Tess of the dUrbervilles - Page 83/283

XVII

The dairymaids and men had flocked down from their cottages and out

of the dairy-house with the arrival of the cows from the meads; the

maids walking in pattens, not on account of the weather, but to keep

their shoes above the mulch of the barton. Each girl sat down on

her three-legged stool, her face sideways, her right cheek resting

against the cow, and looked musingly along the animal's flank at Tess

as she approached. The male milkers, with hat-brims turned down,

resting flat on their foreheads and gazing on the ground, did not

observe her. One of these was a sturdy middle-aged man--whose long white "pinner"

was somewhat finer and cleaner than the wraps of the others, and

whose jacket underneath had a presentable marketing aspect--the

master-dairyman, of whom she was in quest, his double character as

a working milker and butter maker here during six days, and on the

seventh as a man in shining broad-cloth in his family pew at church,

being so marked as to have inspired a rhyme:

Dairyman Dick

All the week:--

On Sundays Mister Richard Crick.

Seeing Tess standing at gaze he went across to her.

The majority of dairymen have a cross manner at milking time, but it

happened that Mr Crick was glad to get a new hand--for the days were

busy ones now--and he received her warmly; inquiring for her mother

and the rest of the family--(though this as a matter of form merely,

for in reality he had not been aware of Mrs Durbeyfield's existence

till apprised of the fact by a brief business-letter about Tess).

"Oh--ay, as a lad I knowed your part o' the country very well," he

said terminatively. "Though I've never been there since. And a aged

woman of ninety that use to live nigh here, but is dead and gone long

ago, told me that a family of some such name as yours in Blackmoor

Vale came originally from these parts, and that 'twere a old ancient

race that had all but perished off the earth--though the new

generations didn't know it. But, Lord, I took no notice of the old

woman's ramblings, not I."

"Oh no--it is nothing," said Tess. Then the talk was of business only.

"You can milk 'em clean, my maidy? I don't want my cows going azew at

this time o' year." She reassured him on that point, and he surveyed her up and down.

She had been staying indoors a good deal, and her complexion had

grown delicate.

"Quite sure you can stand it? 'Tis comfortable enough here for rough

folk; but we don't live in a cowcumber frame."