Tess of the d'Urbervilles

er refusal, though unexpected, did not permanently daunt Clare. His
experience of women was great enough for him to be aware that the
negative often meant nothing more than the preface to the affirmative;
and it was little enough for him not to know that in the manner of the
present negative there lay a great exception to the dallyings of
coyness. That she had already permitted him to make love to her he read
as an additional assurance, not fully trowing that in the fields and
pastures to “sigh gratis” is by no means deemed waste; love-making
being here more often accepted inconsiderately and for its own sweet
sake than in the carking, anxious homes of the ambitious, where a
girl’s craving for an establishment paralyzes her healthy thought of a
passion as an end.

“Tess, why did you say ‘no’ in such a positive way?” he asked her in
the course of a few days.

She started.

“Don’t ask me. I told you why—partly. I am not good enough—not worthy
enough.”

“How? Not fine lady enough?”

“Yes—something like that,” murmured she. “Your friends would scorn me.”

“Indeed, you mistake them—my father and mother. As for my brothers, I
don’t care—” He clasped his fingers behind her back to keep her from
slipping away. “Now—you did not mean it, sweet?—I am sure you did not!
You have made me so restless that I cannot read, or play, or do
anything. I am in no hurry, Tess, but I want to know—to hear from your
own warm lips—that you will some day be mine—any time you may choose;
but some day?”

She could only shake her head and look away from him.

Clare regarded her attentively, conned the characters of her face as if
they had been hieroglyphics. The denial seemed real.

“Then I ought not to hold you in this way—ought I? I have no right to
you—no right to seek out where you are, or walk with you! Honestly,
Tess, do you love any other man?”

“How can you ask?” she said, with continued self-suppression.

“I almost know that you do not. But then, why do you repulse me?”

“I don’t repulse you. I like you to—tell me you love me; and you may
always tell me so as you go about with me—and never offend me.”

“But you will not accept me as a husband?”

“Ah—that’s different—it is for your good, indeed, my dearest! O,
believe me, it is only for your sake! I don’t like to give myself the
great happiness o’ promising to be yours in that way—because—because I
am sure I ought not to do it.”

“But you will make me happy!”

“Ah—you think so, but you don’t know!”

At such times as this, apprehending the grounds of her refusal to be
her modest sense of incompetence in matters social and polite, he would
say that she was wonderfully well-informed and versatile—which was
certainly true, her natural quickness and her admiration for him having
led her to pick up his vocabulary, his accent, and fragments of his
knowledge, to a surprising extent. After these tender contests and her
victory she would go away by herself under the remotest cow, if at
milking-time, or into the sedge or into her room, if at a leisure
interval, and mourn silently, not a minute after an apparently
phlegmatic negative.

The struggle was so fearful; her own heart was so strongly on the side
of his—two ardent hearts against one poor little conscience—that she
tried to fortify her resolution by every means in her power. She had
come to Talbothays with a made-up mind. On no account could she agree
to a step which might afterwards cause bitter rueing to her husband for
his blindness in wedding her. And she held that what her conscience had
decided for her when her mind was unbiassed ought not to be overruled
now.

“Why don’t somebody tell him all about me?” she said. “It was only
forty miles off—why hasn’t it reached here? Somebody must know!”

Yet nobody seemed to know; nobody told him.

For two or three days no more was said. She guessed from the sad
countenances of her chamber companions that they regarded her not only
as the favourite, but as the chosen; but they could see for themselves
that she did not put herself in his way.

Tess had never before known a time in which the thread of her life was
so distinctly twisted of two strands, positive pleasure and positive
pain. At the next cheese-making the pair were again left alone
together. The dairyman himself had been lending a hand; but Mr Crick,
as well as his wife, seemed latterly to have acquired a suspicion of
mutual interest between these two; though they walked so circumspectly
that suspicion was but of the faintest. Anyhow, the dairyman left them
to themselves.

They were breaking up the masses of curd before putting them into the
vats. The operation resembled the act of crumbling bread on a large
scale; and amid the immaculate whiteness of the curds Tess
Durbeyfield’s hands showed themselves of the pinkness of the rose.
Angel, who was filling the vats with his handful, suddenly ceased, and
laid his hands flat upon hers. Her sleeves were rolled far above the
elbow, and bending lower he kissed the inside vein of her soft arm.

Although the early September weather was sultry, her arm, from her
dabbling in the curds, was as cold and damp to his mouth as a
new-gathered mushroom, and tasted of the whey. But she was such a sheaf
of susceptibilities that her pulse was accelerated by the touch, her
blood driven to her finger-ends, and the cool arms flushed hot. Then,
as though her heart had said, “Is coyness longer necessary? Truth is
truth between man and woman, as between man and man,” she lifted her
eyes and they beamed devotedly into his, as her lip rose in a tender
half-smile.

“Do you know why I did that, Tess?” he said.

“Because you love me very much!”

“Yes, and as a preliminary to a new entreaty.”

“Not again!”

She looked a sudden fear that her resistance might break down under her
own desire.

“O, Tessy!” he went on, “I cannot think why you are so tantalizing.
Why do you disappoint me so? You seem almost like a coquette, upon my
life you do—a coquette of the first urban water! They blow hot and blow
cold, just as you do, and it is the very last sort of thing to expect
to find in a retreat like Talbothays.... And yet, dearest,” he quickly
added, observing how the remark had cut her, “I know you to be the most
honest, spotless creature that ever lived. So how can I suppose you a
flirt? Tess, why don’t you like the idea of being my wife, if you love
me as you seem to do?”

“I have never said I don’t like the idea, and I never could say it;
because—it isn’t true!”

The stress now getting beyond endurance, her lip quivered, and she was
obliged to go away. Clare was so pained and perplexed that he ran after
and caught her in the passage.

“Tell me, tell me!” he said, passionately clasping her, in
forgetfulness of his curdy hands: “do tell me that you won’t belong to
anybody but me!”

“I will, I will tell you!” she exclaimed. “And I will give you a
complete answer, if you will let me go now. I will tell you my
experiences—all about myself—all!”

“Your experiences, dear; yes, certainly; any number.” He expressed
assent in loving satire, looking into her face. “My Tess, no doubt,
almost as many experiences as that wild convolvulus out there on the
garden hedge, that opened itself this morning for the first time. Tell
me anything, but don’t use that wretched expression any more about not
being worthy of me.”

“I will try—not! And I’ll give you my reasons to-morrow—next week.”

“Say on Sunday?”

“Yes, on Sunday.”

At last she got away, and did not stop in her retreat till she was in
the thicket of pollard willows at the lower side of the barton, where
she could be quite unseen. Here Tess flung herself down upon the
rustling undergrowth of spear-grass, as upon a bed, and remained
crouching in palpitating misery broken by momentary shoots of joy,
which her fears about the ending could not altogether suppress.

In reality, she was drifting into acquiescence. Every see-saw of her
breath, every wave of her blood, every pulse singing in her ears, was a
voice that joined with nature in revolt against her scrupulousness.
Reckless, inconsiderate acceptance of him; to close with him at the
altar, revealing nothing, and chancing discovery; to snatch ripe
pleasure before the iron teeth of pain could have time to shut upon
her: that was what love counselled; and in almost a terror of ecstasy
Tess divined that, despite her many months of lonely self-chastisement,
wrestlings, communings, schemes to lead a future of austere isolation,
love’s counsel would prevail.

The afternoon advanced, and still she remained among the willows. She
heard the rattle of taking down the pails from the forked stands; the
“waow-waow!” which accompanied the getting together of the cows. But
she did not go to the milking. They would see her agitation; and the
dairyman, thinking the cause to be love alone, would good-naturedly
tease her; and that harassment could not be borne.

Her lover must have guessed her overwrought state, and invented some
excuse for her non-appearance, for no inquiries were made or calls
given. At half-past six the sun settled down upon the levels with the
aspect of a great forge in the heavens; and presently a monstrous
pumpkin-like moon arose on the other hand. The pollard willows,
tortured out of their natural shape by incessant choppings, became
spiny-haired monsters as they stood up against it. She went in and
upstairs without a light.

It was now Wednesday. Thursday came, and Angel looked thoughtfully at
her from a distance, but intruded in no way upon her. The indoor
milkmaids, Marian and the rest, seemed to guess that something definite
was afoot, for they did not force any remarks upon her in the
bedchamber. Friday passed; Saturday. To-morrow was the day.

“I shall give way—I shall say yes—I shall let myself marry him—I cannot
help it!” she jealously panted, with her hot face to the pillow that
night, on hearing one of the other girls sigh his name in her sleep. “I
can’t bear to let anybody have him but me! Yet it is a wrong to him,
and may kill him when he knows! O my heart—O—O—O!”