They do move his soul; don't 'em, father?'
The eldest Dewy smiled across from his distant chair an assent to Reuben's remark.
'Spaking of being moved in soul,' said Mr. Penny, 'I shall never forget the first time I heard the 'Dead March.' 'Twas at poor Corp'l Nineman's funeral at Casterbridge. It fairly made my hair creep and fidget about like a vlock of sheep--ah, it did, souls! And when they had done, and the last trump had sounded, and the guns was fired over the dead hero's grave, a' icy-cold drop o' moist sweat hung upon my forehead, and another upon my jawbone. Ah, 'tis a very solemn thing!'
'Well, as to father in the corner there,' the tranter said, pointing to old William, who was in the act of filling his mouth; 'he'd starve to death for music's sake now, as much as when he was a boy- chap of fifteen.'
'Truly, now,' said Michael Mail, clearing the corner of his throat in the manner of a man who meant to be convincing; 'there's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.' He lifted the cup to his mouth, and drank himself gradually backwards from a perpendicular position to a slanting one, during which time his looks performed a circuit from the wall opposite him to the ceiling overhead. Then clearing the other corner of his throat: 'Once I was a-setting in the little kitchen of the Dree Mariners at Casterbridge, having a bit of dinner, and a brass band struck up in the street. Such a beautiful band as that were! I was setting eating fried liver and lights, I well can mind--ah, I was! and to save my life, I couldn't help chawing to the tune. Band played six- eight time; six-eight chaws I, willynilly. Band plays common; common time went my teeth among the liver and lights as true as a hair. Beautiful 'twere! Ah, I shall never forget that there band!'
'That's as tuneful a thing as ever I heard of,' said grandfather James, with the absent gaze which accompanies profound criticism.
'I don't like Michael's tuneful stories then,' said Mrs. Dewy. 'They are quite coarse to a person o' decent taste.'
Old Michael's mouth twitched here and there, as if he wanted to smile but didn't know where to begin, which gradually settled to an expression that it was not displeasing for a nice woman like the tranter's wife to correct him.
'Well, now,' said Reuben, with decisive earnestness, 'that sort o' coarse touch that's so upsetting to Ann's feelings is to my mind a recommendation; for it do always prove a story to be true. And for the same reason, I like a story with a bad moral. My sonnies, all true stories have a coarse touch or a bad moral, depend upon't. If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd ha' troubled to invent parables?' Saying this the tranter arose to fetch a new stock of cider, ale, mead, and home- made wines.
Mrs. Dewy sighed, and appended a remark (ostensibly behind her husband's back, though that the words should reach his ears distinctly was understood by both): 'Such a man as Dewy is! Nobody do know the trouble I have to keep that man barely respectable. And did you ever hear too--just now at supper-time--talking about 'taties' with Michael in such a work-folk way. Well, 'tis what I was never brought up to! With our family 'twas never less than 'taters,' and very often 'pertatoes' outright; mother was so particular and nice with us girls there was no family in the parish that kept them selves up more than we.'
The hour of parting came. Fancy could not remain for the night, because she had engaged a woman to wait up for her. She disappeared temporarily from the flagging party of dancers, and then came downstairs wrapped up and looking altogether a different person from whom she had been hitherto, in fact (to Dick's sadness and disappointment), a woman somewhat reserved and of a phlegmatic temperament--nothing left in her of the romping girl that she had seemed but a short quarter-hour before, who had not minded the weight of Dick's hand upon her waist, nor shirked the purlieus of the mistletoe.
'What a difference!' thought the young man--hoary cynic pro tem. 'What a miserable deceiving difference between the manners of a maid's life at dancing times and at others!
Look at this lovely Fancy! Through the whole past evening touchable, squeezeable--even kissable! For whole half-hours I held her so chose to me that not a sheet of paper could have been shipped between us; and I could feel her heart only just outside my own, her life beating on so close to mine, that I was aware of every breath in it. A flit is made upstairs--a hat and a cloak put on--and I no more dare to touch her than--' Thought failed him, and he returned to realities.
But this was an endurable misery in comparison with what followed. Mr. Shiner and his watch-chain, taking the intrusive advantage that ardent bachelors who are going homeward along the same road as a pretty young woman always do take of that circumstance, came forward to assure Fancy--with a total disregard of Dick's emotions, and in tones which were certainly not frigid--that he (Shiner) was not the man to go to bed before seeing his Lady Fair safe within her own door--not he, nobody should say he was that;--and that he would not leave her side an inch till the thing was done--drown him if he would. The proposal was assented to by Miss Day, in Dick's foreboding judgment, with one degree--or at any rate, an appreciable fraction of a degree--of warmth beyond that required by a disinterested desire for protection from the dangers of the night.
All was over; and Dick surveyed the chair she had last occupied, looking now like a setting from which the gem has been torn. There stood her glass, and the romantic teaspoonful of elder wine at the bottom that she couldn't drink by trying ever so hard, in obedience to the mighty arguments of the tranter (his hand coming down upon her shoulder the while, like a Nasmyth hammer); but the drinker was there no longer. There were the nine or ten pretty little crumbs she had left on her plate; but the eater was no more seen.
There seemed a disagreeable closeness of relationship between himself and the members of his family, now that they were left alone again face to face. His father seemed quite offensive for appearing to be in just as high spirits as when the guests were there; and as for grandfather James (who had not yet left), he was quite fiendish in being rather glad they were gone.
'Really,' said the tranter, in a tone of placid satisfaction, 'I've had so little time to attend to myself all the evenen, that I mean to enjoy a quiet meal now! A slice of this here ham--
neither too fat nor too lean--so; and then a drop of this vinegar and pickles-- there, that's it--and I shall be as fresh as a lark again! And to tell the truth, my sonny, my inside has been as dry as a lime-basket all night.'
'I like a party very well once in a while,' said Mrs. Dewy, leaving off the adorned tones she had been bound to use throughout the evening, and returning to the natural marriage voice; 'but, Lord, 'tis such a sight of heavy work next day! What with the dirty plates, and knives and forks, and dust and smother, and bits kicked off your furniture, and I don't know what all, why a body could a'most wish there were no such things as Christmases . .
. Ah-h dear!' she yawned, till the chock in the corner had ticked several beats. She cast her eyes round upon the displaced, dust-laden furniture, and sank down overpowered at the sight.
'Well, I be getting all right by degrees, thank the Lord for't!' said the tranter cheerfully through a mangled mass of ham and bread, without lifting his eyes from his plate, and chopping away with his knife and fork as if he were felling trees. 'Ann, you may as well go on to bed at once, and not bide there making such sleepy faces; you look as long-favoured as a fiddle, upon my life, Ann. There, you must be wearied out, 'tis true. I'll do the doors and draw up
