The air of the sleeping-chamber seemed to palpitate with the hopeless passion of the girls.They writhed feverishly under the oppressiveness of an emotion thrust on them by cruel Nature's law - an emotion which they had neither expected nor desired.The incident of the day had fanned the flame that was burning the inside of their hearts out, and the torture was almost more than they could endure.The differences which distinguished them as individuals were abstracted by this passion, and each was but portion of one organism called sex.There was so much frankness and so little jealousy because there was no hope.Each one was a girl of fair common sense, and she did not delude herself with any vain conceits, or deny her love, or give herself airs, in the idea of outshining the others.The full recognition of the futility of their infatuation, from a social point of view; its purposeless beginning; its self-bounded outlook; its lack of everything to justify its existence in the eye of civilization (while lacking nothing in the eye of Nature); the one fact that it did exist, ecstasizing them to a killing joy; all this imparted to them a resignation, a dignity, which a practical and sordid expectation of winning him as a husband would have destroyed.
They tossed and turned on their little beds, and the cheese-wring dripped monotonously downstairs.
`B' you awake, Tess?' whispered one, half-an-hour later.
It was Izz Huett's voice.
Tess replied in the affirmative, whereupon also Retty and Marian suddenly flung the bedclothes off them, and sighed--`So be we!'
`I wonder what she is like - the lady they say his family have looked out for him!'
`I wonder,' said Izz.
`Some lady looked out for him?' gasped Tess, starting.`I have never heard o' that!'
`O yes--'tis whispered; a young lady of his own rank, chosen by his family; a Doctor of Divinity's daughter near his father's parish of Emminster;he don't much care for her, they say.But he is sure to marry her.'
They had heard so very little of this; yet it was enough to build up wretched dolorous dreams upon, there in the shade of the night.They pictured all the details of his being won round to consent, of the wedding preparations, of the bride's happiness, of her dress and veil, of her blissful home with him, when oblivion would have fallen upon themselves as far as he and their love were concerned.Thus they talked, and ached, and wept till sleep charmed their sorrow away.
After this disclosure Tess nourished no further foolish thought that there lurked any grave and deliberate import in Clare's attentions to her.
It was a passing summer love of her face, for love's own temporary sake - nothing more.And the thorny crown of this sad conception was that she whom he really did prefer in a cursory way to the rest, she who knew herself to be more impassioned in nature, cleverer, more beautiful than they, was in the eyes of propriety far less worthy of him than the homelier ones whom he ignored.Chapter 24 Amid the oozing fatness and warm ferments of the Var Vale, at a season when the rush of juices could almost be heard below the hiss of fertilization, it was impossible that the most fanciful love should not grow passionate.
The ready bosoms existing there were impregnated by their surroundings.
July passed over their beads, and the Thermidorean weather which came in its wake seemed an effort on the part of Nature to match the state of hearts at Talbothays Dairy.The air of the place, so fresh in the spring and early summer, was stagnant and enervating now.Its heavy scents weighed upon them, and at mid-day the landscape seemed lying in a swoon.Ethiopic scorchings browned the upper slopes of the pastures, but there was still bright green herbage here where the watercourses purled.And as Clare was oppressed by the outward heats, so was he burdened inwardly by waxing fervour of passion for the soft and silent Tess.
The rains having passed the uplands were dry.The wheels of the dairyman's spring-cart, as he sped home from market, licked up the pulverized surface of the highway, and were followed by white ribands of dust, as if they had set a thin powder-train on fire.The cows jumped wildly over the five-barred barton-gate, maddened by the gad-fly; Dairyman Crick kept his shirt-sleeves permanently rolled up from Monday to Saturday: open windows had no effect in ventilation without open doors, and in the dairy-garden the blackbirds and thrushes crept about under the currant-bushes, rather in the manner of quadrupeds than of winged creatures.The flies in the kitchen were lazy, teasing, and familiar, crawling about in unwonted places, on the floor, into drawers, and over the backs of the milkmaids' hands.Conversations were concerning sunstroke; while butter-making, and still more butterkeeping, was a despair.
They milked entirely in the meads for coolness and convenience, without driving in the cows.During the day the animals obsequiously followed the shadow of the smallest tree as it moved round the stem with the diurnal roll; and when the milkers came they could hardly stand still for the flies.
On one of these afternoons four or five unmilked cows chanced to stand apart from the general herd, behind the corner of a hedge, among them being Dumpling and Old Pretty, who loved Tess's hands above those of any other maid.When she rose from her stool under a finished cow Angel Clare, who had been observing her for some time, asked her if she would take the aforesaid creatures next.She silently assented, and with her stool at arm's length, and the pall against her knee, went round to where they stood.Soon the sound of Old Pretty's milk fizzing into the pail came through the hedge, and then Angel felt inclined to go round the corner also, to finish off a hard-yielding milcher who had strayed there, he being now as capable of this as the dairyman himself.
