XXXII
This penitential mood kept her from naming the wedding-day. The
beginning of November found its date still in abeyance, though he
asked her at the most tempting times. But Tess's desire seemed to be
for a perpetual betrothal in which everything should remain as it was
then. The meads were changing now; but it was still warm enough in early
afternoons before milking to idle there awhile, and the state of
dairy-work at this time of year allowed a spare hour for idling.
Looking over the damp sod in the direction of the sun, a glistening
ripple of gossamer webs was visible to their eyes under the luminary,
like the track of moonlight on the sea. Gnats, knowing nothing
of their brief glorification, wandered across the shimmer of this
pathway, irradiated as if they bore fire within them, then passed out
of its line, and were quite extinct. In the presence of these things
he would remind her that the date was still the question. Or he would ask her at night, when he accompanied her on some mission
invented by Mrs Crick to give him the opportunity. This was mostly a
journey to the farmhouse on the slopes above the vale, to inquire how
the advanced cows were getting on in the straw-barton to which they
were relegated. For it was a time of the year that brought great
changes to the world of kine. Batches of the animals were sent away
daily to this lying-in hospital, where they lived on straw till their
calves were born, after which event, and as soon as the calf could
walk, mother and offspring were driven back to the dairy. In the
interval which elapsed before the calves were sold there was, of
course, little milking to be done, but as soon as the calf had been
taken away the milkmaids would have to set to work as usual.
Returning from one of these dark walks they reached a great
gravel-cliff immediately over the levels, where they stood still and
listened. The water was now high in the streams, squirting through
the weirs, and tinkling under culverts; the smallest gullies were all
full; there was no taking short cuts anywhere, and foot-passengers
were compelled to follow the permanent ways. From the whole extent
of the invisible vale came a multitudinous intonation; it forced upon
their fancy that a great city lay below them, and that the murmur was
the vociferation of its populace. "It seems like tens of thousands of them," said Tess; "holding
public-meetings in their market-places, arguing, preaching,
quarrelling, sobbing, groaning, praying, and cursing."