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

He had occasionally thought the counsel less honest than musical; but he gladly conformed to it now.

He spoke further of the incidents of his visit, of his father’s mode of life, of his zeal for his principles; she grew serener, and the undulations disappeared from her skimming; as she finished one lead after another he followed her, and drew the plugs for letting down the milk.

“I fancied you looked a little downcast when you came in,” she ventured to observe, anxious to keep away from the subject of herself.

“Yes⁠—well, my father had been talking a good deal to me of his troubles and difficulties, and the subject always tends to depress me. He is so zealous that he gets many snubs and buffetings from people of a different way of thinking from himself, and I don’t like to hear of such humiliations to a man of his age, the more particularly as I don’t think earnestness does any good when carried so far. He has been telling me of a very unpleasant scene in which he took part quite recently. He went as the deputy of some missionary society to preach in the neighbourhood of Trantridge, a place forty miles from here, and made it his business to expostulate with a lax young cynic he met with somewhere about there⁠—son of some landowner up that way⁠—and who has a mother afflicted with blindness. My father addressed himself to the gentleman point-blank, and there was quite a disturbance. It was very foolish of my father, I must say, to intrude his conversation upon a stranger when the probabilities were so obvious that it would be useless. But whatever he thinks to be his duty, that he’ll do, in season or out of season; and, of course, he makes many enemies, not only among the absolutely vicious, but among the easygoing, who hate being bothered. He says he glories in what happened, and that good may be done indirectly; but I wish he would not wear himself out now he is getting old, and would leave such pigs to their wallowing.”

Tess’s look had grown hard and worn, and her ripe mouth tragical; but she no longer showed any tremulousness. Clare’s revived thoughts of his father prevented his noticing her particularly; and so they went on down the white row of liquid rectangles till they had finished and drained them off, when the other maids returned, and took their pails, and Deb came to scald out the leads for the new milk. As Tess withdrew to go afield to the cows he said to her softly⁠—

“And my question, Tessy?”

“O no⁠—no!” replied she with grave hopelessness, as one who had heard anew the turmoil of her own past in the allusion to Alec d’Urberville. “It can’t be!”

She went out towards the mead, joining the other milkmaids with a bound, as if trying to make the open air drive away her sad constraint. All the girls drew onward to the spot where the cows were grazing in the farther mead, the bevy advancing with the bold grace of wild animals⁠—the reckless, unchastened motion of women accustomed to unlimited space⁠—in which they abandoned themselves to the air as a swimmer to the wave. It seemed natural enough to him now that Tess was again in sight to choose a mate from unconstrained Nature, and not from the abodes of Art.

Her refusal, though unexpected, did not permanently daunt Clare. His experience of women was great enough for him to be aware that the negative often meant nothing more than the preface to the affirmative; and it was little enough for him not to know that in the manner of the present negative there lay a great exception to the dallyings of coyness. That she had already permitted him to make love to her he read as an additional assurance, not fully trowing that in the fields and pastures to “sigh gratis” is by no means deemed waste; lovemaking being here more often accepted inconsiderately and for its own sweet sake than in the carking, anxious homes of the ambitious, where a girl’s craving for an establishment paralyzes her healthy thought of a passion as an end.

“Tess, why did you say ‘no’ in such a positive way?” he asked her in the course of a few days.

She started.

“Don’t ask me. I told you why⁠—partly. I am not good enough⁠—not worthy enough.”

“How? Not fine lady enough?”

“Yes⁠—something like that,” murmured she. “Your friends would scorn me.”

“Indeed, you mistake them⁠—my father and mother. As for my brothers, I don’t care⁠—” He clasped his fingers behind her back to keep her from slipping away. “Now⁠—you did not mean it, sweet?⁠—I am sure you did not! You have made me so restless that I cannot read, or play, or do anything. I am in no hurry, Tess, but I want to know⁠—to hear from your own warm lips⁠—that you will some day be mine⁠—any time you may choose; but some day?”

She could only shake her head and look away from him.

Clare regarded her attentively, conned the characters of her face as if they had been hieroglyphics. The denial seemed real.

“Then I ought not to hold you in this way⁠—ought I? I have no right to you⁠—no right to seek out where you are, or walk with you! Honestly, Tess, do you love any other man?”

“How can you ask?” she said, with continued self-suppression.

“I almost know that you do not. But then, why do you repulse me?”

“I don’t repulse you. I like you to⁠—tell me you love me; and you may always tell me so as you go about with me⁠—and never offend me.”

“But you will not accept me as a husband?”

“Ah⁠—that’s different⁠—it is for your good, indeed, my dearest! O, 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