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For several days after Tess's arrival Clare, sitting abstractedly reading from some book, periodical, or piece of music just come by post, hardly noticed that she was present at table.
Nobody was visible in the elevated road which skirted the ascent save the lad whom they had sent on before them, sitting on the handle of the barrow that contained all Tess's worldly possessions. "Bide here a bit, and the cart will soon come, no doubt," said Mrs Durbeyfield. "Yes, I see it yonder!"
At the earliest moment she obtained what others she could procure, and in a few days her father was well enough to see to the garden, under Tess's persuasive efforts: while she herself undertook the allotment-plot which they rented in a field a couple of hundred yards out of the village.
And so this is about Tess's country, ain't it? I feel just as if I were in a book. Say, the conduc the guard has something on his mind. What's he getting at?" The splendid badged and belted guard was striding up the platform at the regulation official pace, and in the regulation official voice was saying at each door: "Has any gentleman here a bottle of medicine?
Over the seat of the chair Tess's face was bowed, her posture being a kneeling one in front of it; her hands were clasped over her head, the skirts of her dressing-gown and the embroidery of her night-gown flowed upon the floor behind her, and her stockingless feet, from which the slippers had fallen, protruded upon the carpet. It was from her lips that came the murmur of unspeakable despair.
Tess's female companions sang songs, and showed themselves very sympathetic and glad at her reappearance out of doors, though they could not refrain from mischievously throwing in a few verses of the ballad about the maid who went to the merry green wood and came back a changed state.
Tess's sense of a certain ludicrousness in her errand was now so strong that, notwithstanding her awe of him, and her general discomfort at being here, her rosy lips curved towards a smile, much to the attraction of the swarthy Alexander. "It is so very foolish," she stammered; "I fear can't tell you!" "Never mind; I like foolish things. Try again, my dear," said he kindly.
Like the prophet on the top of Peor, Izz Huett would fain have spoken perversely at such a moment, but the fascination exercised over her rougher nature by Tess's character compelled her to grace. Clare was silent; his heart had risen at these straightforward words from such an unexpected unimpeachable quarter. In his throat was something as if a sob had solidified there.
With pain that was like the bitterness of dissolution she murmured the words of her indispensable and sworn answer as an honourable woman. "O Mr Clare I cannot be your wife I cannot be!" The sound of her own decision seemed to break Tess's very heart, and she bowed her face in her grief. "But, Tess!" he said, amazed at her reply, and holding her still more greedily close. "Do you say no?
There was, it might be said, the energy of her mother's unexpended family, as well as the natural energy of Tess's years, rekindled after the experience which had so overwhelmed her for the time. Let the truth be told women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, and again look about them with an interested eye.
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