Tess of the dUrbervilles - Page 11/283

On account of his long delay he started in a flying-run down the lane

westward, and had soon passed the hollow and mounted the next rise.

He had not yet overtaken his brothers, but he paused to get breath,

and looked back. He could see the white figures of the girls in the

green enclosure whirling about as they had whirled when he was among

them. They seemed to have quite forgotten him already.

All of them, except, perhaps, one. This white shape stood apart

by the hedge alone. From her position he knew it to be the pretty

maiden with whom he had not danced. Trifling as the matter was, he

yet instinctively felt that she was hurt by his oversight. He wished

that he had asked her; he wished that he had inquired her name. She

was so modest, so expressive, she had looked so soft in her thin

white gown that he felt he had acted stupidly.

However, it could not be helped, and turning, and bending himself to

a rapid walk, he dismissed the subject from his mind.

III

As for Tess Durbeyfield, she did not so easily dislodge the incident

from her consideration. She had no spirit to dance again for a long

time, though she might have had plenty of partners; but ah! they did

not speak so nicely as the strange young man had done. It was not

till the rays of the sun had absorbed the young stranger's retreating

figure on the hill that she shook off her temporary sadness and

answered her would-be partner in the affirmative.

She remained with her comrades till dusk, and participated with a

certain zest in the dancing; though, being heart-whole as yet, she

enjoyed treading a measure purely for its own sake; little divining

when she saw "the soft torments, the bitter sweets, the pleasing

pains, and the agreeable distresses" of those girls who had been

wooed and won, what she herself was capable of in that kind. The

struggles and wrangles of the lads for her hand in a jig were an

amusement to her--no more; and when they became fierce she rebuked

them. She might have stayed even later, but the incident of her father's

odd appearance and manner returned upon the girl's mind to make her

anxious, and wondering what had become of him she dropped away from

the dancers and bent her steps towards the end of the village at

which the parental cottage lay.

While yet many score yards off, other rhythmic sounds than those she

had quitted became audible to her; sounds that she knew well--so

well. They were a regular series of thumpings from the interior of

the house, occasioned by the violent rocking of a cradle upon a stone

floor, to which movement a feminine voice kept time by singing, in a

vigorous gallopade, the favourite ditty of "The Spotted Cow"-