Kabanata Kabanata 21 · Chapter XXI Opinions

. Chapter XXI Opinions

There was a great stir in the milk-house just after breakfast. The

churn revolved as usual, but the butter would not come. Whenever this

happened the dairy was paralyzed. Squish, squash echoed the milk in the

great cylinder, but never arose the sound they waited for.

Dairyman Crick and his wife, the milkmaids Tess, Marian, Retty Priddle,

Izz Huett, and the married ones from the cottages; also Mr Clare,

Jonathan Kail, old Deborah, and the rest, stood gazing hopelessly at

the churn; and the boy who kept the horse going outside put on

moon-like eyes to show his sense of the situation. Even the melancholy

horse himself seemed to look in at the window in inquiring despair at

each walk round.

“’Tis years since I went to Conjuror Trendle’s son in Egdon—years!”

said the dairyman bitterly. “And he was nothing to what his father had

been. I have said fifty times, if I have said once, that I _don’t_

believe in en; though ’a do cast folks’ waters very true. But I shall

have to go to ’n if he’s alive. O yes, I shall have to go to ’n, if

this sort of thing continnys!”

Even Mr Clare began to feel tragical at the dairyman’s desperation.

“Conjuror Fall, t’other side of Casterbridge, that they used to call

‘Wide-O’, was a very good man when I was a boy,” said Jonathan Kail.

“But he’s rotten as touchwood by now.”

“My grandfather used to go to Conjuror Mynterne, out at Owlscombe, and

a clever man a’ were, so I’ve heard grandf’er say,” continued Mr Crick.

“But there’s no such genuine folk about nowadays!”

Mrs Crick’s mind kept nearer to the matter in hand.

“Perhaps somebody in the house is in love,” she said tentatively. “I’ve

heard tell in my younger days that that will cause it. Why, Crick—that

maid we had years ago, do ye mind, and how the butter didn’t come

then—”

“Ah yes, yes!—but that isn’t the rights o’t. It had nothing to do with

the love-making. I can mind all about it—’twas the damage to the

churn.”

He turned to Clare.

“Jack Dollop, a ’hore’s-bird of a fellow we had here as milker at one

time, sir, courted a young woman over at Mellstock, and deceived her as

he had deceived many afore. But he had another sort o’ woman to reckon

wi’ this time, and it was not the girl herself. One Holy Thursday of

all days in the almanack, we was here as we mid be now, only there was

no churning in hand, when we zid the girl’s mother coming up to the

door, wi’ a great brass-mounted umbrella in her hand that would ha’

felled an ox, and saying ‘Do Jack Dollop work here?—because I want him!

I have a big bone to pick with he, I can assure ’n!’ And some way

behind her mother walked Jack’s young woman, crying bitterly into her

handkercher. ‘O Lard, here’s a time!’ said Jack, looking out o’ winder

at ’em. ‘She’ll murder me! Where shall I get—where shall I—? Don’t tell

her where I be!’ And with that he scrambled into the churn through the

trap-door, and shut himself inside, just as the young woman’s mother

busted into the milk-house. ‘The villain—where is he?’ says she. ‘I’ll

claw his face for’n, let me only catch him!’ Well, she hunted about

everywhere, ballyragging Jack by side and by seam, Jack lying a’most

stifled inside the churn, and the poor maid—or young woman

rather—standing at the door crying her eyes out. I shall never forget

it, never! ’Twould have melted a marble stone! But she couldn’t find

him nowhere at all.”

The dairyman paused, and one or two words of comment came from the

listeners.

Dairyman Crick’s stories often seemed to be ended when they were not

really so, and strangers were betrayed into premature interjections of

finality; though old friends knew better. The narrator went on—

“Well, how the old woman should have had the wit to guess it I could

never tell, but she found out that he was inside that there churn.

Without saying a word she took hold of the winch (it was turned by

handpower then), and round she swung him, and Jack began to flop about

inside. ‘O Lard! stop the churn! let me out!’ says he, popping out his

head. ‘I shall be churned into a pummy!’ (He was a cowardly chap in his

heart, as such men mostly be). ‘Not till ye make amends for ravaging

her virgin innocence!’ says the old woman. ‘Stop the churn you old

witch!’ screams he. ‘You call me old witch, do ye, you deceiver!’ says

she, ‘when ye ought to ha’ been calling me mother-law these last five

months!’ And on went the churn, and Jack’s bones rattled round again.

Well, none of us ventured to interfere; and at last ’a promised to make

it right wi’ her. ‘Yes—I’ll be as good as my word!’ he said. And so it

ended that day.”

While the listeners were smiling their comments there was a quick

movement behind their backs, and they looked round. Tess, pale-faced,

had gone to the door.

“How warm ’tis to-day!” she said, almost inaudibly.

It was warm, and none of them connected her withdrawal with the

reminiscences of the dairyman. He went forward and opened the door for

her, saying with tender raillery—

“Why, maidy” (he frequently, with unconscious irony, gave her this pet

name), “the prettiest milker I’ve got in my dairy; you mustn’t get so

fagged as this at the first breath of summer weather, or we shall be

finely put to for want of ’ee by dog-days, shan’t we, Mr Clare?”

“I was faint—and—I think I am better out o’ doors,” she said

mechanically; and disappeared outside.

Fortunately for her the milk in the revolving churn at that moment

changed its squashing for a decided flick-flack.

“’Tis coming!” cried Mrs Crick, and the attention of all was called off

from Tess.

That fair sufferer soon recovered herself externally; but she remained

much depressed all the afternoon. When the evening milking was done she

did not care to be with the rest of them, and went out of doors,

wandering along she knew not whither. She was wretched—O so wretched—at

the perception that to her companions the dairyman’s story had been

rather a humorous narration than otherwise; none of them but herself

seemed to see the sorrow of it; to a certainty, not one knew how

cruelly it touched the tender place in her experience. The evening sun

was now ugly to her, like a great inflamed wound in the sky. Only a

solitary cracked-voice reed-sparrow greeted her from the bushes by the

river, in a sad, machine-made tone, resembling that of a past friend

whose friendship she had outworn.

In these long June days the milkmaids, and, indeed, most of the

household, went to bed at sunset or sooner, the morning work before

milking being so early and heavy at a time of full pails. Tess usually

accompanied her fellows upstairs. To-night, however, she was the first

to go to their common chamber; and she had dozed when the other girls

came in. She saw them undressing in the orange light of the vanished

sun, which flushed their forms with its colour; she dozed again, but

she was reawakened by their voices, and quietly turned her eyes towards

them.

Neither of her three chamber-companions had got into bed. They were

standing in a group, in their nightgowns, barefooted, at the window,

the last red rays of the west still warming their faces and necks and

the walls around them. All were watching somebody in the garden with

deep interest, their three faces close together: a jovial and round

one, a pale one with dark hair, and a fair one whose tresses were

auburn.

“Don’t push! You can see as well as I,” said Retty, the auburn-haired

and youngest girl, without removing her eyes from the window.

“’Tis no use for you to be in love with him any more than me, Retty

Priddle,” said jolly-faced Marian, the eldest, slily. “His thoughts be

of other cheeks than thine!”

Retty Priddle still looked, and the others looked again.

“There he is again!” cried Izz Huett, the pale girl with dark damp hair

and keenly cut lips.

“You needn’t say anything, Izz,” answered Retty. “For I zid you kissing

his shade.”

_”What_ did you see her doing?” asked Marian.

“Why—he was standing over the whey-tub to let off the whey, and the

shade of his face came upon the wall behind, close to Izz, who was

standing there filling a vat. She put her mouth against the wall and

kissed the shade of his mouth; I zid her, though he didn’t.”

“O Izz Huett!” said Marian.

A rosy spot came into the middle of Izz Huett’s cheek.

“Well, there was no harm in it,” she declared, with attempted coolness.

“And if I be in love wi’en, so is Retty, too; and so be you, Marian,

come to that.”

Marian’s full face could not blush past its chronic pinkness.

“I!” she said. “What a tale! Ah, there he is again! Dear eyes—dear

face—dear Mr Clare!”

“There—you’ve owned it!”

“So have you—so have we all,” said Marian, with the dry frankness of

complete indifference to opinion. “It is silly to pretend otherwise

amongst ourselves, though we need not own it to other folks. I would

just marry ’n to-morrow!”

“So would I—and more,” murmured Izz Huett.

“And I too,” whispered the more timid Retty.

The listener grew warm.

“We can’t all marry him,” said Izz.

“We shan’t, either of us; which is worse still,” said the eldest.

“There he is again!”

They all three blew him a silent kiss.

“Why?” asked Retty quickly.

“Because he likes Tess Durbeyfield best,” said Marian, lowering her

voice. “I have watched him every day, and have found it out.”

There was a reflective silence.

“But she don’t care anything for ’n?” at length breathed Retty.

“Well—I sometimes think that too.”

“But how silly all this is!” said Izz Huett impatiently. “Of course he

won’t marry any one of us, or Tess either—a gentleman’s son, who’s

going to be a great landowner and farmer abroad! More likely to ask us

to come wi’en as farm-hands at so much a year!”

One sighed, and another sighed, and Marian’s plump figure sighed

biggest of all. Somebody in bed hard by sighed too. Tears came into the

eyes of Retty Priddle, the pretty red-haired youngest—the last bud of

the Paridelles, so important in the county annals. They watched

silently a little longer, their three faces still close together as

before, and the triple hues of their hair mingling. But the unconscious

Mr Clare had gone indoors, and they saw him no more; and, the shades

beginning to deepen, they crept into their beds. In a few minutes they

heard him ascend the ladder to his own room. Marian was soon snoring,

but Izz did not drop into forgetfulness for a long time. Retty Priddle

cried herself to sleep.

The deeper-passioned Tess was very far from sleeping even then. This

conversation was another of the bitter pills she had been obliged to

swallow that day. Scarce the least feeling of jealousy arose in her

breast. For that matter she knew herself to have the preference. Being

more finely formed, better educated, and, though the youngest except

Retty, more woman than either, she perceived that only the slightest

ordinary care was necessary for holding her own in Angel Clare’s heart

against these her candid friends. But the grave question was, ought she

to do this? There was, to be sure, hardly a ghost of a chance for

either of them, in a serious sense; but there was, or had been, a

chance of one or the other inspiring him with a passing fancy for her,

and enjoying the pleasure of his attentions while he stayed here. Such

unequal attachments had led to marriage; and she had heard from Mrs

Crick that Mr Clare had one day asked, in a laughing way, what would be

the use of his marrying a fine lady, and all the while ten thousand

acres of Colonial pasture to feed, and cattle to rear, and corn to

reap. A farm-woman would be the only sensible kind of wife for him. But

whether Mr Clare had spoken seriously or not, why should she, who could

never conscientiously allow any man to marry her now, and who had

religiously determined that she never would be tempted to do so, draw

off Mr Clare’s attention from other women, for the brief happiness of

sunning herself in his eyes while he remained at Talbothays?