第83章

`I shan't ask you to let me live with you, Angel, because I have no right to! I shall not write to mother and sisters to say we be married, as I said I would do; and I shan't finish the good-hussif I cut out and meant to make while we were in lodgings.'

`Shan't you?'

`No, I shan't do anything, unless you order me to; and if you go away from me I shall not follow 'ee; and if you never speak to me any more Ishall not ask why, unless you tell me I may.'

`And if I do order you to do anything?'

`I will obey you like your wretched slave, even if it is to lie down and die.'

`You are very good.But it strikes me that there is a want of harmony between your present mood of self-sacrifice and your past mood of self-preservation.'

These were the first words of antagonism.To fling elaborate sarcasms at Tess, however, was much like flinging them at a dog or cat.The charms of their subtlety passed by her unappreciated, and she only received them as inimical sounds which meant that anger ruled.She remained mute, not knowing that he was smothering his affection for her.She hardly observed that a tear descended slowly upon his cheek, a tear so large that it magnified the pores of the skin over which it rolled, like the object lens of a microscope.

Meanwhile reillumination as to the terrible and total change that her confession had wrought in his life, in his universe, returned to him, and he tried desperately to advance among the new conditions in which he stood.Some consequent action was necessary; yet what?

`Tess,' he said, as gently as he could speak, `I cannot stay - in this room - just now.I will walk out a little way.'

He quietly left the room, and the two glasses of wine that he had poured out for their supper - one for her, one for him - remained on the table untasted.This was what their Agape had come to.At tea, two or three hours earlier, they had, in the freakishness of affection, drunk from one cup.

The closing of the door behind him, gently as it had been pulled to, roused Tess from her stupor.He was gone; she could not stay.Hastily flinging her cloak around her she opened the door and followed, putting out the candles as if she were never coming back.The rain was over and the night was now clear.

She was soon close at his heels, for Clare walked slowly and without purpose.His form beside her light gray figure looked black, sinister, and forbidding, and she felt as sarcasm the touch of the jewels of which she had been momentarily so proud.Clare turned at hearing her footsteps, but his recognition of her presence seemed to make no difference in him, and he went on over the five yawning arches of the great bridge in front of the house.

The cow and horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain having been enough to charge them, but not enough to wash them away.Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick transit as she passed;she would not have known they were shining overhead if she had not seen them there - the vastest things of the universe imaged in objects so mean.

The place to which they had travelled to-day was in the same valley as Talbothays, but some miles lower down the river; and the surroundings being open she kept easily in sight of him.Away from the house the road wound through the meads, and along these she followed Clare without any attempt to come up with him or to attract him, but with dumb and vacant fidelity.

At last, however, her listless walk brought her up alongside him, and still he said nothing.The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great after enlightenment, and it was mighty in Clare now.The outdoor air had apparently taken away from him all tendency to act on impulse; she knew that he saw her without irradiation - in all her bareness; that Time was chanting his satiric psalm at her then--Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate;Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate.

For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain;And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown shall be pain.He was still intently thinking, and her companionship had now insufficient power to break or divert the strain of thought.What a weak thing her presence must have become to him! She could not help addressing Clare.

`What have I done - what have I done! I have not told of anything that interferes with or belies my love for you.You don't think I planned it, do you? It is in your own mind what you are angry at, Angel; it is not in me.O, it is not in me, and I am not that deceitful woman you think me!'

`H'm - well.Not deceitful, my wife; but not the same.No, not the same.

But do not make me reproach you.I have sworn that I will not; and I will do everything to avoid it.'

But she went on pleading in her distraction; and perhaps said things that would have been better left to silence.

`Angel! - Angel! I was a child - a child when it happened! I knew nothing of men.'

`You were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit.'

`Then will you not forgive me?'

`I do forgive you, but forgiveness is not all.'

`And love me?'

To this question he did not answer.

`O Angel - my mother says that it sometimes happens so! - she knows several cases where they were worse than I, and the husband has not minded it much - has got over it at least.And yet the woman has not loved him as I do you!'

`Don't, Tess; don't argue.Different societies, different manners.You almost make me say you are an unapprehending peasant woman, who have never been initiated into the proportions of social things.You don't know what you say.'

`I am only a peasant by position, not by nature!'

She spoke with an impulse to anger, but it went as it came.

`So much the worse for you.I think that parson who unearthed your pedigree would have done better if he had held his tongue.I cannot help associating your decline as a family with this other fact - of your want of firmness.

Decrepit families imply decrepit wills, decrepit conduct.Heaven, why did you give me a handle for despising you more by informing me of your descent!