On account of his long delay he started in a flying-run
down the lane westward, and had soon passed the hollow
and mounted the next rise. He had not yet overtaken
his brothers, but he paused to get breath, and looked
back. He could see the white figures of the girls
in the green enclosure whirling about as they had
whirled when he was among them. They seemed
to have quite forgotten him already.
All of them, except, perhaps, one. This white
shape stood apart by the hedge alone. From her
position he knew it to be the pretty maiden with whom
he had not danced. Trifling as the matter was,
he yet instinctively felt that she was hurt by his
oversight. He wished that he had asked her;
he wished that he had inquired her name. She
was so modest, so expressive, she had looked so soft
in her thin white gown that he felt he had acted stupidly.
However, it could not be helped, and turning, and
bending himself to a rapid walk, he dismissed the
subject from his mind.
As for Tess Durbeyfield, she did not so easily dislodge
the incident from her consideration. She had
no spirit to dance again for a long time, though she
might have had plenty of partners; but ah! they did
not speak so nicely as the strange young man had done.
It was not till the rays of the sun had absorbed
the young stranger’s retreating figure on the
hill that she shook off her temporary sadness and
answered her would-be partner in the affirmative.
She remained with her comrades till dusk, and participated
with a certain zest in the dancing; though, being
heart-whole as yet, she enjoyed treading a measure
purely for its own sake; little divining when she
saw “the soft torments, the bitter sweets, the
pleasing pains, and the agreeable distresses”
of those girls who had been wooed and won, what she
herself was capable of in that kind. The struggles
and wrangles of the lads for her hand in a jig were
an amusement to her—no more; and when they
became fierce she rebuked them.
She might have stayed even later, but the incident
of her father’s odd appearance and manner returned
upon the girl’s mind to make her anxious, and
wondering what had become of him she dropped away from
the dancers and bent her steps towards the end of the
village at which the parental cottage lay.
While yet many score yards off, other rhythmic sounds
than those she had quitted became audible to her;
sounds that she knew well—so well.
They were a regular series of thumpings from the interior
of the house, occasioned by the violent rocking of
a cradle upon a stone floor, to which movement a feminine
voice kept time by singing, in a vigorous gallopade,
the favourite ditty of “The Spotted Cow”—
I saw her lie do’-own in yon’-der
green gro’-ove;
Come,
love!’ and I’ll tell’ you where!’
The cradle-rocking and the song would cease simultaneously
for a moment, and an exclamation at highest vocal
pitch would take the place of the melody.
