“Oh—I have heard of him,” said
her companion, now awake. “A very earnest
clergyman, is he not?”
“Yes—that he is—the earnestest
man in all Wessex, they say—the last of
the old Low Church sort, they tell me—for
all about here be what they call High. All his
sons, except our Mr Clare, be made pa’sons too.”
Tess had not at this hour the curiosity to ask why
the present Mr Clare was not made a parson like his
brethren, and gradually fell asleep again, the words
of her informant coming to her along with the smell
of the cheeses in the adjoining cheeseloft, and the
measured dripping of the whey from the wrings downstairs.
Angel Clare rises out of the past not altogether as
a distinct figure, but as an appreciative voice, a
long regard of fixed, abstracted eyes, and a mobility
of mouth somewhat too small and delicately lined for
a man’s, though with an unexpectedly firm close
of the lower lip now and then; enough to do away with
any inference of indecision. Nevertheless, something
nebulous, preoccupied, vague, in his bearing and regard,
marked him as one who probably had no very definite
aim or concern about his material future. Yet
as a lad people had said of him that he was one who
might do anything if he tried.
He was the youngest son of his father, a poor parson
at the other end of the county, and had arrived at
Talbothays Dairy as a six months’ pupil, after
going the round of some other farms, his object being
to acquire a practical skill in the various processes
of farming, with a view either to the Colonies or
the tenure of a home-farm, as circumstances might
decide.
His entry into the ranks of the agriculturists and
breeders was a step in the young man’s career
which had been anticipated neither by himself nor
by others.
Mr Clare the elder, whose first wife had died and
left him a daughter, married a second late in life.
This lady had somewhat unexpectedly brought him three
sons, so that between Angel, the youngest, and his
father the Vicar there seemed to be almost a missing
generation. Of these boys the aforesaid Angel,
the child of his old age, was the only son who had
not taken a University degree, though he was the single
one of them whose early promise might have done full
justice to an academical training.
Some two or three years before Angel’s appearance
at the Marlott dance, on a day when he had left school
and was pursuing his studies at home, a parcel came
to the Vicarage from the local bookseller’s,
directed to the Reverend James Clare. The Vicar
having opened it and found it to contain a book, read
a few pages; whereupon he jumped up from his seat
and went straight to the shop with the book under his
arm.
“Why has this been sent to my house?”
he asked peremptorily, holding up the volume.
“It was ordered, sir.”
“Not by me, or any one belonging to me, I am
happy to say.”
