Speaker 1: Chapter twenty four. Amid the using fatness and warm ferments
of the Vile Vale, at a season when the rush
of juices could almost be heard below the hiss of fermentation,
it was impossible that the most fanciful love should not
grow passionate. The ready bosoms existing there were impregnated by
their surroundings. June passed over their heads, and the Thermidorian
weather which had come in its wake seemed an effort
on the part of nature to match the state of hearts.
At Talbothay's Dairy, the air of the place, so fresh
in the spring and early summer, was stagnant and enervating.
Now its heavy scents weighed upon them, and at midday
the landscape seemed lying in a swoon. Ethiopic scorchings browned
the upper slopes of the pastures, but there were still
bright green herbage here where the watercourses purled. And as
Claire was oppressed by the outward heats, so was he
burdened inwardly by waxing fervor of passion. For the soft
and silent tests the rains having passed, the uplands were dry.
The wheels of the dairyman's spring cart as he sped
home from market, licked up the pulverized surface of the highway,
and were followed by white ribbons of dust, as if
they had set a thin powder train on fire. The
cows jumped wildly over the five barred Barton Gate, maddened
by the gad fly. Dairyman Creek kept his shirt sleeves
permanently rolled up from Monday to Saturday. Open windows had
no effect on ventilation. Without open doors and the dairy garden,
the blackbirds and thrushes crept out among the currant bushes,
rather in the manner of quadrupeds than of winged creatures.
The flies in the kitchen were lazy, teasing and familiar,
crawling about in unwonted places on the floor, into drawers
and over the backs of the milkmaid's hands. Conversations were
concerning sunstroke, while butter making and still more butter making
was a despair. They milked entirely in the meads for
coolness and convenience, without driving in the cows. During the day,
the animals obsequiously followed the shadow of the smallest tree
as it moved round the stem with the diurnal roll,
and when the milkers came, they could hardly stand still
for the flies. On one of these afternoons, four or
five unmilked cows chanced to stand apart from the general herd,
behind the corner of a hedge, among them being Dumpling,
an old pretty who loved Tess's hands above those of
any other maid. When she rose from her stool under
a finished cow, Angel Claire, who had been observing her
for some time, asked her if she would take the
aforesaid creatures next. She silently assented, and, with her stool
at arm's length and the pail against her knee, went
round to where they stood. Soon the sound of old
Pretty's milk fizzing into the pail came through the hedge,
and then Angel felt inclined to go round the corner,
also to finish off a hard yielding milcher who had
strayed there, he being now as capable of this as
the dairyman himself. All the men and some of the women,
when milking, dug their foreheads into the cows and gazed
into the pail, but a few, mainly the younger ones,
rested their heads sideways. This was Tess Durbeyfield's habit her temple,
pressing the milcher's flank, her eyes fixed on the far
end of the meadow, with the quiet of one lost
in meditation. She was milking Old Pretty, and the sun
chancing to be on the milking side. It shone flat
against her pink gowned form and her white curtained bonnet,
and upon her profile, rendering it keen as a cameo
cut from the dun background of the cow. She did
not know that Claire had followed her round, and that
he sat under his cow watching her. The stillness of
her head and features was remarkable. She might have been
in a trance, her eyes open yet unseeing. Nothing in
the picture moved but Old Pretty's tail and Tess's pink hands,
the latter so gently as to be a rhythmic pulsation,
only as if they were obeying a reflex stimulus, like
a beating heart. How very lovable her face was to him,
Yet there was nothing ethereal about it. All was real vitality,
real warmth, real incarnation. And it was in her mouth
that this culminated. Eyes almost as deep and speaking as
he had seen before, and cheeks perhaps as fair, brows
as arched, a chin and throat almost as shapely her mouth.
He had seen nothing to equal on the face of
the earth. To a young man with the least fire
in him, that little upward lift in the middle of
her red top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had
never before seen a woman's lips and teeth which forced
upon his mind with such persistent iteration, the old Elizabethan
simele of roses filled with snow perfect. He, as a lover,
might have called them off hand, but no, they were
not perfect, and it was the touch of the imperfect
upon the would be perfect that gave the sweetness, because
it was that which gave the humanity. Claire had studded
the curves of those lips so many times that he
could reproduce them mentally with ease. And now, as they
again confronted him, clothed with colour and life, they sent
an aura over his flesh, a breeze through his nerves,
which well nigh produced a qualm, and actually produced, by
some mysterious physiological process, a prosaic sneeze. She then became
conscious that he was observing her, but she would not
show it by any change of position. Though the curious
dreamlike fixity disappeared, and a close eye might easily have
discerned that the rosiness of her face deepened and then faded,
till only a tinge of it was left. The influence
that had passed into Clare, like an excitation from the sky,
did not die down. Resolutions, reticences, prudences, fears fell back
like a defeated battalion. He jumped up from his seat, and,
leaving his pail to be kicked over if the milcher
had such a mind, went quickly toward the desire of
his eyes, and, kneeling down beside her, clasped her in
his arms. Tess was taken completely by surprise, and she
yielded to his embrace with unreflecting inevitableness, having seen that
it was really her lover who had advanced, and no
one else. Her lips parted and she sank upon him
in her momentary joy, with something like a very ecstatic cry.
He had been on the point of kissing that too
tempting mouth, but he had checked himself for tender conscience sake.
Forgive me, Tess, dear, he whispered, I ought to have asked,
I did not know what I was doing. I do
not mean it as a liberty. I am devoted to you,
Tessy dearest, in all sincerity. Old pretty by this time
had looked round, puzzled and seeing two people crouching under
her war where by immemorial custom there should have been
only one. Lifted her hind leg crossly. She's angry. She
doesn't know what we mean. She'll kick over the milk,
exclaimed Tess, gently, striving to be free herself, her eyes
concerned with the quadruped's action, her heart more deeply concerned
with herself and clear, she slipped up from her seat
and they stood together, his arm still encircling her. Tess's eyes,
fixed on distance, began to fill. Why do you cry,
my darling, he said, Oh, I don't know, She murmured,
as she saw and felt more clearly the position she
was in. She became agitated and tried to withdraw. Well,
I have betrayed my feeling, Tess. At last, said he,
with a curious sigh of desperation, signifying unconsciously that his
heart had outrun his judgment, that I love you dearly,
and truly I need not say, but I it shall
go no further now it distresses you I am surprised
as you are. You will not think I have presumed
upon your defenselessness, being too quick and unreflecting, will you,
I can't tell. He had allowed her to free herself,
and in a minute or two the milking of each
was resumed. Nobody had beheld the gravitation of the two
into one, and when the dairy man came round by
that screened nook a few minutes later, there was not
a sign to reveal that the markedly sundered pair were
more to each other than mere acquaintance. Yet in the
interval since Quick's last view of them, something had occurred
which changed the pivot of the universe for their two natures,
something which, had he known its quality, the Dairyman would
have despised as a practical man, Yet which was based
upon a more stubborn and restless tendency than a whole
heap of so called practicalities. A veil had been whisked aside.
The tract of each one's outlook was to have a
new horizon. Henceforward for a short time or for a long.
End of Chapter twenty four