"I always shall."

"O, I know you will!" she cried, with a sudden fervour of faith

in him. "Angel, I will fix the day when I will become yours for

always!" Thus at last it was arranged between them, during that dark walk

home, amid the myriads of liquid voices on the right and left.

When they reached the dairy Mr and Mrs Crick were promptly told--with

injunctions of secrecy; for each of the lovers was desirous that the

marriage should be kept as private as possible. The dairyman, though

he had thought of dismissing her soon, now made a great concern about

losing her. What should he do about his skimming? Who would make

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the ornamental butter-pats for the Anglebury and Sandbourne ladies?

Mrs Crick congratulated Tess on the shilly-shallying having at last

come to an end, and said that directly she set eyes on Tess she

divined that she was to be the chosen one of somebody who was no

common outdoor man; Tess had looked so superior as she walked across

the barton on that afternoon of her arrival; that she was of a good

family she could have sworn. In point of fact Mrs Crick did remember

thinking that Tess was graceful and good-looking as she approached;

but the superiority might have been a growth of the imagination aided

by subsequent knowledge.

Tess was now carried along upon the wings of the hours, without the

sense of a will. The word had been given; the number of the day

written down. Her naturally bright intelligence had begun to admit

the fatalistic convictions common to field-folk and those who

associate more extensively with natural phenomena than with their

fellow-creatures; and she accordingly drifted into that passive

responsiveness to all things her lover suggested, characteristic of

the frame of mind. But she wrote anew to her mother, ostensibly to notify the

wedding-day; really to again implore her advice. It was a gentleman

who had chosen her, which perhaps her mother had not sufficiently

considered. A post-nuptial explanation, which might be accepted with

a light heart by a rougher man, might not be received with the same

feeling by him. But this communication brought no reply from Mrs

Durbeyfield. Despite Angel Clare's plausible representation to himself and to Tess

of the practical need for their immediate marriage, there was in

truth an element of precipitancy in the step, as became apparent at a

later date. He loved her dearly, though perhaps rather ideally and

fancifully than with the impassioned thoroughness of her feeling for

him. He had entertained no notion, when doomed as he had thought to

an unintellectual bucolic life, that such charms as he beheld in this

idyllic creature would be found behind the scenes. Unsophistication

was a thing to talk of; but he had not known how it really struck one

until he came here. Yet he was very far from seeing his future track

clearly, and it might be a year or two before he would be able to

consider himself fairly started in life. The secret lay in the tinge

of recklessness imparted to his career and character by the sense

that he had been made to miss his true destiny through the prejudices

of his family. "Don't you think 'twould have been better for us to wait till you

were quite settled in your midland farm?" she once asked timidly.

(A midland farm was the idea just then.)




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