After the pudding Squire Thorpe gave the health of the brides and their bridegrooms; and rising en masse, they made the old barn ring again with cheering and hammering of the tables. Down fell two of the plank-seats, and added a booming roar to the noise.
Mrs Estcourt slipped out into the air for a minute, and came through the rick-yard. The rosy light of the setting sun, now behind the trees of Thorpe Wood, lit up the house and the barn and the fields. The call of the partridge, “Caer-wit, caer-wit!” sounded across the stubble. Far away upon the hill shone a brilliant red light—a very beacon—flashing and gleaming. It was the last level rays of the sun reflected from the west window of the church—a light of good omen for those who had therein been made one that day. Yet joying in their joy and hoping their hopes, the tears came fast from her swelling heart. But there arose the tuning of a fiddle—“tum-tum, tup-tup!”—and her sigh, as she turned away and forced down her feelings, was drowned in a roar and stamping from the barn. It was her own health that they were drinking, and immediately afterwards a crowd began to pour forth from the wide portal. The older men settled to their pipes—an ample supply of long clay pipes, stacked anglewise, was provided for them. But the lissom young men and the giggling girls trooped across the rick-yard to the level meadow, which the sheep had cropped close, and which had been also carefully mown for the purpose. Had it rained, there would still have been dancing-room in the barn; but it was warm and dry, so they footed it on the sward.
Mrs Estcourt, a little shrinking and nervous, had to open it with the Squire; and, instead of finishing, they commenced with “Sir Roger de Coverley,” that fine old country dance. After a short time she left it, but the rest grew wilder and wilder. The dancing was like a maelstrom, sucking in all that came within its circling sound. Those who had at first held aloof, saying that they were too old or stiff, or didn’t know how, by degrees were drawn in, and frisked as merrily as the lads. So the wearyful women, whose hearts had already been made glad, hummed the tune and flung through it with a will. The children set up a dance of their own, joining hands in a ring. “Let’s jine in,” said Farmer Ruck to Farmer Hedges; and away they went with the stream—a sight not to be seen but once in fifty years. The Ancient, Daddy Pistol-legs, sitting in the barn and listening to the music, lifted his oaken staff and beat time upon an empty barrel. So lustily did the village band blow and fiddle that the carthorses in the meadows, who always cock up their ears at the sound of a drum or a trumpet, galloped to and fro with excitement.
The Squire’s gamekeeper by-and-by came along, with his gun under his arm, to see the fun, when Augustus Basset, with a fine sense of magnanimity, went up to him with his can and poured him out a foaming mug. But as he went to the house to replenish the can he could not forbear muttering to himself, “I can’t see what he wants to show his face here for.”
The bats had now left the tiles of the barn, and were wheeling to and fro. But the band blew and fiddled, well refreshed by Augustus’s can, and the dancers whirled about yet more fast and furious. Sly couples, however, occasionally slipped aside to do a little courting. Tummas and Rause, after slowly sauntering up the hedgerow, came to a gateway, and, looking through, beheld the broad round face of the full moon placidly shining.
“Aw, thur be the moon, you; a’ be as big as a waggon-wheel,” said Tummas, putting his arm as far round her plump waist as it would go.
“Let I bide,” said Rause.
“I wooll kiss ee,” said Tummas sturdily.
“Thee shatn’t.”
There was some struggling, but Tummas succeeded with less difficulty than he expected. The damsel was relenting under the influence of long and faithful attentions. Tummas, like a wise man, hit while the iron was hot, and pressed for the publication of the banns.