Tess’s look had grown hard and worn, and her
ripe mouth tragical; but she no longer showed any
tremulousness. Clare’s revived thoughts
of his father prevented his noticing her particularly;
and so they went on down the white row of liquid rectangles
till they had finished and drained them off, when
the other maids returned, and took their pails, and
Deb came to scald out the leads for the new milk.
As Tess withdrew to go afield to the cows he said
to her softly—
“And my question, Tessy?”
“O no—no!” replied she with
grave hopelessness, as one who had heard anew the
turmoil of her own past in the allusion to Alec d’Urberville.
“It CAN’T be!”
She went out towards the mead, joining the other milkmaids
with a bound, as if trying to make the open air drive
away her sad constraint. All the girls drew
onward to the spot where the cows were grazing in
the farther mead, the bevy advancing with the bold
grace of wild animals—the reckless, unchastened
motion of women accustomed to unlimited space—in
which they abandoned themselves to the air as a swimmer
to the wave. It seemed natural enough to him
now that Tess was again in sight to choose a mate from
unconstrained Nature, and not from the abodes of Art.
Her 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.
