第60章

He would not say whether or not she had attached herself to the sound Low Church School of his father; but she would probably be open to conviction on that point; she was a regular church-goer of simple faith; honest-hearted, receptive, intelligent, graceful to a degree, chaste as a vestal, and, in personal appearance, exceptionally beautiful.

`Is she of a family such as you would care to marry into - a lady, in short?' asked his startled mother, who had come softly into the study during the conversation.

`She is not what in common parlance is called a lady,' said Angel, unflinchingly, `for she is a cottager's daughter, as I am proud to say.But she is a lady, nevertheless - in feeling and nature.'

`Mercy Chant is of a very good family.'

`Pooh! - what's the advantage of that, mother?' said Angel quickly.

`How is family to avail the wife of a man who has to rough it as I have, and shall have to do?'

`Mercy is accomplished.And accomplishments have their charm,' returned his mother, looking at him through her silver spectacles.

`As to external accomplishments, what will be the use of them in the life I am going to lead? - while as to her reading, I can take that in hand.She'll be apt pupil enough, as you would say if you knew her.She's brim full of poetry - actualized poetry, if I may use the expression.She lives# what paper-poets only write...And she is an unimpeachable Christian, I am sure; perhaps of the very tribe, genus, and species you desire to propagate.'

`O Angel, you are mocking!'

`Mother, I beg pardon.But as she really does attend Church almost every Sunday morning, and is a good Christian girl, I am sure you will tolerate any social shortcomings for the sake of that quality, and feel that I may do worse than choose her.' Angel waxed quite earnest on that rather automatic orthodoxy in his beloved Tess which (never dreaming that it might stand him in such good stead) he had been prone to slight when observing it practised by her and the other milkmaids, because of its obvious unreality amid beliefs essentially naturalistic.

In their sad doubts as to whether their son had himself any right whatever to the title he claimed for the unknown young woman, Mr and Mrs Clare began to feel it as an advantage not to be overlooked that she at least was sound in her views; especially as the conjunction of the pair must have arisen by an act of Providence; for Angel never would have made orthodoxy a condition of his choice.They said finally that it was better not to act in a hurry, but that they would not object to see her.

Angel therefore refrained from declaring more particulars now.He felt that, single-minded and self-sacrificing as his parents were, there yet existed certain latent prejudices of theirs, as middle-class people, which it would require some tact to overcome.For though legally at liberty to do as he chose, and though their daughter-in-law's qualifications could make no practical difference to their lives, in the probability of her living far away from them, he wished for affection's sake not to wound their sentiment in the most important decision of his life.

He observed his own inconsistencies in dwelling upon accidents in Tess's life as if they were vital features.It was for herself that he loved Tess;her soul, her heart, her substance - not for her skill in the dairy, her aptness as his scholar, and certainly not for her simple formal faith-professions.

Her unsophisticated open-air existence required no varnish of conventionality to make it palatable to him.He held that education had as yet but little affected the beats of emotion and impulse on which domestic happiness depends.

It was probable that, in the lapse of ages, improved systems of moral and intellectual training would appreciably, perhaps considerably, elevate the involuntary and even the unconscious instincts of human nature; but up to the present day culture, as far as he could see, might be said to have affected only the mental epiderm of those lives which had been brought under its influence.This belief was confirmed by his experience of women, which, having latterly been extended from the cultivated middle-class into the rural community, had taught him how much less was the intrinsic difference between the good and wise woman of one social stratum and the good and wise woman of another social stratum, than between the good and bad, the wise and the foolish, of the same stratum or class.

It was the morning of his departure.His brothers had already left the vicarage to proceed on a walking tour in the north, whence one was to return to his college, and the other to his curacy.Angel might have accompanied them, but preferred to rejoin his sweetheart at Talbothays.He would have been an awkward member of the party; for, though the most appreciative humanist, the most ideal religionist, even the best-versed Christologist of the three, there was alienation in the standing consciousness that his squareness would not fit the round hole that had been prepared for him.

To neither Felix nor Cuthbert had he ventured to mention Tess.

His mother made him sandwiches, and his father accompanied him, on his own mare, a little way along the road.Having fairly well advanced his own affairs Angel listened in a willing silence, as they jogged on together through the shady lanes, to his father's account of his parish difficulties, and the coldness of brother clergymen whom he loved, because of his strict interpretations of the New Testament by the light of what they deemed a pernicious Calvinistic doctrine.

`Pernicious!' said Mr Clare, with genial scorn; and he proceeded to recount experiences which would show the absurdity of that idea.He told of wondrous conversions of evil livers of which he had been the instrument, not only amongst the poor, but amongst the rich and well-to-do; and he also candidly admitted many failures.