by Thomas Hardy
* * * * *
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 minutiæ 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.