"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
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.)