"How much longer is he to bide here?" asked Izz Huett, the only

one of the gloom-stricken bevy who could trust her voice with the

question. The others waited for the dairyman's answer as if their lives hung

upon it; Retty, with parted lips, gazing on the tablecloth, Marian

with heat added to her redness, Tess throbbing and looking out at

the meads. "Well, I can't mind the exact day without looking at my

memorandum-book," replied Crick, with the same intolerable unconcern.

"And even that may be altered a bit. He'll bide to get a little

practice in the calving out at the straw-yard, for certain. He'll

hang on till the end of the year I should say."

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Four months or so of torturing ecstasy in his society--of "pleasure

girdled about with pain". After that the blackness of unutterable

night. At this moment of the morning Angel Clare was riding along a narrow

lane ten miles distant from the breakfasters, in the direction of

his father's Vicarage at Emminster, carrying, as well as he could,

a little basket which contained some black-puddings and a bottle of

mead, sent by Mrs Crick, with her kind respects, to his parents. The

white lane stretched before him, and his eyes were upon it; but they

were staring into next year, and not at the lane. He loved her;

ought he to marry her? Dared he to marry her? What would his mother

and his brothers say? What would he himself say a couple of years

after the event? That would depend upon whether the germs of staunch

comradeship underlay the temporary emotion, or whether it were a

sensuous joy in her form only, with no substratum of everlastingness.

His father's hill-surrounded little town, the Tudor church-tower of

red stone, the clump of trees near the Vicarage, came at last into

view beneath him, and he rode down towards the well-known gate.

Casting a glance in the direction of the church before entering his

home, he beheld standing by the vestry-door a group of girls, of

ages between twelve and sixteen, apparently awaiting the arrival of

some other one, who in a moment became visible; a figure somewhat

older than the school-girls, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and

highly-starched cambric morning-gown, with a couple of books in her

hand. Clare knew her well. He could not be sure that she observed him; he

hoped she did not, so as to render it unnecessary that he should go

and speak to her, blameless creature that she was. An overpowering

reluctance to greet her made him decide that she had not seen him.

The young lady was Miss Mercy Chant, the only daughter of his

father's neighbour and friend, whom it was his parents' quiet hope

that he might wed some day. She was great at Antinomianism and

Bible-classes, and was plainly going to hold a class now. Clare's

mind flew to the impassioned, summer-steeped heathens in the Var

Vale, their rosy faces court-patched with cow-droppings; and to one

the most impassioned of them all.




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