Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman
placed it for convenience of porterage on the top of her head, where it
rode on in jeopardized balance as she walked with arms akimbo.
“Well—whatever is that a-creeping down thy back, Car Darch?” said one
of the group suddenly.
All looked at Car. Her gown was a light cotton print, and from the back
of her head a kind of rope could be seen descending to some distance
below her waist, like a Chinaman’s queue.
“’Tis her hair falling down,” said another.
No; it was not her hair: it was a black stream of something oozing from
her basket, and it glistened like a slimy snake in the cold still rays
of the moon.
“’Tis treacle,” said an observant matron.
Treacle it was. Car’s poor old grandmother had a weakness for the sweet
stuff. Honey she had in plenty out of her own hives, but treacle was
what her soul desired, and Car had been about to give her a treat of
surprise. Hastily lowering the basket the dark girl found that the
vessel containing the syrup had been smashed within.
By this time there had arisen a shout of laughter at the extraordinary
appearance of Car’s back, which irritated the dark queen into getting
rid of the disfigurement by the first sudden means available, and
independently of the help of the scoffers. She rushed excitedly into
the field they were about to cross, and flinging herself flat on her
back upon the grass, began to wipe her gown as well as she could by
spinning horizontally on the herbage and dragging herself over it upon
her elbows.
The laughter rang louder; they clung to the gate, to the posts, rested
on their staves, in the weakness engendered by their convulsions at the
spectacle of Car. Our heroine, who had hitherto held her peace, at this
wild moment could not help joining in with the rest.
It was a misfortune—in more ways than one. No sooner did the dark queen
hear the soberer richer note of Tess among those of the other
work-people than a long-smouldering sense of rivalry inflamed her to
madness. She sprang to her feet and closely faced the object of her
dislike.
“How darest th’ laugh at me, hussy!” she cried.
“I couldn’t really help it when t’others did,” apologized Tess, still
tittering.
“Ah, th’st think th’ beest everybody, dostn’t, because th’ beest first
favourite with He just now! But stop a bit, my lady, stop a bit! I’m as
good as two of such! Look here—here’s at ’ee!”
To Tess’s horror the dark queen began stripping off the bodice of her
gown—which for the added reason of its ridiculed condition she was only
too glad to be free of—till she had bared her plump neck, shoulders,
and arms to the moonshine, under which they looked as luminous and
beautiful as some Praxitelean creation, in their possession of the
faultless rotundities of a lusty country-girl. She closed her fists and
squared up at Tess.
“Indeed, then, I shall not fight!” said the latter majestically; “and
if I had known you was of that sort, I wouldn’t have so let myself down
as to come with such a whorage as this is!”
The rather too inclusive speech brought down a torrent of vituperation
from other quarters upon fair Tess’s unlucky head, particularly from
the Queen of Diamonds, who having stood in the relations to
d’Urberville that Car had also been suspected of, united with the
latter against the common enemy. Several other women also chimed in,
with an animus which none of them would have been so fatuous as to show
but for the rollicking evening they had passed. Thereupon, finding Tess
unfairly browbeaten, the husbands and lovers tried to make peace by
defending her; but the result of that attempt was directly to increase
the war.
Tess was indignant and ashamed. She no longer minded the loneliness of
the way and the lateness of the hour; her one object was to get away
from the whole crew as soon as possible. She knew well enough that the
better among them would repent of their passion next day. They were all
now inside the field, and she was edging back to rush off alone when a
horseman emerged almost silently from the corner of the hedge that
screened the road, and Alec d’Urberville looked round upon them.
“What the devil is all this row about, work-folk?” he asked.
The explanation was not readily forthcoming; and, in truth, he did not
require any. Having heard their voices while yet some way off he had
ridden creepingly forward, and learnt enough to satisfy himself.
Tess was standing apart from the rest, near the gate. He bent over
towards her. “Jump up behind me,” he whispered, “and we’ll get shot of
the screaming cats in a jiffy!”
She felt almost ready to faint, so vivid was her sense of the crisis.
At almost any other moment of her life she would have refused such
proffered aid and company, as she had refused them several times
before; and now the loneliness would not of itself have forced her to
do otherwise. But coming as the invitation did at the particular
juncture when fear and indignation at these adversaries could be
transformed by a spring of the foot into a triumph over them, she
abandoned herself to her impulse, climbed the gate, put her toe upon
his instep, and scrambled into the saddle behind him. The pair were
speeding away into the distant gray by the time that the contentious
revellers became aware of what had happened.
The Queen of Spades forgot the stain on her bodice, and stood beside
the Queen of Diamonds and the new-married, staggering young woman—all
with a gaze of fixity in the direction in which the horse’s tramp was
diminishing into silence on the road.
“What be ye looking at?” asked a man who had not observed the incident.
“Ho-ho-ho!” laughed dark Car.
“Hee-hee-hee!” laughed the tippling bride, as she steadied herself on
the arm of her fond husband.
“Heu-heu-heu!” laughed dark Car’s mother, stroking her moustache as she
explained laconically: “Out of the frying-pan into the fire!”
Then these children of the open air, whom even excess of alcohol could
scarce injure permanently, betook themselves to the field-path; and as
they went there moved onward with them, around the shadow of each one’s
head, a circle of opalized light, formed by the moon’s rays upon the
glistening sheet of dew. Each pedestrian could see no halo but his or
her own, which never deserted the head-shadow, whatever its vulgar
unsteadiness might be; but adhered to it, and persistently beautified
it; till the erratic motions seemed an inherent part of the
irradiation, and the fumes of their breathing a component of the
night’s mist; and the spirit of the scene, and of the moonlight, and of
Nature, seemed harmoniously to mingle with the spirit of wine.
XI
The twain cantered along for some time without speech, Tess as she
clung to him still panting in her triumph, yet in other respects
dubious. She had perceived that the horse was not the spirited one he
sometimes rose, and felt no alarm on that score, though her seat was
precarious enough despite her tight hold of him. She begged him to slow
the animal to a walk, which Alec accordingly did.
“Neatly done, was it not, dear Tess?” he said by and by.
“Yes!” said she. “I am sure I ought to be much obliged to you.”
“And are you?”
She did not reply.
“Tess, why do you always dislike my kissing you?”
“I suppose—because I don’t love you.”
“You are quite sure?”
“I am angry with you sometimes!”
“Ah, I half feared as much.” Nevertheless, Alec did not object to that
confession. He knew that anything was better then frigidity. “Why
haven’t you told me when I have made you angry?”
“You know very well why. Because I cannot help myself here.”
“I haven’t offended you often by love-making?”
“You have sometimes.”
“How many times?”
“You know as well as I—too many times.”
“Every time I have tried?”
She was silent, and the horse ambled along for a considerable distance,
till a faint luminous fog, which had hung in the hollows all the
evening, became general and enveloped them. It seemed to hold the
moonlight in suspension, rendering it more pervasive than in clear air.
Whether on this account, or from absent-mindedness, or from sleepiness,
she did not perceive that they had long ago passed the point at which
the lane to Trantridge branched from the highway, and that her
conductor had not taken the Trantridge track.
She was inexpressibly weary. She had risen at five o’clock every
morning of that week, had been on foot the whole of each day, and on
this evening had in addition walked the three miles to Chaseborough,
waited three hours for her neighbours without eating or drinking, her
impatience to start them preventing either; she had then walked a mile
of the way home, and had undergone the excitement of the quarrel, till,
with the slow progress of their steed, it was now nearly one o’clock.
Only once, however, was she overcome by actual drowsiness. In that
moment of oblivion her head sank gently against him.
D’Urberville stopped the horse, withdrew his feet from the stirrups,
turned sideways on the saddle, and enclosed her waist with his arm to
support her.
This immediately put her on the defensive, and with one of those sudden
impulses of reprisal to which she was liable she gave him a little push
from her. In his ticklish position he nearly lost his balance and only
just avoided rolling over into the road, the horse, though a powerful
one, being fortunately the quietest he rode.
“That is devilish unkind!” he said. “I mean no harm—only to keep you
from falling.”
She pondered suspiciously, till, thinking that this might after all be
true, she relented, and said quite humbly, “I beg your pardon, sir.”
“I won’t pardon you unless you show some confidence in me. Good God!”
he burst out, “what am I, to be repulsed so by a mere chit like you?
For near three mortal months have you trifled with my feelings, eluded
me, and snubbed me; and I won’t stand it!”
“I’ll leave you to-morrow, sir.”
“No, you will not leave me to-morrow! Will you, I ask once more, show
your belief in me by letting me clasp you with my arm? Come, between us
two and nobody else, now. We know each other well; and you know that I
love you, and think you the prettiest girl in the world, which you are.
Mayn’t I treat you as a lover?”
She drew a quick pettish breath of objection, writhing uneasily on her
seat, looked far ahead, and murmured, “I don’t know—I wish—how can I
say yes or no when—”
He settled the matter by clasping his arm round her as he desired, and
Tess expressed no further negative. Thus they sidled slowly onward till
it struck her they had been advancing for an unconscionable time—far
longer than was usually occupied by the short journey from
Chaseborough, even at this walking pace, and that they were no longer
on hard road, but in a mere trackway.
“Why, where be we?” she exclaimed.
“Passing by a wood.”
“A wood—what wood? Surely we are quite out of the road?”
“A bit of The Chase—the oldest wood in England. It is a lovely night,
and why should we not prolong our ride a little?”
“How could you be so treacherous!” said Tess, between archness and real
dismay, and getting rid of his arm by pulling open his fingers one by
one, though at the risk of slipping off herself. “Just when I’ve been
putting such trust in you, and obliging you to please you, because I
thought I had wronged you by that push! Please set me down, and let me
walk home.”
“You cannot walk home, darling, even if the air were clear. We are
miles away from Trantridge, if I must tell you, and in this growing fog
you might wander for hours among these trees.”
“Never mind that,” she coaxed. “Put me down, I beg you. I don’t mind
where it is; only let me get down, sir, please!”
“Very well, then, I will—on one condition. Having brought you here to
this out-of-the-way place, I feel myself responsible for your