you a Hogshead of Cyder for you Wedding, knowing there
is not much in your parts, and thin Sour Stuff what
there is. So no more at present, and with kind love
to your Young Man.--From your affectte. Mother,
J. DURBEYFIELD
'O mother, mother!' murmured Tess.
She was recognizing how light was the touch of events the most
oppressive upon Mrs Durbeyfield's elastic spirit. Her mother did not
see life as Tess saw it. That haunting episode of bygone days was
to her mother but a passing accident. But perhaps her mother was
right as to the course to be followed, whatever she might be in her
reasons. Silence seemed, on the face of it, best for her adored
one's happiness: silence it should be.
Thus steadied by a command from the only person in the world who had
any shadow of right to control her action, Tess grew calmer. The
responsibility was shifted, and her heart was lighter than it had
been for weeks. The days of declining autumn which followed her
assent, beginning with the month of October, formed a season through
which she lived in spiritual altitudes more nearly approaching
ecstasy than any other period of her life.
There was hardly a touch of earth in her love for Clare. To her
sublime trustfulness he was all that goodness could be--knew all that
a guide, philosopher, and friend should know. She thought every line
in the contour of his person the perfection of masculine beauty, his
soul the soul of a saint, his intellect that of a seer. The wisdom
of her love for him, as love, sustained her dignity; she seemed to be
wearing a crown. The compassion of his love for her, as she saw it,
made her lift up her heart to him in devotion. He would sometimes
catch her large, worshipful eyes, that had no bottom to them looking
at him from their depths, as if she saw something immortal before
her.
She dismissed the past--trod upon it and put it out, as one treads on
a coal that is smouldering and dangerous.
She had not known that men could be so disinterested, chivalrous,
protective, in their love for women as he. Angel Clare was far from
all that she thought him in this respect; absurdly far, indeed;
but he was, in truth, more spiritual than animal; he had himself
well in hand, and was singularly free from grossness. Though not
cold-natured, he was rather bright than hot--less Byronic than
Shelleyan; could love desperately, but with a love more especially
inclined to the imaginative and ethereal; it was a fastidious emotion
which could jealously guard the loved one against his very self.
This amazed and enraptured Tess, whose slight experiences had been so
infelicitous till now; and in her reaction from indignation against
the male sex she swerved to excess of honour for Clare.
They unaffectedly sought each other's company; in her honest faith
she did not disguise her desire to be with him. The sum of her
instincts on this matter, if clearly stated, would have been that the
elusive quality of her sex which attracts men in general might be
distasteful to so perfect a man after an avowal of love, since it
