There were tears also in Joan Durbeyfield’s
eyes as she turned to go home. But by the time
she had got back to the village she was passively
trusting to the favour of accident. However,
in bed that night she sighed, and her husband asked
her what was the matter.
“Oh, I don’t know exactly,” she
said. “I was thinking that perhaps it
would ha’ been better if Tess had not gone.”
“Oughtn’t ye to have thought of that before?”
“Well, ’tis a chance for the maid—Still,
if ’twere the doing again, I wouldn’t
let her go till I had found out whether the gentleman
is really a good-hearted young man and choice over
her as his kinswoman.”
“Yes, you ought, perhaps, to ha’ done
that,” snored Sir John.
Joan Durbeyfield always managed to find consolation
somewhere: “Well, as one of the genuine
stock, she ought to make her way with ’en, if
she plays her trump card aright. And if he don’t
marry her afore he will after. For that he’s
all afire wi’ love for her any eye can see.”
“What’s her trump card? Her d’Urberville
blood, you mean?”
“No, stupid; her face—as ’twas
mine.”
Having mounted beside her, Alec d’Urberville
drove rapidly along the crest of the first hill, chatting
compliments to Tess as they went, the cart with her
box being left far behind. Rising still, an
immense landscape stretched around them on every side;
behind, the green valley of her birth, before, a gray
country of which she knew nothing except from her
first brief visit to Trantridge. Thus they reached
the verge of an incline down which the road stretched
in a long straight descent of nearly a mile.
Ever since the accident with her father’s horse
Tess Durbeyfield, courageous as she naturally was,
had been exceedingly timid on wheels; the least irregularity
of motion startled her. She began to get uneasy
at a certain recklessness in her conductor’s
driving.
“You will go down slow, sir, I suppose?”
she said with attempted unconcern.
D’Urberville looked round upon her, nipped his
cigar with the tips of his large white centre-teeth,
and allowed his lips to smile slowly of themselves.
“Why, Tess,” he answered, after another
whiff or two, “it isn’t a brave bouncing
girl like you who asks that? Why, I always go
down at full gallop. There’s nothing like
it for raising your spirits.”
“But perhaps you need not now?”
“Ah,” he said, shaking his head, “there
are two to be reckoned with. It is not me alone.
Tib has to be considered, and she has a very queer
temper.”
“Who?”
“Why, this mare. I fancy she looked round
at me in a very grim way just then. Didn’t
you notice it?”
“Don’t try to frighten me, sir,”
said Tess stiffly.
“Well, I don’t. If any living man
can manage this horse I can: I won’t say
any living man can do it—but if such has
the power, I am he.”
