This emphatic compliment of the Squire’s to Nancy was felt by others…

This emphatic compliment of the Squire’s to Nancy was felt by others besides Godfrey to have a diplomatic significance; and her father gave a slight additional erectness to his back, as he looked across the table at her with complacent gravity. That grave and orderly senior was not going to bate a jot of his dignity by seeming elated at the notion of a match between his family and the Squire’s: he was gratified by any honour paid to his daughter; but he must see an alteration in several ways before his consent would be vouchsafed. His spare but healthy person, and high-featured firm face, that looked as if it had never been flushed by excess, was in strong contrast, not only with the Squire’s, but with the appearance of the Raveloe farmers generally—in accordance with a favourite saying of his own, that “breed was stronger than pasture”.

“Miss Nancy’s wonderful like what her mother was, though; isn’t she, Kimble?” said the stout lady of that name, looking round for her husband.

But Doctor Kimble (country apothecaries in old days enjoyed that title without authority of diploma), being a thin and agile man, was flitting about the room with his hands in his pockets, making himself agreeable to his feminine patients, with medical impartiality, and being welcomed everywhere as a doctor by hereditary right—not one of those miserable apothecaries who canvass for practice in strange neighbourhoods, and spend all their income in starving their one horse, but a man of substance, able to keep an extravagant table like the best of his patients. Time out of mind the Raveloe doctor had been a Kimble; Kimble was inherently a doctor’s name; and it was difficult to contemplate firmly the melancholy fact that the actual Kimble had no son, so that his practice might one day be handed over to a successor with the incongruous name of Taylor or Johnson. But in that case the wiser people in Raveloe would employ Dr. Blick of Flitton—as less unnatural.

“Did you speak to me, my dear?” said the authentic doctor, coming quickly to his wife’s side; but, as if foreseeing that she would be too much out of breath to repeat her remark, he went on immediately—“Ha, Miss Priscilla, the sight of you revives the taste of that super-excellent pork-pie. I hope the batch isn’t near an end.”

“Yes, indeed, it is, doctor,” said Priscilla; “but I’ll answer for it the next shall be as good. My pork-pies don’t turn out well by chance.”

“Not as your doctoring does, eh, Kimble?—because folks forget to take your physic, eh?” said the Squire, who regarded physic and doctors as many loyal churchmen regard the church and the clergy—tasting a joke against them when he was in health, but impatiently eager for their aid when anything was the matter with him. He tapped his box, and looked round with a triumphant laugh.

“Ah, she has a quick wit, my friend Priscilla has,” said the doctor, choosing to attribute the epigram to a lady rather than allow a brother-in-law that advantage over him. “She saves a little pepper to sprinkle over her talk—that’s the reason why she never puts too much into her pies. There’s my wife now, she never has an answer at her tongue’s end; but if I offend her, she’s sure to scarify my throat with black pepper the next day, or else give me the colic with watery greens. That’s an awful tit-for-tat.” Here the vivacious doctor made a pathetic grimace.

“Did you ever hear the like?” said Mrs. Kimble, laughing above her double chin with much good-humour, aside to Mrs. Crackenthorp, who blinked and nodded, and seemed to intend a smile, which, by the correlation of forces, went off in small twitchings and noises.

“I suppose that’s the sort of tit-for-tat adopted in your profession, Kimble, if you’ve a grudge against a patient,” said the rector.

“Never do have a grudge against our patients,” said Mr. Kimble, “except when they leave us: and then, you see, we haven’t the chance of prescribing for ’em. Ha, Miss Nancy,” he continued, suddenly skipping to Nancy’s side, “you won’t forget your promise? You’re to save a dance for me, you know.”

“Come, come, Kimble, don’t you be too for’ard,” said the Squire. “Give the young uns fair-play. There’s my son Godfrey’ll be wanting to have a round with you if you run off with Miss Nancy. He’s bespoke her for the first dance, I’ll be bound. Eh, sir! what do you say?” he continued, throwing himself backward, and looking at Godfrey. “Haven’t you asked Miss Nancy to open the dance with you?”

Godfrey, sorely uncomfortable under this significant insistence about Nancy, and afraid to think where it would end by the time his father had set his usual hospitable example of drinking before and after supper, saw no course open but to turn to Nancy and say, with as little awkwardness as possible—

“No; I’ve not asked her yet, but I hope she’ll consent—if somebody else hasn’t been before me.”

“No, I’ve not engaged myself,” said Nancy, quietly, though blushingly. (If Mr. Godfrey founded any hopes on her consenting to dance with him, he would soon be undeceived; but there was no need for her to be uncivil.)

“Then I hope you’ve no objections to dancing with me,” said Godfrey, beginning to lose the sense that there was anything uncomfortable in this arrangement.

“No, no objections,” said Nancy, in a cold tone.

“Ah, well, you’re a lucky fellow, Godfrey,” said uncle Kimble; “but you’re my godson, so I won’t stand in your way. Else I’m not so very old, eh, my dear?” he went on, skipping to his wife’s side again. “You wouldn’t mind my having a second after you were gone—not if I cried a good deal first?”

“Come, come, take a cup o’ tea and stop your tongue, do,” said good-humoured Mrs. Kimble, feeling some pride in a husband who must be regarded as so clever and amusing by the company generally. If he had only not been irritable at cards!

While safe, well-tested personalities were enlivening the tea in this way, the sound of the fiddle approaching within a distance at which it could be heard distinctly, made the young people look at each other with sympathetic impatience for the end of the meal.

“Why, there’s Solomon in the hall,” said the Squire, “and playing my fav’rite tune, I believe—‘The flaxen-headed ploughboy’—he’s for giving us a hint as we aren’t enough in a hurry to hear him play. Bob,” he called out to his third long-legged son, who was at the other end of the room, “open the door, and tell Solomon to come in. He shall give us a tune here.”

Bob obeyed, and Solomon walked in, fiddling as he walked, for he would on no account break off in the middle of a tune.

“Here, Solomon,” said the Squire, with loud patronage. “Round here, my man. Ah, I knew it was ‘The flaxen-headed ploughboy’: there’s no finer tune.”

Solomon Macey, a small hale old man with an abundant crop of long white hair reaching nearly to his shoulders, advanced to the indicated spot, bowing reverently while he fiddled, as much as to say that he respected the company, though he respected the key-note more. As soon as he had repeated the tune and lowered his fiddle, he bowed again to the Squire and the rector, and said, “I hope I see your honour and your reverence well, and wishing you health and long life and a happy New Year. And wishing the same to you, Mr. Lammeter, sir; and to the other gentlemen, and the madams, and the young lasses.”

As Solomon uttered the last words, he bowed in all directions solicitously, lest he should be wanting in due respect. But thereupon he immediately began to prelude, and fell into the tune which he knew would be taken as a special compliment by Mr. Lammeter.

“Thank ye, Solomon, thank ye,” said Mr. Lammeter when the fiddle paused again. “That’s ‘Over the hills and far away,’ that is. My father used to say to me, whenever we heard that tune, ‘Ah, lad, I come from over the hills and far away.’ There’s a many tunes I don’t make head or tail of; but that speaks to me like the blackbird’s whistle. I suppose it’s the name: there’s a deal in the name of a tune.”

But Solomon was already impatient to prelude again, and presently broke with much spirit into “Sir Roger de Coverley,” at which there was a sound of chairs pushed back, and laughing voices.

“Aye, aye, Solomon, we know what that means,” said the Squire, rising. “It’s time to begin the dance, eh? Lead the way, then, and we’ll all follow you.”

So Solomon, holding his white head on one side, and playing vigorously, marched forward at the head of the gay procession into the White Parlour, where the mistletoe-bough was hung, and multitudinous tallow candles made rather a brilliant effect, gleaming from among the berried holly-boughs, and reflected in the old-fashioned oval mirrors fastened in the panels of the white wainscot. A quaint procession! Old Solomon, in his seedy clothes and long white locks, seemed to be luring that decent company by the magic scream of his fiddle—luring discreet matrons in turban-shaped caps, nay, Mrs. Crackenthorp herself, the summit of whose perpendicular feather was on a level with the Squire’s shoulder—luring fair lasses complacently conscious of very short waists and skirts blameless of front-folds—luring burly fathers in large variegated waistcoats, and ruddy sons, for the most part shy and sheepish, in short nether garments and very long coat-tails.

Already Mr. Macey and a few other privileged villagers, who were allowed to be spectators on these great occasions, were seated on benches placed for them near the door; and great was the admiration and satisfaction in that quarter when the couples had formed themselves for the dance, and the Squire led off with Mrs. Crackenthorp, joining hands with the rector and Mrs. Osgood. That was as it should be—that was what everybody had been used to—and the charter of Raveloe seemed to be renewed by the ceremony. It was not thought of as an unbecoming levity for the old and middle-aged people to dance a little before sitting down to cards, but rather as part of their social duties. For what were these if not to be merry at appropriate times, interchanging visits and poultry with due frequency, paying each other old-established compliments in sound traditional phrases, passing well-tried personal jokes, urging your guests to eat and drink too much out of hospitality, and eating and drinking too much in your neighbour’s house to show that you liked your cheer? And the parson naturally set an example in these social duties. For it would not have been possible for the Raveloe mind, without a peculiar revelation, to know that a clergyman should be a pale-faced memento of solemnities, instead of a reasonably faulty man whose exclusive authority to read prayers and preach, to christen, marry, and bury you, necessarily coexisted with the right to sell you the ground to be buried in and to take tithe in kind; on which last point, of course, there was a little grumbling, but not to the extent of irreligion—not of deeper significance than the grumbling at the rain, which was by no means accompanied with a spirit of impious defiance, but with a desire that the prayer for fine weather might be read forthwith.

There was no reason, then, why the rector’s dancing should not be received as part of the fitness of things quite as much as the Squire’s, or why, on the other hand, Mr. Macey’s official respect should restrain him from subjecting the parson’s performance to that criticism with which minds of extraordinary acuteness must necessarily contemplate the doings of their fallible fellow-men.

“The Squire’s pretty springe, considering his weight,” said Mr. Macey, “and he stamps uncommon well. But Mr. Lammeter beats ’em all for shapes: you see he holds his head like a sodger, and he isn’t so cushiony as most o’ the oldish gentlefolks—they run fat in general; and he’s got a fine leg. The parson’s nimble enough, but he hasn’t got much of a leg: it’s a bit too thick down’ard, and his knees might be a bit nearer wi’out damage; but he might do worse, he might do worse. Though he hasn’t that grand way o’ waving his hand as the Squire has.”

“Talk o’ nimbleness, look at Mrs. Osgood,” said Ben Winthrop, who was holding his son Aaron between his knees. “She trips along with her little steps, so as nobody can see how she goes—it’s like as if she had little wheels to her feet. She doesn’t look a day older nor last year: she’s the finest-made woman as is, let the next be where she will.”

“I don’t heed how the women are made,” said Mr. Macey, with some contempt. “They wear nayther coat nor breeches: you can’t make much out o’ their shapes.”

“Fayder,” said Aaron, whose feet were busy beating out the tune, “how does that big cock’s-feather stick in Mrs. Crackenthorp’s yead? Is there a little hole for it, like in my shuttle-cock?”

“Hush, lad, hush; that’s the way the ladies dress theirselves, that is,” said the father, adding, however, in an undertone to Mr. Macey, “It does make her look funny, though—partly like a short-necked bottle wi’ a long quill in it. Hey, by jingo, there’s the young Squire leading off now, wi’ Miss Nancy for partners! There’s a lass for you!—like a pink-and-white posy—there’s nobody ’ud think as anybody could be so pritty. I shouldn’t wonder if she’s Madam Cass some day, arter all—and nobody more rightfuller, for they’d make a fine match. You can find nothing against Master Godfrey’s shapes, Macey, I’ll bet a penny.”

Mr. Macey screwed up his mouth, leaned his head further on one side, and twirled his thumbs with a presto movement as his eyes followed Godfrey up the dance. At last he summed up his opinion.

“Pretty well down’ard, but a bit too round i’ the shoulder-blades. And as for them coats as he gets from the Flitton tailor, they’re a poor cut to pay double money for.”

“Ah, Mr. Macey, you and me are two folks,” said Ben, slightly indignant at this carping. “When I’ve got a pot o’ good ale, I like to swaller it, and do my inside good, i’stead o’ smelling and staring at it to see if I can’t find faut wi’ the brewing. I should like you to pick me out a finer-limbed young fellow nor Master Godfrey—one as ’ud knock you down easier, or ’s more pleasanter-looksed when he’s piert and merry.”

“Tchuh!” said Mr. Macey, provoked to increased severity, “he isn’t come to his right colour yet: he’s partly like a slack-baked pie. And I doubt he’s got a soft place in his head, else why should he be turned round the finger by that offal Dunsey as nobody’s seen o’ late, and let him kill that fine hunting hoss as was the talk o’ the country? And one while he was allays after Miss Nancy, and then it all went off again, like a smell o’ hot porridge, as I may say. That wasn’t my way when I went a-coorting.”