He paused in his labours for a moment to lean with her against the
banister. Was he going to throw her down? Self-solicitude was near
extinction in her, and in the knowledge that he had planned to depart
on the morrow, possibly for always, she lay in his arms in this
precarious position with a sense rather of luxury than of terror. If
they could only fall together, and both be dashed to pieces, how fit,
how desirable. However, he did not let her fall, but took advantage of the support
of the handrail to imprint a kiss upon her lips--lips in the day-time
scorned. Then he clasped her with a renewed firmness of hold, and
descended the staircase. The creak of the loose stair did not awaken
him, and they reached the ground-floor safely. Freeing one of his
hands from his grasp of her for a moment, he slid back the door-bar
and passed out, slightly striking his stockinged toe against the edge
of the door. But this he seemed not to mind, and, having room for
extension in the open air, he lifted her against his shoulder, so
that he could carry her with ease, the absence of clothes taking much
from his burden. Thus he bore her off the premises in the direction
of the river a few yards distant.
His ultimate intention, if he had any, she had not yet divined; and
she found herself conjecturing on the matter as a third person might
have done. So easefully had she delivered her whole being up to him
that it pleased her to think he was regarding her as his absolute
possession, to dispose of as he should choose. It was consoling,
under the hovering terror of to-morrow's separation, to feel that he
really recognized her now as his wife Tess, and did not cast her off,
even if in that recognition he went so far as to arrogate to himself
the right of harming her.
Ah! now she knew what he was dreaming of--that Sunday morning when he
had borne her along through the water with the other dairymaids, who
had loved him nearly as much as she, if that were possible, which
Tess could hardly admit. Clare did not cross the bridge with her,
but proceeding several paces on the same side towards the adjoining
mill, at length stood still on the brink of the river.
Its waters, in creeping down these miles of meadowland, frequently
divided, serpentining in purposeless curves, looping themselves
around little islands that had no name, returning and re-embodying
themselves as a broad main stream further on. Opposite the spot to
which he had brought her was such a general confluence, and the river
was proportionately voluminous and deep. Across it was a narrow
foot-bridge; but now the autumn flood had washed the handrail away,
leaving the bare plank only, which, lying a few inches above the
speeding current, formed a giddy pathway for even steady heads; and
Tess had noticed from the window of the house in the day-time young
men walking across upon it as a feat in balancing. Her husband had
possibly observed the same performance; anyhow, he now mounted the
plank, and, sliding one foot forward, advanced along it.