第22章

It was in the economy of this régime that Tess Durbeyfield had undertaken to fill a place.Her first day's experiences were fairly typical of those which followed through many succeeding days.A familiarity with Alec d'Urberville's presence - which that young man carefully cultivated in her by playful dialogue, and by lastingly calling her his cousin when they were alone - removed much of her original shyness of him, without, however, implanting any feeling which could engender shyness of a new and tenderer kind.But she was more pliable under his hands than a mere companionship would have made her, owing to her unavoidable dependence upon his mother, and, through that lady's comparative helplessness, upon him.

She soon found that whistling to the bullfinches in Mrs d'Urberville's room was no such onerous business when she had regained the art, for she had caught from her musical mother numerous airs that suited those songsters admirably.A far more satisfactory time than when she practised in the garden was this whistling by the cages each morning.Unrestrained by the young man's presence she threw up her mouth, put her lips near the bars, and piped away in easeful grace to the attentive listeners.

Mrs d'Urberville slept in a large four-post bedstead hung with heavy damask curtains, and the bullfinches occupied the same apartment, where they flitted about freely at certain hours, and made little white spots on the furniture and upholstery.Once while Tess was at the window where the cages were ranged, giving her lesson as usual, she thought she heard a rustling behind the bed.The old lady was not present, and turning round the girl had an impression that the toes of a pair of boots were visible below the fringe of the curtains.Thereupon her whistling became so disjointed that the listener, if such there were, must have discovered her suspicion of his presence.She searched the curtains every morning after that, but never found anybody within them.Alec d'Urberville had evidently thought better of his freak to terrify her by an ambush of that kind.

Chapter 10 Every village has its idiosyncrasy, its constitution, often its own code of morality.The levity of some of the younger women in and about Trantridge was marked, and was perhaps symptomatic of the choice spirit who ruled The Slopes in that vicinity.The place had also a more abiding defect;it drank hard.The staple conversation on the farms around was on the uselessness of saving money; and smock-frocked arithmeticians, leaning on their ploughs or hoes, would enter into calculations of great nicety to prove that parish relief was a fuller provision for a man in his old age than any which could result from savings out of their wages during a whole lifetime.

The chief pleasure of these philosophers lay in going every Saturday night, when work was done, to Chaseborough, a decayed market town two or three miles distant; and, returning in the small hours of the next morning, to spend Sunday in sleeping off the dyspeptic effects of the curious compounds sold to them as beer by the monopolizers of the once independent inns.

For a long time Tess did not join in the weekly pilgrimages.But under pressure from matrons not much older than herself - for a fieldman's wages being as high at twenty one as at forty, marriage was early here - Tess at length consented to go.Her first experience of the journey afforded her more enjoyment than she had expected, the hilariousness of the others being quite contagious after her monotonous attention to the poultry-farm all the week.She went again and again.Being graceful and interesting, standing moreover on the momentary threshold of womanhood, her appearance drew down upon her some shy regards from loungers in the streets of Chaseborough;hence, though sometimes her journey to the town was made independently, she always searched for her fellows at nightfall, to have the protection of their companionship homeward.

This had gone on for a month or two when there came a Saturday in September, on which a fair and a market coincided; and the pilgrims from Trantridge sought double delights at the inns on that account.Tess's occupations made her late in setting out, so that her comrades reached the town long before her.It was a fine September evening, just before sunset, when yellow lights struggle with blue shades in hair-like lines, and the atmosphere itself forms a prospect without aid from more solid objects, except the innumerable winged insects that dance in it.Through this low-lit mistiness Tess walked leisurely along.

She did not discover the coincidence of the market with the fair till she had reached the place, by which time it was close upon dusk.Her limited marketing was soon completed; and then as usual she began to look about for some of the Trantridge cottagers.

At first she could not find them, and she was informed that most of them had gone to what they called a private little jig at the house of a hay-trusser and peat-dealer who had transactions with their farm.He lived in an out-of-the-way nook of the townlet, and in trying to find her course thither her eyes fell upon Mr d'Urberville standing at a street corner.

`What - my Beauty? You here so late?' he said.

She told him that she was simply waiting for company homeward.

`I'll see you again,' said he over her shoulder as she went on down the back lane.

Approaching the hay-trussers she could hear the fiddled notes of a reel proceeding from some building in the rear; but no sound of dancing was audible - an exceptional state of things for these parts, where as a rule the stamping drowned the music.The front door being open she could see straight through the house into the garden at the back as far as the shades of night would allow; and nobody appearing to her knock she traversed the dwelling and went up the path to the outhouse whence the sound had attracted her.