CHAPTER VI: YALBURY WOOD AND THE KEEPER’S HOUSE
A mood of blitheness rarely experienced even by young men was Dick’s
on the following Monday morning. It was the week after the Easter
holidays, and he was journeying along with Smart the mare and the light
spring-cart, watching the damp slopes of the hill-sides as they streamed
in the warmth of the sun, which at this unsettled season shone on the
grass with the freshness of an occasional inspector rather than as an
accustomed proprietor. His errand was to fetch Fancy, and some
additional household goods, from her father’s house in the neighbouring
parish to her dwelling at Mellstock. The distant view was darkly
shaded with clouds; but the nearer parts of the landscape were whitely
illumined by the visible rays of the sun streaming down across the heavy
gray shade behind.
The tranter had not yet told his son of the state of Shiner’s
heart that had been suggested to him by Shiner’s movements. He preferred to let such delicate affairs right themselves; experience having taught him that the uncertain phenomenon of love, as it existed in other people, was not a groundwork upon which a single action of his own life could be founded.
Geoffrey Day lived in the depths of Yalbury Wood, which formed portion
of one of the outlying estates of the Earl of Wessex, to whom Day was
head game-keeper, timber-steward, and general overlooker for this district. The wood was intersected by the highway from Casterbridge to London at a place not far from the house, and some trees had of late years been felled between its windows and the ascent of Yalbury Hill, to give the solitary cottager a glimpse of the passers-by.
It was a satisfaction to walk into the keeper’s house, even
as a stranger, on a fine spring morning like the present. A curl
of wood-smoke came from the chimney, and drooped over the roof like
a blue feather in a lady’s hat; and the sun shone obliquely upon
the patch of grass in front, which reflected its brightness through
the open doorway and up the staircase opposite, lighting up each riser
with a shiny green radiance, and leaving the top of each step in shade.
The window-sill of the front room was between four and five feet
from the floor, dropping inwardly to a broad low bench, over which, as well as over the whole surface of the wall beneath, there always hung a deep shade, which was considered objectionable on every ground save one, namely, that the perpetual sprinkling of seeds and water by the caged canary above was not noticed as an eyesore by visitors. The window was set with thickly-leaded diamond glazing, formed, especially in the lower panes, of knotty glass of various shades of green. Nothing was better known to Fancy than the extravagant manner in which these circular knots or eyes distorted everything seen through them from the outside—lifting hats from heads, shoulders from bodies; scattering the spokes of cart-wheels, and bending the straight fir-trunks into semicircles. The ceiling was carried by a beam traversing its midst, from the side of which projected a large nail, used solely and constantly as a peg for Geoffrey’s hat; the nail was arched by a rainbow-shaped stain, imprinted by the brim of the said hat when it was hung there dripping wet.