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Speaker 1: Chapter twenty. The season developed and matured another year's installment

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of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes, finches, and such ephemeral creatures

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took up their positions where only a year ago others

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had stood in their place, when these were nothing more

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than germs and inorganic particles. Rays from the sunrise drew

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forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted

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up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out

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secrets in invisible jets and breathings. Derriman Criek's household of

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maids and men lived on comfortably, placidly, even merrily. Their

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position was perhaps the happiest of all positions in the

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social scale, being above the line at which neediness ends,

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and below the line at which the convenienceancies begin to

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cramp natural feeling and the stress of threadbare modishness makes

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too little of enough. Thus, past the leafy time, when

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arborescence seems to be the only thing aimed at out

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of doors, Tess and Claire unconsciously studied each other, ever

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balanced on the edge of a passion, yet apparently keeping

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out of it. All the while they were converging under

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an irresistible law as surely as two streams in one vale.

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Tess had never in her recent life been so happy

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as she was now, possibly never would be so happy again.

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She was, for one thing, physically and mentally suited among

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these new surroundings. The sapling, which had rooted down to

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a poisonous stratum on the spot of its sowing, had

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been transplanted to a deeper soil. Moreover, she and Claire

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also stood, as yet on the debatable land between predilection

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and love, where no profundities have been reached, no reflections

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of set in, awkwardly inquiring, whither does this new current

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tend to carry me? What does it mean to my future?

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How does it stand towards my past? Tess was the

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merest stray phenomenon to Angel Claire, as yet a rosy,

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warming apparition which had only just acquired the attribute of

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persistence in his consciousness. So he allowed his mind to

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be occupied with her, deeming his preoccupation to be no

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more than a philosopher's regard of an exceeding novel, fresh

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and interesting specimen of womankind. They met continually. They could

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not help it. They met daily in that strain and

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solemn interval the twilight of the morning in the violet

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or pink dawn, for it was necessary to rise early,

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so very early. Here milking was done betimes, and before

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the milking came the skimming, which began at a little

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past three. It usually fell to the lot of some

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one or other of them to wake the rest, the

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first being aroused by an alarm clock. And as Tess

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was the latest arrival, and they soon discovered that she

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could be depended upon not to sleep through the alarm

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as the others did, this task was thrust most frequently

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upon her. No sooner had the hour of three struck

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and whizzed than she left her room and ran to

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the dairyman's door, then up the ladder to angels, calling

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him in a loud whisper, then woke her fellow dairy maids.

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By the time that Tess was dressed, Claire was downstairs

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and out in the humid air. The remaining maids and

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the dairy man usually gave themselves another turn on the pillow,

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and did not appear until a quarter of an hour later.

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The gray half tones of daybreak are not the gray

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half tones of the day's close, though the degree of

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their shade may be the same. In the twilight of

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the morning, light seems active, darkness passive. In the twilight

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of evening. It is the darkness which is active and crescent,

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and the light which is the drowsy reverse. Being so often,

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possibly not always by chance, the first two persons to

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get up at the dairy house, they seemed to themselves

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the first persons up of all the world. In these

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early days of her residence here, Tests did not skim,

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but went out of doors at once after rising, where

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he was generally awaiting her. The spectral half compounded aqueous

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light which pervaded the open mead, impressed them with a

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feeling of isolation, as if they were Adam and Eve.

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At this dim inceptive stage of the day, Tests seemed

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to clare to exhibit a dignified largeness, both of disposition

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and physique, an almost regnant power, possibly because he knew

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that at that preternatural time, hardly any woman so well

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endowed in person as she was likely to be walking

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in the open air within the boundaries of his horizon.

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Very few in all England fair women are usually asleep

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at midsummer dawns. She was close at hand and the

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rest were nowhere. The mixed singular luminous gloom in which

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they walked along together to the spot where the cows

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lay often made him think of the resurrection hour. He

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little thought that the Magdalen might be at his side.

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Whilst all the landscape was in neutral shade. His companion's face,

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which was the focus of his eyes, rising above the

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miss stratum, seemed to have a sort of phosphorescence about it.

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She looked ghostly, as if she were merely a soul

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at large. In reality, her face, without appearing to do so,

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had caught the cold gleam of day from the northeast.

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His own face, though he did not think of it,

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wore the same aspect to her. It was then, as

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has been said, that she impressed him most deeply. She

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was no longer the milk maid, but a visionary essence

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of woman, a whole sex condensed into one typical form.

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He called her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names, half teasingly,

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which she did not like because she did not understand them.

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Call me Tess, she would say, askance, and he did.

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Then it would grow lighter, and her features would become

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simply feminine. They had changed from those of a divinity

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who could confer bliss to those of a being who

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craved it. At these non human hours they could get

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quite close to the waterfowl. Herons came with a great

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bold noise, as of opening doors and shutters out of

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the boughs of a plantation which they frequented at the

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side of the mead, or, if already on the spot,

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hardily maintained their standing in the water as the pair

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walked by watched them by moving their heads round in

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a slow, horizontal, passionless wheel like the turn of puppets

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by clockwork. They could then see the faint summer fogs

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in layers wooly level and apparently no thicker than counterpanes,

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spread about the meadows. In detached remnants of small extent

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on the gray moisture of the grass were marks where

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the cows had lain through the night, dark green islands

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of dry herbage, the size of their carcasses in a

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general sea of dew. From each island proceeded a serpentine

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trail by which the cow had rambled away to feed.

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After getting up, at the end of which they found her.

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The snoring puff from her nostrils when she recognized them,

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making an intenser little fog of her own amid the

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prevailing one. Then they drove the animals back to the barton,

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or sat down to milk them on the spot, as

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the case might require. Or perhaps the summer fog was

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more general, and their meadows lay like a white sea,

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out of which the scattered trees rose like dangerous rocks.

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Words was soar through it into the upper radiance, and

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hang on the wings, sunning themselves, or alight on the

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wet rails, subdividing the mead, which now shone like glass rods.

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Minute diamonds of moisture from the mist hung too upon

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Tess's eyelashes, and drops upon her hair like seed pearls.

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When the day grew quite strong and commonplace, these dried

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off her moreover. Tess then lost her strange and ethereal beauty.

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Her teeth, lips, and eyes scintillated in the sunbeams, and

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she was again the dazzlingly fair dairy maid, only who

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had to hold her own against the other women of

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the world. About this time they would hear dairyman Crick's

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voice lecturing the non resident milkers for arriving late and

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speaking sharply to old Deborah Fyander for not washing her hands.

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Heaven's sake, pop thy hands under the pump, deb upon

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my soul. If the London folk only knowed of thee

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and nice, lovely ways, they'd swallow their milk and butter

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more mincingly than they'd do already. And that's saying a

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good deal. The milking proceeded till towards the end Tess

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and Claire, in common with the rest, could hear the

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heavy breakfast table dragged out from the wall in the

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kitchen by Missus Crick, this being the invariable preliminary to

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each meal, the same horrible scrape accompanying its return journey

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when the table had been cleared. End of Chapter twenty