Thomas Hardy

“ 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. ”

“ Here he meditated and meditated, and the more he meditated the more decidedly did he begin to fume, and the more positive was he that his time had been scandalously trifled with by Miss Fancy Day—that, so far from being the simple girl who had never had a sweetheart before, as she had solemnly assured him time after time, she was, if not a flirt, a woman who had had no end of admirers; a girl most certainly too anxious about her frocks; a girl, whose feelings, though warm, were not deep; a girl who cared a great deal too much how she appeared in the eyes of other men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Fancy, men in love don’t think so much about how they look to other women.” It is difficult to say whether a tone of playful banter or of gentle reproach prevailed in the speech.
“Well then, Dick,” she said, with good-humoured frankness, “I’ll own it. I shouldn’t like a stranger to see me dressed badly, even though I am in love. ’Tis our nature, I suppose.”
“You perfect woman!”
“Yes; if you lay the stress on ‘woman,’” she murmured, looking at a group of hollyhocks in flower, round which a crowd of butterflies had gathered like female idlers round a bonnet-shop. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fancy looked interested, and Dick said, “No?”
“There’s that wife o’ mine. It was her doom to be nobody’s wife at all in the wide universe. But she made up her mind that she would, and did it twice over. Doom? Doom is nothing beside a elderly woman—quite a chiel in her hands!”
A movement was now heard along the upstairs passage, and footsteps descending. The door at the foot of the stairs opened, and the second Mrs. Day appeared in view, looking fixedly at the table as she advanced towards it, with apparent obliviousness of the presence of any other human being than herself. ”

“ 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 ”

“ During the retreat she said to herself, almost involuntarily, and still conscious of that morning’s triumph—“I like Dick, and I love him; but how plain and sorry a man looks in the rain, with no umbrella, and wet through!”
As he vanished, she made as if to descend from her seat; but glancing in the other direction she saw another form coming along the same track. It was also that of a man. He, too, was in black from top to toe; but he carried an umbrella. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Geoffrey then stood erect, and rather more, to straighten his backbone after the digging.
“They were a peculiar family,” said Mr. Shiner, regarding the hives reflectively.
Geoffrey nodded.
“Those holes will be the grave of thousands!” said Fancy. “I think ’tis rather a cruel thing to do.”
Her father shook his head. “No,” he said, tapping the hives to shake the dead bees from their cells, “if you suffocate ’em this way, they only die once: if you fumigate ’em in the new way, they come to life again, and die o’ starvation; so the pangs o’ death be twice upon ’em.” ”

“ Nothing was better known to Fancy than the extravagant manner in which these circular knots or eyes distorted everything seen through them from the outside—lifting hats from heads, shoulders from bodies; scattering the spokes of cart-wheels, and bending the straight fir-trunks into semicircles. The ceiling was carried by a beam traversing its midst, from the side of which projected a large nail, used solely and constantly as a peg for Geoffrey’s hat; the nail was arched by a rainbow-shaped stain, imprinted by the brim of the said hat when it was hung there dripping wet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fancy was ushered into a little tea-room, and Dick went to the stables to see to the feeding of Smart. In face of the significant twitches of feature that were visible in the ostler and labouring men idling around, Dick endeavoured to look unconscious of the fact that there was any sentiment between him and Fancy beyond a tranter’s desire to carry a passenger home. ”

“ Smart, who had been lost in thought for some time, never dreaming that Dick could reach so far with a whip which, on this particular journey, had never been extended further than his flank, tossed his head, and scampered along with exceeding briskness, which was very pleasant to the young couple behind him till, turning a bend in the road, they came instantly upon the farmer, farmer’s man, and farmer’s wife with the flapping mantle, all jogging on just the same as ever. ”

“ The last day of the story is dated just subsequent to that point in the development of the seasons when country people go to bed among nearly naked trees, are lulled to sleep by a fall of rain, and awake next morning among green ones; when the landscape appears embarrassed with the sudden weight and brilliancy of its leaves; when the night-jar comes and strikes up for the summer his tune of one note; when the apple-trees have bloomed, and the roads and orchard-grass become spotted with fallen petals ”

“ Dick, dressed in his ‘second-best’ suit, burst into Fancy’s sitting-room with a glow of pleasure on his face.
It was two o’clock on Friday, the day before her contemplated visit to her father, and for some reason connected with cleaning the school the children had been given this Friday afternoon for pastime, in addition to the 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 nutting with me!” ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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. ”