第62章

He unbridled and fed his horse, and as he re-entered the house the clock struck three.Three was the afternoon skimming-hour; and, with the stroke, Clare heard the creaking of the floor-boards above, and then the touch of a descending foot on the stairs.It was Tess's, who in another moment came down before his eyes.

She had not heard him enter, and hardly realized his presence there.

She was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her mouth as if it had been a snake's.She had stretched one arm so high as above her coiled-up cable of hair that he could see its satin delicacy above the sunburn; her face was flushed with sleep, and her eyelids hung heavy over their pupils.

The brimfulness of her nature breathed from her.It was a moment when a woman's soul is more incarnate than at any other time; when the most spiritual beauty bespeaks itself flesh; and sex takes the outside place in the presentation.

Then those eyes flashed brightly through their filmy heaviness, before the remainder of her face was well awake.With an oddly compounded look of gladness, shyness, and surprise, she exclaimed--`O Mr Clare! How you frightened me - I--'

There had not at first been time for her to think of the changed relations which his declaration had introduced; but the full sense of the matter rose up in her face when she encountered Clare's tender look as he stepped forward to the bottom stair.

`Dear, darling Tessy!' he whispered, putting his arm round her, and his face to her flushed cheek.`Don't, for Heaven's sake, Mister me any more.I have hastened back so soon because of you!'

Tess's excitable heart beat against bis by way of reply; and there they stood upon the red-brick floor of the entry, the sun slanting in by the window upon his back, as he held her tightly to his breast; upon her inclining face, upon the blue veins of her temple, upon her naked arm, and her neck, and into the depths of her hair.Having been lying down in her clothes she was warm as a sunned cat.At first she would not look straight up at him, but her eyes soon lifted, and his plumbed the deepness of the ever-varying pupils, with their radiating fibrils of blue, and black, and gray, and violet, while she regarded him as Eve at her second waking might have regarded Adam.

`I've got to go a-skimming,' she pleaded, `and I have on'y old Deb to help me to-day.Mrs Crick is gone to market with Mr Crick, and Retty is not well, and the others are gone out somewhere, and won't be home till milking.'

As they retreated to the milk-house Deborah Fyander appeared on the stairs.

`I have come back, Deborah,' said Mr Clare, upwards.'So I can help Tess with the skimming; and, as you are very tired, I am sure, you needn't come down till milking-time.'

Possibly the Talbothays milk was not very thoroughly skimmed that afternoon.

Tess was in a dream wherein familiar objects appeared as having light and shade and position, but no particular outline.Every time she held the skimmer under the pump to cool it for the work her hand trembled, the ardour of his affection being so palpable that she seemed to flinch under it like a plant in too burning a sun.

Then he pressed her again to his side, and when she had done running her forefinger round the leads to cut off the cream-edge, he cleaned it in nature's way; for the unconstrained manners of Talbothays dairy came convenient now.

`I may as well say it now as later, dearest,' he resumed gently.`Iwish to ask you something of a very practical nature, which I have been thinking of ever since that day last week in the meads.I shall soon want to marry, and, being a farmer, you see I shall require for my wife a woman who knows all about the management of farms.Will you be that woman, Tessy?'

He put it in that way that she might not think he had yielded to an impulse of which his head would disapprove.

She turned quite careworn.She had bowed to the inevitable result of proximity, the necessity of loving him; but she had not calculated upon this sudden corollary, which, indeed, Clare had put before her without quite meaning himself to do it so soon.With pain that was like the bitterness of dissolution she murmured the words of her indispensable and sworn answer as an honourable woman.

`O Mr Clare - I cannot be your wife - I cannot be!'

The sound of her own decision seemed to break Tess's very heart, and she bowed her face in her grief.

`But, Tess!' he said, amazed at her reply, and holding her still more greedily close.`Do you say no? Surely you love me?'

`O yes, yes! And I would rather be yours than anybody's in the world,'

returned the sweet and honest voice of the distressed girl.`But I cannot marry you!'

`Tess,' he said, holding her at arm's length, `you are engaged to marry some one else!'

`No, no!'

`Then why do you refuse me?'

`I don't want to marry! I have not thought o'doing it.I cannot! I only want to love you.'

`But why?'

Driven to subterfuge, she stammered--

`Your father is a parson, and your mother wouldn' like you to marry such as me.She will want you to marry a lady.'

`Nonsense - I have spoken to them both.That was partly why I went home.'

`I feel I cannot - never, never!' she echoed.

`Is it too sudden to be asked thus, my Pretty?'

`Yes - I did not expect it.'

`If you will let it pass, please, Tessy, I will give you time,' he said.

`It was very abrupt to come home and speak to you all at once.I'll not allude to it again for a while.'

She again took up the shining skimmer, held it beneath the pump, and began anew.But she could not, as at other times, hit the exact under-surface of the cream with the delicate dexterity required, try as she might: sometimes she was cutting down into the milk, sometimes in the air.She could hardly see, her eyes having filled with two blurring tears drawn forth by a grief which, to this her best friend and dear advocate, she could never explain.

`I can't skim - I can't!' she said, turning away from him.

Not to agitate and hinder her longer the considerate Clare began talking in a more general way: