Speaker 1: Chapter twenty seven. An up hill and down dale ride
of twenty odd miles through a garish midday atmosphere brought
him in the afternoon to a detached knoll a mile
or two west of Talbothays, whence he again looked into
that green trough of sappiness and humidity, the veil of
the var or froom. Immediately he began to descend from
the upland to the fat alluvial soil below. The atmosphere
grew heavier, the languid perfume of the summer fruits, the mists,
the hay, the flowers formed therein a vast pool of odor,
which at this hour seemed to make the animals, the
very bees and butterflies drowsy. Claire was now so familiar
with the spot that he knew the individual cows by
their names, when a long distance off he saw them
dotted about the meads. It was with a sense of
luxury that he recognized his power of viewing life here
from its inner side in a way that had been
quite forgotten to him in his student days. And much
as he loved his parents, he could not help being
aware that to come here as now after an experience
of home life affected him like throwing off splints and bandages,
even the one customary curb on the humors of English
rural society being absent in this place. Talbothays having no
resident landlord, the denizens were all enjoying the usual afternoon
nap of an hour or so, which the exceedingly early
hours kept in summer time rendered a necessity. At the door,
the wood hooped pails, sodden and bleached by infinite scrubbings,
hung like hats on a stand upon the forked and
peeled limb of an oak fixed there for that purpose,
all of them ready and dry for the evening milking.
Angel entered and went through the silent passages of the
house to the back quarters, where he listened for a moment.
Sustained snores came from the cart house, where some of
the men were lying down. The grunt and squeal of
sweltering pigs arose from the still further distance. The large
leaved rhubarb and cabbage plants slept too, their broad limp
surfaces hanging in the sun like half closed umbrellas. He
unbridled and fed his horse, and as he re entered
the house, the clock struck three three was the afternoon's
skimming hour, and with the stroke Claire heard the creaking
of the floorboards above, and then the touch of a
descending foot on the stairs. It was Tess's, who, in
another moment, came down before his eyes. She had not
heard him enter and hardly realized his presence. There. She
was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her
mouth as if it had been a snake's. She had
stretched one arm so high above her coiled up cable
of hair that he could see it satin delicacy above
the auban. Her face was flushed with sleep, and her
eyelids hung heavy over their pupils. The brim fullness of
her nature breathed from her. It was a moment when
a woman's soul is more incarnate than at any other time,
when the most spiritual beauty bespeaks itself. Flesh and sex
takes the outside place in the presentation. Then those eyes
flashed brightly through their filmy heaviness, before the remainder of
her face was well awake, with an oddly compounded look
of gladness, shyness, and surprise. She exclaimed, Oh, mister Clare,
how you frightened me. I there had not at first
been time for her to think of the changed relifeations
which his declaration had introduced, But the full sense of
the matter rose up in her face when she encountered
Claire's tender look as he stepped forward to the bottom stair.
Dear darling Tessy, he whispered, putting his arm round her
and his face to her flushed cheek, don't, for Heaven's sake,
mister me any more, I've hastened back so soon because
of you. Tess's excitable heart beat against his by way
of reply. And there they stood upon the red brick
floor of the entry, the sun slanting in by the window,
upon his back, as he held her tightly to his breast,
upon her inclining face, upon the blue veins of her temple,
upon her naked arm and her neck, and into the
depths of her hair, having been dying down in her clothes,
she was warm as a sunned cat. At first she
would not look straight up at him, but her eyes
soon lifted, and his plumb the deepness of the ever
varying pupils, with their radiating fibrils of blue and black
and gray and Violet, while she regarded him as Eve
at her second wakening, might have regarded Adam. I've got
to go a skim in, she pleaded, And I've only
old deb to help me to day. Missus Krik is
gone to market with mister Krick, and Retty is not well,
and the others are gone out somewhere and won't be
home till milkin. As they retreated to the milk house,
Deborah Fireander appeared on the stairs. I've come back, Deborah, said,
mister Clare upwards, so I can help Tess with the skimming.
And as you're very tired, I am sure you needn't
come down till milking time. Possibly Talbothay's milk was not
very thoroughly skimmed. That afternoon, Tess was in a dream
wherein familiar objects appeared as having light and shade and position,
but no particular outline. Every time she held the skimmer
under the pump to cool it for the work, her
hand trembled, the ardor of his affection, being so palpable
that she seemed to flinch under it, like a plant
in too burning a sun. Then he pressed her again
to his side, and when she had done running her
forefinger round the leads to cut off the cream edge.
He cleaned it in nature's way. For the unconstrained manners
of Talbothay's dairy came convenient. Now I may as well
say it now as later, dearest, he resumed gently. I
wish to ask you something of a very practical nature,
which I have been thinking of ever since that day
last week in the Meads. I shall soon want to marry,
and being a farmer, you see, I shall require for
my wife a woman who knows all about the management
of farms. Will you be that woman, Tessy. He put
it in the way that she might not think he
had yielded to an impulse of which his head would disapprove.
She turned quite careworn. She had bowed to the inevitable
result of proximity the necessity of loving him. But she
had not calculated upon this sudden corollary, which indeed Claire
had put before her without quite meaning himself to do
it so soon. With pain that was like the bitterness
of dissolution, she murmured the words of her indispensable and
sworn answer, as an honorable woman, Oh, mister Clare, I
cannot be your wife. I cannot be the sound of
her own decision seemed to break Tess's very heart, and
she bowed her face in her grief. But Tess, he said,
amazed at her reply, and holding her still more greedily close,
do you say no? Surely you love me? Oh? Yes, yes,
and I would rather be yours than anybody is in
the world, returned the sweet and honest voice of the
distressed girl. But I cannot marry you, Tess, he said,
holding her at arm's length. You are engaged to marry
some one else. No, no, then why do you refuse me?
I don't want to marry I have not thought of
doing it. I cannot. I only want to love you.
But why driven to sob defuse? She stammered, Your father
is a parson, and your mother wouldn't like you to
marry such as me. She will want you to marry
a lady. Nonsense. I've spoken to them both. That is
partly why I went home. I feel I cannot never never,
she echoed. Is it too sudden to be asked? Thus,
my pretty Yes, I did not expect it. If you
will let it pass, please, Tessy, I will give you time,
he said. It was very abrupt to come home and
speak to you all at once. I'll not allude to
it again for a while. She again took up the
shining skimmer, held it beneath the pump, and began anew.
But she could not, as at other times, hit the
exact undersurface of the cream with the delicate dexterity required,
try as she might. Sometimes she was cutting down into
the milk. Sometimes in the air she could hardly see,
her eyes, having filled with two blurring tears, drawn forth
by a grief which, to this her best friend and
dear advocate, she could never explain. I can't skim, I can't,
she said, turning away from him, not to agitate and
hinder her longer. The considerate Claire began talking in a
more general way. You quite misapprehend me. My parents. They
are the most simple mannered people alive, and quite unambitious.
They are two of the few remaining evangelical school. Tessy,
are you an evangelical? I don't know. You go to
church very regularly, and our parson here is not very high.
They tell me. Tess's ideas on the view of the
parish clergyman, whom she had heard every week seemed to
be rather more vague than Claire's, who had never heard
him at all. I wish I could fix my mind
on what I hear there more firmly than I do,
she remarked, as a safe generality is often a great
sorrow to me. She spoke so unaffectedly that Angel was
sure in his heart that his father could not object
to her on religious grounds. Even though she did not
know whether her principles were high, low, or broad. He
himself knew that, in reality, the confused beliefs which she held,
apparently imbibed in childhood were, if anything, tractarian as to phraseology,
and pantheistic as to essence. Confused or otherwise to disturb
them was his last desire. Leave thou, thy sister, when
she prays her early heaven, her happy views, nor thou,
with shadowed hint confuse a life that leads melodious days.
He had occasionally thought the council 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 has 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 in 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 to some missionary society to
preach in the neighborhood 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 easy going who hate to be bothered. He says
he glories in what happened, and that good may be
done indirectly. But I wish he would not so wear
himself out now he's getting old, and would leave such
pigs to their wallowing. Tess's look had grown hard and worn,
and her ripe mouth tragical, and she no longer showed
any tremulousness. Claire'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 schoold 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,
oh no, no, replied she with grave hopelessness, as one
who had heard anew the turmoil of her own past
in the illusion of Alec d'urberville. It can't be. She
went out toward the mead, joining the other milkmaids with
a bound, as if to try to make the open
air drive away her sad constraint. All the gulls drew
onward to the spot where the cows were grazing in
the further 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 was again in sight, to
choose a mate from unconstrained nature, and not from the
abodes of art. End of Chapter twenty seven