第105章

`Well, well, I know you do.But upon my body, it is a rum life for a married couple! There - I won't say another word! Well, as for the weather, it won't hurt us in the wheat-barn; but reed-drawing is fearful hard work - worse than swede-hacking.I can stand it because I'm stout; but you be slimmer than I.I can't think why maister should have set 'ee at it.'

They reached the wheat-barn and entered it.One end of the long structure was full of corn; the middle was where the reed-drawing was carried on, and there had already been placed in the reed-press the evening before as many sheaves of wheat as would be sufficient for the women to draw from during the day.

`Why, here's Izz!' said Marian.

Izz it was, and she came forward.She had walked all the way from her mother's home on the previous afternoon, and, not deeming the distance so great, had been belated, arriving, however, just before the snow began, and sleeping at the ale-house.The farmer had agreed with her mother at market to take her on if she came to-day, and she had been afraid to disappoint him by delay.

In addition to Tess, Marian, and Izz, there were two women from a neighbouring village; two Amazonian sisters, whom Tess with a start remembered as Dark Car the Queen of Spades and her junior the Queen of Diamonds - those who had tried to fight with her in the midnight quarrel at Trantridge.They showed no recognition of her, and possibly had none, for they had been under the influence of liquor on that occasion, and were only temporary sojourners there as here.They did all kinds of men's work by preference, including well-sinking, hedging, ditching, and excavating, without any sense of fatigue.Noted reed-drawers were they too, and looked round upon the other three with some superciliousness.

Putting on their gloves all set to work in a row in front of the press, an erection formed of two posts connected by a cross-beam, under which the sheaves to be drawn from were laid ears outward, the beam being pegged down by pins in the uprights, and lowered as the sheaves diminished.

The day hardened in colour, the light coming in at the barn doors upwards from the snow instead of downwards from the sky.The girls pulled handful after handful from the press; but by reason of the presence of the strange women, who were recounting scandals, Marian and Izz could not at first talk of old times as they wished to do.Presently they heard the muffled tread of a horse, and the farmer rode up to the barn-door.When he had dismounted he came close to Tess, and remained looking musingly at the side of her face.She had not turned at first, but his fixed attitude led her to look round, when she perceived that her employer was the native of Trantridge from whom she had taken flight on the high-road because of his allusion to her history.

He waited till she had carried the drawn bundles to the pile outside, when he said, `So you be the young woman who took my civility in such ill part? Be drowned if I didn't think you might be as soon as I heard of your being hired! Well, you thought you had got the better of me the first time at the inn with your fancy-man, and the second time on the road, when you bolted; but now I think I've got the better of you.' He concluded with a hard laugh.

Tess, between the Amazons and the farmer like a bird caught in a clap-net, returned no answer, continuing to pull the straw.She could read character sufficiently well to know by this time that she had nothing to fear from her employer's gallantry; it was rather the tyranny induced by his mortification at Clare's treatment of him.Upon the whole she preferred that sentiment in man and felt brave enough to endure it.

`You thought I was in love with 'ee I suppose? Some women are such fools, to take every look as serious earnest.But there's nothing like a winter afield for taking that nonsense out o' young wenches' heads; and you've signed and agreed till Lady-Day.Now, are you going to beg my pardon?'

`I think you ought to beg mine.'

`Very well - as you like.But we'll see which is master here.Be they all the sheaves you've done to-day?'

`Yes, sir.'

`'Tis a very poor show.Just see what they've done over there' (pointing to the two stalwart women).`The rest, too, have done better than you.'

`They've all practised it before, and I have not.And I thought it made no difference to you as it is task work, and we are only paid for what we do.'

`Oh, but it does.I want the barn cleared.'

`I am going to work all the afternoon instead of leaving at two as the others will do.'

He looked sullenly at her and went away.Tess felt that she could not have come to a much worse place; but anything was better than gallantry.

When two o'clock arrived the professional reed-drawers tossed off the last half-pint in their flagon, put down their hooks, tied their last sheaves, and went away.Marian and Izz would have done likewise, but on hearing that Tess meant to stay, to make up by longer hours for her lack of skill, they would not leave her.Looking out at the snow, which still fell, Marian exclaimed, 'Now, we've got it all to ourselves.' And so at last the conversation turned to their old experiences at the dairy; and, of course, the incidents of their affection for Angel Clare.

`Izz and Marian,' said Mrs Angel Clare, with a dignity which was extremely touching, seeing how very little of a wife she was: `I can't join 'n talk with you now, as I used to do, about Mr Clare; you will see that I cannot;because, although he is gone away from me for the present, he is my husband.'

Izz was by nature the sauciest and most caustic of all the four girls who had loved Clare.`He was a very splendid lover, no doubt,' she said;`but I don't think he is a too fond husband to go away from you so soon.'

`He had to go - he was obliged to go, to see about the land over there!'

pleaded Tess.

`He might have tided 'ee over the winter.'