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In the incoherent multitude of his emotions he knelt down at the bedside wet-eyed. "O Tess! If you had only told me sooner, I would have forgiven you!" he mourned. Hearing a footstep below, he rose and went to the top of the stairs. At the bottom of the flight he saw a woman standing, and on her turning up her face recognized the pale, dark-eyed Izz Huett.
But the unconscious Mr Clare had gone indoors, and they saw him no more; and, the shades beginning to deepen, they crept into their beds. In a few minutes they heard him ascend the ladder to his own room. Marian was soon snoring, but Izz did not drop into forgetfulness for a long time. Retty Priddle cried herself to sleep. The deeper-passioned Tess was very far from sleeping even then.
Tess, in her start at the words, narrowly missed cutting off a finger with the bill-hook. "Is it about my husband?" she stammered. "Well, yes. Izz said, 'Don't 'ee tell her'; but I am sure I can't help it! It was what he wanted Izz to do. He wanted her to go off to Brazil with him." Tess's face faded as white as the scene without, and its curves straightened. "And did Izz refuse to go?" she asked.
She was the only woman whose place was upon the machine so as to be shaken bodily by its spinning, and the decrease of the stack now separated her from Marian and Izz, and prevented their changing duties with her as they had done.
Izz spoke with a magnanimous abandonment of herself to the situation; she could not be no woman with a heart bigger than a hazel-nut could be antagonistic to Tess in her presence, the influence which she exercised over those of her own sex being of a warmth and strength quite unusual, curiously overpowering the less worthy feminine feelings of spite and rivalry.
"'Tis no use for you to be in love with him any more than me, Retty Priddle," said jolly-faced Marian, the eldest, slily. "His thoughts be of other cheeks than thine!" Retty Priddle still looked, and the others looked again. "There he is again!" cried Izz Huett, the pale girl with dark damp hair and keenly cut lips. "You needn't say anything, Izz," answered Retty.
"You love me very, very much, Izz?" he suddenly asked. "I do I have said I do! I loved you all the time we was at the dairy together!" "More than Tess?" She shook her head. "No," she murmured, "not more than she." "How's that?" "Because nobody could love 'ee more than Tess did! ... She would have laid down her life for 'ee. I could do no more."
Marian and Izz were much interested in her excursion, knowing that the journey concerned her husband.
She indirectly inquired of Amby Seedling, who had followed Izz from Talbothays, and by chance Amby remembered that, amongst the snatches of melody in which they had indulged at the dairyman's, to induce the cows to let down their milk, Clare had seemed to like "Cupid's Gardens", "I have parks, I have hounds", and "The break o' the day"; and had seemed not to care for "The Tailor's Breeches" and "Such a beauty I did grow", excellent ditties as they were.
"For I zid you kissing his shade." "WHAT did you see her doing?" asked Marian. "Why he was standing over the whey-tub to let off the whey, and the shade of his face came upon the wall behind, close to Izz, who was standing there filling a vat. She put her mouth against the wall and kissed the shade of his mouth; I zid her, though he didn't." "O Izz Huett!" said Marian.
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