She clasped his neck, and for the first time Clare
learnt what an impassioned woman’s kisses were
like upon the lips of one whom she loved with all
her heart and soul, as Tess loved him.
“There—now do you believe?”
she asked, flushed, and wiping her eyes.
“Yes. I never really doubted—never,
never!”
So they drove on through the gloom, forming one bundle
inside the sail-cloth, the horse going as he would,
and the rain driving against them. She had consented.
She might as well have agreed at first. The
“appetite for joy” which pervades all creation,
that tremendous force which sways humanity to its
purpose, as the tide sways the helpless weed, was
not to be controlled by vague lucubrations over the
social rubric.
“I must write to my mother,” she said.
“You don’t mind my doing that?”
“Of course not, dear child. You are a
child to me, Tess, not to know how very proper it
is to write to your mother at such a time, and how
wrong it would be in me to object. Where does
she live?”
“At the same place—Marlott.
On the further side of Blackmoor Vale.”
“Ah, then I HAVE seen you before this summer—”
“Yes; at that dance on the green; but you would
not dance with me. O, I hope that is of no ill-omen
for us now!”
Tess wrote a most touching and urgent letter to her
mother the very next day, and by the end of the week
a response to her communication arrived in Joan Durbeyfield’s
wandering last-century hand.
DEAR TESS,—
J write these few lines Hoping they will
find you well, as they leave me at Present, thank
God for it. Dear Tess, we are all glad to
Hear that you are going really to be married soon.
But with respect to your question, Tess, J say
between ourselves, quite private but very strong,
that on no account do you say a word of your Bygone
Trouble to him. J did not tell everything to
your Father, he being so Proud on account of his Respectability,
which, perhaps, your Intended is the same.
Many a woman—some of the Highest in the
Land—have had a Trouble in their time;
and why should you Trumpet yours when others don’t
Trumpet theirs? No girl would be such a Fool,
specially as it is so long ago, and not your Fault
at all. J shall answer the same if you ask
me fifty times. Besides, you must bear in
mind that, knowing it to be your Childish Nature to
tell all that’s in your heart—so
simple!—J made you promise me never
to let it out by Word or Deed, having your Welfare
in my Mind; and you most solemnly did promise it
going from this Door. J have not named either
that Question or your coming marriage to your Father,
as he would blab it everywhere, poor Simple Man.
Dear Tess, keep up your Spirits, and
we mean to send you a Hogshead of Cyder for you
Wedding, knowing there is not much in your parts,
and thin Sour Stuff what there is. So no
more at present, and with kind love to your Young
Man.—From your affectte. Mother,
J. DURBEYFIELD
