you and me to live together?'
'I have not been able to think what we can do.'
'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
I shall not ask why, unless you tell me I may.'
'And if I 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 to 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.
