CHAPTER VIII: DICK MEETS HIS FATHER
For several minutes Dick drove along homeward, with the inner eye of
reflection so anxiously set on his passages at arms with Fancy, that
the road and scenery were as a thin mist over the real pictures of
his mind. Was she a coquette? The balance between the evidence
that she did love him and that she did not was so nicely struck,
that his opinion had no stability. She had let him put his hand
upon hers; she had allowed her gaze to drop plumb into the depths of
his--his into hers--three or four times; her manner had been very
free with regard to the basin and towel; she had appeared vexed at
the mention of Shiner. On the other hand, she had driven him about
the house like a quiet dog or cat, said Shiner cared for her, and
seemed anxious that Mr. Maybold should do the same.
Thinking thus as he neared the handpost at Mellstock Cross, sitting
on the front board of the spring cart--his legs on the outside, and
his whole frame jigging up and down like a candle-flame to the time
of Smart's trotting--who should he see coming down the hill but his
father in the light wagon, quivering up and down on a smaller scale
of shakes, those merely caused by the stones in the road. They were
soon crossing each other's front.
"Weh-hey!" said the tranter to Smiler.
"Weh-hey!" said Dick to Smart, in an echo of the same voice.
"Th'st hauled her back, I suppose?" Reuben inquired peaceably.
"Yes," said Dick, with such a clinching period at the end that it
seemed he was never going to add another word. Smiler, thinking
this the close of the conversation, prepared to move on.
"Weh-hey!" said the tranter. "I tell thee what it is, Dick. That
there maid is taking up thy thoughts more than's good for thee, my
sonny. Thou'rt never happy now unless th'rt making thyself
miserable about her in one way or another."
"I don't know about that, father," said Dick rather stupidly.
"But I do--Wey, Smiler!--'Od rot the women, 'tis nothing else wi'
'em nowadays but getting young men and leading 'em astray."
"Pooh, father! you just repeat what all the common world says;
that's all you do."
"The world's a very sensible feller on things in jineral, Dick; very
sensible indeed."
Dick looked into the distance at a vast expanse of mortgaged estate.
"I wish I was as rich as a squire when he's as poor as a crow," he
murmured; "I'd soon ask Fancy something."
"I wish so too, wi' all my heart, sonny; that I do. Well, mind what
beest about, that's all."
Smart moved on a step or two. "Supposing now, father,--We-hey,
Smart!--I did think a little about her, and I had a chance, which I
ha'n't; don't you think she's a very good sort of--of--one?"
"Ay, good; she's good enough. When you've made up your mind to
marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand--she's as
good as any other; they be all alike in the groundwork; 'tis only in
the flourishes there's a difference. She's good enough; but I can't
see what the nation a young feller like you--wi a comfortable house
and home, and father and mother to take care o' thee, and who sent
'ee to a school so good that 'twas hardly fair to the other
children--should want to go hollering after a young woman for, when
she's quietly making a husband in her pocket, and not troubled by
chick nor chiel, to make a poverty-stric' wife and family of her,
and neither hat, cap, wig, nor waistcoat to set 'em up with: be
drowned if I can see it, and that's the long and the short o't, my
sonny."
Dick looked at Smart's ears, then up the hill; but no reason was
suggested by any object that met his gaze.
"For about the same reason that you did, father, I suppose."
"Dang it, my sonny, thou'st got me there!" And the tranter gave
vent to a grim admiration, with the mien of a man who was too
magnanimous not to appreciate artistically a slight rap on the
knuckles, even if they were his own.
"Whether or no," said Dick, "I asked her a thing going along the
road."
"Come to that, is it? Turk! won't thy mother be in a taking! Well,
she's ready, I don't doubt?"
"I didn't ask her anything about having me; and if you'll let me
speak, I'll tell 'ee what I want to know. I just said, Did she care
about me?"
"Piph-ph-ph!"
"And then she said nothing for a quarter of a mile, and then she
said she didn't know. Now, what I want to know is, what was the
meaning of that speech?" The latter words were spoken resolutely,
as if he didn't care for the ridicule of all the fathers in
creation.
"The meaning of that speech is," the tranter replied deliberately,
"that the meaning is meant to be rather hid at present. Well, Dick,
as an honest father to thee, I don't pretend to deny what you d'know
well enough; that is, that her father being rather better in the
pocket than we, I should welcome her ready enough if it must be
somebody."
"But what d'ye think she really did mean?" said the unsatisfied
Dick.
"I'm afeard I am not o' much account in guessing, especially as I
was not there when she said it, and seeing that your mother was the
only 'ooman I ever cam' into such close quarters as that with."
"And what did mother say to you when you asked her?" said Dick
musingly.
"I don't see that that will help 'ee."
"The principle is the same."
"Well--ay: what did she say? Let's see. I was oiling my working-
day boots without taking 'em off, and wi' my head hanging down, when
she just brushed on by the garden hatch like a flittering leaf.
"Ann," I said, says I, and then,--but, Dick I'm afeard 'twill be no
help to thee; for we were such a rum couple, your mother and I,
leastways one half was, that is myself--and your mother's charms was
more in the manner than the material."
"Never mind! 'Ann,' said you."
"'Ann,' said I, as I was saying . . . 'Ann,' I said to her when I
was oiling my working-day boots wi' my head hanging down, 'Woot hae
me?' . . . What came next I can't quite call up at this distance o'
time. Perhaps your mother would know,--she's got a better memory
for her little triumphs than I. However, the long and the short o'
the story is that we were married somehow, as I found afterwards.
'Twas on White Tuesday,--Mellstock Club walked the same day, every
man two and two, and a fine day 'twas,--hot as fire,--how the sun
did strike down upon my back going to church! I well can mind what
a bath o' sweating I was in, body and soul! But Fance will ha'
thee, Dick--she won't walk with another chap--no such good luck."
"I don't know about that," said Dick, whipping at Smart's flank in a
fanciful way, which, as Smart knew, meant nothing in connection with
going on. "There's Pa'son Maybold, too--that's all against me."
"What about he? She's never been stuffing into thy innocent heart
that he's in hove with her? Lord, the vanity o' maidens!"
"No, no. But he called, and she looked at him in such a way, and at
me in such a way--quite different the ways were,--and as I was
coming off, there was he hanging up her birdcage."
"Well, why shouldn't the man hang up her bird-cage? Turk seize it
all, what's that got to do wi' it? Dick, that thou beest a white-
lyvered chap I don't say, but if thou beestn't as mad as a cappel-
faced bull, let me smile no more."
"O, ay."
"And what's think now, Dick?"
"I don't know."
"Here's another pretty kettle o' fish for thee. Who d'ye think's
the bitter weed in our being turned out? Did our party tell 'ee?"
"No. Why, Pa'son Maybold, I suppose."
"Shiner,--because he's in love with thy young woman, and d'want to
see her young figure sitting up at that queer instrument, and her
young fingers rum-strumming upon the keys."
A sharp ado of sweet and bitter was going on in Dick during this
communication from his father. "Shiner's a fool!--no, that's not
it; I don't believe any such thing, father. Why, Shiner would never
take a bold step like that, unless she'd been a little made up to,
and had taken it kindly. Pooh!"
"Who's to say she didn't?"
"I do."
"The more fool you."
"Why, father of me?"
"Has she ever done more to thee?"
"No."
"Then she has done as much to he--rot 'em! Now, Dick, this is how a
maid is. She'll swear she's dying for thee, and she is dying for
thee, and she will die for thee; but she'll fling a look over
t'other shoulder at another young feller, though never leaving off
dying for thee just the same."
"She's not dying for me, and so she didn't fling a look at him."
"But she may be dying for him, for she looked at thee."
"I don't know what to make of it at all," said Dick gloomily.
"All I can make of it is," the tranter said, raising his whip,
arranging his different joints and muscles, and motioning to the
horse to move on, "that if you can't read a maid's mind by her
motions, nature d'seem to say thou'st ought to be a bachelor. Clk,
clk! Smiler!" And the tranter moved on.
Dick held Smart's rein firmly, and the whole concern of horse, cart,
and man remained rooted in the lane. Hew long this condition would
have lasted is unknown, had not Dick's thoughts, after adding up
numerous items of misery, gradually wandered round to the fact that
as something must be done, it could not be done by staying there all
night.
Reaching home he went up to his bedroom, shut the door as if he were
going to be seen no more in this life, and taking a sheet of paper
and uncorking the ink-bottle, he began a letter. The dignity of the
writer's mind was so powerfully apparent in every line of this
effusion that it obscured the logical sequence of facts and
intentions to an appreciable degree; and it was not at all clear to
a reader whether he there and then left off loving Miss Fancy Day;
whether he had never loved her seriously, and never meant to;
whether he had been dying up to the present moment, and now intended
to get well again; or whether he had hitherto been in good health,
and intended to die for her forthwith.
He put this letter in an envelope, sealed it up, directed it in a
stern handwriting of straight dashes--easy flourishes being
rigorously excluded. He walked with it in his pocket down the lane
in strides not an inch less than three feet long. Reaching her gate
he put on a resolute expression--then put it off again, turned back
homeward, tore up his letter, and sat down.
That letter was altogether in a wrong tone--that he must own. A
heartless man-of-the-world tone was what the juncture required.
That he rather wanted her, and rather did not want her--the latter
for choice; but that as a member of society he didn't mind making a
query in jaunty terms, which could only be answered in the same way:
did she mean anything by her bearing towards him, or did she not?
This letter was considered so satisfactory in every way that, being
put into the hands of a little boy, and the order given that he was
to run with it to the school, he was told in addition not to look
behind him if Dick called after him to bring it hack, but to run
along with it just the same. Having taken this precaution against
vacillation, Dick watched his messenger down the road, and turned
into the house whistling an air in such ghastly jerks and starts,
that whistling seemed to be the act the very furthest removed from
that which was instinctive in such a youth.
The letter was left as ordered: the next morning came and passed--
and no answer. The next. The next. Friday night came. Dick
resolved that if no answer or sign were given by her the next day,
on Sunday he would meet her face to face, and have it all out by
word of mouth.
"Dick," said his father, coming in from the garden at that moment--
in each hand a hive of bees tied in a cloth to prevent their egress-
-"I think you'd better take these two swarms of bees to Mrs.
Maybold's to-morrow, instead o' me, and I'll go wi' Smiler and the
wagon."
It was a relief; for Mrs. Maybold, the vicar's mother, who had just
taken into her head a fancy for keeping bees (pleasantly disguised
under the pretence of its being an economical wish to produce her
own honey), lived near the watering-place of Budmouth-Regis, ten
miles off, and the business of transporting the hives thither would
occupy the whole day, and to some extent annihilate the vacant time
between this evening and the coming Sunday. The best spring-cart
was washed throughout, the axles oiled, and the bees placed therein
for the journey.
