CHAPTER II.

UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE

The point in Yalbury Wood which abutted on the end of Geoffrey Day’s

premises was closed with an ancient tree, horizontally of enormous

extent, though having no great pretensions to height. Many hundreds of

birds had been born amidst the boughs of this single tree; tribes of

rabbits and hares had nibbled at its bark from year to year; quaint

tufts of fungi had sprung from the cavities of its forks; and countless

families of moles and earthworms had crept about its roots. Beneath and

beyond its shade spread a carefully-tended grass-plot, its purpose

being to supply a healthy exercise-ground for young chickens and

pheasants; the hens, their mothers, being enclosed in coops placed upon

the same green flooring.

All these encumbrances were now removed, and as the afternoon advanced,

the guests gathered on the spot, where music, dancing, and the singing

of songs went forward with great spirit throughout the evening. The

propriety of every one was intense by reason of the influence of Fancy,

who, as an additional precaution in this direction, had strictly

charged her father and the tranter to carefully avoid saying ‘thee’ and

‘thou’ in their conversation, on the plea that those ancient words

sounded so very humiliating to persons of newer taste; also that they

were never to be seen drawing the back of the hand across the mouth

after drinking—a local English custom of extraordinary antiquity, but

stated by Fancy to be decidedly dying out among the better classes of

society.

In addition to the local musicians present, a man who had a thorough

knowledge of the tambourine was invited from the village of Tantrum

Clangley,—a place long celebrated for the skill of its inhabitants as

performers on instruments of percussion. These important members of the

assembly were relegated to a height of two or three feet from the

ground, upon a temporary erection of planks supported by barrels.

Whilst the dancing progressed the older persons sat in a group under

the trunk of the tree,—the space being allotted to them somewhat

grudgingly by the young ones, who were greedy of pirouetting room,—and

fortified by a table against the heels of the dancers. Here the gaffers

and gammers, whose dancing days were over, told stories of great

impressiveness, and at intervals surveyed the advancing and retiring

couples from the same retreat, as people on shore might be supposed to

survey a naval engagement in the bay beyond; returning again to their

tales when the pause was over. Those of the whirling throng, who,

during the rests between each figure, turned their eyes in the

direction of these seated ones, were only able to discover, on account

of the music and bustle, that a very striking circumstance was in

course of narration—denoted by an emphatic sweep of the hand, snapping

of the fingers, close of the lips, and fixed look into the centre of

the listener’s eye for the space of a quarter of a minute, which raised

in that listener such a reciprocating working of face as to sometimes

make the distant dancers half wish to know what such an interesting

tale could refer to.

Fancy caused her looks to wear as much matronly expression as was

obtainable out of six hours’ experience as a wife, in order that the

contrast between her own state of life and that of the unmarried young

women present might be duly impressed upon the company: occasionally

stealing glances of admiration at her left hand, but this quite

privately; for her ostensible bearing concerning the matter was

intended to show that, though she undoubtedly occupied the most

wondrous position in the eyes of the world that had ever been attained,

she was almost unconscious of the circumstance, and that the somewhat

prominent position in which that wonderfully-emblazoned left hand was

continually found to be placed, when handing cups and saucers, knives,

forks, and glasses, was quite the result of accident. As to wishing to

excite envy in the bosoms of her maiden companions, by the exhibition

of the shining ring, every one was to know it was quite foreign to the

dignity of such an experienced married woman. Dick’s imagination in the

meantime was far less capable of drawing so much wontedness from his

new condition. He had been for two or three hours trying to feel

himself merely a newly-married man, but had been able to get no further

in the attempt than to realize that he was Dick Dewy, the tranter’s

son, at a party given by Lord Wessex’s head man-in-charge, on the

outlying Yalbury estate, dancing and chatting with Fancy Day.

Five country dances, including ‘Haste to the Wedding,’ two reels, and

three fragments of horn-pipes, brought them to the time for supper,

which, on account of the dampness of the grass from the immaturity of

the summer season, was spread indoors. At the conclusion of the meal

Dick went out to put the horse in; and Fancy, with the elder half of

the four bridesmaids, retired upstairs to dress for the journey to

Dick’s new cottage near Mellstock.

“How long will you be putting on your bonnet, Fancy?” Dick inquired at

the foot of the staircase. Being now a man of business and married, he

was strong on the importance of time, and doubled the emphasis of his

words in conversing, and added vigour to his nods.

“Only a minute.”

“How long is that?”

“Well, dear, five.”

“Ah, sonnies!” said the tranter, as Dick retired, “’tis a talent of the

female race that low numbers should stand for high, more especially in

matters of waiting, matters of age, and matters of money.”

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

“Ye spak with feeling, Geoffrey, seemingly.”

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

“What’s she doing now, Geoffrey?”

“Claning out all the upstairs drawers and cupboards, and dusting the

second-best chainey—a thing that’s only done once a year. ‘If there’s

work to be done I must do it,’ says she, ‘wedding or no.’”

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

“She’s terrible deep, then.”

Mrs. Penny turned round. “Well, ’tis humps and hollers with the best of

us; but still and for all that, Dick and Fancy stand as fair a chance

of having a bit of sunsheen as any married pair in the land.”

“Ay, there’s no gainsaying it.”

Mrs. Dewy came up, talking to one person and looking at another.

“Happy, yes,” she said. “’Tis always so when a couple is so exactly in

tune with one another as Dick and she.”

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

James.

“I tell ye, neighbours, when the pinch comes,” said the tranter: “when

the oldest daughter’s boots be only a size less than her mother’s, and

the rest o’ the flock close behind her. A sharp time for a man that, my

sonnies; a very sharp time! Chanticleer’s comb is a-cut then, ’a

believe.”

“That’s about the form o’t,” said Mr. Penny. “That’ll put the stuns

upon a man, when you must measure mother and daughter’s lasts to tell

’em apart.”

“You’ve no cause to complain, Reuben, of such a close-coming flock,”

said Mrs. Dewy; “for ours was a straggling lot enough, God knows!”

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

woman, Ann.”

Mrs. Dewy put her mouth in the form of a smile, and put it back again

without smiling.

“And if they come together, they go together,” said Mrs. Penny, whose

family had been the reverse of the tranter’s; “and a little money will

make either fate tolerable. And money can be made by our young couple,

I know.”

“Yes, that it can!” said the impulsive voice of Leaf, who had hitherto

humbly admired the proceedings from a corner. “It can be done—all

that’s wanted is a few pounds to begin with. That’s all! I know a story

about it!”

“Let’s hear thy story, Leaf,” said the tranter. “I never knew you were

clever enough to tell a story. Silence, all of ye! Mr. Leaf will tell a

story.”

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

a schoolmaster.

“Once,” said the delighted Leaf, in an uncertain voice, “there was a

man who lived in a house! Well, this man went thinking and thinking

night and day. At last, he said to himself, as I might, ‘If I had only

ten pound, I’d make a fortune.’ At last by hook or by crook, behold he

got the ten pounds!”

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

“Silence!” said the tranter.

“Well, now comes the interesting part of the story! In a little time he

made that ten pounds twenty. Then a little time after that he doubled

it, and made it forty. Well, he went on, and a good while after that he

made it eighty, and on to a hundred. Well, by-and-by he made it two

hundred! Well, you’d never believe it, but—he went on and made it four

hundred! He went on, and what did he do? Why, he made it eight hundred!

Yes, he did,” continued Leaf, in the highest pitch of excitement,

bringing down his fist upon his knee with such force that he quivered

with the pain; “yes, and he went on and made it A THOUSAND!”

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

sonnies!”

“Thank you for your story, Thomas Leaf,” said grandfather William; and

then Leaf gradually sank into nothingness again.

Amid a medley of laughter, old shoes, and elder-wine, Dick and his

bride took their departure, side by side in the excellent new

spring-cart which the young tranter now possessed. The moon was just

over the full, rendering any light from lamps or their own beauties

quite unnecessary to the pair. They drove slowly along Yalbury Bottom,

where the road passed between two copses. Dick was talking to his

companion.

“Fancy,” he said, “why we are so happy is because there is such full

confidence between us. Ever since that time you confessed to that

little flirtation with Shiner by the river (which was really no

flirtation at all), I have thought how artless and good you must be to

tell me o’ such a trifling thing, and to be so frightened about it as

you were. It has won me to tell you my every deed and word since then.

We’ll have no secrets from each other, darling, will we ever?—no secret

at all.”

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

From a neighbouring thicket was suddenly heard to issue in a loud,

musical, and liquid voice—

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

“O, ’tis the nightingale,” murmured she, and thought of a secret she

would never tell.

Footnotes:

{1} This, a local expression, must be a corruption of something less

questionable.