Mrs. Durbeyfield clapped her hands like a child. Then she looked down, then stared again. Could she be deceived as to the meaning of this?
“Is dat the gentleman-kinsman who’ll make Sissy a lady?” asked the youngest child.
Meanwhile the muslined form of Tess could be seen standing still, undecided, beside this turnout, whose owner was talking to her. Her seeming indecision was, in fact, more than indecision: it was misgiving. She would have preferred the humble cart. The young man dismounted, and appeared to urge her to ascend. She turned her face down the hill to her relatives, and regarded the little group. Something seemed to quicken her to a determination; possibly the thought that she had killed Prince. She suddenly stepped up; he mounted beside her, and immediately whipped on the horse. In a moment they had passed the slow cart with the box, and disappeared behind the shoulder of the hill.
Directly Tess was out of sight, and the interest of the matter as a drama was at an end, the little ones’ eyes filled with tears. The youngest child said, “I wish poor, poor Tess wasn’t gone away to be a lady!” and, lowering the corners of his lips, burst out crying. The new point of view was infectious, and the next child did likewise, and then the next, till the whole three of them wailed loud.
There were tears also in Joan Durbeyfield’s eyes as she turned to go home. But by the time she had got back to the village she was passively trusting to the favour of accident. However, in bed that night she sighed, and her husband asked her what was the matter.
“Oh, I don’t know exactly,” she said. “I was thinking that perhaps it would ha’ been better if Tess had not gone.”
“Oughtn’t ye to have thought of that before?”
“Well, ’tis a chance for the maid—Still, if ’twere the doing again, I wouldn’t let her go till I had found out whether the gentleman is really a good-hearted young man and choice over her as his kinswoman.”
“Yes, you ought, perhaps, to ha’ done that,” snored Sir John.
Joan Durbeyfield always managed to find consolation somewhere: “Well, as one of the genuine stock, she ought to make her way with ’en, if she plays her trump card aright. And if he don’t marry her afore he will after. For that he’s all afire wi’ love for her any eye can see.”
“What’s her trump card? Her d’Urberville blood, you mean?”
“No, stupid; her face—as ’twas mine.”
VIII
Having mounted beside her, Alec d’Urberville drove rapidly along the crest of the first hill, chatting compliments to Tess as they went, the cart with her box being left far behind. Rising still, an immense landscape stretched around them on every side; behind, the green valley of her birth, before, a gray country of which she knew nothing except from her first brief visit to Trantridge. Thus they reached the verge of an incline down which the road stretched in a long straight descent of nearly a mile.
Ever since the accident with her father’s horse Tess Durbeyfield, courageous as she naturally was, had been exceedingly timid on wheels; the least irregularity of motion startled her. She began to get uneasy at a certain recklessness in her conductor’s driving.
“You will go down slow, sir, I suppose?” she said with attempted unconcern.
D’Urberville looked round upon her, nipped his cigar with the tips of his large white centre-teeth, and allowed his lips to smile slowly of themselves.
“Why, Tess,” he answered, after another whiff or two, “it isn’t a brave bouncing girl like you who asks that? Why, I always go down at full gallop. There’s nothing like it for raising your spirits.”
“But perhaps you need not now?”
“Ah,” he said, shaking his head, “there are two to be reckoned with. It is not me alone. Tib has to be considered, and she has a very queer temper.”
“Who?”
“Why, this mare. I fancy she looked round at me in a very grim way just then. Didn’t you notice it?”
“Don’t try to frighten me, sir,” said Tess stiffly.
“Well, I don’t. If any living man can manage this horse I can: I won’t say any living man can do it—but if such has the power, I am he.”
“Why do you have such a horse?”
“Ah, well may you ask it! It was my fate, I suppose. Tib has killed one chap; and just after I bought her she nearly killed me. And then, take my word for it, I nearly killed her. But she’s touchy still, very touchy; and one’s life is hardly safe behind her sometimes.”
They were just beginning to descend; and it was evident that the horse, whether of her own will or of his (the latter being the more likely), knew so well the reckless performance expected of her that she hardly required a hint from behind.
Down, down, they sped, the wheels humming like a top, the dogcart rocking right and left, its axis acquiring a slightly oblique set in relation to the line of progress; the figure of the horse rising and falling in undulations before them. Sometimes a wheel was off the ground, it seemed, for many yards; sometimes a stone was sent spinning over the hedge, and flinty sparks from the horse’s hoofs outshone the daylight. The aspect of the straight road enlarged with their advance, the two banks dividing like a splitting stick; one rushing past at each shoulder.
The wind blew through Tess’s white muslin to her very skin, and her washed hair flew out behind. She was determined to show no open fear, but she clutched d’Urberville’s rein-arm.
“Don’t touch my arm! We shall be thrown out if you do! Hold on round my waist!”
She grasped his waist, and so they reached the bottom.
“Safe, thank God, in spite of your fooling!” said she, her face on fire.
“Tess—fie! that’s temper!” said d’Urberville.
“ ’Tis truth.”
“Well, you need not let go your
