Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman
(which had possibly lain by folded for many a year) inclined to a
cadaverous tint, and to a Georgian style.
In addition to the distinction of a white frock, every woman and girl
carried in her right hand a peeled willow wand, and in her left a bunch
of white flowers. The peeling of the former, and the selection of the
latter, had been an operation of personal care.
There were a few middle-aged and even elderly women in the train, their
silver-wiry hair and wrinkled faces, scourged by time and trouble,
having almost a grotesque, certainly a pathetic, appearance in such a
jaunty situation. In a true view, perhaps, there was more to be
gathered and told of each anxious and experienced one, to whom the
years were drawing nigh when she should say, “I have no pleasure in
them,” than of her juvenile comrades. But let the elder be passed over
here for those under whose bodices the life throbbed quick and warm.
The young girls formed, indeed, the majority of the band, and their
heads of luxuriant hair reflected in the sunshine every tone of gold,
and black, and brown. Some had beautiful eyes, others a beautiful nose,
others a beautiful mouth and figure: few, if any, had all. A difficulty
of arranging their lips in this crude exposure to public scrutiny, an
inability to balance their heads, and to dissociate self-consciousness
from their features, was apparent in them, and showed that they were
genuine country girls, unaccustomed to many eyes.
And as each and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each had
a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some
affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which,
though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will. They
were all cheerful, and many of them merry.
They came round by The Pure Drop Inn, and were turning out of the high
road to pass through a wicket-gate into the meadows, when one of the
women said—
“The Load-a-Lord! Why, Tess Durbeyfield, if there isn’t thy father
riding hwome in a carriage!”
A young member of the band turned her head at the exclamation. She was
a fine and handsome girl—not handsomer than some others, possibly—but
her mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes added eloquence to
colour and shape. She wore a red ribbon in her hair, and was the only
one of the white company who could boast of such a pronounced
adornment. As she looked round Durbeyfield was seen moving along the
road in a chaise belonging to The Pure Drop, driven by a frizzle-headed
brawny damsel with her gown-sleeves rolled above her elbows. This was
the cheerful servant of that establishment, who, in her part of
factotum, turned groom and ostler at times. Durbeyfield, leaning back,
and with his eyes closed luxuriously, was waving his hand above his
head, and singing in a slow recitative—
“I’ve-got-a-gr’t-family-vault-at-Kingsbere—and
knighted-forefathers-in-lead-coffins-there!”
The clubbists tittered, except the girl called Tess—in whom a slow heat
seemed to rise at the sense that her father was making himself foolish
in their eyes.
“He’s tired, that’s all,” she said hastily, “and he has got a lift
home, because our own horse has to rest to-day.”
“Bless thy simplicity, Tess,” said her companions. “He’s got his
market-nitch. Haw-haw!”
“Look here; I won’t walk another inch with you, if you say any jokes
about him!” Tess cried, and the colour upon her cheeks spread over her
face and neck. In a moment her eyes grew moist, and her glance drooped
to the ground. Perceiving that they had really pained her they said no
more, and order again prevailed. Tess’s pride would not allow her to
turn her head again, to learn what her father’s meaning was, if he had
any; and thus she moved on with the whole body to the enclosure where
there was to be dancing on the green. By the time the spot was reached
she had recovered her equanimity, and tapped her neighbour with her
wand and talked as usual.
Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of emotion
untinctured by experience. The dialect was on her tongue to some
extent, despite the village school: the characteristic intonation of
that dialect for this district being the voicing approximately rendered
by the syllable UR, probably as rich an utterance as any to be found in
human speech. The pouted-up deep red mouth to which this syllable was
native had hardly as yet settled into its definite shape, and her lower
lip had a way of thrusting the middle of her top one upward, when they
closed together after a word.
Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still. As she walked along
to-day, for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could sometimes
see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her
eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now
and then.
Yet few knew, and still fewer considered this. A small minority, mainly
strangers, would look long at her in casually passing by, and grow
momentarily fascinated by her freshness, and wonder if they would ever
see her again: but to almost everybody she was a fine and picturesque
country girl, and no more.
Nothing was seen or heard further of Durbeyfield in his triumphal
chariot under the conduct of the ostleress, and the club having entered
the allotted space, dancing began. As there were no men in the company,
the girls danced at first with each other, but when the hour for the
close of labour drew on, the masculine inhabitants of the village,
together with other idlers and pedestrians, gathered round the spot,
and appeared inclined to negotiate for a partner.
Among these on-lookers were three young men of a superior class,
carrying small knapsacks strapped to their shoulders, and stout sticks
in their hands. Their general likeness to each other, and their
consecutive ages, would almost have suggested that they might be, what
in fact they were, brothers. The eldest wore the white tie, high
waistcoat, and thin-brimmed hat of the regulation curate; the second
was the normal undergraduate; the appearance of the third and youngest
would hardly have been sufficient to characterize him; there was an
uncribbed, uncabined aspect in his eyes and attire, implying that he
had hardly as yet found the entrance to his professional groove. That
he was a desultory tentative student of something and everything might
only have been predicted of him.
These three brethren told casual acquaintance that they were spending
their Whitsun holidays in a walking tour through the Vale of Blackmoor,
their course being south-westerly from the town of Shaston on the
north-east.
They leant over the gate by the highway, and inquired as to the meaning
of the dance and the white-frocked maids. The two elder of the brothers
were plainly not intending to linger more than a moment, but the
spectacle of a bevy of girls dancing without male partners seemed to
amuse the third, and make him in no hurry to move on. He unstrapped his
knapsack, put it, with his stick, on the hedge-bank, and opened the
gate.
“What are you going to do, Angel?” asked the eldest.
“I am inclined to go and have a fling with them. Why not all of us—just
for a minute or two—it will not detain us long?”
“No—no; nonsense!” said the first. “Dancing in public with a troop of
country hoydens—suppose we should be seen! Come along, or it will be
dark before we get to Stourcastle, and there’s no place we can sleep at
nearer than that; besides, we must get through another chapter of _A
Counterblast to Agnosticism_ before we turn in, now I have taken the
trouble to bring the book.”
“All right—I’ll overtake you and Cuthbert in five minutes; don’t stop;
I give my word that I will, Felix.”
The two elder reluctantly left him and walked on, taking their
brother’s knapsack to relieve him in following, and the youngest
entered the field.
“This is a thousand pities,” he said gallantly, to two or three of the
girls nearest him, as soon as there was a pause in the dance. “Where
are your partners, my dears?”
“They’ve not left off work yet,” answered one of the boldest. “They’ll
be here by and by. Till then, will you be one, sir?”
“Certainly. But what’s one among so many!”
“Better than none. ’Tis melancholy work facing and footing it to one of
your own sort, and no clipsing and colling at all. Now, pick and
choose.”
“’Ssh—don’t be so for’ard!” said a shyer girl.
The young man, thus invited, glanced them over, and attempted some
discrimination; but, as the group were all so new to him, he could not
very well exercise it. He took almost the first that came to hand,
which was not the speaker, as she had expected; nor did it happen to be
Tess Durbeyfield. Pedigree, ancestral skeletons, monumental record, the
d’Urberville lineaments, did not help Tess in her life’s battle as yet,
even to the extent of attracting to her a dancing-partner over the
heads of the commonest peasantry. So much for Norman blood unaided by
Victorian lucre.
The name of the eclipsing girl, whatever it was, has not been handed
down; but she was envied by all as the first who enjoyed the luxury of
a masculine partner that evening. Yet such was the force of example
that the village young men, who had not hastened to enter the gate
while no intruder was in the way, now dropped in quickly, and soon the
couples became leavened with rustic youth to a marked extent, till at
length the plainest woman in the club was no longer compelled to foot
it on the masculine side of the figure.
The church clock struck, when suddenly the student said that he must
leave—he had been forgetting himself—he had to join his companions. As
he fell out of the dance his eyes lighted on Tess Durbeyfield, whose
own large orbs wore, to tell the truth, the faintest aspect of reproach
that he had not chosen her. He, too, was sorry then that, owing to her
backwardness, he had not observed her; and with that in his mind he
left the pasture.
On account of his long delay he started in a flying-run down the lane
westward, and had soon passed the hollow and mounted the next rise. He
had not yet overtaken his brothers, but he paused to get breath, and
looked back. He could see the white figures of the girls in the green
enclosure whirling about as they had whirled when he was among them.
They seemed to have quite forgotten him already.
All of them, except, perhaps, one. This white shape stood apart by the
hedge alone. From her position he knew it to be the pretty maiden with
whom he had not danced. Trifling as the matter was, he yet
instinctively felt that she was hurt by his oversight. He wished that
he had asked her; he wished that he had inquired her name. She was so
modest, so expressive, she had looked so soft in her thin white gown
that he felt he had acted stupidly.
However, it could not be helped, and turning, and bending himself to a
rapid walk, he dismissed the subject from his mind.
III
As for Tess Durbeyfield, she did not so easily dislodge the incident
from her consideration. She had no spirit to dance again for a long
time, though she might have had plenty of partners; but ah! they did
not speak so nicely as the strange young man had done. It was not till
the rays of the sun had absorbed the young stranger’s retreating figure
on the hill that she shook off her temporary sadness and answered her
would-be partner in the affirmative.
She remained with her comrades till dusk, and participated with a
certain zest in the dancing; though, being heart-whole as yet, she
enjoyed treading a measure purely for its own sake; little divining
when she saw “the soft torments, the bitter sweets, the pleasing pains,
and the agreeable distresses” of those girls who had been wooed and
won, what she herself was capable of in that kind. The struggles and