LITMIR.BIZ

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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 tomorrow.”

      “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

       Table of Contents

      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:—

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