CHAPTER IX: d.i.c.k CALLS AT THE SCHOOL

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 d.i.c.k in accidentally pa.s.sing 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 d.i.c.k 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.sing 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 d.i.c.k, 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:-

"Good morning, Miss Day."

"Good morning, Mr. Dewy."

The gate was closed; she was gone; and d.i.c.k was standing outside, unchanged in his condition from what he had been before he called. Of course the Angel was not to blame--a young woman living alone in a house could not ask him indoors unless she had known him better--he should have kept her outside before floundering into that fatal farewell. He wished that before he called he had realized more fully than he did the pleasure of being about to call; and turned away.

PART THE SECOND--SPRING

CHAPTER I: Pa.s.sING BY THE SCHOOL

It followed that, as the spring advanced, d.i.c.k walked abroad much more frequently than had hitherto been usual with him, and was continually finding that his nearest way to or from home lay by the road which skirted the garden of the school. The first-fruits of his perseverance were that, on turning the angle on the nineteenth journey by that track, he saw Miss Fancy's figure, clothed in a dark-gray dress, looking from a high open window upon the crown of his hat. The friendly greeting resulting from this rencounter was considered so valuable an elixir that d.i.c.k pa.s.sed still oftener; and by the time he had almost trodden a little path under the fence where never a path was before, he was rewarded with an actual meeting face to face on the open road before her gate. This brought another meeting, and another, Fancy faintly showing by her bearing that it was a pleasure to her of some kind to see him there; but the sort of pleasure she derived, whether exultation at the hope her exceeding fairness inspired, or the true feeling which was alone d.i.c.k's concern, he could not anyhow decide, although he meditated on her every little movement for hours after it was made.

CHAPTER II: A MEETING OF THE QUIRE

It was the evening of a fine spring day. The descending sun appeared as a nebulous blaze of amber light, its outline being lost in cloudy ma.s.ses hanging round it, like wild locks of hair.

The chief members of Mellstock parish choir were standing in a group in front of Mr. Penny's workshop in the lower village. They were all brightly illuminated, and each was backed up by a shadow as long as a steeple; the lowness of the source of light rendering the brims of their hats of no use at all as a protection to the eyes.

Mr. Penny's was the last house in that part of the parish, and stood in a hollow by the roadside so that cart-wheels and horses' legs were about level with the sill of his shop-window. This was low and wide, and was open from morning till evening, Mr. Penny himself being invariably seen working inside, like a framed portrait of a shoemaker by some modern Moroni. He sat facing the road, with a boot on his knees and the awl in his hand, only looking up for a moment as he stretched out his arms and bent forward at the pull, when his spectacles flashed in the pa.s.ser's face with a shine of flat whiteness, and then returned again to the boot as usual. Rows of lasts, small and large, stout and slender, covered the wall which formed the background, in the extreme shadow of which a kind of dummy was seen sitting, in the shape of an apprentice with a string tied round his hair (probably to keep it out of his eyes). He smiled at remarks that floated in from without, but was never known to answer them in Mr. Penny's presence. Outside the window the upper-leather of a Wellington-boot was usually hung, pegged to a board as if to dry. No sign was over his door; in fact--as with old banks and mercantile houses--advertising in any shape was scorned, and it would have been felt as beneath his dignity to paint up, for the benefit of strangers, the name of an establishment whose trade came solely by connection based on personal respect.

His visitors now came and stood on the outside of his window, sometimes leaning against the sill, sometimes moving a pace or two backwards and forwards in front of it. They talked with deliberate gesticulations to Mr. Penny, enthroned in the shadow of the interior.

"I do like a man to stick to men who be in the same line o' life--o'

Sundays, anyway--that I do so."

"'Tis like all the doings of folk who don't know what a day's work is, that's what I say."

"My belief is the man's not to blame; 'tis she--she's the bitter weed!"

"No, not altogether. He's a poor gawk-hammer. Look at his sermon yesterday."

"His sermon was well enough, a very good guessable sermon, only he couldn't put it into words and speak it. That's all was the matter wi'

the sermon. He hadn't been able to get it past his pen."

"Well--ay, the sermon might have been good; for, 'tis true, the sermon of Old Eccl'iastes himself lay in Eccl'iastes's ink-bottle afore he got it out."

Mr. Penny, being in the act of drawing the last st.i.tch tight, could afford time to look up and throw in a word at this point.

"He's no spouter--that must be said, 'a b'lieve."

"'Tis a terrible muddle sometimes with the man, as far as spout do go,"

said Spinks.

"Well, we'll say nothing about that," the tranter answered; "for I don't believe 'twill make a penneth o' difference to we poor martels here or hereafter whether his sermons be good or bad, my sonnies."

Mr. Penny made another hole with his awl, pushed in the thread, and looked up and spoke again at the extension of arms.

"'Tis his goings-on, souls, that's what it is." He clenched his features for an Herculean addition to the ordinary pull, and continued, "The first thing he done when he came here was to be hot and strong about church business."

"True," said Spinks; "that was the very first thing he done."

Mr. Penny, having now been offered the ear of the a.s.sembly, accepted it, ceased st.i.tching, swallowed an unimportant quant.i.ty of air as if it were a pill, and continued:

"The next thing he do do is to think about altering the church, until he found 'twould be a matter o' cost and what not, and then not to think no more about it."

"True: that was the next thing he done."

"And the next thing was to tell the young chaps that they were not on no account to put their hats in the christening font during service."