Chapter Chapter 22 · Chapter XXII Traits of Friendship

. Chapter XXII Traits of Friendship

They came downstairs yawning next morning; but skimming and milking

were proceeded with as usual, and they went indoors to breakfast.

Dairyman Crick was discovered stamping about the house. He had received

a letter, in which a customer had complained that the butter had a

twang.

“And begad, so ’t have!” said the dairyman, who held in his left hand a

wooden slice on which a lump of butter was stuck. “Yes—taste for

yourself!”

Several of them gathered round him; and Mr Clare tasted, Tess tasted,

also the other indoor milkmaids, one or two of the milking-men, and

last of all Mrs Crick, who came out from the waiting breakfast-table.

There certainly was a twang.

The dairyman, who had thrown himself into abstraction to better realize

the taste, and so divine the particular species of noxious weed to

which it appertained, suddenly exclaimed—

“’Tis garlic! and I thought there wasn’t a blade left in that mead!”

Then all the old hands remembered that a certain dry mead, into which a

few of the cows had been admitted of late, had, in years gone by,

spoilt the butter in the same way. The dairyman had not recognized the

taste at that time, and thought the butter bewitched.

“We must overhaul that mead,” he resumed; “this mustn’t continny!”

All having armed themselves with old pointed knives, they went out

together. As the inimical plant could only be present in very

microscopic dimensions to have escaped ordinary observation, to find it

seemed rather a hopeless attempt in the stretch of rich grass before

them. However, they formed themselves into line, all assisting, owing

to the importance of the search; the dairyman at the upper end with Mr

Clare, who had volunteered to help; then Tess, Marian, Izz Huett, and

Retty; then Bill Lewell, Jonathan, and the married dairywomen—Beck

Knibbs, with her wooly black hair and rolling eyes; and flaxen Frances,

consumptive from the winter damps of the water-meads—who lived in their

respective cottages.

With eyes fixed upon the ground they crept slowly across a strip of the

field, returning a little further down in such a manner that, when they

should have finished, not a single inch of the pasture but would have

fallen under the eye of some one of them. It was a most tedious

business, not more than half a dozen shoots of garlic being

discoverable in the whole field; yet such was the herb’s pungency that

probably one bite of it by one cow had been sufficient to season the

whole dairy’s produce for the day.

Differing one from another in natures and moods so greatly as they did,

they yet formed, bending, a curiously uniform row—automatic, noiseless;

and an alien observer passing down the neighbouring lane might well

have been excused for massing them as “Hodge”. As they crept along,

stooping low to discern the plant, a soft yellow gleam was reflected

from the buttercups into their shaded faces, giving them an elfish,

moonlit aspect, though the sun was pouring upon their backs in all the

strength of noon.

Angel Clare, who communistically stuck to his rule of taking part with

the rest in everything, glanced up now and then. It was not, of course,

by accident that he walked next to Tess.

“Well, how are you?” he murmured.

“Very well, thank you, sir,” she replied demurely.

As they had been discussing a score of personal matters only

half-an-hour before, the introductory style seemed a little

superfluous. But they got no further in speech just then. They crept

and crept, the hem of her petticoat just touching his gaiter, and his

elbow sometimes brushing hers. At last the dairyman, who came next,

could stand it no longer.

“Upon my soul and body, this here stooping do fairly make my back open

and shut!” he exclaimed, straightening himself slowly with an

excruciated look till quite upright. “And you, maidy Tess, you wasn’t

well a day or two ago—this will make your head ache finely! Don’t do

any more, if you feel fainty; leave the rest to finish it.”

Dairyman Crick withdrew, and Tess dropped behind. Mr Clare also stepped

out of line, and began privateering about for the weed. When she found

him near her, her very tension at what she had heard the night before

made her the first to speak.

“Don’t they look pretty?” she said.

“Who?”

“Izzy Huett and Retty.”

Tess had moodily decided that either of these maidens would make a good

farmer’s wife, and that she ought to recommend them, and obscure her

own wretched charms.

“Pretty? Well, yes—they are pretty girls—fresh looking. I have often

thought so.”

“Though, poor dears, prettiness won’t last long!”

“O no, unfortunately.”

“They are excellent dairywomen.”

“Yes: though not better than you.”

“They skim better than I.”

“Do they?”

Clare remained observing them—not without their observing him.

“She is colouring up,” continued Tess heroically.

“Who?”

“Retty Priddle.”

“Oh! Why it that?”

“Because you are looking at her.”

Self-sacrificing as her mood might be, Tess could not well go further

and cry, “Marry one of them, if you really do want a dairywoman and not

a lady; and don’t think of marrying me!” She followed Dairyman Crick,

and had the mournful satisfaction of seeing that Clare remained behind.

From this day she forced herself to take pains to avoid him—never

allowing herself, as formerly, to remain long in his company, even if

their juxtaposition were purely accidental. She gave the other three

every chance.

Tess was woman enough to realize from their avowals to herself that

Angel Clare had the honour of all the dairymaids in his keeping, and

her perception of his care to avoid compromising the happiness of

either in the least degree bred a tender respect in Tess for what she

deemed, rightly or wrongly, the self-controlling sense of duty shown by

him, a quality which she had never expected to find in one of the

opposite sex, and in the absence of which more than one of the simple

hearts who were his house-mates might have gone weeping on her

pilgrimage.