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

of contact between their secluded world and modern life. Modern life stretched out its steam feeler to this point three or four times a day, touched the native existences, and quickly withdrew its feeler again, as if what it touched had been uncongenial.

They reached the feeble light, which came from the smoky lamp of a little railway station; a poor enough terrestrial star, yet in one sense of more importance to Talbothays Dairy and mankind than the celestial ones to which it stood in such humiliating contrast. The cans of new milk were unladen in the rain, Tess getting a little shelter from a neighbouring holly tree.

Then there was the hissing of a train, which drew up almost silently upon the wet rails, and the milk was rapidly swung can by can into the truck. The light of the engine flashed for a second upon Tess Durbeyfield’s figure, motionless under the great holly tree. No object could have looked more foreign to the gleaming cranks and wheels than this unsophisticated girl, with the round bare arms, the rainy face and hair, the suspended attitude of a friendly leopard at pause, the print gown of no date or fashion, and the cotton bonnet drooping on her brow.

She mounted again beside her lover, with a mute obedience characteristic of impassioned natures at times, and when they had wrapped themselves up over head and ears in the sailcloth again, they plunged back into the now thick night. Tess was so receptive that the few minutes of contact with the whirl of material progress lingered in her thought.

“Londoners will drink it at their breakfasts tomorrow, won’t they?” she asked. “Strange people that we have never seen.”

“Yes⁠—I suppose they will. Though not as we send it. When its strength has been lowered, so that it may not get up into their heads.”

“Noble men and noble women, ambassadors and centurions, ladies and tradeswomen, and babies who have never seen a cow.”

“Well, yes; perhaps; particularly centurions.”

“Who don’t know anything of us, and where it comes from; or think how we two drove miles across the moor tonight in the rain that it might reach ’em in time?”

“We did not drive entirely on account of these precious Londoners; we drove a little on our own⁠—on account of that anxious matter which you will, I am sure, set at rest, dear Tess. Now, permit me to put it in this way. You belong to me already, you know; your heart, I mean. Does it not?”

“You know as well as I. O yes⁠—yes!”

“Then, if your heart does, why not your hand?”

“My only reason was on account of you⁠—on account of a question. I have something to tell you⁠—”

“But suppose it to be entirely for my happiness, and my worldly convenience also?”

“O yes; if it is for your happiness and worldly convenience. But my life before I came here⁠—I want⁠—”

“Well, it is for my convenience as well as my happiness. If I have a very large farm, either English or colonial, you will be invaluable as a wife to me; better than a woman out of the largest mansion in the country. So please⁠—please, dear Tessy, disabuse your mind of the feeling that you will stand in my way.”

“But my history. I want you to know it⁠—you must let me tell you⁠—you will not like me so well!”

“Tell it if you wish to, dearest. This precious history then. Yes, I was born at so-and-so, Anno Domini⁠—”

“I was born at Marlott,” she said, catching at his words as a help, lightly as they were spoken. “And I grew up there. And I was in the Sixth Standard when I left school, and they said I had great aptness, and should make a good teacher, so it was settled that I should be one. But there was trouble in my family; father was not very industrious, and he drank a little.”

“Yes, yes. Poor child! Nothing new.” He pressed her more closely to his side.

“And then⁠—there is something very unusual about it⁠—about me. I⁠—I was⁠—”

Tess’s breath quickened.

“Yes, dearest. Never mind.”

“I⁠—I⁠—am not a Durbeyfield, but a d’Urberville⁠—a descendant of the same family as those that owned the old house we passed. And⁠—we are all gone to nothing!”

“A d’Urberville!⁠—Indeed! And is that all the trouble, dear Tess?”

“Yes,” she answered faintly.

“Well⁠—why should I love you less after knowing this?”

“I was told by the dairyman that you hated old families.”

He laughed.

“Well, it is true, in one sense. I do hate the aristocratic principle of blood before everything, and do think that as reasoners the only pedigrees we ought to respect are those spiritual ones of the wise and virtuous, without regard to corporal paternity. But I am extremely interested in this news⁠—you can have no idea how interested I am! Are you not interested yourself in being one of that well-known line?”

“No. I have thought it sad⁠—especially since coming here, and knowing that many of the hills and fields I see once belonged to my father’s people. But other hills and field belonged to Retty’s people, and perhaps others to Marian’s, so that I don’t value it particularly.”

“Yes⁠—it is surprising how many of the present tillers of the soil were once owners of it, and I sometimes wonder that a certain school of politicians don’t make capital of the circumstance; but they don’t seem to know it⁠ ⁠… I wonder that I did not see the resemblance of your name to d’Urberville, and trace the manifest corruption. And this was the carking secret!”

She had not told. At the last moment her courage had failed her; she feared his blame for not telling him sooner; and her instinct of self-preservation was stronger than her candour.

“Of course,” continued the unwitting Clare, “I should have been glad to know you to be descended exclusively from the long-suffering, dumb, unrecorded rank and file of the English nation, and not from the self-seeking few who made themselves powerful at the expense of the rest. But I am corrupted away from that by