awoke they cried bitterly, and begged Sissy to have another pretty
baby.
The calmness which had possessed Tess since the christening remained
with her in the infant's loss. In the daylight, indeed, she felt her
terrors about his soul to have been somewhat exaggerated; whether
well founded or not, she had no uneasiness now, reasoning that
if Providence would not ratify such an act of approximation
she, for one, did not value the kind of heaven lost by the
irregularity--either for herself or for her child.
So passed away Sorrow the Undesired--that intrusive creature, that
bastard gift of shameless Nature, who respects not the social law;
a waif to whom eternal Time had been a matter of days merely, who
knew not that such things as years and centuries ever were; to whom
the cottage interior was the universe, the week's weather climate,
new-born babyhood human existence, and the instinct to suck human
knowledge.
Tess, who mused on the christening a good deal, wondered if it were
doctrinally sufficient to secure a Christian burial for the child.
Nobody could tell this but the parson of the parish, and he was a
new-comer, and did not know her. She went to his house after dusk,
and stood by the gate, but could not summon courage to go in. The
enterprise would have been abandoned if she had not by accident met
him coming homeward as she turned away. In the gloom she did not
mind speaking freely.
'I should like to ask you something, sir.'
He expressed his willingness to listen, and she told the story of the
baby's illness and the extemporized ordinance. 'And now, sir,' she
added earnestly, 'can you tell me this--will it be just the same for
him as if you had baptized him?'
Having the natural feelings of a tradesman at finding that a job he
should have been called in for had been unskilfully botched by his
customers among themselves, he was disposed to say no. Yet the
dignity of the girl, the strange tenderness in her voice, combined
to affect his nobler impulses--or rather those that he had left in
him after ten years of endeavour to graft technical belief on actual
scepticism. The man and the ecclesiastic fought within him, and the
victory fell to the man.
'My dear girl,' he said, 'it will be just the same.'
'Then will you give him a Christian burial?' she asked quickly.
The Vicar felt himself cornered. Hearing of the baby's illness, he
had conscientiously gone to the house after nightfall to perform the
rite, and, unaware that the refusal to admit him had come from Tess's
father and not from Tess, he could not allow the plea of necessity
for its irregular administration.
'Ah--that's another matter,' he said.
'Another matter--why?' asked Tess, rather warmly.
'Well--I would willingly do so if only we two were concerned. But I
must not--for certain reasons.'
'Just for once, sir!'
'Really I must not.'
