Speaker 1: Chapter twenty two. They came downstairs yawning next morning, but
skimming and milking were proceeded with as usual, and they
went indoors to breakfast. Dairyman Crick was discovered stamping about
the house. He had received a letter in which a
customer had complained that the butter had a twang. And
be gad sult have said the dairyman, who held in
his left hand a wooden slice on which a lump
of butter was stuck, yas taste it for yourself. Several
of them gathered round him, and mister Clare tasted. Tess
tasted also the indoor milk maids, one or two of
the milking men, and last of all missus Crick, who
came out from the waiting breakfast table. There certainly was
a twang. The dairyman, who had thrown himself into abstraction
to better realize the taste and so divine the particular
species of noxious weed to which it appertained, suddenly exclaimed
tears garlic, And I thought there wasn't a blade left
in that mead. Then all the old hands remembered that
a certain dry mead into which a few of the
cows had been admitted of late, had in years gone by,
spoilt the butter in the same way. The dairy man
had not recognized the taste at the time, and thought
the butter bewitched. We must overhaul that mead, he resumed,
this mustn't continue. All, having armed themselves with old pointed knives,
they went out together. As the inimical plant could only
be present in very microscopic dimensions to have escaped ordinary
observation to find it seemed rather a hopeless attempt in
the stretch of rich grasp For them, however, they formed
themselves into line, all assisting, owing to the importance of
the search. The dairy man at the upper end with
mister Clare, who had volunteered to help, then Tess Marion
Is Hewett and Retty, then Bill Lewell Jonathan, and the
married dairywomen Beck Crebs with her wooly black hair and
rolling eyes, and Flaxen Francis, consumptive from the winter's damps
of the water meads, who lived in their respective cottages.
With eyes fixed upon the ground, they crept slowly across
the strip of the field, returning a little further down,
in such a manner that when they should have finished
not a single inch of the pasture, but would have
fallen under the eye of some one of them. It
was a most tedious business, not more than half a
dozen shoots of garlic being discoverable in the whole field.
Yet such was the herb's pungency that probably one bite
of it by one cow had been sufficient to season
the whole. Dairies produce for the day, Differing one from
another in natures and moods so greatly as they did,
they yet formed bending a curiously uniform row, automatic, noiseless,
and an alien observer passing down the neighboring lane might
well have been excused for massing them as hodge. As
they crept along, stooping low to discern the plant, a
soft yellow gleam was reflected from the buttercups into their
shaded faces, giving them an elfish moonlit aspect, though the
sun was pouring upon their backs. In all the strength
of noon, Angel Claire, who communistically stuck to his rule
of taking part with the rest in everything, glanced up
now and then. It was, not, of course, by accident,
that he walked next to Tess. Well, how are you,
he murmured, Very well, thank you, sir, she replied demurely.
As they had been discussing a score of personal matters
only half an hour before. The introductory style seemed a
little superfluous, but they got no further in speech. Just
then they crept and crept the hem of her petticoat,
just touching his gaiter and his elbow, sometimes brushing hers.
At last, the dairyman who came next could stand it
no longer upon my soul and body, this here, stupid,
do fairly make my back open and shut, he exclaimed,
straightening himself up slowly with an excruciated look. Till quite upright.
And you made e Tess. You wasn't well a day
or two ago. This we'll make your head ache finely.
Don't do any more if you'll fail, fainty, leave the
rest to finish it. Dairy man crick withdrew and Tess
dropped behind. Mister Clare also stepped out of line and
began privateering about for the weed when she found him
near her. Her very tension at what she had heard
the night before made her the first to speak. Don't
they look pretty? She said? Who is he? Hewett and
Retty Tess had moodily decided that either of these maidens
would make a good farmer's wife, and that she ought
to recommend them and obscure her own wretched charms. Pretty
er well, yes, they are pretty girls, fresh looking I
have often thought so, though poor DearS, prettiness won't last long.
Oh no, Unfortunately they are excellent dairy women. Yes, though
not better than you. They skim better than I do
they Claire remained observing them, not without their observing him.
She's coloring up, continued Tess heroically, Who Retty, priddle? Oh
why is that? Because you are looking at her self?
Sacrificing as her mood might be, Tess could not go
well further and cry, marry one of them, if you
really do want a dairywoman and not a lady, and
don't think of marrying me. She followed dairyman Crick and
had the mournful satisfaction of seeing that Claire remained behind.
From this day she forced herself to take pains to
avoid him, never allowing herself as formerly to remain long
in his company, even if their juxtaposition were purely accidental.
She gave the other three every chance. Tess was woman
enough to realize from their avows to her that Angel
Claire had the honor of all the dairy maids in
his keeping, and her preconception of his care to avoid
compromising the happiness of either in the least degree. Bread
a tender aspect in tests for what she deemed rightly
or wrongly, the self controlling sense of duty shown by him,
a quality which she had never expected to find in
one of the opposite sex, and in the absence of
which more than one of the simple hearts who were
his housemates might have gone weeping on her pilgrimage. End
of Chapter twenty two,