Tess of the dUrbervilles - Page 251/283

There was a momentary pause; it was broken, first, in one little

tentative note; then a second voice strengthened it, and a third

and a fourth chimed in unison, with words they had learnt at the

Sunday-school-

Here we suffer grief and pain,

Here we meet to part again;

In Heaven we part no more.

The four sang on with the phlegmatic passivity of persons who had

long ago settled the question, and there being no mistake about it,

felt that further thought was not required. With features strained

hard to enunciate the syllables they continued to regard the centre

of the flickering fire, the notes of the youngest straying over into

the pauses of the rest.

Tess turned from them, and went to the window again. Darkness had

now fallen without, but she put her face to the pane as though to

peer into the gloom. It was really to hide her tears. If she could

only believe what the children were singing; if she were only sure,

how different all would now be; how confidently she would leave them

to Providence and their future kingdom! But, in default of that, it

behoved her to do something; to be their Providence; for to Tess,

as to not a few millions of others, there was ghastly satire in the

poet's lines-

Not in utter nakedness

But trailing clouds of glory do we come.

To her and her like, birth itself was an ordeal of degrading personal

compulsion, whose gratuitousness nothing in the result seemed to

justify, and at best could only palliate.

In the shades of the wet road she soon discerned her mother with tall

'Liza-Lu and Abraham. Mrs Durbeyfield's pattens clicked up to the

door, and Tess opened it. "I see the tracks of a horse outside the window," said Joan. "Hev

somebody called?"

"No," said Tess. The children by the fire looked gravely at her, and one murmured-"Why, Tess, the gentleman a-horseback!"

"He didn't call," said Tess. "He spoke to me in passing."

"Who was the gentleman?" asked the mother. "Your husband?"

"No. He'll never, never come," answered Tess in stony hopelessness. "Then who was it?"

"Oh, you needn't ask. You've seen him before, and so have I."

"Ah! What did he say?" said Joan curiously.

"I will tell you when we are settled in our lodging at Kingsbere

to-morrow--every word."

It was not her husband, she had said. Yet a consciousness that in a

physical sense this man alone was her husband seemed to weigh on her

more and more.