Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman
Retty, more woman than either, she perceived that only the slightest
ordinary care was necessary for holding her own in Angel Clare’s heart
against these her candid friends. But the grave question was, ought she
to do this? There was, to be sure, hardly a ghost of a chance for
either of them, in a serious sense; but there was, or had been, a
chance of one or the other inspiring him with a passing fancy for her,
and enjoying the pleasure of his attentions while he stayed here. Such
unequal attachments had led to marriage; and she had heard from Mrs
Crick that Mr Clare had one day asked, in a laughing way, what would be
the use of his marrying a fine lady, and all the while ten thousand
acres of Colonial pasture to feed, and cattle to rear, and corn to
reap. A farm-woman would be the only sensible kind of wife for him. But
whether Mr Clare had spoken seriously or not, why should she, who could
never conscientiously allow any man to marry her now, and who had
religiously determined that she never would be tempted to do so, draw
off Mr Clare’s attention from other women, for the brief happiness of
sunning herself in his eyes while he remained at Talbothays?
XXII
They came downstairs yawning next morning; but skimming and milking
were proceeded with as usual, and they went indoors to breakfast.
Dairyman Crick was discovered stamping about the house. He had received
a letter, in which a customer had complained that the butter had a
twang.
“And begad, so ’t have!” said the dairyman, who held in his left hand a
wooden slice on which a lump of butter was stuck. “Yes—taste for
yourself!”
Several of them gathered round him; and Mr Clare tasted, Tess tasted,
also the other indoor milkmaids, one or two of the milking-men, and
last of all Mrs Crick, who came out from the waiting breakfast-table.
There certainly was a twang.
The dairyman, who had thrown himself into abstraction to better realize
the taste, and so divine the particular species of noxious weed to
which it appertained, suddenly exclaimed—
“’Tis garlic! and I thought there wasn’t a blade left in that mead!”
Then all the old hands remembered that a certain dry mead, into which a
few of the cows had been admitted of late, had, in years gone by,
spoilt the butter in the same way. The dairyman had not recognized the
taste at that time, and thought the butter bewitched.
“We must overhaul that mead,” he resumed; “this mustn’t continny!”
All having armed themselves with old pointed knives, they went out
together. As the inimical plant could only be present in very
microscopic dimensions to have escaped ordinary observation, to find it
seemed rather a hopeless attempt in the stretch of rich grass before
them. However, they formed themselves into line, all assisting, owing
to the importance of the search; the dairyman at the upper end with Mr
Clare, who had volunteered to help; then Tess, Marian, Izz Huett, and
Retty; then Bill Lewell, Jonathan, and the married dairywomen—Beck
Knibbs, with her wooly black hair and rolling eyes; and flaxen Frances,
consumptive from the winter damps of the water-meads—who lived in their
respective cottages.
With eyes fixed upon the ground they crept slowly across a strip of the
field, returning a little further down in such a manner that, when they
should have finished, not a single inch of the pasture but would have
fallen under the eye of some one of them. It was a most tedious
business, not more than half a dozen shoots of garlic being
discoverable in the whole field; yet such was the herb’s pungency that
probably one bite of it by one cow had been sufficient to season the
whole dairy’s produce for the day.
Differing one from another in natures and moods so greatly as they did,
they yet formed, bending, a curiously uniform row—automatic, noiseless;
and an alien observer passing down the neighbouring lane might well
have been excused for massing them as “Hodge”. As they crept along,
stooping low to discern the plant, a soft yellow gleam was reflected
from the buttercups into their shaded faces, giving them an elfish,
moonlit aspect, though the sun was pouring upon their backs in all the
strength of noon.
Angel Clare, who communistically stuck to his rule of taking part with
the rest in everything, glanced up now and then. It was not, of course,
by accident that he walked next to Tess.
“Well, how are you?” he murmured.
“Very well, thank you, sir,” she replied demurely.
As they had been discussing a score of personal matters only
half-an-hour before, the introductory style seemed a little
superfluous. But they got no further in speech just then. They crept
and crept, the hem of her petticoat just touching his gaiter, and his
elbow sometimes brushing hers. At last the dairyman, who came next,
could stand it no longer.
“Upon my soul and body, this here stooping do fairly make my back open
and shut!” he exclaimed, straightening himself slowly with an
excruciated look till quite upright. “And you, maidy Tess, you wasn’t
well a day or two ago—this will make your head ache finely! Don’t do
any more, if you feel fainty; leave the rest to finish it.”
Dairyman Crick withdrew, and Tess dropped behind. Mr Clare also stepped
out of line, and began privateering about for the weed. When she found
him near her, her very tension at what she had heard the night before
made her the first to speak.
“Don’t they look pretty?” she said.
“Who?”
“Izzy Huett and Retty.”
Tess had moodily decided that either of these maidens would make a good
farmer’s wife, and that she ought to recommend them, and obscure her
own wretched charms.
“Pretty? Well, yes—they are pretty girls—fresh looking. I have often
thought so.”
“Though, poor dears, prettiness won’t last long!”
“O no, unfortunately.”
“They are excellent dairywomen.”
“Yes: though not better than you.”
“They skim better than I.”
“Do they?”
Clare remained observing them—not without their observing him.
“She is colouring up,” continued Tess heroically.
“Who?”
“Retty Priddle.”
“Oh! Why it that?”
“Because you are looking at her.”
Self-sacrificing as her mood might be, Tess could not well go further
and cry, “Marry one of them, if you really do want a dairywoman and not
a lady; and don’t think of marrying me!” She followed Dairyman Crick,
and had the mournful satisfaction of seeing that Clare remained behind.
From this day she forced herself to take pains to avoid him—never
allowing herself, as formerly, to remain long in his company, even if
their juxtaposition were purely accidental. She gave the other three
every chance.
Tess was woman enough to realize from their avowals to herself that
Angel Clare had the honour of all the dairymaids in his keeping, and
her perception of his care to avoid compromising the happiness of
either in the least degree bred a tender respect in Tess for what she
deemed, rightly or wrongly, the self-controlling sense of duty shown by
him, a quality which she had never expected to find in one of the
opposite sex, and in the absence of which more than one of the simple
hearts who were his house-mates might have gone weeping on her
pilgrimage.
XXIII
The hot weather of July had crept upon them unawares, and the
atmosphere of the flat vale hung heavy as an opiate over the
dairy-folk, the cows, and the trees. Hot steaming rains fell
frequently, making the grass where the cows fed yet more rank, and
hindering the late hay-making in the other meads.
It was Sunday morning; the milking was done; the outdoor milkers had
gone home. Tess and the other three were dressing themselves rapidly,
the whole bevy having agreed to go together to Mellstock Church, which
lay some three or four miles distant from the dairy-house. She had now
been two months at Talbothays, and this was her first excursion.
All the preceding afternoon and night heavy thunderstorms had hissed
down upon the meads, and washed some of the hay into the river; but
this morning the sun shone out all the more brilliantly for the deluge,
and the air was balmy and clear.
The crooked lane leading from their own parish to Mellstock ran along
the lowest levels in a portion of its length, and when the girls
reached the most depressed spot they found that the result of the rain
had been to flood the lane over-shoe to a distance of some fifty yards.
This would have been no serious hindrance on a week-day; they would
have clicked through it in their high pattens and boots quite
unconcerned; but on this day of vanity, this Sun’s-day, when flesh went
forth to coquet with flesh while hypocritically affecting business with
spiritual things; on this occasion for wearing their white stockings
and thin shoes, and their pink, white, and lilac gowns, on which every
mud spot would be visible, the pool was an awkward impediment. They
could hear the church-bell calling—as yet nearly a mile off.
“Who would have expected such a rise in the river in summer-time!” said
Marian, from the top of the roadside bank on which they had climbed,
and were maintaining a precarious footing in the hope of creeping along
its slope till they were past the pool.
“We can’t get there anyhow, without walking right through it, or else
going round the Turnpike way; and that would make us so very late!”
said Retty, pausing hopelessly.
“And I do colour up so hot, walking into church late, and all the
people staring round,” said Marian, “that I hardly cool down again till
we get into the That-it-may-please-Thees.”
While they stood clinging to the bank they heard a splashing round the
bend of the road, and presently appeared Angel Clare, advancing along
the lane towards them through the water.
Four hearts gave a big throb simultaneously.
His aspect was probably as un-Sabbatarian a one as a dogmatic parson’s
son often presented; his attire being his dairy clothes, long wading
boots, a cabbage-leaf inside his hat to keep his head cool, with a
thistle-spud to finish him off. “He’s not going to church,” said
Marian.
“No—I wish he was!” murmured Tess.
Angel, in fact, rightly or wrongly (to adopt the safe phrase of evasive
controversialists), preferred sermons in stones to sermons in churches
and chapels on fine summer days. This morning, moreover, he had gone
out to see if the damage to the hay by the flood was considerable or
not. On his walk he observed the girls from a long distance, though
they had been so occupied with their difficulties of passage as not to
notice him. He knew that the water had risen at that spot, and that it
would quite check their progress. So he had hastened on, with a dim
idea of how he could help them—one of them in particular.
The rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed quartet looked so charming in their light
summer attire, clinging to the roadside bank like pigeons on a
roof-slope, that he stopped a moment to regard them before coming
close. Their gauzy skirts had brushed up from the grass innumerable
flies and butterflies which, unable to escape, remained caged in the
transparent tissue as in an aviary. Angel’s eye at last fell upon Tess,
the hindmost of the four; she, being full of suppressed laughter at
their dilemma, could not help meeting his glance radiantly.
He came beneath them in the water, which did not rise over his long
boots; and stood looking at the entrapped flies and butterflies.
“Are you trying to get to church?” he said to Marian, who was in front,
including the next two in his remark, but avoiding Tess.
“Yes, sir; and ’tis getting late; and my colour do come up so—”
“I’ll carry you through the pool—every Jill of you.”
The whole four flushed as if one heart beat through them.
“I think you can’t, sir,” said Marian.
“It is the only way for you to get past. Stand still. Nonsense—you are