Chapter Chapter 48 · Chapter XLVIII Further Intelligence

. Chapter XLVIII Further Intelligence

In the afternoon the farmer made it known that the rick was to be

finished that night, since there was a moon by which they could see to

work, and the man with the engine was engaged for another farm on the

morrow. Hence the twanging and humming and rustling proceeded with even

less intermission than usual.

It was not till “nammet”-time, about three o’clock, that Tess raised

her eyes and gave a momentary glance round. She felt but little

surprise at seeing that Alec d’Urberville had come back, and was

standing under the hedge by the gate. He had seen her lift her eyes,

and waved his hand urbanely to her, while he blew her a kiss. It meant

that their quarrel was over. Tess looked down again, and carefully

abstained from gazing in that direction.

Thus the afternoon dragged on. The wheat-rick shrank lower, and the

straw-rick grew higher, and the corn-sacks were carted away. At six

o’clock the wheat-rick was about shoulder-high from the ground. But the

unthreshed sheaves remaining untouched seemed countless still,

notwithstanding the enormous numbers that had been gulped down by the

insatiable swallower, fed by the man and Tess, through whose two young

hands the greater part of them had passed. And the immense stack of

straw where in the morning there had been nothing, appeared as the

_faeces_ of the same buzzing red glutton. From the west sky a wrathful

shine—all that wild March could afford in the way of sunset—had burst

forth after the cloudy day, flooding the tired and sticky faces of the

threshers, and dyeing them with a coppery light, as also the flapping

garments of the women, which clung to them like dull flames.

A panting ache ran through the rick. The man who fed was weary, and

Tess could see that the red nape of his neck was encrusted with dirt

and husks. She still stood at her post, her flushed and perspiring face

coated with the corndust, and her white bonnet embrowned by it. She was

the only woman whose place was upon the machine so as to be shaken

bodily by its spinning, and the decrease of the stack now separated her

from Marian and Izz, and prevented their changing duties with her as

they had done. The incessant quivering, in which every fibre of her

frame participated, had thrown her into a stupefied reverie in which

her arms worked on independently of her consciousness. She hardly knew

where she was, and did not hear Izz Huett tell her from below that her

hair was tumbling down.

By degrees the freshest among them began to grow cadaverous and

saucer-eyed. Whenever Tess lifted her head she beheld always the great

upgrown straw-stack, with the men in shirt-sleeves upon it, against the

gray north sky; in front of it the long red elevator like a Jacob’s

ladder, on which a perpetual stream of threshed straw ascended, a

yellow river running uphill, and spouting out on the top of the rick.

She knew that Alec d’Urberville was still on the scene, observing her

from some point or other, though she could not say where. There was an

excuse for his remaining, for when the threshed rick drew near its

final sheaves a little ratting was always done, and men unconnected

with the threshing sometimes dropped in for that performance—sporting

characters of all descriptions, gents with terriers and facetious

pipes, roughs with sticks and stones.

But there was another hour’s work before the layer of live rats at the

base of the stack would be reached; and as the evening light in the

direction of the Giant’s Hill by Abbot’s-Cernel dissolved away, the

white-faced moon of the season arose from the horizon that lay towards

Middleton Abbey and Shottsford on the other side. For the last hour or

two Marian had felt uneasy about Tess, whom she could not get near

enough to speak to, the other women having kept up their strength by

drinking ale, and Tess having done without it through traditionary

dread, owing to its results at her home in childhood. But Tess still

kept going: if she could not fill her part she would have to leave; and

this contingency, which she would have regarded with equanimity and

even with relief a month or two earlier, had become a terror since

d’Urberville had begun to hover round her.

The sheaf-pitchers and feeders had now worked the rick so low that

people on the ground could talk to them. To Tess’s surprise Farmer

Groby came up on the machine to her, and said that if she desired to

join her friend he did not wish her to keep on any longer, and would

send somebody else to take her place. The “friend” was d’Urberville,

she knew, and also that this concession had been granted in obedience

to the request of that friend, or enemy. She shook her head and toiled

on.

The time for the rat-catching arrived at last, and the hunt began. The

creatures had crept downwards with the subsidence of the rick till they

were all together at the bottom, and being now uncovered from their

last refuge, they ran across the open ground in all directions, a loud

shriek from the by-this-time half-tipsy Marian informing her companions

that one of the rats had invaded her person—a terror which the rest of

the women had guarded against by various schemes of skirt-tucking and

self-elevation. The rat was at last dislodged, and, amid the barking of

dogs, masculine shouts, feminine screams, oaths, stampings, and

confusion as of Pandemonium, Tess untied her last sheaf; the drum

slowed, the whizzing ceased, and she stepped from the machine to the

ground.

Her lover, who had only looked on at the rat-catching, was promptly at

her side.

“What—after all—my insulting slap, too!” said she in an underbreath.

She was so utterly exhausted that she had not strength to speak louder.

“I should indeed be foolish to feel offended at anything you say or

do,” he answered, in the seductive voice of the Trantridge time. “How

the little limbs tremble! You are as weak as a bled calf, you know you

are; and yet you need have done nothing since I arrived. How could you

be so obstinate? However, I have told the farmer that he has no right

to employ women at steam-threshing. It is not proper work for them; and

on all the better class of farms it has been given up, as he knows very

well. I will walk with you as far as your home.”

“O yes,” she answered with a jaded gait. “Walk wi’ me if you will! I do

bear in mind that you came to marry me before you knew o’ my state.

Perhaps—perhaps you are a little better and kinder than I have been

thinking you were. Whatever is meant as kindness I am grateful for;

whatever is meant in any other way I am angered at. I cannot sense your

meaning sometimes.”

“If I cannot legitimize our former relations at least I can assist you.

And I will do it with much more regard for your feelings than I

formerly showed. My religious mania, or whatever it was, is over. But I

retain a little good nature; I hope I do. Now, Tess, by all that’s

tender and strong between man and woman, trust me! I have enough and

more than enough to put you out of anxiety, both for yourself and your

parents and sisters. I can make them all comfortable if you will only

show confidence in me.”

“Have you seen ’em lately?” she quickly inquired.

“Yes. They didn’t know where you were. It was only by chance that I

found you here.”

The cold moon looked aslant upon Tess’s fagged face between the twigs

of the garden-hedge as she paused outside the cottage which was her

temporary home, d’Urberville pausing beside her.

“Don’t mention my little brothers and sisters—don’t make me break down

quite!” she said. “If you want to help them—God knows they need it—do

it without telling me. But no, no!” she cried. “I will take nothing

from you, either for them or for me!”

He did not accompany her further, since, as she lived with the

household, all was public indoors. No sooner had she herself entered,

laved herself in a washing-tub, and shared supper with the family than

she fell into thought, and withdrawing to the table under the wall, by

the light of her own little lamp wrote in a passionate mood—

My own Husband,

Let me call you so—I must—even if it makes you angry to think of

such an unworthy wife as I. I must cry to you in my trouble—I have

no one else! I am so exposed to temptation, Angel. I fear to say

who it is, and I do not like to write about it at all. But I cling

to you in a way you cannot think! Can you not come to me now, at

once, before anything terrible happens? O, I know you cannot,

because you are so far away! I think I must die if you do not come

soon, or tell me to come to you. The punishment you have measured

out to me is deserved—I do know that—well deserved—and you are

right and just to be angry with me. But, Angel, please, please, not

to be just—only a little kind to me, even if I do not deserve it,

and come to me! If you would come, I could die in your arms! I

would be well content to do that if so be you had forgiven me!

Angel, I live entirely for you. I love you too much to blame you

for going away, and I know it was necessary you should find a farm.

Do not think I shall say a word of sting or bitterness. Only come

back to me. I am desolate without you, my darling, O, so desolate!

I do not mind having to work: but if you will send me one little

line, and say, “_I am coming soon_”, I will bide on, Angel—O, so

cheerfully!

It has been so much my religion ever since we were married to be

faithful to you in every thought and look, that even when a man

speaks a compliment to me before I am aware, it seems wronging you.

Have you never felt one little bit of what you used to feel when we

were at the dairy? If you have, how can you keep away from me? I am

the same woman, Angel, as you fell in love with; yes, the very

same!—not the one you disliked but never saw. What was the past to

me as soon as I met you? It was a dead thing altogether. I became

another woman, filled full of new life from you. How could I be the

early one? Why do you not see this? Dear, if you would only be a

little more conceited, and believe in yourself so far as to see

that you were strong enough to work this change in me, you would

perhaps be in a mind to come to me, your poor wife.

How silly I was in my happiness when I thought I could trust you

always to love me! I ought to have known that such as that was not

for poor me. But I am sick at heart, not only for old times, but

for the present. Think—think how it do hurt my heart not to see you

ever—ever! Ah, if I could only make your dear heart ache one little

minute of each day as mine does every day and all day long, it

might lead you to show pity to your poor lonely one.

People still say that I am rather pretty, Angel (handsome is the

word they use, since I wish to be truthful). Perhaps I am what they

say. But I do not value my good looks; I only like to have them

because they belong to you, my dear, and that there may be at least

one thing about me worth your having. So much have I felt this,

that when I met with annoyance on account of the same, I tied up my

face in a bandage as long as people would believe in it. O Angel, I

tell you all this not from vanity—you will certainly know I do

not—but only that you may come to me!

If you really cannot come to me, will you let me come to you? I am,

as I say, worried, pressed to do what I will not do. It cannot be

that I shall yield one inch, yet I am in terror as to what an

accident might lead to, and I so defenceless on account of my first

error. I cannot say more about this—it makes me too miserable. But

if I break down by falling into some fearful snare, my last state

will be worse than my first. O God, I cannot think of it! Let me

come at once, or at once come to me!

I would be content, ay, glad, to live with you as your servant, if

I may not as your wife; so that I could only be near you, and get

glimpses of you, and think of you as mine.

The daylight has nothing to show me, since you are not here, and I

don’t like to see the rooks and starlings in the field, because I

grieve and grieve to miss you who used to see them with me. I long

for only one thing in heaven or earth or under the earth, to meet

you, my own dear! Come to me—come to me, and save me from what

threatens me!—

Your faithful heartbroken

Tess