by Thomas Hardy
PART THE FOURTH--AUTUMN
CHAPTER I: GOING NUTTING
Dick, dressed in his 'second-best' suit, burst into Fancy's sitting-roomwith a glow of pleasure on his face.
It was two o'clock on Friday, the day before her contemplated visit toher father, and for some reason connected with cleaning the school thechildren had been given this Friday afternoon for pastime, in addition tothe usual Saturday.
"Fancy! it happens just right that it is a leisure half day with you.Smart is lame in his near-foot-afore, and so, as I can't do anything,I've made a holiday afternoon of it, and am come for you to go nuttingwith me!"
She was sitting by the parlour window, with a blue frock lying across herlap and scissors in her hand.
"Go nutting! Yes. But I'm afraid I can't go for an hour or so."
"Why not? 'Tis the only spare afternoon we may both have together forweeks."
"This dress of mine, that I am going to wear on Sunday at Yalbury;--Ifind it fits so badly that I must alter it a little, after all. I toldthe dressmaker to make it by a pattern I gave her at the time; instead ofthat, she did it her own way, and made me look a perfect fright."
"How long will you be?" he inquired, looking rather disappointed.
"Not long. Do wait and talk to me; come, do, dear."
Dick sat down. The talking progressed very favourably, amid the snippingand sewing, till about half-past two, at which time his conversationbegan to be varied by a slight tapping upon his toe with a walking-stickhe had cut from the hedge as he came along. Fancy talked and answeredhim, but sometimes the answers were so negligently given, that it wasevident her thoughts lay for the greater part in her lap with the bluedress.
The clock struck three. Dick arose from his seat, walked round the roomwith his hands behind him, examined all the furniture, then sounded a fewnotes on the harmonium, then looked inside all the books he could find,then smoothed Fancy's head with his hand. Still the snipping and sewingwent on.
The clock struck four. Dick fidgeted about, yawned privately; countedthe knots in the table, yawned publicly; counted the flies on theceiling, yawned horribly; went into the kitchen and scullery, and sothoroughly studied the principle upon which the pump was constructed thathe could have delivered a lecture on the subject. Stepping back toFancy, and finding still that she had not done, he went into her gardenand looked at her cabbages and potatoes, and reminded himself that theyseemed to him to wear a decidedly feminine aspect; then pulled up severalweeds, and came in again. The clock struck five, and still the snippingand sewing went on.
Dick attempted to kill a fly, peeled all the rind off his walking-stick,then threw the stick into the scullery because it was spoilt, producedhideous discords from the harmonium, and accidentally overturned a vaseof flowers, the water from which ran in a rill across the table anddribbled to the floor, where it formed a lake, the shape of which, afterthe lapse of a few minutes, he began to modify considerably with hisfoot, till it was like a map of England and Wales.
"Well, Dick, you needn't have made quite such a mess."
"Well, I needn't, I suppose." He walked up to the blue dress, and lookedat it with a rigid gaze. Then an idea seemed to cross his brain.
"Fancy."
"Yes."
"I thought you said you were going to wear your gray gown all dayto-morrow on your trip to Yalbury, and in the evening too, when I shallbe with you, and ask your father for you?"
"So I am."
"And the blue one only on Sunday?"
"And the blue one Sunday."
"Well, dear, I sha'n't be at Yalbury Sunday to see it."
"No, but I shall walk to Longpuddle church in the afternoon with father,and such lots of people will be looking at me there, you know; and it didset so badly round the neck."
"I never noticed it, and 'tis like nobody else would."
"They might."
"Then why not wear the gray one on Sunday as well? 'Tis as pretty as theblue one."
"I might make the gray one do, certainly. But it isn't so good; itdidn't cost half so much as this one, and besides, it would be the same Iwore Saturday."
"Then wear the striped one, dear."
"I might."
"Or the dark one."
"Yes, I might; but I want to wear a fresh one they haven't seen."
"I see, I see," said Dick, in a voice in which the tones of love weredecidedly inconvenienced by a considerable emphasis, his thoughtsmeanwhile running as follows: "I, the man she loves best in the world, asshe says, am to understand that my poor half-holiday is to be lost,because she wants to wear on Sunday a gown there is not the slightestnecessity for wearing, simply, in fact, to appear more striking thanusual in the eyes of Longpuddle young men; and I not there, either."
"Then there are three dresses good enough for my eyes, but neither isgood enough for the youths of Longpuddle," he said.
"No, not that exactly, Dick. Still, you see, I do want--to look prettyto them--there, that's honest! But I sha'n't be much longer."
"How much?"
"A quarter of an hour."
"Very well; I'll come in in a quarter of an hour."
"Why go away?"
"I mid as well."
He went out, walked down the road, and sat upon a gate. Here hemeditated and meditated, and the more he meditated the more decidedly didhe begin to fume, and the more positive was he that his time had beenscandalously trifled with by Miss Fancy Day--that, so far from being thesimple girl who had never had a sweetheart before, as she had solemnlyassured him time after time, she was, if not a flirt, a woman who had hadno end of admirers; a girl most certainly too anxious about her frocks; agirl, whose feelings, though warm, were not deep; a girl who cared agreat deal too much how she appeared in the eyes of other men. "What sheloves best in the world," he thought, with an incipient spice of hisfather's grimness, "is her hair and complexion. What she loves nextbest, her gowns and hats; what she loves next best, myself, perhaps!"
Suffering great anguish at this disloyalty in himself and harshness tohis darling, yet disposed to persevere in it, a horribly cruel thoughtcrossed his mind. He would not call for her, as he had promised, at theend of a quarter of an hour! Yes, it would be a punishment she welldeserved. Although the best part of the afternoon had been wasted hewould go nutting as he had intended, and go by himself.
He leaped over the gate, and pushed up the lane for nearly two miles,till a winding path called Snail-Creep sloped up a hill and entered ahazel copse by a hole like a rabbit's burrow. In he plunged, vanishedamong the bushes, and in a short time there was no sign of his existenceupon earth, save an occasional rustling of boughs and snapping of twigsin divers points of Grey's Wood.
Never man nutted as Dick nutted that afternoon. He worked like a galleyslave. Half-hour after half-hour passed away, and still he gatheredwithout ceasing. At last, when the sun had set, and bunches of nutscould not be distinguished from the leaves which nourished them, heshouldered his bag, containing quite two pecks of the finest produce ofthe wood, about as much use to him as two pecks of stones from the road,strolled down the woodland track, crossed the highway and entered thehomeward lane, whistling as he went.
Probably, Miss Fancy Day never before or after stood so low in Mr. Dewy'sopinion as on that afternoon. In fact, it is just possible that a fewmore blue dresses on the Longpuddle young men's account would haveclarified Dick's brain entirely, and made him once more a free man.
But Venus had planned other developments, at any rate for the present.Cuckoo-Lane, the way he pursued, passed over a ridge which rose keenlyagainst the sky about fifty yards in his van. Here, upon the brightafter-glow about the horizon, was now visible an irregular shape, whichat first he conceived to be a bough standing a little beyond the line ofits neighbours. Then it seemed to move, and, as he advanced stillfurther, there was no doubt that it was a living being sitting in thebank, head bowed on hand. The grassy margin entirely prevented hisfootsteps from being heard, and it
was not till he was close that thefigure recognized him. Up it sprang, and he was face to face with Fancy.
"Dick, Dick! O, is it you, Dick!"
"Yes, Fancy," said Dick, in a rather repentant tone, and lowering hisnuts.
She ran up to him, flung her parasol on the grass, put her little headagainst his breast, and then there began a narrative, disjointed by sucha hysterical weeping as was never surpassed for intensity in the wholehistory of love.
"O Dick," she sobbed out, "where have you been away from me? O, I havesuffered agony, and thought you would never come any more! 'Tis cruel,Dick; no 'tisn't, it is justice! I've been walking miles and miles upand down Grey's Wood, trying to find you, till I was wearied and wornout, and I could walk no further, and had come back this far! O Dick,directly you were gone, I thought I had offended you and I put down thedress; 'tisn't finished now, and I never will finish, it, and I'll wearan old one Sunday! Yes, Dick, I will, because I don't care what I wearwhen you are not by my side--ha, you think I do, but I don't!--and I ranafter you, and I saw you go up Snail-Creep and not look back once, andthen you plunged in, and I after you; but I was too far behind. O, I didwish the horrid bushes had been cut down, so that I could see your dearshape again! And then I called out to you, and nobody answered, and Iwas afraid to call very loud, lest anybody else should hear me. Then Ikept wandering and wandering about, and it was dreadful misery, Dick. Andthen I shut my eyes and fell to picturing you looking at some otherwoman, very pretty and nice, but with no affection or truth in her atall, and then imagined you saying to yourself, 'Ah, she's as good asFancy, for Fancy told me a story, and was a flirt, and cared for herselfmore than me, so now I'll have this one for my sweetheart.' O, youwon't, will you, Dick, for I do love you so!"
It is scarcely necessary to add that Dick renounced his freedom there andthen, and kissed her ten times over, and promised that no pretty woman ofthe kind alluded to should ever engross his thoughts; in short, thatthough he had been vexed with her, all such vexation was past, and thathenceforth and for ever it was simply Fancy or death for him. And thenthey set about proceeding homewards, very slowly on account of Fancy'sweariness, she leaning upon his shoulder, and in addition receivingsupport from his arm round her waist; though she had sufficientlyrecovered from her desperate condition to sing to him, 'Why are youwandering here, I pray?' during the latter part of their walk. Nor is itnecessary to describe in detail how the bag of nuts was quite forgottenuntil three days later, when it was found among the brambles and restoredempty to Mrs. Dewy, her initials being marked thereon in red cotton andhow she puzzled herself till her head ached upon the question of how onearth her meal-bag could have got into Cuckoo-Lane.