Not in utter nakedness
But trailing clouds of glory do we come.
To her and her like, birth itself was an ordeal of degrading personal
compulsion, whose gratuitousness nothing in the result seemed to
justify, and at best could only palliate.
In the shades of the wet road she soon discerned her mother with tall
'Liza-Lu and Abraham. Mrs Durbeyfield's pattens clicked up to the
door, and Tess opened it.
'I see the tracks of a horse outside the window,' said Joan. 'Hev
somebody called?'
'No,' said Tess.
The children by the fire looked gravely at her, and one murmured--
'Why, Tess, the gentleman a-horseback!'
'He didn't call,' said Tess. 'He spoke to me in passing.'
'Who was the gentleman?' asked the mother. 'Your husband?'
'No. He'll never, never come,' answered Tess in stony hopelessness.
'Then who was it?'
'Oh, you needn't ask. You've seen him before, and so have I.'
'Ah! What did he say?' said Joan curiously.
'I will tell you when we are settled in our lodging at Kingsbere
to-morrow--every word.'
It was not her husband, she had said. Yet a consciousness that in a
physical sense this man alone was her husband seemed to weigh on her
more and more.
LII
During the small hours of the next morning, while it was still dark,
dwellers near the highways were conscious of a disturbance of their
night's rest by rumbling noises, intermittently continuing till
daylight--noises as certain to recur in this particular first week of
the month as the voice of the cuckoo in the third week of the same.
They were the preliminaries of the general removal, the passing of
the empty waggons and teams to fetch the goods of the migrating
families; for it was always by the vehicle of the farmer who required
his services that the hired man was conveyed to his destination.
That this might be accomplished within the day was the explanation
of the reverberation occurring so soon after midnight, the aim of
the carters being to reach the door of the outgoing households by
six o'clock, when the loading of their movables at once began.
But to Tess and her mother's household no such anxious farmer sent
his team. They were only women; they were not regular labourers;
they were not particularly required anywhere; hence they had to hire
a waggon at their own expense, and got nothing sent gratuitously.
It was a relief to Tess, when she looked out of the window that
morning, to find that though the weather was windy and louring, it
did not rain, and that the waggon had come. A wet Lady-Day was a
spectre which removing families never forgot; damp furniture, damp
bedding, damp clothing accompanied it, and left a train of ills.
Her mother, 'Liza-Lu, and Abraham were also awake, but the younger
children were let sleep on. The four breakfasted by the thin light,
and the 'house-ridding' was taken in hand.
