Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy [best large ereader TXT] 📗

a tweed suit of fashionable pattern, and he twirled a gay walking-cane.

“Who is that?” said Izz Huett to Marian. She had at first addressed the inquiry to Tess, but the latter could not hear it.

“Somebody’s fancy-man, I s’pose,” said Marian laconically.

“I’ll lay a guinea he’s after Tess.”

“O no. ’Tis a ranter pa’son who’s been sniffing after her lately; not a dandy like this.”

“Well⁠—this is the same man.”

“The same man as the preacher? But he’s quite different!”

“He hev left off his black coat and white neckercher, and hev cut off his whiskers; but he’s the same man for all that.”

“D’ye really think so? Then I’ll tell her,” said Marian.

“Don’t. She’ll see him soon enough, good-now.”

“Well, I don’t think it at all right for him to join his preaching to courting a married woman, even though her husband mid be abroad, and she, in a sense, a widow.”

“Oh⁠—he can do her no harm,” said Izz drily. “Her mind can no more be heaved from that one place where it do bide than a stooded wagon from the hole he’s in. Lord love ’ee, neither court-paying, nor preaching, nor the seven thunders themselves, can wean a woman when ’twould be better for her that she should be weaned.”

Dinnertime came, and the whirling ceased; whereupon Tess left her post, her knees trembling so wretchedly with the shaking of the machine that she could scarcely walk.

“You ought to het a quart o’ drink into ’ee, as I’ve done,” said Marian. “You wouldn’t look so white then. Why, souls above us, your face is as if you’d been hagrode!”

It occurred to the good-natured Marian that, as Tess was so tired, her discovery of her visitor’s presence might have the bad effect of taking away her appetite; and Marian was thinking of inducing Tess to descend by a ladder on the further side of the stack when the gentleman came forward and looked up.

Tess uttered a short little “Oh!” And a moment after she said, quickly, “I shall eat my dinner here⁠—right on the rick.”

Sometimes, when they were so far from their cottages, they all did this; but as there was rather a keen wind going today, Marian and the rest descended, and sat under the straw-stack.

The newcomer was, indeed, Alec d’Urberville, the late Evangelist, despite his changed attire and aspect. It was obvious at a glance that the original Weltlust had come back; that he had restored himself, as nearly as a man could do who had grown three or four years older, to the old jaunty, slapdash guise under which Tess had first known her admirer, and cousin so-called. Having decided to remain where she was, Tess sat down among the bundles, out of sight of the ground, and began her meal; till, by-and-by, she heard footsteps on the ladder, and immediately after Alec appeared upon the stack⁠—now an oblong and level platform of sheaves. He strode across them, and sat down opposite of her without a word.

Tess continued to eat her modest dinner, a slice of thick pancake which she had brought with her. The other workfolk were by this time all gathered under the rick, where the loose straw formed a comfortable retreat.

“I am here again, as you see,” said d’Urberville.

“Why do you trouble me so!” she cried, reproach flashing from her very finger-ends.

“I trouble you? I think I may ask, why do you trouble me?”

“Sure, I don’t trouble you any-when!”

“You say you don’t? But you do! You haunt me. Those very eyes that you turned upon me with such a bitter flash a moment ago, they come to me just as you showed them then, in the night and in the day! Tess, ever since you told me of that child of ours, it is just as if my feelings, which have been flowing in a strong puritanical stream, had suddenly found a way open in the direction of you, and had all at once gushed through. The religious channel is left dry forthwith; and it is you who have done it!”

She gazed in silence.

“What⁠—you have given up your preaching entirely?” she asked. She had gathered from Angel sufficient of the incredulity of modern thought to despise flash enthusiasm; but, as a woman, she was somewhat appalled.

In affected severity d’Urberville continued⁠—

“Entirely. I have broken every engagement since that afternoon I was to address the drunkards at Casterbridge Fair. The deuce only knows what I am thought of by the brethren. Ah-ha! The brethren! No doubt they pray for me⁠—weep for me; for they are kind people in their way. But what do I care? How could I go on with the thing when I had lost my faith in it?⁠—it would have been hypocrisy of the basest kind! Among them I should have stood like Hymenaeus and Alexander, who were delivered over to Satan that they might learn not to blaspheme. What a grand revenge you have taken! I saw you innocent, and I deceived you. Four years after, you find me a Christian enthusiast; you then work upon me, perhaps to my complete perdition! But Tess, my coz, as I used to call you, this is only my way of talking, and you must not look so horribly concerned. Of course you have done nothing except retain your pretty face and shapely figure. I saw it on the rick before you saw me⁠—that tight pinafore-thing sets it off, and that wing-bonnet⁠—you field-girls should never wear those bonnets if you wish to keep out of danger.” He regarded her silently for a few moments, and with a short cynical laugh resumed: “I believe that if the bachelor-apostle, whose deputy I thought I was, had been tempted by such a pretty face, he would have let go the plough for her sake as I do!”

Tess attempted to expostulate, but at this juncture all her fluency failed her, and without heeding he added:

“Well, this paradise that you supply is perhaps as good as any other, after all. But to speak seriously, Tess.”