Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman
not too heavy! I’d carry you all four together. Now, Marian, attend,”
he continued, “and put your arms round my shoulders, so. Now! Hold on.
That’s well done.”
Marian had lowered herself upon his arm and shoulder as directed, and
Angel strode off with her, his slim figure, as viewed from behind,
looking like the mere stem to the great nosegay suggested by hers. They
disappeared round the curve of the road, and only his sousing footsteps
and the top ribbon of Marian’s bonnet told where they were. In a few
minutes he reappeared. Izz Huett was the next in order upon the bank.
“Here he comes,” she murmured, and they could hear that her lips were
dry with emotion. “And I have to put my arms round his neck and look
into his face as Marian did.”
“There’s nothing in that,” said Tess quickly.
“There’s a time for everything,” continued Izz, unheeding. “A time to
embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; the first is now going
to be mine.”
“Fie—it is Scripture, Izz!”
“Yes,” said Izz, “I’ve always a’ ear at church for pretty verses.”
Angel Clare, to whom three-quarters of this performance was a
commonplace act of kindness, now approached Izz. She quietly and
dreamily lowered herself into his arms, and Angel methodically marched
off with her. When he was heard returning for the third time Retty’s
throbbing heart could be almost seen to shake her. He went up to the
red-haired girl, and while he was seizing her he glanced at Tess. His
lips could not have pronounced more plainly, “It will soon be you and
I.” Her comprehension appeared in her face; she could not help it.
There was an understanding between them.
Poor little Retty, though by far the lightest weight, was the most
troublesome of Clare’s burdens. Marian had been like a sack of meal, a
dead weight of plumpness under which he has literally staggered. Izz
had ridden sensibly and calmly. Retty was a bunch of hysterics.
However, he got through with the disquieted creature, deposited her,
and returned. Tess could see over the hedge the distant three in a
group, standing as he had placed them on the next rising ground. It was
now her turn. She was embarrassed to discover that excitement at the
proximity of Mr Clare’s breath and eyes, which she had contemned in her
companions, was intensified in herself; and as if fearful of betraying
her secret, she paltered with him at the last moment.
“I may be able to clim’ along the bank perhaps—I can clim’ better than
they. You must be so tired, Mr Clare!”
“No, no, Tess,” said he quickly. And almost before she was aware, she
was seated in his arms and resting against his shoulder.
“Three Leahs to get one Rachel,” he whispered.
“They are better women than I,” she replied, magnanimously sticking to
her resolve.
“Not to me,” said Angel.
He saw her grow warm at this; and they went some steps in silence.
“I hope I am not too heavy?” she said timidly.
“O no. You should lift Marian! Such a lump. You are like an undulating
billow warmed by the sun. And all this fluff of muslin about you is the
froth.”
“It is very pretty—if I seem like that to you.”
“Do you know that I have undergone three-quarters of this labour
entirely for the sake of the fourth quarter?”
“No.”
“I did not expect such an event to-day.”
“Nor I... The water came up so sudden.”
That the rise in the water was what she understood him to refer to, the
state of breathing belied. Clare stood still and inclinced his face
towards hers.
“O Tessy!” he exclaimed.
The girl’s cheeks burned to the breeze, and she could not look into his
eyes for her emotion. It reminded Angel that he was somewhat unfairly
taking advantage of an accidental position; and he went no further with
it. No definite words of love had crossed their lips as yet, and
suspension at this point was desirable now. However, he walked slowly,
to make the remainder of the distance as long as possible; but at last
they came to the bend, and the rest of their progress was in full view
of the other three. The dry land was reached, and he set her down.
Her friends were looking with round thoughtful eyes at her and him, and
she could see that they had been talking of her. He hastily bade them
farewell, and splashed back along the stretch of submerged road.
The four moved on together as before, till Marian broke the silence by
saying—
“No—in all truth; we have no chance against her!” She looked joylessly
at Tess.
“What do you mean?” asked the latter.
“He likes ’ee best—the very best! We could see it as he brought ’ee. He
would have kissed ’ee, if you had encouraged him to do it, ever so
little.”
“No, no,” said she.
The gaiety with which they had set out had somehow vanished; and yet
there was no enmity or malice between them. They were generous young
souls; they had been reared in the lonely country nooks where fatalism
is a strong sentiment, and they did not blame her. Such supplanting was
to be.
Tess’s heart ached. There was no concealing from herself the fact that
she loved Angel Clare, perhaps all the more passionately from knowing
that the others had also lost their hearts to him. There is contagion
in this sentiment, especially among women. And yet that same hungry
nature had fought against this, but too feebly, and the natural result
had followed.
“I will never stand in your way, nor in the way of either of you!” she
declared to Retty that night in the bedroom (her tears running down).
“I can’t help this, my dear! I don’t think marrying is in his mind at
all; but if he were ever to ask me I should refuse him, as I should
refuse any man.”
“Oh! would you? Why?” said wondering Retty.
“It cannot be! But I will be plain. Putting myself quite on one side, I
don’t think he will choose either of you.”
“I have never expected it—thought of it!” moaned Retty. “But O! I wish
I was dead!”
The poor child, torn by a feeling which she hardly understood, turned
to the other two girls who came upstairs just then.
“We be friends with her again,” she said to them. “She thinks no more
of his choosing her than we do.”
So the reserve went off, and they were confiding and warm.
“I don’t seem to care what I do now,” said Marian, whose mood was
turned to its lowest bass. “I was going to marry a dairyman at
Stickleford, who’s asked me twice; but—my soul—I would put an end to
myself rather’n be his wife now! Why don’t ye speak, Izz?”
“To confess, then,” murmured Izz, “I made sure to-day that he was going
to kiss me as he held me; and I lay still against his breast, hoping
and hoping, and never moved at all. But he did not. I don’t like biding
here at Talbothays any longer! I shall go hwome.”
The air of the sleeping-chamber seemed to palpitate with the hopeless
passion of the girls. They writhed feverishly under the oppressiveness
of an emotion thrust on them by cruel Nature’s law—an emotion which
they had neither expected nor desired. The incident of the day had
fanned the flame that was burning the inside of their hearts out, and
the torture was almost more than they could endure. The differences
which distinguished them as individuals were abstracted by this
passion, and each was but portion of one organism called sex. There was
so much frankness and so little jealousy because there was no hope.
Each one was a girl of fair common sense, and she did not delude
herself with any vain conceits, or deny her love, or give herself airs,
in the idea of outshining the others. The full recognition of the
futility of their infatuation, from a social point of view; its
purposeless beginning; its self-bounded outlook; its lack of everything
to justify its existence in the eye of civilization (while lacking
nothing in the eye of Nature); the one fact that it did exist,
ecstasizing them to a killing joy—all this imparted to them a
resignation, a dignity, which a practical and sordid expectation of
winning him as a husband would have destroyed.
They tossed and turned on their little beds, and the cheese-wring
dripped monotonously downstairs.
“B’ you awake, Tess?” whispered one, half-an-hour later.
It was Izz Huett’s voice.
Tess replied in the affirmative, whereupon also Retty and Marian
suddenly flung the bedclothes off them, and sighed—
“So be we!”
“I wonder what she is like—the lady they say his family have looked out
for him!”
“I wonder,” said Izz.
“Some lady looked out for him?” gasped Tess, starting. “I have never
heard o’ that!”
“O yes—’tis whispered; a young lady of his own rank, chosen by his
family; a Doctor of Divinity’s daughter near his father’s parish of
Emminster; he don’t much care for her, they say. But he is sure to
marry her.”
They had heard so very little of this; yet it was enough to build up
wretched dolorous dreams upon, there in the shade of the night. They
pictured all the details of his being won round to consent, of the
wedding preparations, of the bride’s happiness, of her dress and veil,
of her blissful home with him, when oblivion would have fallen upon
themselves as far as he and their love were concerned. Thus they
talked, and ached, and wept till sleep charmed their sorrow away.
After this disclosure Tess nourished no further foolish thought that
there lurked any grave and deliberate import in Clare’s attentions to
her. It was a passing summer love of her face, for love’s own temporary
sake—nothing more. And the thorny crown of this sad conception was that
she whom he really did prefer in a cursory way to the rest, she who
knew herself to be more impassioned in nature, cleverer, more beautiful
than they, was in the eyes of propriety far less worthy of him than the
homelier ones whom he ignored.
XXIV
Amid the oozing fatness and warm ferments of the Froom Vale, at a
season when the rush of juices could almost be heard below the hiss of
fertilization, it was impossible that the most fanciful love should not
grow passionate. The ready bosoms existing there were impregnated by
their surroundings.
July passed over their heads, and the Thermidorean weather which came
in its wake seemed an effort on the part of Nature to match the state
of hearts at Talbothays Dairy. The air of the place, so fresh in the
spring and early summer, was stagnant and enervating now. Its heavy
scents weighed upon them, and at mid-day the landscape seemed lying in
a swoon. Ethiopic scorchings browned the upper slopes of the pastures,
but there was still bright green herbage here where the watercourses
purled. And as Clare was oppressed by the outward heats, so was he
burdened inwardly by waxing fervour of passion for the soft and silent
Tess.
The rains having passed, the uplands were dry. The wheels of the
dairyman’s spring-cart, as he sped home from market, licked up the
pulverized surface of the highway, and were followed by white ribands
of dust, as if they had set a thin powder-train on fire. The cows
jumped wildly over the five-barred barton-gate, maddened by the
gad-fly; Dairyman Crick kept his shirt-sleeves permanently rolled up
from Monday to Saturday; open windows had no effect in ventilation
without open doors, and in the dairy-garden the blackbirds and thrushes
crept about under the currant-bushes, rather in the manner of
quadrupeds than of winged creatures. The flies in the kitchen were
lazy, teasing, and familiar, crawling about in the unwonted places, on
the floors, into drawers, and over the backs of the milkmaids’ hands.
Conversations were concerning sunstroke; while butter-making, and still
more butter-keeping, was a despair.
They milked entirely in the meads for coolness and convenience, without
driving in the cows. During the day the animals obsequiously followed
the shadow of the smallest tree as it moved round the stem with the