XXIV

Amid the oozing fatness and warm ferments of the Froom Vale, at a

season when the rush of juices could almost be heard below the hiss

of fertilization, it was impossible that the most fanciful love

should not grow passionate. The ready bosoms existing there were

impregnated by their surroundings.

July passed over their heads, and the Thermidorean weather which came

in its wake seemed an effort on the part of Nature to match the state

of hearts at Talbothays Dairy. The air of the place, so fresh in the

spring and early summer, was stagnant and enervating now. Its heavy

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scents weighed upon them, and at mid-day the landscape seemed lying

in a swoon. Ethiopic scorchings browned the upper slopes of the

pastures, but there was still bright green herbage here where the

watercourses purled. And as Clare was oppressed by the outward

heats, so was he burdened inwardly by waxing fervour of passion for

the soft and silent Tess. The rains having passed, the uplands were dry.

The wheels of the

dairyman's spring-cart, as he sped home from market, licked up the

pulverized surface of the highway, and were followed by white ribands

of dust, as if they had set a thin powder-train on fire. The cows

jumped wildly over the five-barred barton-gate, maddened by the

gad-fly; Dairyman Crick kept his shirt-sleeves permanently rolled up

from Monday to Saturday; open windows had no effect in ventilation

without open doors, and in the dairy-garden the blackbirds and

thrushes crept about under the currant-bushes, rather in the manner

of quadrupeds than of winged creatures. The flies in the kitchen

were lazy, teasing, and familiar, crawling about in the unwonted

places, on the floors, into drawers, and over the backs of the

milkmaids' hands. Conversations were concerning sunstroke; while

butter-making, and still more butter-keeping, was a despair.

They milked entirely in the meads for coolness and convenience,

without driving in the cows. During the day the animals obsequiously

followed the shadow of the smallest tree as it moved round the stem

with the diurnal roll; and when the milkers came they could hardly

stand still for the flies.

On one of these afternoons four or five unmilked cows chanced to

stand apart from the general herd, behind the corner of a hedge,

among them being Dumpling and Old Pretty, who loved Tess's hands

above those of any other maid. When she rose from her stool under a

finished cow, Angel Clare, who had been observing her for some time,

asked her if she would take the aforesaid creatures next. She

silently assented, and with her stool at arm's length, and the pail

against her knee, went round to where they stood. Soon the sound of

Old Pretty's milk fizzing into the pail came through the hedge, and

then Angel felt inclined to go round the corner also, to finish off a

hard-yielding milcher who had strayed there, he being now as capable

of this as the dairyman himself.




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