"I was ill over there, you know," he said.
"I am all right now." As if, however, to falsify this assertion, his legs seemed to give
way, and he suddenly sat down to save himself from falling. It was
only a slight attack of faintness, resulting from the tedious day's
journey, and the excitement of arrival.
"Has any letter come for me lately?" he asked. "I received the
last you sent on by the merest chance, and after considerable delay
through being inland; or I might have come sooner."
"It was from your wife, we supposed?" "It was."
Only one other had recently come. They had not sent it on to him,
knowing he would start for home so soon.
He hastily opened the letter produced, and was much disturbed to read
in Tess's handwriting the sentiments expressed in her last hurried
scrawl to him.
O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do
not deserve it. I have thought it all over carefully,
and I can never, never forgive you! You know that I
did not intend to wrong you--why have you so wronged
me? You are cruel, cruel indeed! I will try to forget
you. It is all injustice I have received at your
hands!
T.
"It is quite true!" said Angel, throwing down the letter. "Perhaps
she will never be reconciled to me!"
"Don't, Angel, be so anxious about a mere child of the soil!" said
his mother.
"Child of the soil! Well, we all are children of the soil. I wish
she were so in the sense you mean; but let me now explain to you what
I have never explained before, that her father is a descendant in the
male line of one of the oldest Norman houses, like a good many others
who lead obscure agricultural lives in our villages, and are dubbed
'sons of the soil.'"
He soon retired to bed; and the next morning, feeling exceedingly
unwell, he remained in his room pondering. The circumstances amid
which he had left Tess were such that though, while on the south of
the Equator and just in receipt of her loving epistle, it had seemed
the easiest thing in the world to rush back into her arms the moment
he chose to forgive her, now that he had arrived it was not so easy
as it had seemed. She was passionate, and her present letter,
showing that her estimate of him had changed under his delay--too
justly changed, he sadly owned,--made him ask himself if it would
be wise to confront her unannounced in the presence of her parents.
Supposing that her love had indeed turned to dislike during the last
weeks of separation, a sudden meeting might lead to bitter words.