PART THE THIRD—SUMMER
CHAPTER I: DRIVING OUT OF BUDMOUTH
An easy bend of neck and graceful set of head; full and wavy bundles
of dark-brown hair; light fall of little feet; pretty devices on the
skirt of 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 the
King’s statue, at which point the white angle of the last house
in the row cut perpendicularly an embayed and nearly motionless expanse
of salt water projected from the outer ocean—to-day lit in bright
tones of green and opal. Dick and Smart had just emerged from
the street, and there on the 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 came
there by driving close to the chains of the Esplanade—incontinently
displacing two chairmen, who had just come to life for the summer in
new clean shirts and revivified clothes, and being almost displaced
in turn by a rigid boy rattling along with a baker’s cart, and
looking neither to the right nor the left. He asked if she were
going to Mellstock that night.
“Yes, I’m waiting for the carrier,” she replied, seeming, too, to suspend thoughts of the letter.
“Now I can drive you home nicely, and you save half an hour. Will ye come with me?”
As Fancy’s power to will anything seemed to have departed in
some mysterious manner at that moment, Dick settled the matter by getting
out and assisting her into the vehicle without another word.
The temporary flush upon her cheek changed to a lesser hue, which
was permanent, and at length their eyes met; there was present between
them a certain feeling of embarrassment, which arises at such moments
when all the instinctive acts dictated by the position have been performed. Dick, being engaged with the reins, thought less of this awkwardness than did Fancy, who had nothing to do but to feel his presence, and to be more and more conscious of the fact, that by accepting a seat beside him in this way she succumbed to the tone of his note. Smart jogged along, and Dick jogged, and the helpless Fancy necessarily jogged, too; and she felt that she was in a measure captured and made a prisoner.
“I am so much obliged to you for your company, Miss Day,” he observed, as they drove past the two semicircular bays of the Old Royal Hotel, where His Majesty King George the Third had many a time attended the balls of the burgesses.
To Miss Day, crediting him with the same consciousness of mastery—a
consciousness of which he was perfectly innocent—this remark sounded
like a magnanimous intention to soothe her, the captive.
“I didn’t come for the pleasure of obliging you with
my company,” she said.
The answer had an unexpected manner of incivility in it that must
have been rather surprising to young Dewy. At the same time it
may be observed, that when a young woman returns a rude answer to a
young man’s civil remark, her heart is in a state which argues
rather hopefully for his case than otherwise.
There was silence between them till they had left the sea-front and
passed about twenty of the trees that ornamented the road leading up
out of 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, arranged
his looks very emphatically, and cleared his throat.
“Really, anybody would think you had met me on business and
were just going 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 a man who had resolved never to spoil his jollity by loving one of womankind—
“Well, how are you getting on, Miss Day, at the present time? Gaily, I don’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 scholar you’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?”