by Thomas Hardy
“But you will not accept me as a husband?”
“Ah—that’s different—it is for your good, indeed my dearest! Oh, believe me, it is only for your sake! I don’t like to give myself the great happiness o’ promising to be yours in that way—because—because I am sure I ought not to do it.”
“But you will make me happy!”
“Ah—you think so, but you don’t know!”
At such times as this, apprehending the grounds of her refusal to be her modest sense of incompetence in matters social and polite, he would say that she was wonderfully well informed and versatile—which was certainly true, her natural quickness and her admiration for him having led her to pick up his vocabulary, his accent, and fragments of his knowledge, to a surprising extent. After these tender contests and her victory she would go away by herself under the remotest cow if at milking-time, or into the sedge or into her room if at a leisure interval, and mourn silently, not a minute after an apparently phlegmatic negative.
The struggle was so fearful; her own heart was so strongly on the side of his—two ardent hearts against one poor little conscience—that she tried to fortify her resolution by every means in her power. She had come to Talbothays with a made-up mind. On no account could she agree to a step which might afterwards cause bitter rueing to her husband for his blindness in wedding her. And she held that what her conscience had decided for her when her mind was unbiased ought not to be overruled now.
“Why don’t somebody tell him all about me?” she said. “It was only forty miles off—why hasn’t it reached here? Somebody must know!”
Yet nobody seemed to know; nobody told him.
For two or three days no more was said. She guessed from the sad countenances of her chamber-companions that they regarded her not only as the favourite but as the chosen; but they could see for themselves that she did not put herself in his way.
Tess had never before known a time in which the thread of her life was so distinctly twisted of two strands, positive pleasure and positive pain. At the next cheese-making the pair were again left alone together. The dairyman himself had been lending a hand; but Mr. Crick, as well as his wife, seemed latterly to have acquired a suspicion of mutual interest between these two; though they walked so circumspectly that suspicion was but of the faintest. Anyhow, the dairyman left them to themselves.
They were breaking up the masses of curd before putting them into the vats. The operation resembled the act of crumbling bread on a large scale; and amid the immaculate whiteness of the curds Tess Durbeyfield’s hands showed themselves of the pinkness of the rose. Angel, who was filling the vats with his handfuls, suddenly ceased and laid his hands flat upon hers. Her sleeves were rolled far above the elbow, and bending lower, he kissed the inside vein of her soft arm.
Although the early September weather was sultry, her arm, from her dabbling in the curds, was as cold and damp to his mouth as a new-gathered mushroom, and tasted of the whey. But she was such a sheaf of susceptibilities that her pulse was accelerated by the touch, her blood driven to her finger-ends, and the cool arms flushed hot. Then, as though her heart had said, “Is coyness longer necessary? Truth is truth between man and woman, as between man and man,” she lifted her eyes, and they beamed devotedly into his as her lip rose in a tender half-smile.
“Do you know why I did that, Tess?” he said.
“Because you love me very much!”
“Yes, and as a preliminary to a new entreaty.”
“Not again!”
She looked a sudden fear that her resistance might break down under her own desire.
“Oh, Tessy!” he went on, “I cannot think why you are so tantalizing. Why do you disappoint me so? You seem almost like a coquette, upon my life you do—a coquette of the first urban water! They blow hot and blow cold, just as you do; and it is the very last sort of thing to expect to find in a retreat like Talbothays.... And yet, dearest,” he quickly added, observing how the remark had cut her, “I know you to be the most honest, spotless creature that ever lived. So how can I suppose you a flirt? Tess, why don’t you like the idea of being my wife if you love me as you seem to do?”
“I have never said I don’t like the idea, and I never could say it; because—it isn’t true!”
The stress now getting beyond endurance, her lip quivered, and she was obliged to go away. Clare was so pained and perplexed that he ran after and caught her in the passage.
“Tell me, tell me!” he said, passionately clasping her, in forgetfulness of his curdy hands. “Do tell me that you won’t belong to anybody but me!”
“I will, I will tell you!” she exclaimed. “And I will give you a complete answer if you will let me go now. I will tell you my experiences—all about myself—all!”
“Your experiences, dear; yes, certainly; any number.” He expressed assent in loving satire, looking into her face. “My Tess has, no doubt, almost as many experiences as that wild convolvulus out there on the garden hedge that opened itself this morning for the first time. Tell me anything, but don’t use that wretched expression any more about not being worthy of me.”
“I will try—not! And I’ll give you my reasons tomorrow—next week.”
“Say on Sunday?”
“Yes, on Sunday.”
At last she got away, and did not stop in her retreat till she was in the thicket of pollard willows at the lower side of the barton, where she could be quite unseen. Here Tess flung herself down upon the rustling undergrowth of spear-grass, as upon a bed, and remained crouching in palpitating misery broken by momentary shoots of joy, which her fears about the ending could not altogether suppress.
In reality, she was drifting into acquiescence. Every see-saw of her breath, every wave of her blood, every pulse singing in her ears, was a voice that joined with nature in revolt against her scrupulousness. Reckless, inconsiderate acceptance of him; to close with him at the altar, revealing nothing and chancing discovery; to snatch ripe pleasure before the iron teeth of pain could have time to shut upon her—that was what love counselled; and in almost a terror of ecstasy Tess divined that despite her many months of lonely self-chastisement, wrestlings, communings, schemes to lead a future of austere isolation, love’s counsel would prevail.
The afternoon advanced, and still she remained among the willows. She heard the rattle of taking down the pails from the forked stands; the “waow-waow!” which accompanied the getting together of the cows. But she did not go to the milking. They would see her agitation, and the dairyman, thinking the cause to be love alone, would good-naturedly tease her; and that harassment could not be borne.
Her lover must have guessed her overwrought state and invented some excuse for her non-appearance, for no inquiries were made or calls given. At half-past six the sun settled down upon the levels with the aspect of a great forge in the heavens, and presently a monstrous, pumpkin-like moon arose on the other hand. The pollard willows, tortured out of their natural shape by incessant choppings, became spiny-haired monsters as they stood up against it. She went in and upstairs without a light.
It was now Wednesday. Thursday came, and Angel looked thoughtfully at her from a distance, but intruded in no way upon her. The indoor milkmaids, Marian and the rest, seemed to guess that something definite was afoot, for they did not force any remarks upon her in the bed-chamber. Friday passed; Saturday. To-morrow was the day.
“I shall give way—I shall say yes—I shall let myself marry him—I cannot help it!” she jealously panted, with her hot face to the pillow that night, on hearing one of the other girls sigh his name in her sleep. “I can’t bear to let anybody have him but me! Yet it is a wrong to him and may kill him when he knows! Oh, my heart—oh—oh—oh!”
29
“Now, who mid ye think I’ve heard news o’ this morning?” said Dairyman Crick as he sat down to breakfast next day, with a riddling gaze round upon the munching men and maids. “Now, just who mid ye think?”
One guessed, and another guess
ed. Mrs. Crick did not guess because she knew already.
“Well,” said the dairyman, “ ‘tis that slack-twisted ’hore‘s-bird of a feller, Jack Dollop. He’s lately got married to a widow-woman.”
“Not Jack Dollop? A villain—to think o’ that!” said a milker.
The name entered quickly into Tess Durbeyfield’s consciousness, for it was the name of the lover who had wronged his sweetheart, and had afterwards been so roughly used by the young woman’s mother in the butter-churn.
“And has he married the valiant matron’s daughter, as he promised?” asked Angel Clare absently as he turned over the newspaper he was reading at the little table to which he was always banished by Mrs. Crick, in her sense of his gentility.
“Not he, sir. Never meant to,” replied the dairyman. “As I say, ‘tis a widow-woman, and she had money, it seems—fifty poun’ a year or so; and that was all he was after. They were married in a great hurry, and then she told him that by marrying she had lost her fifty poun’ a year. Just fancy the state o’ my gentleman’s mind at that news! Never such a cat-and-dog life as they’ve been leading ever since! Serves him well beright. But onluckily the poor woman gets the worst o’t.”
“Well, the silly body should have told en sooner that the ghost of her first man would trouble him,” said Mrs. Crick.
“Aye, aye,” responded the dairyman indecisively. “Still, you can see exactly how ‘twas. She wanted a home and didn’t like to run the risk of losing him. Don’t ye think that was something like it, maidens?”
He glanced towards the row of girls.
“She ought to ha’ told him just before they went to church, when he could hardly have backed out,” exclaimed Marian.
“Yes, she ought,” agreed Izz.
“She must have seen what he was after, and should ha’ refused him,” cried Retty spasmodically.
“And what do you say, my dear?” asked the dairyman ofTess.
“I think she ought—to have told him the true state of things—or else refused him—I don’t know,” replied Tess, the bread and butter choking her.
“Be cust if I’d have done either o‘t,” said Beck Knibbs, a married helper from one of the cottages. “All’s fair in love and war. I’d ha’ married en just as she did, and if he’d said two words to me about not telling him beforehand anything what- somdever about my first chap that I hadn’t chose to tell, I’d ha’ knocked him down wi’ the rolling-pin—a scram little feller like he! Any woman could do it.”
The laughter which followed this sally was supplemented only by a sorry smile, for form’s sake, from Tess. What was comedy to them was tragedy to her, and she could hardly bear their mirth. She soon rose from table and, with an impression that Clare would follow her, went along a little wriggling path, now stepping to one side of the irrigating channels and now to the other, till she stood by the main stream of the Var. Men had been cutting the water-weeds higher up the river, and masses of them were floating past her—moving islands of green crow-foot, whereon she might almost have ridden; long locks of which weed had lodged against the piles driven to keep the cows from crossing.
Yes, there was the pain of it. This question of a woman telling her story—the heaviest of crosses to herself—seemed but amusement to others. It was as if people should laugh at martyrdom.
“Tessy!” came from behind her, and Clare sprang across the gully, alighting beside her feet. “My wife—soon!”
“No, no; I cannot. For your sake, oh, Mr. Clare; for your sake, I say no!”
“Tess!”
“Still I say no!” she repeated.
Not expecting this, he had put his arm lightly round her waist the moment after speaking, beneath her hanging tail of hair. (The younger dairymaids, including Tess, breakfasted with their hair loose on Sunday mornings before building it up extra high for attending church, a style they could not adopt when milking with their heads against the cows.) If she had said “yes” instead of “no,” he would have kissed her; it had evidently been his intention; but her determined negative deterred his scrupulous heart. Their condition of domiciliary comradeship put her, as the woman, to such disadvantage by its enforced intercourse that he felt it unfair to her to exercise any pressure of blandishment which he might have honestly employed had she been better able to avoid him. He released her momentarily imprisoned waist and withheld the kiss.
It all turned on that release. What had given her strength to refuse him this time was solely the tale of the widow told by the dairyman; and that would have been overcome in another moment. But Angel said no more; his face was perplexed; he went away.
Day after day they met—somewhat less constantly than before, and thus two or three weeks went by. The end of September drew near, and she could see in his eye that he might ask her again.
His plan of procedure was different now—as though he had made up his mind that her negatives were, after all, only coyness and youth startled by the novelty of the proposal. The fitful evasiveness of her manner when the subject was under discussion countenanced the idea. So he played a more coaxing game; and while never going beyond words or attempting the renewal of caresses, he did his utmost orally.
In this way Clare persistently wooed her in undertones like that of the purling milk—at the cow’s side, at skimmings, at butter-makings, at cheese-makings, among broody poultry, and among farrowing pigs—as no milkmaid was ever wooed before by such a man.
Tess knew that she must break down. Neither a religious sense of a certain moral validity in the previous union nor a conscientious wish for candour could hold out against it much longer. She loved him so passionately, and he was so god-like in her eyes; and being, though untrained, instinctively refined, her nature cried for his tutelary guidance. And thus, though Tess kept repeating to herself, “I can never be his wife,” the words were vain. A proof of her weakness lay in the very utterance of what calm strength would not have taken the trouble to formulate. Every sound of his voice beginning on the old subject stirred her with a terrifying bliss, and she coveted the recantation she feared.
His manner was—what man’s is not?—so much that of one who would love and cherish and defend her under any conditions, changes, charges, or revelations that her gloom lessened as she basked in it. The season meanwhile was drawing onward to the equinox, and though it was still fine, the days were much shorter. The dairy had again worked by morning candlelight for a long time, and a fresh renewal of Clare’s pleading occurred one morning between three and four.
She had run up in her bed-gown to his door to call him as usual; then had gone back to dress and call the others; and in ten minutes was walking to the head of the stairs with the candle in her hand. At the same moment he came down his steps from above in his shirt-sleeves and put his arm across the stairway.
“Now, Miss Flirt, before you go down,” he said peremptorily. “It is a fortnight since I spoke, and this won’t do any longer. You must tell me what you mean or I shall have to leave this house. My door was ajar just now, and I saw you. For your own safety I must go. You don’t know. Well? Is it to be yes at last?”
“I am only just up, Mr. Clare, and it is too early to take me to task!” she pouted. “You need not call me flirt. ‘Tis cruel and untrue. Wait till by and by. Please wait till by and by! I will really think seriously about it between now and then. Let me go downstairs!”
She looked a little like what he said she was as, holding the candle sideways, she tried to smile away the seriousness of her words.
“Call me Angel, then, and not Mr. Clare.”
“Angel.”
“Angel dearest—why not?”
“ ‘Twould mean that I agree, wouldn’t it?”
“It would only mean that you love me, even if you cannot marry me; and you were so good as to own that long ago.”
“Very well, then, ‘Angel dearest,’ if I must,” she murmured, looking at her candle, a roguish curl coming upon her mouth, notwithstanding her suspense.
C
lare had resolved never to kiss her until he had obtained her promise; but somehow, as Tess stood there in her prettily tucked-up milking-gown, her hair carelessly heaped upon her head till there should be leisure to arrange it when skimming and milking were done, he broke his resolve and brought his lips to her cheek for one moment. She passed downstairs very quickly, never looking back at him or saying another word. The other maids were already down, and the subject was not pursued. Except Marian they all looked wistfully and suspiciously at the pair, in the sad yellow rays which the morning candles emitted in contrast with the first cold signals of the dawn without.
When skimming was done—which, as the milk diminished with the approach of autumn, was a lessening process day by day—Retty and the rest went out. The lovers followed them.
“Our tremulous lives are so different from theirs, are they not?” he musingly observed to her as he regarded the three figures tripping before him through the frigid pallor of opening day.
“Not so very different, I think,” she said.
“Why do you think that?”
“There are very few women’s lives that are not—tremulous,” Tess replied, pausing over the new word as if it impressed her. “There’s more in those three than you think.”
“What is in them?”
“Almost either of ‘em,” she began, “would make—perhaps would make—a properer wife than I. And perhaps they love you as well as I—almost.”
“Oh, Tessy!”
There were signs that it was an exquisite relief to her to hear the impatient exclamation, though she had resolved so intrepidly to let generosity make one bid against herself. That was now done, and she had not the power to attempt self-immolation a second time then. They were joined by a milker from one of the cottages, and no more was said on that which concerned them so deeply. But Tess knew that this day would decide it.
In the afternoon several of the dairyman’s household and assistants went down to the meads as usual, a long way from the dairy, where many of the cows were milked without being driven home. The supply was getting less as the animals advanced in calf, and the supernumerary milkers of the lush green season had been dismissed.
