way you and the company like, my dear!” said Dick, who, being on the point of securing his right to Fancy, seemed willing to renounce all other rights in the world with the greatest pleasure. The decision was left to Fancy.
“Well, I think I’d rather have it the way mother had it,” she said, and the couples moved along under the trees, every man to his maid.
“Ah!” said grandfather James to grandfather William as they retired, “I wonder which she thinks most about, Dick or her wedding raiment!”
“Well, ’tis their nature,” said grandfather William. “Remember the words of the prophet Jeremiah: ‘Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?’”
Now among dark perpendicular firs, like the shafted columns of a cathedral; now through a hazel copse, matted with primroses and wild hyacinths; now under broad beeches in bright young leaves they threaded their way into the high road over Yalbury Hill, which dipped at that point directly into the village of Geoffrey Day’s parish; and in the space of a quarter of an hour Fancy found herself to be Mrs. Richard Dewy, though, much to her surprise, feeling no other than Fancy Day still.
On the circuitous return walk through the lanes and fields, amid much chattering and laughter, especially when they came to stiles, Dick discerned a brown spot far up a turnip field.
“Why, ’tis Enoch!” he said to Fancy. “I thought I missed him at the house this morning. How is it he’s left you?”
“He drank too much cider, and it got into his head, and they put him in Weatherbury stocks for it. Father was obliged to get somebody else for a day or two, and Enoch hasn’t had anything to do with the woods since.”
“We might ask him to call down to-night. Stocks are nothing for once, considering ’tis our wedding day.” The bridal party was ordered to halt.
“Eno-o-o-o-ch!” cried Dick at the top of his voice.
“Y-a-a-a-a-a-as!” said Enoch from the distance.
“D’ye know who I be-e-e-e-e-e?”
“No-o-o-o-o-o-o!”
“Dick Dew-w-w-w-wy!”
“O-h-h-h-h-h!”
“Just a-ma-a-a-a-a-arried!”
“O-h-h-h-h-h!”
“This is my wife, Fa-a-a-a-a-ancy!” (holding her up to Enoch’s view as if she had been a nosegay.)
“O-h-h-h-h-h!”
“Will ye come across to the party to-ni-i-i-i-i-i-ight!”
“Ca-a-a-a-a-an’t!”
“Why n-o-o-o-o-ot?”
“Don’t work for the family no-o-o-o-ow!”
“Not nice of Master Enoch,” said Dick, as they resumed their walk.
“You mustn’t blame en,” said Geoffrey; “the man’s not hisself now; he’s in his morning frame of mind. When he’s had a gallon o’ cider or ale, or a pint or two of mead, the man’s well enough, and his manners be as good as anybody’s in the kingdom.”
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-incharge, on the outlying Yalbury estate, dancing and chatting with Fancy Day.
Five
