The dull sky soon began to tell its meaning by sending down
herald-drops of rain, and the stagnant air of the day changed into
a fitful breeze which played about their faces. The quick-silvery
glaze on the rivers and pools vanished; from broad mirrors of light
they changed to lustreless sheets of lead, with a surface like a
rasp. But that spectacle did not affect her preoccupation. Her
countenance, a natural carnation slightly embrowned by the season,
had deepened its tinge with the beating of the rain-drops; and her
hair, which the pressure of the cows' flanks had, as usual, caused to
tumble down from its fastenings and stray beyond the curtain of her
calico bonnet, was made clammy by the moisture, till it hardly was
better than seaweed.
"I ought not to have come, I suppose," she murmured, looking at the
sky. "I am sorry for the rain," said he. "But how glad I am to have you
here!" Remote Egdon disappeared by degree behind the liquid gauze. The
evening grew darker, and the roads being crossed by gates, it was
not safe to drive faster than at a walking pace. The air was rather
chill. "I am so afraid you will get cold, with nothing upon your arms and
shoulders," he said. "Creep close to me, and perhaps the drizzle
won't hurt you much. I should be sorrier still if I did not think
that the rain might be helping me."
She imperceptibly crept closer, and he wrapped round them both a
large piece of sail-cloth, which was sometimes used to keep the sun
off the milk-cans. Tess held it from slipping off him as well as
herself, Clare's hands being occupied.
"Now we are all right again. Ah--no we are not! It runs down into
my neck a little, and it must still more into yours. That's better.
Your arms are like wet marble, Tess. Wipe them in the cloth. Now,
if you stay quiet, you will not get another drop. Well, dear--about
that question of mine--that long-standing question?"
The only reply that he could hear for a little while was the smack of
the horse's hoofs on the moistening road, and the cluck of the milk
in the cans behind them. "Do you remember what you said?"
"I do," she replied. "Before we get home, mind."
"I'll try." He said no more then. As they drove on, the fragment of an old manor
house of Caroline date rose against the sky, and was in due course
passed and left behind. "That," he observed, to entertain her, "is an interesting old
place--one of the several seats which belonged to an ancient Norman
family formerly of great influence in this county, the d'Urbervilles.
I never pass one of their residences without thinking of them. There
is something very sad in the extinction of a family of renown, even
if it was fierce, domineering, feudal renown."