the rest.
It was a misfortune--in more ways than one. No sooner did the dark
queen hear the soberer richer note of Tess among those of the other
work-people than a long-smouldering sense of rivalry inflamed her to
madness. She sprang to her feet and closely faced the object of her
dislike.
'How darest th' laugh at me, hussy!' she cried.
'I couldn't really help it when t'others did,' apologized Tess,
still tittering.
'Ah, th'st think th' beest everybody, dostn't, because th' beest
first favourite with He just now! But stop a bit, my lady, stop a
bit! I'm as good as two of such! Look here--here's at 'ee!'
To Tess's horror the dark queen began stripping off the bodice of
her gown--which for the added reason of its ridiculed condition she
was only too glad to be free of--till she had bared her plump neck,
shoulders, and arms to the moonshine, under which they looked as
luminous and beautiful as some Praxitelean creation, in their
possession of the faultless rotundities of a lusty country-girl.
She closed her fists and squared up at Tess.
'Indeed, then, I shall not fight!' said the latter majestically; 'and
if I had know you was of that sort, I wouldn't have so let myself
down as to come with such a whorage as this is!'
The rather too inclusive speech brought down a torrent of
vituperation from other quarters upon fair Tess's unlucky head,
particularly from the Queen of Diamonds, who having stood in the
relations to d'Urberville that Car had also been suspected of, united
with the latter against the common enemy. Several other women also
chimed in, with an animus which none of them would have been so
fatuous as to show but for the rollicking evening they had passed.
Thereupon, finding Tess unfairly browbeaten, the husbands and lovers
tried to make peace by defending her; but the result of that attempt
was directly to increase the war.
Tess was indignant and ashamed. She no longer minded the loneliness
of the way and the lateness of the hour; her one object was to get
away from the whole crew as soon as possible. She knew well enough
that the better among them would repent of their passion next day.
They were all now inside the field, and she was edging back to rush
off alone when a horseman emerged almost silently from the corner of
the hedge that screened the road, and Alec d'Urberville looked round
upon them.
'What the devil is all this row about, work-folk?' he asked.
The explanation was not readily forthcoming; and, in truth, he did
not require any. Having heard their voices while yet some way off he
had ridden creepingly forward, and learnt enough to satisfy himself.
Tess was standing apart from the rest, near the gate. He bent over
towards her. 'Jump up behind me,' he whispered, 'and we'll get shot
of the screaming cats in a jiffy!'
She felt almost ready to faint, so vivid was her sense of the crisis.
At almost any other moment of her life she would have refused such
