Tess of the d'Urbervilles eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 557 pages of information about Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 557 pages of information about Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

“Heu-heu-heu!” laughed dark Car’s mother, stroking her moustache as she explained laconically:  “Out of the frying-pan into the fire!”

Then these children of the open air, whom even excess of alcohol could scarce injure permanently, betook themselves to the field-path; and as they went there moved onward with them, around the shadow of each one’s head, a circle of opalized light, formed by the moon’s rays upon the glistening sheet of dew.  Each pedestrian could see no halo but his or her own, which never deserted the head-shadow, whatever its vulgar unsteadiness might be; but adhered to it, and persistently beautified it; till the erratic motions seemed an inherent part of the irradiation, and the fumes of their breathing a component of the night’s mist; and the spirit of the scene, and of the moonlight, and of Nature, seemed harmoniously to mingle with the spirit of wine.

XI

The twain cantered along for some time without speech, Tess as she clung to him still panting in her triumph, yet in other respects dubious.  She had perceived that the horse was not the spirited one he sometimes rose, and felt no alarm on that score, though her seat was precarious enough despite her tight hold of him.  She begged him to slow the animal to a walk, which Alec accordingly did.

“Neatly done, was it not, dear Tess?” he said by and by.

“Yes!” said she.  “I am sure I ought to be much obliged to you.”

“And are you?”

She did not reply.

“Tess, why do you always dislike my kissing you?”

“I suppose—­because I don’t love you.”

“You are quite sure?”

“I am angry with you sometimes!”

“Ah, I half feared as much.”  Nevertheless, Alec did not object to that confession.  He knew that anything was better then frigidity.  “Why haven’t you told me when I have made you angry?”

“You know very well why.  Because I cannot help myself here.”

“I haven’t offended you often by love-making?”

“You have sometimes.”

“How many times?”

“You know as well as I—­too many times.”

“Every time I have tried?”

She was silent, and the horse ambled along for a considerable distance, till a faint luminous fog, which had hung in the hollows all the evening, became general and enveloped them.  It seemed to hold the moonlight in suspension, rendering it more pervasive than in clear air.  Whether on this account, or from absent-mindedness, or from sleepiness, she did not perceive that they had long ago passed the point at which the lane to Trantridge branched from the highway, and that her conductor had not taken the Trantridge track.

She was inexpressibly weary.  She had risen at five o’clock every morning of that week, had been on foot the whole of each day, and on this evening had in addition walked the three miles to Chaseborough, waited three hours for her neighbours without eating or drinking, her impatience to start them preventing either; she had then walked a mile of the way home, and had undergone the excitement of the quarrel, till, with the slow progress of their steed, it was now nearly one o’clock.  Only once, however, was she overcome by actual drowsiness.  In that moment of oblivion her head sank gently against him.

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Tess of the d'Urbervilles from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.