PART THE THIRD--SUMMER
CHAPTER I: DRIVING OUT OF BUDMOUTH
An easy bend of neck and graceful set of head; full and wavy bundles ofdark-brown hair; light fall of little feet; pretty devices on the skirtof the dress; clear deep eyes; in short, a bunch of sweets: it was Fancy!Dick's heart went round to her with a rush.
The scene was the corner of Mary Street in Budmouth-Regis, near theKing's statue, at which point the white angle of the last house in therow cut perpendicularly an embayed and nearly motionless expanse of saltwater projected from the outer ocean--to-day lit in bright tones of greenand opal. Dick and Smart had just emerged from the street, and there onthe right, against the brilliant sheet of liquid colour, stood Fancy Day;and she turned and recognized him.
Dick suspended his thoughts of the letter and wonder at how she camethere by driving close to the chains of the Esplanade--incontinentlydisplacing two chairmen, who had just come to life for the summer in newclean shirts and revivified clothes, and being almost displaced in turnby a rigid boy rattling along with a baker's cart, and looking neither tothe right nor the left. He asked if she were going to Mellstock thatnight.
"Yes, I'm waiting for the carrier," she replied, seeming, too, to suspendthoughts of the letter.
"Now I can drive you home nicely, and you save half an hour. Will yecome with me?"
As Fancy's power to will anything seemed to have departed in somemysterious manner at that moment, Dick settled the matter by getting outand assisting her into the vehicle without another word.
The temporary flush upon her cheek changed to a lesser hue, which waspermanent, and at length their eyes met; there was present between them acertain feeling of embarrassment, which arises at such moments when allthe instinctive acts dictated by the position have been performed. Dick,being engaged with the reins, thought less of this awkwardness than didFancy, who had nothing to do but to feel his presence, and to be more andmore conscious of the fact, that by accepting a seat beside him in thisway she succumbed to the tone of his note. Smart jogged along, and Dickjogged, and the helpless Fancy necessarily jogged, too; and she felt thatshe was in a measure captured and made a prisoner.
"I am so much obliged to you for your company, Miss Day," he observed, asthey drove past the two semicircular bays of the Old Royal Hotel, whereHis Majesty King George the Third had many a time attended the balls ofthe burgesses.
To Miss Day, crediting him with the same consciousness of mastery--aconsciousness of which he was perfectly innocent--this remark soundedlike a magnanimous intention to soothe her, the captive.
"I didn't come for the pleasure of obliging you with my company," shesaid.
The answer had an unexpected manner of incivility in it that must havebeen rather surprising to young Dewy. At the same time it may beobserved, that when a young woman returns a rude answer to a young man'scivil remark, her heart is in a state which argues rather hopefully forhis case than otherwise.
There was silence between them till they had left the sea-front andpassed about twenty of the trees that ornamented the road leading up outof the town towards Casterbridge and Mellstock.
"Though I didn't come for that purpose either, I would have done it,"said Dick at the twenty-first tree.
"Now, Mr. Dewy, no flirtation, because it's wrong, and I don't wish it."
Dick seated himself afresh just as he had been sitting before, arrangedhis looks very emphatically, and cleared his throat.
"Really, anybody would think you had met me on business and were justgoing to commence," said the lady intractably.
"Yes, they would."
"Why, you never have, to be sure!"
This was a shaky beginning. He chopped round, and said cheerily, as aman who had resolved never to spoil his jollity by loving one ofwomankind--
"Well, how are you getting on, Miss Day, at the present time? Gaily, Idon't doubt for a moment."
"I am not gay, Dick; you know that."
"Gaily doesn't mean decked in gay dresses."
"I didn't suppose gaily was gaily dressed. Mighty me, what a scholaryou've grown!"
"Lots of things have happened to you this spring, I see."
"What have you seen?"
"O, nothing; I've heard, I mean!"
"What have you heard?"
"The name of a pretty man, with brass studs and a copper ring and a tinwatch-chain, a little mixed up with your own. That's all."
"That's a very unkind picture of Mr. Shiner, for that's who you mean! Thestuds are gold, as you know, and it's a real silver chain; the ring Ican't conscientiously defend, and he only wore it once."
"He might have worn it a hundred times without showing it half so much."
"Well, he's nothing to me," she serenely observed.
"Not any more than I am?"
"Now, Mr. Dewy," said Fancy severely, "certainly he isn't any more to methan you are!"
"Not so much?"
She looked aside to consider the precise compass of that question. "ThatI can't exactly answer," she replied with soft archness.
As they were going rather slowly, another spring-cart, containing afarmer, farmer's wife, and farmer's man, jogged past them; and thefarmer's wife and farmer's man eyed the couple very curiously. Thefarmer never looked up from the horse's tail.
"Why can't you exactly answer?" said Dick, quickening Smart a little, andjogging on just behind the farmer and farmer's wife and man.
As no answer came, and as their eyes had nothing else to do, they bothcontemplated the picture presented in front, and noticed how the farmer'swife sat flattened between the two men, who bulged over each end of theseat to give her room, till they almost sat upon their respective wheels;and they looked too at the farmer's wife's silk mantle, inflating itselfbetween her shoulders like a balloon and sinking flat again, at each jogof the horse. The farmer's wife, feeling their eyes sticking into herback, looked over her shoulder. Dick dropped ten yards further behind.
"Fancy, why can't you answer?" he repeated.
"Because how much you are to me depends upon how much I am to you," saidshe in low tones.
"Everything," said Dick, putting his hand towards hers, and castingemphatic eyes upon the upper curve of her cheek.
"Now, Richard Dewy, no touching me! I didn't say in what way yourthinking of me affected the question--perhaps inversely, don't you see?No touching, sir! Look; goodness me, don't, Dick!"
The cause of her sudden start was the unpleasant appearance over Dick'sright shoulder of an empty timber-wagon and four journeymen-carpentersreclining in lazy postures inside it, their eyes directed upwards atvarious oblique angles into the surrounding world, the chief object oftheir existence being apparently to criticize to the very backbone andmarrow every animate object that came within the compass of their vision.This difficulty of Dick's was overcome by trotting on till the wagon andcarpenters were beginning to look rather misty by reason of a film ofdust that accompanied their wagon-wheels, and rose around their headslike a fog.
"Say you love me, Fancy."
"No, Dick, certainly not; 'tisn't time to do that yet."
"Why, Fancy?"
"'Miss Day' is better at present--don't mind my saying so; and I oughtnot to have called you Dick."
"Nonsense! when you know that I would do anything on earth for your love.Why, you make any one think that loving is a thing that can be done andundone, and put on and put off at a mere whim."
"No, no, I don't," she said gently; "but there are things which tell me Iought not to give way to much thinking about you, even if--"
"But you want to, don't you? Yes, say you do; it is best to be truthful.Whatever they may say about a woman's right to conceal where her lovelies, and pretend it doesn't exist, and things like that, it is not best;I do know it, Fancy. And an honest woman in that, as well as in all herdaily concerns, shines most brightly, and is thought most of in the long-run."
"Well then, perhaps, Dick, I do love you a little," she whisperedtend
erly; "but I wish you wouldn't say any more now."
"I won't say any more now, then, if you don't like it, dear. But you dolove me a little, don't you?"
"Now you ought not to want me to keep saying things twice; I can't sayany more now, and you must be content with what you have."
"I may at any rate call you Fancy? There's no harm in that."
"Yes, you may."
"And you'll not call me Mr. Dewy any more?"
"Very well."