time to summon me for assault?' he asked good-humouredly.
'No--I only meant--if it should have to be put off.'
What she meant was not very clear, and he directed her to dismiss
such fancies from her mind, which she obediently did as well as she
could. But she was grave, very grave, all the way home; till she
thought, 'We shall go away, a very long distance, hundreds of miles
from these parts, and such as this can never happen again, and no
ghost of the past reach there.'
They parted tenderly that night on the landing, and Clare ascended to
his attic. Tess sat up getting on with some little requisites, lest
the few remaining days should not afford sufficient time. While she
sat she heard a noise in Angel's room overhead, a sound of thumping
and struggling. Everybody else in the house was asleep, and in her
anxiety lest Clare should be ill she ran up and knocked at his door,
and asked him what was the matter.
'Oh, nothing, dear,' he said from within. 'I am so sorry I disturbed
you! But the reason is rather an amusing one: I fell asleep and
dreamt that I was fighting that fellow again who insulted you,
and the noise you heard was my pummelling away with my fists at
my portmanteau, which I pulled out to-day for packing. I am
occasionally liable to these freaks in my sleep. Go to bed and
think of it no more.'
This was the last drachm required to turn the scale of her
indecision. Declare the past to him by word of mouth she could not;
but there was another way. She sat down and wrote on the four pages
of a note-sheet a succinct narrative of those events of three or four
years ago, put it into an envelope, and directed it to Clare. Then,
lest the flesh should again be weak, she crept upstairs without any
shoes and slipped the note under his door.
Her night was a broken one, as it well might be, and she listened for
the first faint noise overhead. It came, as usual; he descended, as
usual. She descended. He met her at the bottom of the stairs and
kissed her. Surely it was as warmly as ever!
He looked a little disturbed and worn, she thought. But he said not
a word to her about her revelation, even when they were alone. Could
he have had it? Unless he began the subject she felt that she could
say nothing. So the day passed, and it was evident that whatever
he thought he meant to keep to himself. Yet he was frank and
affectionate as before. Could it be that her doubts were childish?
that he forgave her; that he loved her for what she was, just as she
was, and smiled at her disquiet as at a foolish nightmare? Had he
really received her note? She glanced into his room, and could see
nothing of it. It might be that he forgave her. But even if he had
not received it she had a sudden enthusiastic trust that he surely
would forgive her.
Every morning and night he was the same, and thus New Year's Eve
broke--the wedding day.
The lovers did not rise at milking-time, having through the whole of
this last week of their sojourn at the dairy been accorded something
of the position of guests, Tess being honoured with a room of her
