Under the Greenwood Tree. Томас Харди

partner, a young lady of the name of Lizzy—called Lizz for short—tried to mollify.

      “I can’t say that I myself have much feeling for casting off,” she said.

      “Nor I,” said Mrs Penny, following up the argument; “especially if a friend and neighbour is set against it. Not but that ’Tis a terrible tasty thing in good hands and well done; yes, indeed, so say I.”

      “All I meant was,” said Dick, rather sorry that he had spoken correctingly to a guest, “that ’Tis in the dance; and a man has hardly any right to hack and mangle what was ordained by the regular dance-maker, who, I daresay, got his living by making ’em, and thought of nothing else all his life.”

      “I don’t like casting off: then very well; I cast off for no dance-maker that ever lived.”

      Dick now appeared to be doing mental arithmetic, the act being really an effort to present to himself, in an abstract form, how far an argument with a formidable rival ought to be carried, when that rival was his mother’s guest. The dead-lock was put an end to by the stamping arrival up the middle of the tranter, who, despising minutiae on principle, started a theme of his own.

      “I assure you, neighbours,” he said, “the heat of my frame no tongue can tell!” He looked around and endeavoured to give, by a forcible gaze of self-sympathy, some faint idea of the truth.

      Mrs Dewy formed one of the next couple.

      “Yes,” she said, in an auxiliary tone, “Reuben always was such a hot man.”

      Mrs Penny implied the species of sympathy that such a class of affliction required, by trying to smile and to look grieved at the same time.

      “If he only walk round the garden of a Sunday morning, his shirt-collar is as limp as no starch at all,” continued Mrs Dewy, her countenance lapsing parenthetically into a housewifely expression of concern at the reminiscence.

      “Come, come, you women-folk; ’Tis hands across—come, come!” said the tranter; and the conversation ceased for the present.

       CHAPTER 8

       They Dance More Wildly

      Dick had at length secured Fancy for that most delightful of country-dances, opening with six-hands-round.

      “Before we begin,” said the tranter, “my proposal is, that ’twould be a right and proper plan for every mortal man in the dance to pull off his jacket, considering the heat.”

      “Such low notions as you have, Reuben! Nothing but strip will go down with you when you are a-dancing. Such a hot man as he is!”

      “Well, now, look here, my sonnies,” he argued to his wife, whom he often addressed in the plural masculine for economy of epithet merely; “I don’t see that. You dance and get hot as fire; therefore you lighten your clothes. Isn’t that nature and reason for gentle and simple? If I strip by myself and not necessary, ’Tis rather pot-housey I own; but if we stout chaps strip one and all, why, ’Tis the native manners of the country, which no man can gainsay? Hey—what did you say, my sonnies?”

      “Strip we will!” said the three other heavy men who were in the dance; and their coats were accordingly taken off and hung in the passage, whence the four sufferers from heat soon reappeared, marching in close column, with flapping shirtsleeves, and having, as common to them all, a general glance of being now a match for any man or dancer in England or Ireland. 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; when the very fiddlers as well as the dancers get red in the face, the dancers having advanced further still towards incandescence, and entered the cadaverous phase; the fiddlers no longer sit down, but kick back their chairs and saw madly at the strings, with legs firmly spread and eyes closed, regardless of the visible world. Again and again did Dick share his Love’s hand with another man, and wheel round; then, more delightfully, promenade in a circle with her all to himself, his arm holding her waist more firmly each time, and his elbow getting further and further behind her back, till the distance reached was rather noticeable; and, most blissful, swinging to places shoulder to shoulder, her breath curling round his neck like a summer zephyr that had strayed from its proper date. Threading the couples one by one they reached the bottom, when there arose in Dick’s mind a minor misery lest the tune should end before they could work their way to the top again, and have anew the same exciting run down through. Dick’s feelings on actually reaching the top in spite of his doubts were supplemented by a mortal fear that the fiddling might even stop at this supreme moment; which prompted him to convey a stealthy whisper to the far-gone musicians, to the effect that they were not to leave off till he and his partner had reached the bottom of the dance once more, which remark was replied to by the nearest of those convulsed and quivering men by a private nod to the anxious young man between two semiquavers of the tune, and a simultaneous “All right, ay, ay,” without opening the eyes. Fancy was now held so closely that Dick and she were practically one person. The room became to Dick like a picture in a dream; all that he could remember of it afterwards being the look of the fiddlers going to sleep, as humming-tops sleep, by increasing their motion and hum, together with the figures of grandfather James and old Simon Crumpler sitting by the chimney-corner, talking and nodding in dumb-show, and beating the air to their emphatic sentences like people near a threshing machine.

      The dance ended. “Piph-h-h-h!” said tranter Dewy, blowing out his breath in the very finest stream of vapour that a man’s lips could form. “A regular tightener, that one, sonnies!” He wiped his forehead, and went to the cider and ale mugs on the table.

      “Well!” said Mrs Penny, flopping into a chair, “my heart haven’t been in such a thumping state of uproar since I used to sit up on old Midsummer-eves to see who my husband was going to be.”

      “And that’s getting on for a good few years ago now, from what I’ve heard you tell,” said the tranter, without lifting his eyes from the cup he was filling. Being now engaged in the business of handing round refreshments, he was warranted in keeping his coat off still, though the other heavy men had resumed theirs.