He expressed his willingness to listen, and she told the story of the
baby's illness and the extemporized ordinance. "And now, sir," she
added earnestly, "can you tell me this--will it be just the same for
him as if you had baptized him?"
Having the natural feelings of a tradesman at finding that a job he
should have been called in for had been unskilfully botched by his
customers among themselves, he was disposed to say no. Yet the
dignity of the girl, the strange tenderness in her voice, combined
to affect his nobler impulses--or rather those that he had left in
him after ten years of endeavour to graft technical belief on actual
scepticism. The man and the ecclesiastic fought within him, and the
victory fell to the man. "My dear girl," he said, "it will be just the same."
"Then will you give him a Christian burial?" she asked quickly.
The Vicar felt himself cornered. Hearing of the baby's illness, he
had conscientiously gone to the house after nightfall to perform the
rite, and, unaware that the refusal to admit him had come from Tess's
father and not from Tess, he could not allow the plea of necessity
for its irregular administration.
"Ah--that's another matter," he said.
"Another matter--why?" asked Tess, rather warmly.
"Well--I would willingly do so if only we two were concerned. But I
must not--for certain reasons."
"Just for once, sir!" "Really I must not."
"O sir!" She seized his hand as she spoke. He withdrew it, shaking his head.
"Then I don't like you!" she burst out, "and I'll never come to your
church no more!"
"Don't talk so rashly."
"Perhaps it will be just the same to him if you don't? ... Will it
be just the same? Don't for God's sake speak as saint to sinner, but
as you yourself to me myself--poor me!"
How the Vicar reconciled his answer with the strict notions he
supposed himself to hold on these subjects it is beyond a layman's
power to tell, though not to excuse. Somewhat moved, he said in
this case also-"It will be just the same."
So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's
shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light,
at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that
shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow,
and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides,
and others of the conjecturally damned are laid. In spite of the
untoward surroundings, however, Tess bravely made a little cross of
two laths and a piece of string, and having bound it with flowers,
she stuck it up at the head of the grave one evening when she could
enter the churchyard without being seen, putting at the foot also
a bunch of the same flowers in a little jar of water to keep them
alive. What matter was it that on the outside of the jar the eye of
mere observation noted the words "Keelwell's Marmalade"? The eye of
maternal affection did not see them in its vision of higher things.