第35章

Her figure looked singularly tall and imposing as she stood in her long white nightgown, a thick cable of twisted dark hair hanging straight down her back to her waist.The kindly dimness of the weak candle abstracted from her form and features the little blemishes which sunlight might have revealed - the stubble scratches upon her wrists, and the weariness of her eyes - her high enthusiasm having a transfiguring effect upon the fact which had been her undoing, showing it as a thing of immaculate beauty, with a touch of dignity which was almost regal.The little ones kneeling round, their sleepy eyes blinking and red, awaited her preparations full of a suspended wonder which their physical heaviness at that hour would not allow to become active.

The most impressed of them said:

`Be you really going to christen him, Tess?'

The girl-mother replied in a grave affirmative.

`What's his name going to be?'

She had not thought of that, but a name suggested by a phrase in the book of Genesis came into her head as she proceeded with the baptismal service, and now she pronounced it:

`SORROW, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.'

She sprinkled the water, and there was silence.

`Say "Amen", children.'

The tiny voices piped in obedient response `Amen!'

Tess went on:

`We receive this child - and so forth--'and do sign him with the sign of the Cross.'

Here she dipped her hand into the basin, and fervently drew an immense cross upon the baby with her forefinger, continuing with the customary sentences as to his manfully fighting against sin, the world, and the devil, and being a faithful soldier and servant unto his life's end.She duly went on with the Lord's Prayer, the children lisping it after her in a thin gnatlike wail, till, at the conclusion, raising their voices to clerk's pitch, they again piped into the silence, `Amen!'

Then their sister, with much augmented confidence in the efficacy of this sacrament, poured forth from the bottom of her heart the thanksgiving that follows, uttering it boldly and triumphantly in the stopt-diapason note which her voice acquired when her heart was in her speech, and which will never be forgotten by those who knew her.The ecstasy of faith almost apotheosized her; it set upon her face a glowing irradiation, and brought a red spot into the middle of each cheek; while the miniature candle-flame inverted in her eye-pupils shone like a diamond.The children gazed up at her with more and more reverence, and no longer had a will for questioning.

She did not look like Sissy to them now, but as a being large, towering, and awful - a divine personage with whom they had nothing in common.

Poor Sorrow's campaign against sin, the world, and the devil was doomed to be of limited brilliancy - luckily perhaps for himself, considering his beginnings.In the blue of the morning that fragile soldier and servant breathed his last, and when the other children awoke they cried bitterly, and begged Sissy to have another pretty baby.

The calmness which had possessed Tess since the christening remained with her in the infant's loss.In the daylight, indeed, she felt her terrors about his soul to have been somewhat exaggerated; whether well founded or not she had no uneasiness now, reasoning that if Providence would not ratify such an act of approximation she, for one, did not value the kind of heaven lost by the irregularity - either for herself or for her child.

So passed away Sorrow the Undesired - that intrusive creature, that bastard gift of shameless Nature who respects not the social law; a waif to whom eternal Time had been a matter of days merely, who knew not that such things as years and centuries ever were; to whom the cottage interior was the universe, the week's weather climate, new-born babyhood human existence, and the instinct to suck human knowledge.

Tess, who mused on the christening a good deal, wondered if it were doctrinally sufficient to secure a Christian burial for the child.Nobody could tell this but the parson of the parish, and he was a new-comer, and did not know her.She went to his house after dusk, and stood by the gate, but could not summon courage to go in.The enterprise would have been abandoned if she had not by accident met him coming homeward as she turned away.

In the gloom she did not mind speaking freely.

`I should like to ask you something, sir.'

He expressed his willingness to listen, and she told the story of the baby's illness and the extemporized ordinance.

`And now, sir,' she added earnestly, `can you tell me this - will it be just the same for him as if you had baptized him?'

Having the natural feelings of a tradesman at finding that a job he should have been called in for had been unskilfully botched by his customers among themselves, he was disposed to say no.Yet the dignity of the girl, the strange tenderness in her voice, combined to affect his nobler impulses - or rather those that he had left in him after ten years of endeavour to graft technical belief on actual scepticism.The man and the ecclesiastic fought within him, and the victory fell to the man.

`My dear girl,' he said, `it will be just the same.'

`Then will you give him a Christian burial?' she asked quickly.

The Vicar felt himself cornered.Hearing of the baby's illness, he had conscientiously gone to the house after nightfall to perform the rite, and, unaware that the refusal to admit him had come from Tess's father and not from Tess, he could not allow the plea of necessity for its irregular administration.

`Ah - that's another matter,' he said.

`Another matter - why?' asked Tess, rather warmly.

`Well - I would willingly do so if only we two were concerned.'

`But I must not - for certain reasons.'

`Just for once, sir!'

`Really I must not.'

`O sir!' She seized his hand as she spoke.

He withdrew it, shaking his head.

`Then I don't like you!' she burst out, `and I'll never come to your church no more!'

`Don't talk so rashly.'