that make in all, four or five?"

"Five; they've buried three.  Yes, five; and she not much more than a
maid yet.  She do know the multiplication table onmistakable well.
However, 'twas to be, and none can gainsay it."

Mrs. Dewy resigned Mr. Penny.  "Wonder where your grandfather James is?"
she inquired of one of the children.  "He said he'd drop in to-night."

"Out in fuel-house with grandfather William," said Jimmy.

"Now let's see what we can do," was heard spoken about this time by the
tranter in a private voice to the barrel, beside which he had again
established himself, and was stooping to cut away the cork.

"Reuben, don't make such a mess o' tapping that barrel as is mostly made
in this house," Mrs. Dewy cried from the fireplace.  "I'd tap a hundred
without wasting more than you do in one.  Such a squizzling and squirting
job as 'tis in your hands!  There, he always was such a clumsy man
indoors."

"Ay, ay; I know you'd tap a hundred beautiful, Ann--I know you would; two
hundred, perhaps.  But I can't promise.  This is a' old cask, and the
wood's rotted away about the tap-hole.  The husbird of a feller Sam
Lawson--that ever I should call'n such, now he's dead and gone, poor
heart!--took me in completely upon the feat of buying this cask.  'Reub,'
says he--'a always used to call me plain Reub, poor old heart!--'Reub,'
he said, says he, 'that there cask, Reub, is as good as new; yes, good as
new.  'Tis a wine-hogshead; the best port-wine in the commonwealth have
been in that there cask; and you shall have en for ten shillens,
Reub,'--'a said, says he--'he's worth twenty, ay, five-and-twenty, if
he's worth one; and an iron hoop or two put round en among the wood ones
will make en worth thirty shillens of any man's money, if--'"

"I think I should have used the eyes that Providence gave me to use afore
I paid any ten shillens for a jimcrack wine-barrel; a saint is sinner
enough not to be cheated.  But 'tis like all your family was, so easy to
be deceived."

"That's as true as gospel of this member," said Reuben.

Mrs. Dewy began a smile at the answer, then altering her lips and
refolding them so that it was not a smile, commenced smoothing little
Bessy's hair; the tranter having meanwhile suddenly become oblivious to
conversation, occupying himself in a deliberate cutting and arrangement
of some more brown paper for the broaching operation.

"Ah, who can believe sellers!" said old Michael Mail in a
carefully-cautious voice, by way of tiding-over this critical point of
affairs.

"No one at all," said Joseph Bowman, in the tone of a man fully agreeing
with everybody.

"Ay," said Mail, in the tone of a man who did not agree with everybody as
a rule, though he did now; "I knowed a' auctioneering feller once--a very
friendly feller 'a was too.  And so one hot day as I was walking down the
front street o' Casterbridge, jist below the King's Arms, I passed a'
open winder and see him inside, stuck upon his perch, a-selling off.  I
jist nodded to en in a friendly way as I passed, and went my way, and
thought no more about it.  Well, next day, as I was oilen my boots by
fuel-house door, if a letter didn't come wi' a bill charging me with a
feather-bed, bolster, and pillers, that I had bid for at Mr. Taylor's
sale.  The slim-faced martel had knocked 'em down to me because I nodded
to en in my friendly way; and I had to pay for 'em too.  Now, I hold that
that was coming it very close, Reuben?"

"'Twas close, there's no denying," said the general voice.

"Too close, 'twas," said Reuben, in the rear of the rest.  "And as to Sam
Lawson--poor heart! now he's dead and gone too!--I'll warrant, that if so
be I've spent one hour in making hoops for that barrel, I've spent fifty,
first and last.  That's one of my hoops"--touching it with his
elbow--"that's one of mine, and that, and that, and all these."

"Ah, Sam was a man," said Mr. Penny, contemplatively.

"Sam was!" said Bowman.

"Especially for a drap o' drink," said the tranter.

"Good, but not religious-good," suggested Mr. Penny.

The tranter nodded.  Having at last made the tap and hole quite ready,
"Now then, Suze, bring a mug," he said.  "Here's luck to us, my sonnies!"

The tap went in, and the cider immediately squirted out in a horizontal
shower over Reuben's hands, knees, and leggings, and into the eyes and
neck of Charley, who, having temporarily put off his grief under pressure
of more interesting proceedings, was squatting down and blinking near his
father.

"There 'tis again!" said Mrs. Dewy.

"Devil take the hole, the cask, and Sam Lawson too, that good cider
should be wasted like this!" exclaimed the tranter.  "Your thumb!  Lend
me your thumb, Michael!  Ram it in here, Michael!  I must get a bigger
tap, my sonnies."

"Idd it cold inthide te hole?" inquired Charley of Michael, as he
continued in a stooping posture with his thumb in the cork-hole.

"What wonderful odds and ends that chiel has in his head to be sure!"
Mrs. Dewy admiringly exclaimed from the distance.  "I lay a wager that he
thinks more about how 'tis inside that barrel than in all the other parts
of the world put together."

All persons present put on a speaking countenance of admiration for the
cleverness alluded to, in the midst of which Reuben returned.  The
operation was then satisfactorily performed; when Michael arose and
stretched his head to the extremest fraction of height that his body
would allow of, to re-straighten his back and shoulders--thrusting out
his arms and twisting his features to a mass of wrinkles to emphasize the
relief aquired.  A quart or two of the beverage was then brought to
table, at which all the new arrivals reseated themselves with wide-spread
knees, their eyes meditatively seeking out any speck or knot in the board
upon which the gaze might precipitate itself.

"Whatever is father a-biding out in fuel-house so long for?" said the
tranter.  "Never such a man as father for two things--cleaving up old
dead apple-tree wood and playing the bass-viol.  'A'd pass his life
between the two, that 'a would."  He stepped to the door and opened it.

"Father!"

"Ay!" rang thinly from round the corner.

"Here's the barrel tapped, and we all a-waiting!"

A series of dull thuds, that had been heard without for some time past,
now ceased; and after the light of a lantern had passed the window and
made wheeling rays upon the ceiling inside the eldest of the Dewy family
appeared.



CHAPTER III: THE ASSEMBLED QUIRE


William Dewy--otherwise grandfather William--was now about seventy; yet
an ardent vitality still preserved a warm and roughened bloom upon his
face, which reminded gardeners of the sunny side of a ripe
ribstone-pippin; though a narrow strip of forehead, that was protected
from the weather by lying above the line of his hat-brim, seemed to
belong to some town man, so gentlemanly was its whiteness.  His was a
humorous and kindly nature, not unmixed with a frequent melancholy; and
he had a firm religious faith.  But to his neighbours he had no character
in particular.  If they saw him pass by their windows when they had been
bottling off old mead, or when they had just been called long-headed men
who might do anything in the world if they chose, they thought concerning
him, "Ah, there's that good-hearted man--open as a child!"  If they saw
him just after losing a shilling or half-a-crown, or accidentally letting
fall a piece of crockery, they thought, "There's that poor weak-minded
man Dewy again!  Ah, he's never done much in the world either!"  If he
passed when fortune neither smiled nor frowned on them, they merely
thought him old William Dewy.

"Ah, so's--here you be!--Ah, Michael and Joseph and John--and you too,
Leaf! a merry Christmas all!  We shall have a rare log-wood fire
directly, Reub, to reckon by the toughness of the job I had in cleaving
'em."  As he spoke he threw down an armful of logs which fell in the
chimney-corner with a rumble, and looked at them with something of the
admiring enmity he would have bestowed on living people who had been very
obstinate in holding their own.  "Come in, grandfather James."

Old James (grandfather on the maternal side) had simply called as a
visitor.  He lived in a cottage by himself, and many people considered
him a miser; some, rather slovenly in his habits.  He now came forward
from behind grandfather William, and his stooping figure formed a well-
illuminated picture as he passed towards the fire-place.  Being by trade
a mason, he wore a long linen apron reaching almost to his toes, corduroy
breeches and gaiters, which, together with his boots, graduated in tints
of whitish-brown by constant friction against lime and stone.  He also
wore a very stiff fustian coat, having folds at the elbows and shoulders
as unvarying in their arrangement as those in a pair of bellows: the
ridges and the projecting parts of the coat collectively exhibiting a
shade different from that of the hollows, which were lined with small
ditch-like accumulations of stone and mortar-dust.  The extremely large
side-pockets, sheltered beneath wide flaps, bulged out convexly whether
empty or full; and as he was often engaged to work at buildings far
away--his breakfasts and dinners being eaten in a strange chimney-corner,
by a garden wall, on a heap of stones, or walking along the road--he
carried in these pockets a small tin canister of butter, a small canister
of sugar, a small canister of tea, a paper of salt, and a paper of
pepper; the bread, cheese, and meat, forming the substance of his meals,
hanging up behind him in his basket among the hammers and chisels.  If a
passer-by looked hard at him when he was drawing forth any of these, "My
buttery," he said, with a pinched smile.

"Better try over number seventy-eight before we start, I suppose?" said
William, pointing to a heap of old Christmas-carol books on a side table.

"Wi' all my heart," said the choir generally.

"Number seventy-eight was always a teaser--always.  I can mind him ever
since I was growing up a hard boy-chap."

"But he's a good tune, and worth a mint o' practice," said Michael.

"He is; though I've been mad enough wi' that tune at times to seize en
and tear en all to linnit.  Ay, he's a splendid carrel--there's no
denying that."

"The first line is well enough," said Mr. Spinks; "but when you come to
'O, thou man,' you make a mess o't."

"We'll have another go into en, and see what we can make of the martel.
Half-an-hour's hammering at en will conquer the toughness of en; I'll
warn it."

"'Od rabbit it all!" said Mr. Penny, interrupting with a flash of his
spectacles, and at the same time clawing at something in the depths of a
large side-pocket.  "If so be I hadn't been as scatter-brained and
thirtingill as a chiel, I should have called at the schoolhouse wi' a
boot as I cam up along.  Whatever is coming to me I really can't estimate
at all!"

"The brain has its weaknesses," murmured Mr. Spinks, waving his head
ominously.  Mr. Spinks was considered to be a scholar, having once kept a
night-school, and always spoke up to that level.

"Well, I must call with en the first thing to-morrow.  And I'll empt my
pocket o' this last too, if you don't mind, Mrs. Dewy."  He drew forth a
last, and placed it on a table at his elbow.  The eyes of three or four
followed it.

"Well," said the shoemaker, seeming to perceive that the interest the
object had excited was greater than he had anticipated, and warranted the
last's being taken up again and exhibited; "now, whose foot do ye suppose
this last was made for?  It was made for Geoffrey Day's father, over at
Yalbury Wood.  Ah, many's the pair o' boots he've had off the last!  Well,
when 'a died, I used the last for Geoffrey, and have ever since, though a
little doctoring was wanted to make it do.  Yes, a very queer natured
last it is now, 'a b'lieve," he continued, turning it over caressingly.
"Now, you notice that there" (pointing to a lump of leather bradded to
the toe), "that's a very bad bunion that he've had ever since 'a was a
boy.  Now, this remarkable large piece" (pointing to a patch nailed to
the side), "shows a' accident he received by the tread of a horse, that
squashed his foot a'most to a pomace.  The horseshoe cam full-butt on
this point, you see.  And so I've just been over to Geoffrey's, to know
if he wanted his bunion altered or made bigger in the new pair I'm
making."

During the latter part of this speech, Mr. Penny's left hand wandered
towards the cider-cup, as if the hand had no connection with the person
speaking; and bringing his sentence to an abrupt close, all but the
extreme margin of the bootmaker's face was eclipsed by the circular brim
of the vessel.

"However, I was going to say," continued Penny, putting down the cup, "I
ought to have called at the school"--here he went groping again in the
depths of his pocket--"to leave this without fail, though I suppose the
first thing to-morrow will do."

He now drew forth and placed upon the table a boot--small, light, and
prettily shaped--upon the heel of which he had been operating.

"The new schoolmistress's!"

"Ay, no less, Miss Fancy Day; as neat a little figure of fun as ever I
see, and just husband-high."

"Never Geoffrey's daughter Fancy?" said Bowman, as all glances present
converged like wheel-spokes upon the boot in the centre of them.

"Yes, sure," resumed Mr. Penny, regarding the boot as if that alone were
his auditor; "'tis she that's come here schoolmistress.  You knowed his
daughter was in training?"

"Strange, isn't it, for her to be here Christmas night, Master Penny?"

"Yes; but here she is, 'a b'lieve."

"I know how she comes here--so I do!" chirruped one of the children.

"Why?" Dick inquired, with subtle interest.

"Pa'son Maybold was afraid he couldn't manage us all to-morrow at the
dinner, and he talked o' getting her jist to come over and help him hand
about the plates, and see we didn't make pigs of ourselves; and that's
what she's come for!"

"And that's the boot, then," continued its mender imaginatively, "that
she'll walk to church in to-morrow morning.  I don't care to mend boots I
don't make; but there's no knowing what it may lead to, and her father
always comes to me."

There, between the cider-mug and the candle, stood this interesting
receptacle of the little unknown's foot; and a very pretty boot it was.  A
character, in fact--the flexible bend at the instep, the rounded
localities of the small nestling toes, scratches from careless scampers
now forgotten--all, as repeated in the tell-tale leather, evidencing a
nature and a bias.  Dick surveyed it with a delicate feeling that he had
no right to do so without having first asked the owner of the foot's
permission.

"Now, neighbours, though no common eye can see it," the shoemaker went
on, "a man in the trade can see the likeness between this boot and that
last, although that is so deformed as hardly to recall one of God's
creatures, and this is one of as pretty a pair as you'd get for ten-and-
sixpence in Casterbridge.  To you, nothing; but 'tis father's voot and
daughter's voot to me, as plain as houses."

"I don't doubt there's a likeness, Master Penny--a mild likeness--a
fantastical likeness," said Spinks.  "But I han't got imagination enough
to see it, perhaps."

Mr. Penny adjusted his spectacles.

"Now, I'll tell ye what happened to me once on this very point.  You used
to know Johnson the dairyman, William?"

"Ay, sure; I did."

"Well, 'twasn't opposite his house, but a little lower down--by his
paddock, in front o' Parkmaze Pool.  I was a-bearing across towards
Bloom's End, and lo and behold, there was a man just brought out o' the
Pool, dead; he had un'rayed for a dip, but not being able to pitch it
just there had gone in flop over his head.  Men looked at en; women
looked at en; children looked at en; nobody knowed en.  He was covered
wi' a sheet; but I catched sight of his voot, just showing out as they
carried en along.  'I don't care what name that man went by,' I said, in
my way, 'but he's John Woodward's brother; I can swear to the family
voot.'  At that very moment up comes John Woodward, weeping and teaving,
'I've lost my brother!  I've lost my brother!'"

"Only to think of that!" said Mrs. Dewy.

"'Tis well enough to know this foot and that foot," said Mr. Spinks.
"'Tis long-headed, in fact, as far as feet do go.  I know little, 'tis
true--I say no more; but show me a man's foot, and I'll tell you that
man's heart."

"You must be a cleverer feller, then, than mankind in jineral," said the
tranter.

"Well, that's nothing for me to speak of," returned Mr. Spinks.  "A man
lives and learns.  Maybe I've read a leaf or two in my time.  I don't
wish to say anything large, mind you; but nevertheless, maybe I have."

"Yes, I know," said Michael soothingly, "and all the parish knows, that
ye've read sommat of everything a'most, and have been a great filler of
young folks' brains.  Learning's a worthy thing, and ye've got it, Master
Spinks."

"I make no boast, though I may have read and thought a little; and I
know--it may be from much perusing, but I make no boast--that by the time
a man's head is finished, 'tis almost time for him to creep underground.
I am over forty-five."

Mr. Spinks emitted a look to signify that if his head was not finished,
nobody's head ever could be.

"Talk of knowing people by their feet!" said Reuben.  "Rot me, my
sonnies, then, if I can tell what a man is from all his members put
together, oftentimes."

"But still, look is a good deal," observed grandfather William absently,
moving and balancing his head till the tip of grandfather James's nose
was exactly in a right line with William's eye and the mouth of a
miniature cavern he was discerning in the fire.  "By the way," he
continued in a fresher voice, and looking up, "that young crater, the
schoolmis'ess, must be sung to to-night wi' the rest?  If her ear is as
fine as her face, we shall have enough to do to be up-sides with her."

"What about her face?" said young Dewy.

"Well, as to that," Mr. Spinks replied, "'tis a face you can hardly
gainsay.  A very good pink face, as far as that do go.  Still, only a
face, when all is said and done."

"Come, come, Elias Spinks, say she's a pretty maid, and have done wi'
her," said the tranter, again preparing to visit the cider-barrel.



CHAPTER IV: GOING THE ROUNDS


Shortly after ten o'clock the singing-boys arrived at the tranter's
house, which was invariably the place of meeting, and preparations were
made for the start.  The older men and musicians wore thick coats, with
stiff perpendicular collars, and coloured handkerchiefs wound round and
round the neck till the end came to hand, over all which they just showed
their ears and noses, like people looking over a wall.  The remainder,
stalwart ruddy men and boys, were dressed mainly in snow-white
smock-frocks, embroidered upon the shoulders and breasts, in ornamental
forms of hearts, diamonds, and zigzags.  The cider-mug was emptied for
the ninth time, the music-books were arranged, and the pieces finally
decided upon.  The boys in the meantime put the old horn-lanterns in
order, cut candles into short lengths to fit the lanterns; and, a thin
fleece of snow having fallen since the early part of the evening, those
who had no leggings went to the stable and wound wisps of hay round their
ankles to keep the insidious flakes from the interior of their boots.

Mellstock was a parish of considerable acreage, the hamlets composing it
lying at a much greater distance from each other than is ordinarily the
case.  Hence several hours were consumed in playing and singing within
hearing of every family, even if but a single air were bestowed on each.
There was Lower Mellstock, the main village; half a mile from this were
the church and vicarage, and a few other houses, the spot being rather
lonely now, though in past centuries it had been the most
thickly-populated quarter of the parish.  A mile north-east lay the
hamlet of Upper Mellstock, where the tranter lived; and at other points
knots of cottages, besides solitary farmsteads and dairies.

Old William Dewy, with the violoncello, played the bass; his grandson
Dick the treble violin; and Reuben and Michael Mail the tenor and second
violins respectively.  The singers consisted of four men and seven boys,
upon whom devolved the task of carrying and attending to the lanterns,
and holding the books open for the players.  Directly music was the
theme, old William ever and instinctively came to the front.

"Now mind, neighbours," he said, as they all went out one by one at the
door, he himself holding it ajar and regarding them with a critical face
as they passed, like a shepherd counting out his sheep.  "You two counter-
boys, keep your ears open to Michael's fingering, and don't ye go
straying into the treble part along o' Dick and his set, as ye did last
year; and mind this especially when we be in 'Arise, and hail.'  Billy
Chimlen, don't you sing quite so raving mad as you fain would; and, all
o' ye, whatever ye do, keep from making a great scuffle on the ground
when we go in at people's gates; but go quietly, so as to strike up all
of a sudden, like spirits."

"Farmer Ledlow's first?"

"Farmer Ledlow's first; the rest as usual."

"And, Voss," said the tranter terminatively, "you keep house here till
about half-past two; then heat the metheglin and cider in the warmer
you'll find turned up upon the copper; and bring it wi' the victuals to
church-hatch, as th'st know."

* * * * *

Just before the clock struck twelve they lighted the lanterns and
started.  The moon, in her third quarter, had risen since the snowstorm;
but the dense accumulation of snow-cloud weakened her power to a faint
twilight, which was rather pervasive of the landscape than traceable to
the sky.  The breeze had gone down, and the rustle of their feet and
tones of their speech echoed with an alert rebound from every post,
boundary-stone, and ancient wall they passed, even where the distance of
the echo's origin was less than a few yards.  Beyond their own slight
noises nothing was to be heard, save the occasional bark of foxes in the
direction of Yalbury Wood, or the brush of a rabbit among the grass now
and then, as it scampered out of their way.

Most of the outlying homesteads and hamlets had been visited by about two
o'clock; they then passed across the outskirts of a wooded park toward
the main village, nobody being at home at the Manor.  Pursuing no
recognized track, great care was necessary in walking lest their faces
should come in contact with the low-hanging boughs of the old lime-trees,
which in many spots formed dense over-growths of interlaced branches.

"Times have changed from the times they used to be," said Mail, regarding
nobody can tell what interesting old panoramas with an inward eye, and
letting his outward glance rest on the ground, because it was as
convenient a position as any.  "People don't care much about us now!  I've
been thinking we must be almost the last left in the county of the old
string players?  Barrel-organs, and the things next door to 'em that you
blow wi' your foot, have come in terribly of late years."

"Ay!" said Bowman, shaking his head; and old William, on seeing him, did
the same thing.

"More's the pity," replied another.  "Time was--long and merry ago
now!--when not one of the varmits was to be heard of; but it served some
of the quires right.  They should have stuck to strings as we did, and
kept out clarinets, and done away with serpents.  If you'd thrive in
musical religion, stick to strings, says I."

"Strings be safe soul-lifters, as far as that do go," said Mr. Spinks.

"Yet there's worse things than serpents," said Mr. Penny.  "Old things
pass away, 'tis true; but a serpent was a good old note: a deep rich note
was the serpent."

"Clar'nets, however, be bad at all times," said Michael Mail.  "One
Christmas--years agone now, years--I went the rounds wi' the Weatherbury
quire.  'Twas a hard frosty night, and the keys of all the clar'nets
froze--ah, they did freeze!--so that 'twas like drawing a cork every time
a key was opened; and the players o' 'em had to go into a
hedger-and-ditcher's chimley-corner, and thaw their clar'nets every now
and then.  An icicle o' spet hung down from the end of every man's
clar'net a span long; and as to fingers--well, there, if ye'll believe
me, we had no fingers at all, to our knowing."

"I can well bring back to my mind," said Mr. Penny, "what I said to poor
Joseph Ryme (who took the treble part in Chalk-Newton Church for two-and-
forty year) when they thought of having clar'nets there.  'Joseph,' I
said, says I, 'depend upon't, if so be you have them tooting clar'nets
you'll spoil the whole set-out.  Clar'nets were not made for the service
of the Lard; you can see it by looking at 'em,' I said.  And what came
o't?  Why, souls, the parson set up a barrel-organ on his own account
within two years o' the time I spoke, and the old quire went to nothing."

"As far as look is concerned," said the tranter, "I don't for my part see
that a fiddle is much nearer heaven than a clar'net.  'Tis further off.
There's always a rakish, scampish twist about a fiddle's looks that seems
to say the Wicked One had a hand in making o'en; while angels be supposed
to play clar'nets in heaven, or som'at like 'em, if ye may believe
picters."

"Robert Penny, you was in the right," broke in the eldest Dewy.  "They
should ha' stuck to strings.  Your brass-man is a rafting dog--well and
good; your reed-man is a dab at stirring ye--well and good; your drum-man
is a rare bowel-shaker--good again.  But I don't care who hears me say
it, nothing will spak to your heart wi' the sweetness o' the man of
strings!"

"Strings for ever!" said little Jimmy.

"Strings alone would have held their ground against all the new comers in
creation."  ("True, true!" said Bowman.)  "But clarinets was death."
("Death they was!" said Mr. Penny.)  "And harmonions," William continued
in a louder voice, and getting excited by these signs of approval,
"harmonions and barrel-organs"  ("Ah!" and groans from Spinks) "be
miserable--what shall I call 'em?--miserable--"

"Sinners," suggested Jimmy, who made large strides like the men, and did
not lag behind like the other little boys.

"Miserable dumbledores!"

"Right, William, and so they be--miserable dumbledores!" said the choir
with unanimity.

By this time they were crossing to a gate in the direction of the school,
which, standing on a slight eminence at the junction of three ways, now
rose in unvarying and dark flatness against the sky.  The instruments
were retuned, and all the band entered the school enclosure, enjoined by
old William to keep upon the grass.

"Number seventy-eight," he softly gave out as they formed round in a
semicircle, the boys opening the lanterns to get a clearer light, and
directing their rays on the books.

Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time-worn hymn,
embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father
to son through several generations down to the present characters, who
sang them out right earnestly:

   "Remember Adam's fall,
      O thou Man:
   Remember Adam's fall
      From Heaven to Hell.
   Remember Adam's fall;
   How he hath condemn'd all
   In Hell perpetual
      There for to dwell.

   Remember God's goodnesse,
      O thou Man:
   Remember God's goodnesse,
      His promise made.
   Remember God's goodnesse;
   He sent His Son sinlesse
   Our ails for to redress;
      Be not afraid!

   In Bethlehem He was born,
      O thou Man:
   In Bethlehem He was born,
      For mankind's sake.
   In Bethlehem He was born,
   Christmas-day i' the morn:
   Our Saviour thought no scorn
      Our faults to take.

   Give thanks to God alway,
      O thou Man:
   Give thanks to God alway
      With heart-most joy.
   Give thanks to God alway
   On this our joyful day:
   Let all men sing and say,
      Holy, Holy!"

Having concluded the last note, they listened for a minute or two, but
found that no sound issued from the schoolhouse.

"Four breaths, and then, 'O, what unbounded goodness!' number
fifty-nine," said William.

This was duly gone through, and no notice whatever seemed to be taken of
the performance.

"Good guide us, surely 'tisn't a' empty house, as befell us in the year
thirty-nine and forty-three!" said old Dewy.

"Perhaps she's jist come from some musical city, and sneers at our
doings?" the tranter whispered.

"'Od rabbit her!" said Mr. Penny, with an annihilating look at a corner
of the school chimney, "I don't quite stomach her, if this is it.  Your
plain music well done is as worthy as your other sort done bad, a'
b'lieve, souls; so say I."

"Four breaths, and then the last," said the leader authoritatively.
"'Rejoice, ye Tenants of the Earth,' number sixty-four."

At the close, waiting yet another minute, he said in a clear loud voice,
as he had said in the village at that hour and season for the previous
forty years--"A merry Christmas to ye!"



CHAPTER V: THE LISTENERS


When the expectant stillness consequent upon the exclamation had nearly
died out of them all, an increasing light made itself visible in one of
the windows of the upper floor.  It came so close to the blind that the
exact position of the flame could be perceived from the outside.
Remaining steady for an instant, the blind went upward from before it,
revealing to thirty concentrated eyes a young girl, framed as a picture
by the window architrave, and unconsciously illuminating her countenance
to a vivid brightness by a candle she held in her left hand, close to her
face, her right hand being extended to the side of the window.  She was
wrapped in a white robe of some kind, whilst down her shoulders fell a
twining profusion of marvellously rich hair, in a wild disorder which
proclaimed it to be only during the invisible hours of the night that
such a condition was discoverable.  Her bright eyes were looking into the
grey world outside with an uncertain expression, oscillating between
courage and shyness, which, as she recognized the semicircular group of
dark forms gathered before her, transformed itself into pleasant
resolution.

Opening the window, she said lightly and warmly--"Thank you, singers,
thank you!"

Together went the window quickly and quietly, and the blind started
downward on its return to its place.  Her fair forehead and eyes
vanished; her little mouth; her neck and shoulders; all of her.  Then the
spot of candlelight shone nebulously as before; then it moved away.

"How pretty!" exclaimed Dick Dewy.

"If she'd been rale wexwork she couldn't ha' been comelier," said Michael
Mail.

"As near a thing to a spiritual vision as ever I wish to see!" said
tranter Dewy.

"O, sich I never, never see!" said Leaf fervently.

All the rest, after clearing their throats and adjusting their hats,
agreed that such a sight was worth singing for.

"Now to Farmer Shiner's, and then replenish our insides, father?" said
the tranter.

"Wi' all my heart," said old William, shouldering his bass-viol.

Farmer Shiner's was a queer lump of a house, standing at the corner of a
lane that ran into the principal thoroughfare.  The upper windows were
much wider than they were high, and this feature, together with a broad
bay-window where the door might have been expected, gave it by day the
aspect of a human countenance turned askance, and wearing a sly and
wicked leer.  To-night nothing was visible but the outline of the roof
upon the sky.

The front of this building was reached, and the preliminaries arranged as
usual.

"Four breaths, and number thirty-two, 'Behold the Morning Star,'" said
old William.

They had reached the end of the second verse, and the fiddlers were doing
the up bow-stroke previously to pouring forth the opening chord of the
third verse, when, without a light appearing or any signal being given, a
roaring voice exclaimed--

"Shut up, woll 'ee!  Don't make your blaring row here!  A feller wi' a
headache enough to split his skull likes a quiet night!"

Slam went the window.

"Hullo, that's a' ugly blow for we!" said the tranter, in a keenly
appreciative voice, and turning to his companions.

"Finish the carrel, all who be friends of harmony!" commanded old
William; and they continued to the end.

"Four breaths, and number nineteen!" said William firmly.  "Give it him
well; the quire can't be insulted in this manner!"

A light now flashed into existence, the window opened, and the farmer
stood revealed as one in a terrific passion.

"Drown en!--drown en!" the tranter cried, fiddling frantically.  "Play
fortissimy, and drown his spaking!"

"Fortissimy!" said Michael Mail, and the music and singing waxed so loud
that it was impossible to know what Mr. Shiner had said, was saying, or
was about to say; but wildly flinging his arms and body about in the
forms of capital Xs and Ys, he appeared to utter enough invectives to
consign the whole parish to perdition.

"Very onseemly--very!" said old William, as they retired.  "Never such a
dreadful scene in the whole round o' my carrel practice--never!  And he a
churchwarden!"

"Only a drap o' drink got into his head," said the tranter.  "Man's well
enough when he's in his religious frame.  He's in his worldly frame now.
Must ask en to our bit of a party to-morrow night, I suppose, and so put
en in humour again.  We bear no mortal man ill-will."

They now crossed Mellstock Bridge, and went along an embowered path
beside the Froom towards the church and vicarage, meeting Voss with the
hot mead and bread-and-cheese as they were approaching the churchyard.
This determined them to eat and drink before proceeding further, and they
entered the church and ascended to the gallery.  The lanterns were
opened, and the whole body sat round against the walls on benches and
whatever else was available, and made a hearty meal.  In the pauses of
conversation there could be heard through the floor overhead a little
world of undertones and creaks from the halting clockwork, which never
spread further than the tower they were born in, and raised in the more
meditative minds a fancy that here lay the direct pathway of Time.

Having done eating and drinking, they again tuned the instruments, and
once more the party emerged into the night air.

"Where's Dick?" said old Dewy.

Every man looked round upon every other man, as if Dick might have been
transmuted into one or the other; and then they said they didn't know.

"Well now, that's what I call very nasty of Master Dicky, that I do,"
said Michael Mail.

"He've clinked off home-along, depend upon't," another suggested, though
not quite believing that he had.

"Dick!" exclaimed the tranter, and his voice rolled sonorously forth
among the yews.

He suspended his muscles rigid as stone whilst listening for an answer,
and finding he listened in vain, turned to the assemblage.

"The treble man too!  Now if he'd been a tenor or counter chap, we might
ha' contrived the rest o't without en, you see.  But for a quire to lose
the treble, why, my sonnies, you may so well lose your . . . "  The
tranter paused, unable to mention an image vast enough for the occasion.

"Your head at once," suggested Mr. Penny.

The tranter moved a pace, as if it were puerile of people to complete
sentences when there were more pressing things to be done.

"Was ever heard such a thing as a young man leaving his work half done
and turning tail like this!"

"Never," replied Bowman, in a tone signifying that he was the last man in
the world to wish to withhold the formal finish required of him.

"I hope no fatal tragedy has overtook the lad!" said his grandfather.

"O no," replied tranter Dewy placidly.  "Wonder where he's put that there
fiddle of his.  Why that fiddle cost thirty shillings, and good words
besides.  Somewhere in the damp, without doubt; that instrument will be
unglued and spoilt in ten minutes--ten! ay, two."

"What in the name o' righteousness can have happened?" said old William,
more uneasily.  "Perhaps he's drownded!"

Leaving their lanterns and instruments in the belfry they retraced their
steps along the waterside track.  "A strapping lad like Dick d'know
better than let anything happen onawares," Reuben remarked.  "There's
sure to be some poor little scram reason for't staring us in the face all
the while."  He lowered his voice to a mysterious tone: "Neighbours, have
ye noticed any sign of a scornful woman in his head, or suchlike?"

"Not a glimmer of such a body.  He's as clear as water yet."

"And Dicky said he should never marry," cried Jimmy, "but live at home
always along wi' mother and we!"

"Ay, ay, my sonny; every lad has said that in his time."

They had now again reached the precincts of Mr. Shiner's, but hearing
nobody in that direction, one or two went across to the schoolhouse.  A
light was still burning in the bedroom, and though the blind was down,
the window had been slightly opened, as if to admit the distant notes of
the carollers to the ears of the occupant of the room.

Opposite the window, leaning motionless against a beech tree, was the
lost man, his arms folded, his head thrown back, his eyes fixed upon the
illuminated lattice.

"Why, Dick, is that thee?  What b'st doing here?"

Dick's body instantly flew into a more rational attitude, and his head
was seen to turn east and west in the gloom, as if endeavouring to
discern some proper answer to that question; and at last he said in
rather feeble accents--"Nothing, father."

"Th'st take long enough time about it then, upon my body," said the
tranter, as they all turned anew towards the vicarage.

"I thought you hadn't done having snap in the gallery," said Dick.

"Why, we've been traypsing and rambling about, looking everywhere, and
thinking you'd done fifty deathly things, and here have you been at
nothing at all!"

"The stupidness lies in that point of it being nothing at all," murmured
Mr. Spinks.

The vicarage front was their next field of operation, and Mr. Maybold,
the lately-arrived incumbent, duly received his share of the night's
harmonies.  It was hoped that by reason of his profession he would have
been led to open the window, and an extra carol in quick time was added
to draw him forth.  But Mr. Maybold made no stir.

"A bad sign!" said old William, shaking his head.

However, at that same instant a musical voice was heard exclaiming from
inner depths of bedclothes--"Thanks, villagers!"

"What did he say?" asked Bowman, who was rather dull of hearing.  Bowman's
voice, being therefore loud, had been heard by the vicar within.

"I said, 'Thanks, villagers!'" cried the vicar again.

"Oh, we didn't hear 'ee the first time!" cried Bowman.

"Now don't for heaven's sake spoil the young man's temper by answering
like that!" said the tranter.

"You won't do that, my friends!" the vicar shouted.

"Well to be sure, what ears!" said Mr. Penny in a whisper.  "Beats any
horse or dog in the parish, and depend upon't, that's a sign he's a
proper clever chap."

"We shall see that in time," said the tranter.

Old William, in his gratitude for such thanks from a comparatively new
inhabitant, was anxious to play all the tunes over again; but renounced
his desire on being reminded by Reuben that it would be best to leave
well alone.

"Now putting two and two together," the tranter continued, as they went
their way over the hill, and across to the last remaining houses; "that
is, in the form of that young female vision we zeed just now, and this
young tenor-voiced parson, my belief is she'll wind en round her finger,
and twist the pore young feller about like the figure of 8--that she will
so, my sonnies."



CHAPTER VI: CHRISTMAS MORNING


The choir at last reached their beds, and slept like the rest of the
parish.  Dick's slumbers, through the three or four hours remaining for
rest, were disturbed and slight; an exhaustive variation upon the
incidents that had passed that night in connection with the school-window
going on in his brain every moment of the time.

In the morning, do what he would--go upstairs, downstairs, out of doors,
speak of the wind and weather, or what not--he could not refrain from an
unceasing renewal, in imagination, of that interesting enactment.  Tilted
on the edge of one foot he stood beside the fireplace, watching his
mother grilling rashers; but there was nothing in grilling, he thought,
unless the Vision grilled.  The limp rasher hung down between the bars of
the gridiron like a cat in a child's arms; but there was nothing in
similes, unless She uttered them.  He looked at the daylight shadows of a
yellow hue, dancing with the firelight shadows in blue on the whitewashed
chimney corner, but there was nothing in shadows.  "Perhaps the new young
wom--sch--Miss Fancy Day will sing in church with us this morning," he
said.

The tranter looked a long time before he replied, "I fancy she will; and
yet I fancy she won't."

Dick implied that such a remark was rather to be tolerated than admired;
though deliberateness in speech was known to have, as a rule, more to do
with the machinery of the tranter's throat than with the matter
enunciated.

They made preparations for going to church as usual; Dick with extreme
alacrity, though he would not definitely consider why he was so
religious.  His wonderful nicety in brushing and cleaning his best light
boots had features which elevated it to the rank of an art.  Every
particle and speck of last week's mud was scraped and brushed from toe
and heel; new blacking from the packet was carefully mixed and made use
of, regardless of expense.  A coat was laid on and polished; then another
coat for increased blackness; and lastly a third, to give the perfect and
mirror-like jet which the hoped-for rencounter demanded.

It being Christmas-day, the tranter prepared himself with Sunday
particularity.  Loud sousing and snorting noises were heard to proceed
from a tub in the back quarters of the dwelling, proclaiming that he was
there performing his great Sunday wash, lasting half-an-hour, to which
his washings on working-day mornings were mere flashes in the pan.
Vanishing into the outhouse with a large brown towel, and the above-named
bubblings and snortings being carried on for about twenty minutes, the
tranter would appear round the edge of the door, smelling like a summer
fog, and looking as if he had just narrowly escaped a watery grave with
the loss of much of his clothes, having since been weeping bitterly till
his eyes were red; a crystal drop of water hanging ornamentally at the
bottom of each ear, one at the tip of his nose, and others in the form of
spangles about his hair.

After a great deal of crunching upon the sanded stone floor by the feet
of father, son, and grandson as they moved to and fro in these
preparations, the bass-viol and fiddles were taken from their nook, and
the strings examined and screwed a little above concert-pitch, that they
might keep their tone when the service began, to obviate the awkward
contingency of having to retune them at the back of the gallery during a
cough, sneeze, or amen--an inconvenience which had been known to arise in
damp wintry weather.

The three left the door and paced down Mellstock-lane and across the ewe-
lease, bearing under their arms the instruments in faded green-baize
bags, and old brown music-books in their hands; Dick continually finding
himself in advance of the other two, and the tranter moving on with toes
turned outwards to an enormous angle.

At the foot of an incline the church became visible through the north
gate, or 'church hatch,' as it was called here.  Seven agile figures in a
clump were observable beyond, which proved to be the choristers waiting;
sitting on an altar-tomb to pass the time, and letting their heels dangle
against it.  The musicians being now in sight, the youthful party
scampered off and rattled up the old wooden stairs of the gallery like a
regiment of cavalry; the other boys of the parish waiting outside and
observing birds, cats, and other creatures till the vicar entered, when
they suddenly subsided into sober church-goers, and passed down the aisle
with echoing heels.

The gallery of Mellstock Church had a status and sentiment of its own.  A
stranger there was regarded with a feeling altogether differing from that
of the congregation below towards him.  Banished from the nave as an
intruder whom no originality could make interesting, he was received
above as a curiosity that no unfitness could render dull.  The gallery,
too, looked down upon and knew the habits of the nave to its remotest
peculiarity, and had an extensive stock of exclusive information about
it; whilst the nave knew nothing of the gallery folk, as gallery folk,
beyond their loud-sounding minims and chest notes.  Such topics as that
the clerk was always chewing tobacco except at the moment of crying amen;
that he had a dust-hole in his pew; that during the sermon certain young
daughters of the village had left off caring to read anything so mild as
the marriage service for some years, and now regularly studied the one
which chronologically follows it; that a pair of lovers touched fingers
through a knot-hole between their pews in the manner ordained by their
great exemplars, Pyramus and Thisbe; that Mrs. Ledlow, the farmer's wife,
counted her money and reckoned her week's marketing expenses during the
first lesson--all news to those below--were stale subjects here.

Old William sat in the centre of the front row, his violoncello between
his knees and two singers on each hand.  Behind him, on the left, came
the treble singers and Dick; and on the right the tranter and the tenors.
Farther back was old Mail with the altos and supernumeraries.

But before they had taken their places, and whilst they were standing in
a circle at the back of the gallery practising a psalm or two, Dick cast
his eyes over his grandfather's shoulder, and saw the vision of the past
night enter the porch-door as methodically as if she had never been a
vision at all.  A new atmosphere seemed suddenly to be puffed into the
ancient edifice by her movement, which made Dick's body and soul tingle
with novel sensations.  Directed by Shiner, the churchwarden, she
proceeded to the small aisle on the north side of the chancel, a spot now
allotted to a throng of Sunday-school girls, and distinctly visible from
the gallery-front by looking under the curve of the furthermost arch on
that side.

Before this moment the church had seemed comparatively empty--now it was
thronged; and as Miss Fancy rose from her knees and looked around her for
a permanent place in which to deposit herself--finally choosing the
remotest corner--Dick began to breathe more freely the warm new air she
had brought with her; to feel rushings of blood, and to have impressions
that there was a tie between her and himself visible to all the
congregation.

Ever afterwards the young man could recollect individually each part of
the service of that bright Christmas morning, and the trifling
occurrences which took place as its minutes slowly drew along; the duties
of that day dividing themselves by a complete line from the services of
other times.  The tunes they that morning essayed remained with him for
years, apart from all others; also the text; also the appearance of the
layer of dust upon the capitals of the piers; that the holly-bough in the
chancel archway was hung a little out of the centre--all the ideas, in
short, that creep into the mind when reason is only exercising its lowest
activity through the eye.

By chance or by fate, another young man who attended Mellstock Church on
that Christmas morning had towards the end of the service the same
instinctive perception of an interesting presence, in the shape of the
same bright maiden, though his emotion reached a far less developed
stage.  And there was this difference, too, that the person in question
was surprised at his condition, and sedulously endeavoured to reduce
himself to his normal state of mind.  He was the young vicar, Mr.
Maybold.

The music on Christmas mornings was frequently below the standard of
church-performances at other times.  The boys were sleepy from the heavy
exertions of the night; the men were slightly wearied; and now, in
addition to these constant reasons, there was a dampness in the
atmosphere that still further aggravated the evil.  Their strings, from
the recent long exposure to the night air, rose whole semitones, and
snapped with a loud twang at the most silent moment; which necessitated
more retiring than ever to the back of the gallery, and made the gallery
throats quite husky with the quantity of coughing and hemming required
for tuning in.  The vicar looked cross.

When the singing was in progress there was suddenly discovered to be a
strong and shrill reinforcement from some point, ultimately found to be
the school-girls' aisle.  At every attempt it grew bolder and more
distinct.  At the third time of singing, these intrusive feminine voices
were as mighty as those of the regular singers; in fact, the flood of
sound from this quarter assumed such an individuality, that it had a
time, a key, almost a tune of its own, surging upwards when the gallery
plunged downwards, and the reverse.

Now this had never happened before within the memory of man.  The girls,
like the rest of the congregation, had always been humble and respectful
followers of the gallery; singing at sixes and sevens if without gallery
leaders; never interfering with the ordinances of these practised
artists--having no will, union, power, or proclivity except it was given
them from the established choir enthroned above them.

A good deal of desperation became noticeable in the gallery throats and
strings, which continued throughout the musical portion of the service.
Directly the fiddles were laid down, Mr. Penny's spectacles put in their
sheath, and the text had been given out, an indignant whispering began.

"Did ye hear that, souls?" Mr. Penny said, in a groaning breath.

"Brazen-faced hussies!" said Bowman.

"True; why, they were every note as loud as we, fiddles and all, if not
louder!"

"Fiddles and all!" echoed Bowman bitterly.

"Shall anything saucier be found than united 'ooman?" Mr. Spinks
murmured.

"What I want to know is," said the tranter (as if he knew already, but
that civilization required the form of words), "what business people have
to tell maidens to sing like that when they don't sit in a gallery, and
never have entered one in their lives?  That's the question, my sonnies."

"'Tis the gallery have got to sing, all the world knows," said Mr. Penny.
"Why, souls, what's the use o' the ancients spending scores of pounds to
build galleries if people down in the lowest depths of the church sing
like that at a moment's notice?"

"Really, I think we useless ones had better march out of church, fiddles
and all!" said Mr. Spinks, with a laugh which, to a stranger, would have
sounded mild and real.  Only the initiated body of men he addressed could
understand the horrible bitterness of irony that lurked under the quiet
words 'useless ones,' and the ghastliness of the laughter apparently so
natural.

"Never mind!  Let 'em sing too--'twill make it all the louder--hee, hee!"
said Leaf.

"Thomas Leaf, Thomas Leaf!  Where have you lived all your life?" said
grandfather William sternly.

The quailing Leaf tried to look as if he had lived nowhere at all.

"When all's said and done, my sonnies," Reuben said, "there'd have been
no real harm in their singing if they had let nobody hear 'em, and only
jined in now and then."

"None at all," said Mr. Penny.  "But though I don't wish to accuse people
wrongfully, I'd say before my lord judge that I could hear every note o'
that last psalm come from 'em as much as from us--every note as if 'twas
their own."

"Know it! ah, I should think I did know it!" Mr. Spinks was heard to
observe at this moment, without reference to his fellow players--shaking
his head at some idea he seemed to see floating before him, and smiling
as if he were attending a funeral at the time.  "Ah, do I or don't I know
it!"

No one said "Know what?" because all were aware from experience that what
he knew would declare itself in process of time.

"I could fancy last night that we should have some trouble wi' that young
man," said the tranter, pending the continuance of Spinks's speech, and
looking towards the unconscious Mr. Maybold in the pulpit.

"I fancy," said old William, rather severely, "I fancy there's too much
whispering going on to be of any spiritual use to gentle or simple."  Then
folding his lips and concentrating his glance on the vicar, he implied
that none but the ignorant would speak again; and accordingly there was
silence in the gallery, Mr. Spinks's telling speech remaining for ever
unspoken.

Dick had said nothing, and the tranter little, on this episode of the
morning; for Mrs. Dewy at breakfast expressed it as her intention to
invite the youthful leader of the culprits to the small party it was
customary with them to have on Christmas night--a piece of knowledge
which had given a particular brightness to Dick's reflections since he
had received it.  And in the tranter's slightly-cynical nature, party
feeling was weaker than in the other members of the choir, though
friendliness and faithful partnership still sustained in him a hearty
earnestness on their account.



CHAPTER VII: THE TRANTER'S PARTY


During the afternoon unusual activity was seen to prevail about the
precincts of tranter Dewy's house.  The flagstone floor was swept of
dust, and a sprinkling of the finest yellow sand from the innermost
stratum of the adjoining sand-pit lightly scattered thereupon.  Then were
produced large knives and forks, which had been shrouded in darkness and
grease since the last occasion of the kind, and bearing upon their sides,
"Shear-steel, warranted," in such emphatic letters of assurance, that the
warranter's name was not required as further proof, and not given.  The
key was left in the tap of the cider-barrel, instead of being carried in
a pocket.  And finally the tranter had to stand up in the room and let
his wife wheel him round like a turnstile, to see if anything
discreditable was visible in his appearance.

"Stand still till I've been for the scissors," said Mrs. Dewy.

The tranter stood as still as a sentinel at the challenge.

The only repairs necessary were a trimming of one or two whiskers that
had extended beyond the general contour of the mass; a like trimming of a
slightly-frayed edge visible on his shirt-collar; and a final tug at a
grey hair--to all of which operations he submitted in resigned silence,
except the last, which produced a mild "Come, come, Ann," by way of
expostulation.

"Really, Reuben, 'tis quite a disgrace to see such a man," said Mrs.
Dewy, with the severity justifiable in a long-tried companion, giving him
another turn round, and picking several of Smiler's hairs from the
shoulder of his coat.  Reuben's thoughts seemed engaged elsewhere, and he
yawned.  "And the collar of your coat is a shame to behold--so plastered
with dirt, or dust, or grease, or something.  Why, wherever could you
have got it?"

"'Tis my warm nater in summer-time, I suppose.  I always did get in such
a heat when I bustle about."

"Ay, the Dewys always were such a coarse-skinned family.  There's your
brother Bob just as bad--as fat as a porpoise--wi' his low, mean, 'How'st
do, Ann?' whenever he meets me.  I'd 'How'st do' him indeed!  If the sun
only shines out a minute, there be you all streaming in the face--I never
see!"

"If I be hot week-days, I must be hot Sundays."

"If any of the girls should turn after their father 'twill be a bad look-
out for 'em, poor things!  None of my family were sich vulgar sweaters,
not one of 'em.  But, Lord-a-mercy, the Dewys!  I don't know how ever I
cam' into such a family!"

"Your woman's weakness when I asked ye to jine us.  That's how it was I
suppose."  But the tranter appeared to have heard some such words from
his wife before, and hence his answer had not the energy it might have
shown if the inquiry had possessed the charm of novelty.

"You never did look so well in a pair o' trousers as in them," she
continued in the same unimpassioned voice, so that the unfriendly
criticism of the Dewy family seemed to have been more normal than
spontaneous.  "Such a cheap pair as 'twas too.  As big as any man could
wish to have, and lined inside, and double-lined in the lower parts, and
an extra piece of stiffening at the bottom.  And 'tis a nice high cut
that comes up right under your armpits, and there's enough turned down
inside the seams to make half a pair more, besides a piece of cloth left
that will make an honest waistcoat--all by my contriving in buying the
stuff at a bargain, and having it made up under my eye.  It only shows
what may be done by taking a little trouble, and not going straight to
the rascally tailors."

The discourse was cut short by the sudden appearance of Charley on the
scene, with a face and hands of hideous blackness, and a nose like a
guttering candle.  Why, on that particularly cleanly afternoon, he should
have discovered that the chimney-crook and chain from which the hams were
suspended should have possessed more merits and general interest as
playthings than any other articles in the house, is a question for
nursing mothers to decide.  However, the humour seemed to lie in the
result being, as has been seen, that any given player with these articles
was in the long-run daubed with soot.  The last that was seen of Charley
by daylight after this piece of ingenuity was when in the act of
vanishing from his father's presence round the corner of the
house--looking back over his shoulder with an expression of great sin on
his face, like Cain as the Outcast in Bible pictures.

* * * * *

The guests had all assembled, and the tranter's party had reached that
degree of development which accords with ten o'clock P.M. in rural
assemblies.  At that hour the sound of a fiddle in process of tuning was
heard from the inner pantry.

"That's Dick," said the tranter.  "That lad's crazy for a jig."

"Dick!  Now I cannot--really, I cannot have any dancing at all till
Christmas-day is out," said old William emphatically.  "When the clock
ha' done striking twelve, dance as much as ye like."

"Well, I must say there's reason in that, William," said Mrs. Penny.  "If
you do have a party on Christmas-night, 'tis only fair and honourable to
the sky-folk to have it a sit-still party.  Jigging parties be all very
well on the Devil's holidays; but a jigging party looks suspicious now.  O
yes; stop till the clock strikes, young folk--so say I."

It happened that some warm mead accidentally got into Mr. Spinks's head
about this time.

"Dancing," he said, "is a most strengthening, livening, and courting
movement, 'specially with a little beverage added!  And dancing is good.
But why disturb what is ordained, Richard and Reuben, and the company
zhinerally?  Why, I ask, as far as that do go?"

"Then nothing till after twelve," said William.

Though Reuben and his wife ruled on social points, religious questions
were mostly disposed of by the old man, whose firmness on this head quite
counterbalanced a certain weakness in his handling of domestic matters.
The hopes of the younger members of the household were therefore
relegated to a distance of one hour and three-quarters--a result that
took visible shape in them by a remote and listless look about the
eyes--the singing of songs being permitted in the interim.

At five minutes to twelve the soft tuning was again heard in the back
quarters; and when at length the clock had whizzed forth the last stroke,
Dick appeared ready primed, and the instruments were boldly handled; old
William very readily taking the bass-viol from its accustomed nail, and
touching the strings as irreligiously as could be desired.

The country-dance called the 'Triumph, or Follow my Lover,' was the
figure with which they opened.  The tranter took for his partner Mrs.
Penny, and Mrs. Dewy was chosen by Mr. Penny, who made so much of his
limited height by a judicious carriage of the head, straightening of the
back, and important flashes of his spectacle-glasses, that he seemed
almost as tall as the tranter.  Mr. Shiner, age about thirty-five, farmer
and church-warden, a character principally composed of a crimson stare,
vigorous breath, and a watch-chain, with a mouth hanging on a dark smile
but never smiling, had come quite willingly to the party, and showed a
wondrous obliviousness of all his antics on the previous night.  But the
comely, slender, prettily-dressed prize Fancy Day fell to Dick's lot, in
spite of some private machinations of the farmer, for the reason that Mr.
Shiner, as a richer man, had shown too much assurance in asking the
favour, whilst Dick had been duly courteous.

We gain a good view of our heroine as she advances to her place in the
ladies' line.  She belonged to the taller division of middle height.
Flexibility was her first characteristic, by which she appeared to enjoy
the most easeful rest when she was in gliding motion.  Her dark
eyes--arched by brows of so keen, slender, and soft a curve, that they
resembled nothing so much as two slurs in music--showed primarily a
bright sparkle each.  This was softened by a frequent thoughtfulness, yet
not so frequent as to do away, for more than a few minutes at a time,
with a certain coquettishness; which in its turn was never so decided as
to banish honesty.  Her lips imitated her brows in their clearly-cut
outline and softness of bend; and her nose was well shaped--which is
saying a great deal, when it is remembered that there are a hundred
pretty mouths and eyes for one pretty nose.  Add to this, plentiful knots
of dark-brown hair, a gauzy dress of white, with blue facings; and the
slightest idea may be gained of the young maiden who showed, amidst the
rest of the dancing-ladies, like a flower among vegetables.  And so the
dance proceeded.  Mr. Shiner, according to the interesting rule laid
down, deserted his own partner, and made off down the middle with this
fair one of Dick's--the pair appearing from the top of the room like two
persons tripping down a lane to be married.  Dick trotted behind with
what was intended to be a look of composure, but which was, in fact, a
rather silly expression of feature--implying, with too much earnestness,
that such an elopement could not be tolerated.  Then they turned and came
back, when Dick grew more rigid around his mouth, and blushed with
ingenuous ardour as he joined hands with the rival and formed the arch
over his lady's head; which presumably gave the figure its name;
relinquishing her again at setting to partners, when Mr. Shiner's new
chain quivered in every link, and all the loose flesh upon the
tranter--who here came into action again--shook like jelly.  Mrs. Penny,
being always rather concerned for her personal safety when she danced
with the tranter, fixed her face to a chronic smile of timidity the whole
time it lasted--a peculiarity which filled her features with wrinkles,
and reduced her eyes to little straight lines like hyphens, as she jigged
up and down opposite him; repeating in her own person not only his proper
movements, but also the minor flourishes which the richness of the
tranter's imagination led him to introduce from time to time--an
imitation which had about it something of slavish obedience, not unmixed
with fear.

The ear-rings of the ladies now flung themselves wildly about, turning
violent summersaults, banging this way and that, and then swinging
quietly against the ears sustaining them.  Mrs. Crumpler--a heavy woman,
who, for some reason which nobody ever thought worth inquiry, danced in a
clean apron--moved so smoothly through the figure that her feet were
never seen; conveying to imaginative minds the idea that she rolled on
castors.

Minute after minute glided by, and the party reached the period when
ladies' back-hair begins to look forgotten and dissipated; when a
perceptible dampness makes itself apparent upon the faces even of
delicate girls--a ghastly dew having for some time rained from the
features of their masculine partners; when skirts begin to be torn out of
their gathers; when elderly people, who have stood up to please their
juniors, begin to feel sundry small tremblings in the region of the
knees, and to wish the interminable dance was at Jericho; when (at
country parties of the thorough sort) waistcoats begin to be unbuttoned,
and when the fiddlers' chairs have been wriggled, by the frantic bowing
of their occupiers, to a distance of about two feet from where they
originally stood.

Fancy was dancing with Mr. Shiner.  Dick knew that Fancy, by the law of
good manners, was bound to dance as pleasantly with one partner as with
another; yet he could not help suggesting to himself that she need not
have put quite so much spirit into her steps, nor smiled quite so
frequently whilst in the farmer's hands.

"I'm afraid you didn't cast off," said Dick mildly to Mr. Shiner, before
the latter man's watch-chain had done vibrating from a recent whirl.

Fancy made a motion of accepting the correction; but her partner took no
notice, and proceeded with the next movement, with an affectionate bend
towards her.

"That Shiner's too fond of her," the young man said to himself as he
watched them.  They came to the top again, Fancy smiling warmly towards
her partner, and went to their places.

"Mr. Shiner, you didn't cast off," said Dick, for want of something else
to demolish him with; casting off himself, and being put out at the
farmer's irregularity.

"Perhaps I sha'n't cast off for any man," said Mr. Shiner.

"I think you ought to, sir."

Dick's partner, a young lady of the name of Lizzy--called Lizz for
short--tried to mollify.

"I can't say that I myself have much feeling for casting off," she said.

"Nor I," said Mrs. Penny, following up the argument, "especially if a
friend and neighbour is set against it.  Not but that 'tis a terrible
tasty thing in good hands and well done; yes, indeed, so say I."

"All I meant was," said Dick, rather sorry that he had spoken
correctingly to a guest, "that 'tis in the dance; and a man has hardly
any right to hack and mangle what was ordained by the regular
dance-maker, who, I daresay, got his living by making 'em, and thought of
nothing else all his life."

"I don't like casting off: then very well; I cast off for no dance-maker
that ever lived."

Dick now appeared to be doing mental arithmetic, the act being really an
effort to present to himself, in an abstract form, how far an argument
with a formidable rival ought to be carried, when that rival was his
mother's guest.  The dead-lock was put an end to by the stamping arrival
up the middle of the tranter, who, despising minutiae on principle,
started a theme of his own.

"I assure you, neighbours," he said, "the heat of my frame no tongue can
tell!"  He looked around and endeavoured to give, by a forcible gaze of
self-sympathy, some faint idea of the truth.

Mrs. Dewy formed one of the next couple.

"Yes," she said, in an auxiliary tone, "Reuben always was such a hot
man."

Mrs. Penny implied the species of sympathy that such a class of
affliction required, by trying to smile and to look grieved at the same
time.

"If he only walk round the garden of a Sunday morning, his shirt-collar
is as limp as no starch at all," continued Mrs. Dewy, her countenance
lapsing parenthetically into a housewifely expression of concern at the
reminiscence.

"Come, come, you women-folk; 'tis hands across--come, come!" said the
tranter; and the conversation ceased for the present.



CHAPTER VIII: THEY DANCE MORE WILDLY


Dick had at length secured Fancy for that most delightful of
country-dances, opening with six-hands-round.

"Before we begin," said the tranter, "my proposal is, that 'twould be a
right and proper plan for every mortal man in the dance to pull off his
jacket, considering the heat."

"Such low notions as you have, Reuben!  Nothing but strip will go down
with you when you are a-dancing.  Such a hot man as he is!"

"Well, now, look here, my sonnies," he argued to his wife, whom he often
addressed in the plural masculine for economy of epithet merely; "I don't
see that.  You dance and get hot as fire; therefore you lighten your
clothes.  Isn't that nature and reason for gentle and simple?  If I strip
by myself and not necessary, 'tis rather pot-housey I own; but if we
stout chaps strip one and all, why, 'tis the native manners of the
country, which no man can gainsay?  Hey--what did you say, my sonnies?"

"Strip we will!" said the three other heavy men who were in the dance;
and their coats were accordingly taken off and hung in the passage,
whence the four sufferers from heat soon reappeared, marching in close
column, with flapping shirt-sleeves, and having, as common to them all, a
general glance of being now a match for any man or dancer in England or
Ireland.  Dick, fearing to lose ground in Fancy's good opinion, retained
his coat like the rest of the thinner men; and Mr. Shiner did the same
from superior knowledge.

And now a further phase of revelry had disclosed itself.  It was the time
of night when a guest may write his name in the dust upon the tables and
chairs, and a bluish mist pervades the atmosphere, becoming a distinct
halo round the candles; when people's nostrils, wrinkles, and crevices in
general, seem to be getting gradually plastered up; when the very
fiddlers as well as the dancers get red in the face, the dancers having
advanced further still towards incandescence, and entered the cadaverous
phase; the fiddlers no longer sit down, but kick back their chairs and
saw madly at the strings, with legs firmly spread and eyes closed,
regardless of the visible world.  Again and again did Dick share his
Love's hand with another man, and wheel round; then, more delightfully,
promenade in a circle with her all to himself, his arm holding her waist
more firmly each time, and his elbow getting further and further behind
her back, till the distance reached was rather noticeable; and, most
blissful, swinging to places shoulder to shoulder, her breath curling
round his neck like a summer zephyr that had strayed from its proper
date.  Threading the couples one by one they reached the bottom, when
there arose in Dick's mind a minor misery lest the tune should end before
they could work their way to the top again, and have anew the same
exciting run down through.  Dick's feelings on actually reaching the top
in spite of his doubts were supplemented by a mortal fear that the
fiddling might even stop at this supreme moment; which prompted him to
convey a stealthy whisper to the far-gone musicians, to the effect that
they were not to leave off till he and his partner had reached the bottom
of the dance once more, which remark was replied to by the nearest of
those convulsed and quivering men by a private nod to the anxious young
man between two semiquavers of the tune, and a simultaneous "All right,
ay, ay," without opening the eyes.  Fancy was now held so closely that
Dick and she were practically one person.  The room became to Dick like a
picture in a dream; all that he could remember of it afterwards being the
look of the fiddlers going to sleep, as humming-tops sleep, by increasing
their motion and hum, together with the figures of grandfather James and
old Simon Crumpler sitting by the chimney-corner, talking and nodding in
dumb-show, and beating the air to their emphatic sentences like people
near a threshing machine.

The dance ended.  "Piph-h-h-h!" said tranter Dewy, blowing out his breath
in the very finest stream of vapour that a man's lips could form.  "A
regular tightener, that one, sonnies!"  He wiped his forehead, and went
to the cider and ale mugs on the table.

"Well!" said Mrs. Penny, flopping into a chair, "my heart haven't been in
such a thumping state of uproar since I used to sit up on old Midsummer-
eves to see who my husband was going to be."

"And that's getting on for a good few years ago now, from what I've heard
you tell," said the tranter, without lifting his eyes from the cup he was
filling.  Being now engaged in the business of handing round
refreshments, he was warranted in keeping his coat off still, though the
other heavy men had resumed theirs.

"And a thing I never expected would come to pass, if you'll believe me,
came to pass then," continued Mrs. Penny.  "Ah, the first spirit ever I
see on a Midsummer-eve was a puzzle to me when he appeared, a hard
puzzle, so say I!"

"So I should have fancied," said Elias Spinks.

"Yes," said Mrs. Penny, throwing her glance into past times, and talking
on in a running tone of complacent abstraction, as if a listener were not
a necessity.  "Yes; never was I in such a taking as on that Midsummer-
eve!  I sat up, quite determined to see if John Wildway was going to
marry me or no.  I put the bread-and-cheese and beer quite ready, as the
witch's book ordered, and I opened the door, and I waited till the clock
struck twelve, my nerves all alive and so strained that I could feel
every one of 'em twitching like bell-wires.  Yes, sure! and when the
clock had struck, lo and behold, I could see through the door a little
small man in the lane wi' a shoemaker's apron on."

Here Mr. Penny stealthily enlarged himself half an inch.

"Now, John Wildway," Mrs. Penny continued, "who courted me at that time,
was a shoemaker, you see, but he was a very fair-sized man, and I
couldn't believe that any such a little small man had anything to do wi'
me, as anybody might.  But on he came, and crossed the threshold--not
John, but actually the same little small man in the shoemaker's apron--"

"You needn't be so mighty particular about little and small!" said her
husband.

"In he walks, and down he sits, and O my goodness me, didn't I flee
upstairs, body and soul hardly hanging together!  Well, to cut a long
story short, by-long and by-late, John Wildway and I had a miff and
parted; and lo and behold, the coming man came!  Penny asked me if I'd go
snacks with him, and afore I knew what I was about a'most, the thing was
done."

"I've fancied you never knew better in your life; but I mid be mistaken,"
said Mr. Penny in a murmur.

After Mrs. Penny had spoken, there being no new occupation for her eyes,
she still let them stay idling on the past scenes just related, which
were apparently visible to her in the centre of the room.  Mr. Penny's
remark received no reply.

During this discourse the tranter and his wife might have been observed
standing in an unobtrusive corner, in mysterious closeness to each other,
a just perceptible current of intelligence passing from each to each,
which had apparently no relation whatever to the conversation of their
guests, but much to their sustenance.  A conclusion of some kind having
at length been drawn, the palpable confederacy of man and wife was once
more obliterated, the tranter marching off into the pantry, humming a
tune that he couldn't quite recollect, and then breaking into the words
of a song of which he could remember about one line and a quarter.  Mrs.
Dewy spoke a few words about preparations for a bit of supper.

That elder portion of the company which loved eating and drinking put on
a look to signify that till this moment they had quite forgotten that it
was customary to expect suppers on these occasions; going even further
than this politeness of feature, and starting irrelevant subjects, the
exceeding flatness and forced tone of which rather betrayed their object.
The younger members said they were quite hungry, and that supper would be
delightful though it was so late.

Good luck attended Dick's love-passes during the meal.  He sat next
Fancy, and had the thrilling pleasure of using permanently a glass which
had been taken by Fancy in mistake; of letting the outer edge of the sole
of his boot touch the lower verge of her skirt; and to add to these
delights the cat, which had lain unobserved in her lap for several
minutes, crept across into his own, touching him with fur that had
touched her hand a moment before.  There were, besides, some little
pleasures in the shape of helping her to vegetable she didn't want, and
when it had nearly alighted on her plate taking it across for his own
use, on the plea of waste not, want not.  He also, from time to time,
sipped sweet sly glances at her profile; noticing the set of her head,
the curve of her throat, and other artistic properties of the lively
goddess, who the while kept up a rather free, not to say too free,
conversation with Mr. Shiner sitting opposite; which, after some uneasy
criticism, and much shifting of argument backwards and forwards in Dick's
mind, he decided not to consider of alarming significance.

"A new music greets our ears now," said Miss Fancy, alluding, with the
sharpness that her position as village sharpener demanded, to the
contrast between the rattle of knives and forks and the late notes of the
fiddlers.

"Ay; and I don't know but what 'tis sweeter in tone when you get above
forty," said the tranter; "except, in faith, as regards father there.
Never such a mortal man as he for tunes.  They do move his soul; don't
'em, father?"

The eldest Dewy smiled across from his distant chair an assent to
Reuben's remark.

"Spaking of being moved in soul," said Mr. Penny, "I shall never forget
the first time I heard the 'Dead March.'  'Twas at poor Corp'l Nineman's
funeral at Casterbridge.  It fairly made my hair creep and fidget about
like a vlock of sheep--ah, it did, souls!  And when they had done, and
the last trump had sounded, and the guns was fired over the dead hero's
grave, a' icy-cold drop o' moist sweat hung upon my forehead, and another
upon my jawbone.  Ah, 'tis a very solemn thing!"

"Well, as to father in the corner there," the tranter said, pointing to
old William, who was in the act of filling his mouth; "he'd starve to
death for music's sake now, as much as when he was a boy-chap of
fifteen."

"Truly, now," said Michael Mail, clearing the corner of his throat in the
manner of a man who meant to be convincing; "there's a friendly tie of
some sort between music and eating."  He lifted the cup to his mouth, and
drank himself gradually backwards from a perpendicular position to a
slanting one, during which time his looks performed a circuit from the
wall opposite him to the ceiling overhead.  Then clearing the other
corner of his throat: "Once I was a-setting in the little kitchen of the
Dree Mariners at Casterbridge, having a bit of dinner, and a brass band
struck up in the street.  Such a beautiful band as that were!  I was
setting eating fried liver and lights, I well can mind--ah, I was! and to
save my life, I couldn't help chawing to the tune.  Band played six-eight
time; six-eight chaws I, willynilly.  Band plays common; common time went
my teeth among the liver and lights as true as a hair.  Beautiful 'twere!
Ah, I shall never forget that there band!"

"That's as tuneful a thing as ever I heard of," said grandfather James,
with the absent gaze which accompanies profound criticism.

"I don't like Michael's tuneful stories then," said Mrs. Dewy.  "They are
quite coarse to a person o' decent taste."

Old Michael's mouth twitched here and there, as if he wanted to smile but
didn't know where to begin, which gradually settled to an expression that
it was not displeasing for a nice woman like the tranter's wife to
correct him.

"Well, now," said Reuben, with decisive earnestness, "that sort o' coarse
touch that's so upsetting to Ann's feelings is to my mind a
recommendation; for it do always prove a story to be true.  And for the
same reason, I like a story with a bad moral.  My sonnies, all true
stories have a coarse touch or a bad moral, depend upon't.  If the story-
tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd
ha' troubled to invent parables?"  Saying this the tranter arose to fetch
a new stock of cider, ale, mead, and home-made wines.

Mrs. Dewy sighed, and appended a remark (ostensibly behind her husband's
back, though that the words should reach his ears distinctly was
understood by both): "Such a man as Dewy is!  Nobody do know the trouble
I have to keep that man barely respectable.  And did you ever hear
too--just now at supper-time--talking about 'taties' with Michael in such
a work-folk way.  Well, 'tis what I was never brought up to!  With our
family 'twas never less than 'taters,' and very often 'pertatoes'
outright; mother was so particular and nice with us girls there was no
family in the parish that kept them selves up more than we."

The hour of parting came.  Fancy could not remain for the night, because
she had engaged a woman to wait up for her.  She disappeared temporarily
from the flagging party of dancers, and then came downstairs wrapped up
and looking altogether a different person from whom she had been
hitherto, in fact (to Dick's sadness and disappointment), a woman
somewhat reserved and of a phlegmatic temperament--nothing left in her of
the romping girl that she had seemed but a short quarter-hour before, who
had not minded the weight of Dick's hand upon her waist, nor shirked the
purlieus of the mistletoe.

"What a difference!" thought the young man--hoary cynic pro tem.  "What a
miserable deceiving difference between the manners of a maid's life at
dancing times and at others!  Look at this lovely Fancy!  Through the
whole past evening touchable, squeezeable--even kissable!  For whole half-
hours I held her so chose to me that not a sheet of paper could have been
shipped between us; and I could feel her heart only just outside my own,
her life beating on so close to mine, that I was aware of every breath in
it.  A flit is made upstairs--a hat and a cloak put on--and I no more
dare to touch her than--"  Thought failed him, and he returned to
realities.

But this was an endurable misery in comparison with what followed.  Mr.
Shiner and his watch-chain, taking the intrusive advantage that ardent
bachelors who are going homeward along the same road as a pretty young
woman always do take of that circumstance, came forward to assure
Fancy--with a total disregard of Dick's emotions, and in tones which were
certainly not frigid--that he (Shiner) was not the man to go to bed
before seeing his Lady Fair safe within her own door--not he, nobody
should say he was that;--and that he would not leave her side an inch
till the thing was done--drown him if he would.  The proposal was
assented to by Miss Day, in Dick's foreboding judgment, with one
degree--or at any rate, an appreciable fraction of a degree--of warmth
beyond that required by a disinterested desire for protection from the
dangers of the night.

All was over; and Dick surveyed the chair she had last occupied, looking
now like a setting from which the gem has been torn.  There stood her
glass, and the romantic teaspoonful of elder wine at the bottom that she
couldn't drink by trying ever so hard, in obedience to the mighty
arguments of the tranter (his hand coming down upon her shoulder the
while, like a Nasmyth hammer); but the drinker was there no longer.  There
were the nine or ten pretty little crumbs she had left on her plate; but
the eater was no more seen.

There seemed a disagreeable closeness of relationship between himself and
the members of his family, now that they were left alone again face to
face.  His father seemed quite offensive for appearing to be in just as
high spirits as when the guests were there; and as for grandfather James
(who had not yet left), he was quite fiendish in being rather glad they
were gone.

"Really," said the tranter, in a tone of placid satisfaction, "I've had
so little time to attend to myself all the evenen, that I mean to enjoy a
quiet meal now!  A slice of this here ham--neither too fat nor too
lean--so; and then a drop of this vinegar and pickles--there, that's
it--and I shall be as fresh as a lark again!  And to tell the truth, my
sonny, my inside has been as dry as a lime-basket all night."

"I like a party very well once in a while," said Mrs. Dewy, leaving off
the adorned tones she had been bound to use throughout the evening, and
returning to the natural marriage voice; "but, Lord, 'tis such a sight of
heavy work next day!  What with the dirty plates, and knives and forks,
and dust and smother, and bits kicked off your furniture, and I don't
know what all, why a body could a'most wish there were no such things as
Christmases . . . Ah-h dear!" she yawned, till the clock in the corner
had ticked several beats.  She cast her eyes round upon the displaced,
dust-laden furniture, and sank down overpowered at the sight.

"Well, I be getting all right by degrees, thank the Lord for't!" said the
tranter cheerfully through a mangled mass of ham and bread, without
lifting his eyes from his plate, and chopping away with his knife and
fork as if he were felling trees.  "Ann, you may as well go on to bed at
once, and not bide there making such sleepy faces; you look as
long-favoured as a fiddle, upon my life, Ann.  There, you must be wearied
out, 'tis true.  I'll do the doors and draw up the clock; and you go on,
or you'll be as white as a sheet to-morrow."

"Ay; I don't know whether I shan't or no."  The matron passed her hand
across her eyes to brush away the film of sleep till she got upstairs.

Dick wondered how it was that when people were married they could be so
blind to romance; and was quite certain that if he ever took to wife that
dear impossible Fancy, he and she would never be so dreadfully practical
and undemonstrative of the Passion as his father and mother were.  The
most extraordinary thing was, that all the fathers and mothers he knew
were just as undemonstrative as his own.



CHAPTER IX: DICK CALLS AT THE SCHOOL


The early days of the year drew on, and Fancy, having spent the holiday
weeks at home, returned again to Mellstock.

Every spare minute of the week following her return was used by Dick in
accidentally passing the schoolhouse in his journeys about the
neighbourhood; but not once did she make herself visible.  A handkerchief
belonging to her had been providentially found by his mother in clearing
the rooms the day after that of the dance; and by much contrivance Dick
got it handed over to him, to leave with her at any time he should be
near the school after her return.  But he delayed taking the extreme
measure of calling with it lest, had she really no sentiment of interest
in him, it might be regarded as a slightly absurd errand, the reason
guessed; and the sense of the ludicrous, which was rather keen in her, do
his dignity considerable injury in her eyes; and what she thought of him,
even apart from the question of her loving, was all the world to him now.

But the hour came when the patience of love at twenty-one could endure no
longer.  One Saturday he approached the school with a mild air of
indifference, and had the satisfaction of seeing the object of his quest
at the further end of her garden, trying, by the aid of a spade and
gloves, to root a bramble that had intruded itself there.

He disguised his feelings from some suspicious-looking cottage-windows
opposite by endeavouring to appear like a man in a great hurry of
business, who wished to leave the handkerchief and have done with such
trifling errands.

This endeavour signally failed; for on approaching the gate he found it
locked to keep the children, who were playing 'cross-dadder' in the
front, from running into her private grounds.

She did not see him; and he could only think of one thing to be done,
which was to shout her name.

"Miss Day!"

The words were uttered with a jerk and a look meant to imply to the
cottages opposite that he was now simply one who liked shouting as a
pleasant way of passing his time, without any reference to persons in
gardens.  The name died away, and the unconscious Miss Day continued
digging and pulling as before.

He screwed himself up to enduring the cottage-windows yet more stoically,
and shouted again.  Fancy took no notice whatever.

He shouted the third time, with desperate vehemence, turning suddenly
about and retiring a little distance, as if it were by no means for his
own pleasure that he had come.

This time she heard him, came down the garden, and entered the school at
the back.  Footsteps echoed across the interior, the door opened, and
three-quarters of the blooming young schoolmistress's face and figure
stood revealed before him; a slice on her left-hand side being cut off by
the edge of the door.  Having surveyed and recognized him, she came to
the gate.

At sight of him had the pink of her cheeks increased, lessened, or did it
continue to cover its normal area of ground?  It was a question meditated
several hundreds of times by her visitor in after-hours--the meditation,
after wearying involutions, always ending in one way, that it was
impossible to say.

"Your handkerchief: Miss Day: I called with."  He held it out
spasmodically and awkwardly.  "Mother found it: under a chair."

"O, thank you very much for bringing it, Mr. Dewy.  I couldn't think
where I had dropped it."

Now Dick, not being an experienced lover--indeed, never before having
been engaged in the practice of love-making at all, except in a small
schoolboy way--could not take advantage of the situation; and out came
the blunder, which afterwards cost him so many bitter moments and a
sleepless night:-

"Good morning, Miss Day."

"Good morning, Mr. Dewy."

The gate was closed; she was gone; and Dick was standing outside,
unchanged in his condition from what he had been before he called.  Of
course the Angel was not to blame--a young woman living alone in a house
could not ask him indoors unless she had known him better--he should have
kept her outside before floundering into that fatal farewell.  He wished
that before he called he had realized more fully than he did the pleasure
of being about to call; and turned away.




PART THE SECOND--SPRING


CHAPTER I: PASSING BY THE SCHOOL


It followed that, as the spring advanced, Dick walked abroad much more
frequently than had hitherto been usual with him, and was continually
finding that his nearest way to or from home lay by the road which
skirted the garden of the school.  The first-fruits of his perseverance
were that, on turning the angle on the nineteenth journey by that track,
he saw Miss Fancy's figure, clothed in a dark-gray dress, looking from a
high open window upon the crown of his hat.  The friendly greeting
resulting from this rencounter was considered so valuable an elixir that
Dick passed still oftener; and by the time he had almost trodden a little
path under the fence where never a path was before, he was rewarded with
an actual meeting face to face on the open road before her gate.  This
brought another meeting, and another, Fancy faintly showing by her
bearing that it was a pleasure to her of some kind to see him there; but
the sort of pleasure she derived, whether exultation at the hope her
exceeding fairness inspired, or the true feeling which was alone Dick's
concern, he could not anyhow decide, although he meditated on her every
little movement for hours after it was made.



CHAPTER II: A MEETING OF THE QUIRE


It was the evening of a fine spring day.  The descending sun appeared as
a nebulous blaze of amber light, its outline being lost in cloudy masses
hanging round it, like wild locks of hair.

The chief members of Mellstock parish choir were standing in a group in
front of Mr. Penny's workshop in the lower village.  They were all
brightly illuminated, and each was backed up by a shadow as long as a
steeple; the lowness of the source of light rendering the brims of their
hats of no use at all as a protection to the eyes.

Mr. Penny's was the last house in that part of the parish, and stood in a
hollow by the roadside so that cart-wheels and horses' legs were about
level with the sill of his shop-window.  This was low and wide, and was
open from morning till evening, Mr. Penny himself being invariably seen
working inside, like a framed portrait of a shoemaker by some modern
Moroni.  He sat facing the road, with a boot on his knees and the awl in
his hand, only looking up for a moment as he stretched out his arms and
bent forward at the pull, when his spectacles flashed in the passer's
face with a shine of flat whiteness, and then returned again to the boot
as usual.  Rows of lasts, small and large, stout and slender, covered the
wall which formed the background, in the extreme shadow of which a kind
of dummy was seen sitting, in the shape of an apprentice with a string
tied round his hair (probably to keep it out of his eyes).  He smiled at
remarks that floated in from without, but was never known to answer them
in Mr. Penny's presence.  Outside the window the upper-leather of a
Wellington-boot was usually hung, pegged to a board as if to dry.  No
sign was over his door; in fact--as with old banks and mercantile
houses--advertising in any shape was scorned, and it would have been felt
as beneath his dignity to paint up, for the benefit of strangers, the
name of an establishment whose trade came solely by connection based on
personal respect.

His visitors now came and stood on the outside of his window, sometimes
leaning against the sill, sometimes moving a pace or two backwards and
forwards in front of it.  They talked with deliberate gesticulations to
Mr. Penny, enthroned in the shadow of the interior.

"I do like a man to stick to men who be in the same line o' life--o'
Sundays, anyway--that I do so."

"'Tis like all the doings of folk who don't know what a day's work is,
that's what I say."

"My belief is the man's not to blame; 'tis she--she's the bitter weed!"

"No, not altogether.  He's a poor gawk-hammer.  Look at his sermon
yesterday."

"His sermon was well enough, a very good guessable sermon, only he
couldn't put it into words and speak it.  That's all was the matter wi'
the sermon.  He hadn't been able to get it past his pen."

"Well--ay, the sermon might have been good; for, 'tis true, the sermon of
Old Eccl'iastes himself lay in Eccl'iastes's ink-bottle afore he got it
out."

Mr. Penny, being in the act of drawing the last stitch tight, could
afford time to look up and throw in a word at this point.

"He's no spouter--that must be said, 'a b'lieve."

"'Tis a terrible muddle sometimes with the man, as far as spout do go,"
said Spinks.

"Well, we'll say nothing about that," the tranter answered; "for I don't
believe 'twill make a penneth o' difference to we poor martels here or
hereafter whether his sermons be good or bad, my sonnies."

Mr. Penny made another hole with his awl, pushed in the thread, and
looked up and spoke again at the extension of arms.

"'Tis his goings-on, souls, that's what it is."  He clenched his features
for an Herculean addition to the ordinary pull, and continued, "The first
thing he done when he came here was to be hot and strong about church
business."

"True," said Spinks; "that was the very first thing he done."

Mr. Penny, having now been offered the ear of the assembly, accepted it,
ceased stitching, swallowed an unimportant quantity of air as if it were
a pill, and continued:

"The next thing he do do is to think about altering the church, until he
found 'twould be a matter o' cost and what not, and then not to think no
more about it."

"True: that was the next thing he done."

"And the next thing was to tell the young chaps that they were not on no
account to put their hats in the christening font during service."

"True."

"And then 'twas this, and then 'twas that, and now 'tis--"

Words were not forcible enough to conclude the sentence, and Mr. Penny
gave a huge pull to signify the concluding word.

"Now 'tis to turn us out of the quire neck and crop," said the tranter
after an interval of half a minute, not by way of explaining the pause
and pull, which had been quite understood, but as a means of keeping the
subject well before the meeting.

Mrs. Penny came to the door at this point in the discussion.  Like all
good wives, however much she was inclined to play the Tory to her
husband's Whiggism, and vice versa, in times of peace, she coalesced with
him heartily enough in time of war.

"It must be owned he's not all there," she replied in a general way to
the fragments of talk she had heard from indoors.  "Far below poor Mr.
Grinham" (the late vicar).

"Ay, there was this to be said for he, that you were quite sure he'd
never come mumbudgeting to see ye, just as you were in the middle of your
work, and put you out with his fuss and trouble about ye."

"Never.  But as for this new Mr. Maybold, though he mid be a very well-
intending party in that respect, he's unbearable; for as to sifting your
cinders, scrubbing your floors, or emptying your slops, why, you can't do
it.  I assure you I've not been able to empt them for several days,
unless I throw 'em up the chimley or out of winder; for as sure as the
sun you meet him at the door, coming to ask how you are, and 'tis such a
confusing thing to meet a gentleman at the door when ye are in the mess
o' washing."

"'Tis only for want of knowing better, poor gentleman," said the tranter.
"His meaning's good enough.  Ay, your pa'son comes by fate: 'tis heads or
tails, like pitch-halfpenny, and no choosing; so we must take en as he
is, my sonnies, and thank God he's no worse, I suppose."

"I fancy I've seen him look across at Miss Day in a warmer way than
Christianity asked for," said Mrs. Penny musingly; "but I don't quite
like to say it."

"O no; there's nothing in that," said grandfather William.

"If there's nothing, we shall see nothing," Mrs. Penny replied, in the
tone of a woman who might possibly have private opinions still.

"Ah, Mr. Grinham was the man!" said Bowman.  "Why, he never troubled us
wi' a visit from year's end to year's end.  You might go anywhere, do
anything: you'd be sure never to see him."

"Yes, he was a right sensible pa'son," said Michael.  "He never entered
our door but once in his life, and that was to tell my poor wife--ay,
poor soul, dead and gone now, as we all shall!--that as she was such a'
old aged person, and lived so far from the church, he didn't at all
expect her to come any more to the service."

"And 'a was a very jinerous gentleman about choosing the psalms and hymns
o' Sundays.  'Confound ye,' says he, 'blare and scrape what ye will, but
don't bother me!'"

"And he was a very honourable man in not wanting any of us to come and
hear him if we were all on-end for a jaunt or spree, or to bring the
babies to be christened if they were inclined to squalling.  There's good
in a man's not putting a parish to unnecessary trouble."

"And there's this here man never letting us have a bit o' peace; but
keeping on about being good and upright till 'tis carried to such a pitch
as I never see the like afore nor since!"

"No sooner had he got here than he found the font wouldn't hold water, as
it hadn't for years off and on; and when I told him that Mr. Grinham
never minded it, but used to spet upon his vinger and christen 'em just
as well, 'a said, 'Good Heavens!  Send for a workman immediate.  What
place have I come to!'  Which was no compliment to us, come to that."

"Still, for my part," said old William, "though he's arrayed against us,
I like the hearty borussnorus ways of the new pa'son."

"You, ready to die for the quire," said Bowman reproachfully, "to stick
up for the quire's enemy, William!"

"Nobody will feel the loss of our church-work so much as I," said the old
man firmly; "that you d'all know.  I've a-been in the quire man and boy
ever since I was a chiel of eleven.  But for all that 'tisn't in me to
call the man a bad man, because I truly and sincerely believe en to be a
good young feller."

Some of the youthful sparkle that used to reside there animated William's
eye as he uttered the words, and a certain nobility of aspect was also
imparted to him by the setting sun, which gave him a Titanic shadow at
least thirty feet in length, stretching away to the east in outlines of
imposing magnitude, his head finally terminating upon the trunk of a
grand old oak-tree.

"Mayble's a hearty feller enough," the tranter replied, "and will spak to
you be you dirty or be you clane.  The first time I met en was in a
drong, and though 'a didn't know me no more than the dead, 'a passed the
time of day.  'D'ye do?' he said, says he, nodding his head.  'A fine
day.'  Then the second time I met en was full-buff in town street, when
my breeches were tore into a long strent by getting through a copse of
thorns and brimbles for a short cut home-along; and not wanting to
disgrace the man by spaking in that state, I fixed my eye on the
weathercock to let en pass me as a stranger.  But no: 'How d'ye do,
Reuben?' says he, right hearty, and shook my hand.  If I'd been dressed
in silver spangles from top to toe, the man couldn't have been civiller."

At this moment Dick was seen coming up the village-street, and they
turned and watched him.



CHAPTER III: A TURN IN THE DISCUSSION


"I'm afraid Dick's a lost man," said the tranter.

"What?--no!" said Mail, implying by his manner that it was a far commoner
thing for his ears to report what was not said than that his judgment
should be at fault.

"Ay," said the tranter, still gazing at Dick's unconscious advance.  "I
don't at all like what I see!  There's too many o' them looks out of the
winder without noticing anything; too much shining of boots; too much
peeping round corners; too much looking at the clock; telling about
clever things she did till you be sick of it; and then upon a hint to
that effect a horrible silence about her.  I've walked the path once in
my life and know the country, neighbours; and Dick's a lost man!"  The
tranter turned a quarter round and smiled a smile of miserable satire at
the setting new moon, which happened to catch his eye.

The others became far too serious at this announcement to allow them to
speak; and they still regarded Dick in the distance.

"'Twas his mother's fault," the tranter continued, "in asking the young
woman to our party last Christmas.  When I eyed the blue frock and light
heels o' the maid, I had my thoughts directly.  'God bless thee, Dicky my
sonny,' I said to myself; 'there's a delusion for thee!'"

"They seemed to be rather distant in manner last Sunday, I thought?" Mail
tentatively observed, as became one who was not a member of the family.

"Ay, that's a part of the zickness.  Distance belongs to it, slyness
belongs to it, queerest things on earth belongs to it!  There, 'tmay as
well come early as late s'far as I know.  The sooner begun, the sooner
over; for come it will."

"The question I ask is," said Mr. Spinks, connecting into one thread the
two subjects of discourse, as became a man learned in rhetoric, and
beating with his hand in a way which signified that the manner rather
than the matter of his speech was to be observed, "how did Mr. Maybold
know she could play the organ?  You know we had it from her own lips, as
far as lips go, that she has never, first or last, breathed such a thing
to him; much less that she ever would play."

In the midst of this puzzle Dick joined the party, and the news which had
caused such a convulsion among the ancient musicians was unfolded to him.
"Well," he said, blushing at the allusion to Miss Day, "I know by some
words of hers that she has a particular wish not to play, because she is
a friend of ours; and how the alteration comes, I don't know."

"Now, this is my plan," said the tranter, reviving the spirit of the
discussion by the infusion of new ideas, as was his custom--"this is my
plan; if you don't like it, no harm's done.  We all know one another very
well, don't we, neighbours?"

That they knew one another very well was received as a statement which,
though familiar, should not be omitted in introductory speeches.

"Then I say this"--and the tranter in his emphasis slapped down his hand
on Mr. Spinks's shoulder with a momentum of several pounds, upon which
Mr. Spinks tried to look not in the least startled--"I say that we all
move down-along straight as a line to Pa'son Mayble's when the clock has
gone six to-morrow night.  There we one and all stand in the passage,
then one or two of us go in and spak to en, man and man; and say, 'Pa'son
Mayble, every tradesman d'like to have his own way in his workshop, and
Mellstock Church is yours.  Instead of turning us out neck and crop, let
us stay on till Christmas, and we'll gie way to the young woman, Mr.
Mayble, and make no more ado about it.  And we shall always be quite
willing to touch our hats when we meet ye, Mr. Mayble, just as before.'
That sounds very well?  Hey?"

"Proper well, in faith, Reuben Dewy."

"And we won't sit down in his house; 'twould be looking too familiar when
only just reconciled?"

"No need at all to sit down.  Just do our duty man and man, turn round,
and march out--he'll think all the more of us for it."

"I hardly think Leaf had better go wi' us?" said Michael, turning to Leaf
and taking his measure from top to bottom by the eye.  "He's so terrible
silly that he might ruin the concern."

"He don't want to go much; do ye, Thomas Leaf?" said William.

"Hee-hee! no; I don't want to.  Only a teeny bit!"

"I be mortal afeard, Leaf, that you'll never be able to tell how many
cuts d'take to sharpen a spar," said Mail.

"I never had no head, never! that's how it happened to happen, hee-hee!"

They all assented to this, not with any sense of humiliating Leaf by
disparaging him after an open confession, but because it was an accepted
thing that Leaf didn't in the least mind having no head, that deficiency
of his being an unimpassioned matter of parish history.

"But I can sing my treble!" continued Thomas Leaf, quite delighted at
being called a fool in such a friendly way; "I can sing my treble as well
as any maid, or married woman either, and better!  And if Jim had lived,
I should have had a clever brother!  To-morrow is poor Jim's birthday.
He'd ha' been twenty-six if he'd lived till to-morrow."

"You always seem very sorry for Jim," said old William musingly.

"Ah!  I do.  Such a stay to mother as he'd always ha' been!  She'd never
have had to work in her old age if he had continued strong, poor Jim!"

"What was his age when 'a died?"

"Four hours and twenty minutes, poor Jim.  'A was born as might be at
night; and 'a didn't last as might be till the morning.  No, 'a didn't
last.  Mother called en Jim on the day that would ha' been his
christening day if he had lived; and she's always thinking about en.  You
see he died so very young."

"Well, 'twas rather youthful," said Michael.

"Now to my mind that woman is very romantical on the matter o' children?"
said the tranter, his eye sweeping his audience.

"Ah