XXXV
Her narrative ended; even its re-assertions and secondary
explanations were done. Tess's voice throughout had hardly risen
higher than its opening tone; there had been no exculpatory phrase of
any kind, and she had not wept.
But the complexion even of external things seemed to suffer
transmutation as her announcement progressed. The fire in the grate
looked impish--demoniacally funny, as if it did not care in the least
about her strait. The fender grinned idly, as if it too did not
care. The light from the water-bottle was merely engaged in a
chromatic problem. All material objects around announced their
irresponsibility with terrible iteration. And yet nothing had
changed since the moments when he had been kissing her; or rather,
nothing in the substance of things. But the essence of things had
changed.
When she ceased, the auricular impressions from their previous
endearments seemed to hustle away into the corner of their brains,
repeating themselves as echoes from a time of supremely purblind
foolishness. Clare performed the irrelevant act of stirring the fire; the
intelligence had not even yet got to the bottom of him. After
stirring the embers he rose to his feet; all the force of her
disclosure had imparted itself now. His face had withered. In the
strenuousness of his concentration he treadled fitfully on the floor.
He could not, by any contrivance, think closely enough; that was the
meaning of his vague movement. When he spoke it was in the most
inadequate, commonplace voice of the many varied tones she had heard
from him.
"Tess!"
"Yes, dearest."
"Am I to believe this? From your manner I am to take it as true.
O you cannot be out of your mind! You ought to be! Yet you are
not... My wife, my Tess--nothing in you warrants such a supposition
as that?"
"I am not out of my mind," she said. "And yet--" He looked vacantly at her, to resume with dazed senses:
"Why didn't you tell me before? Ah, yes, you would have told me, in a
way--but I hindered you, I remember!"
These and other of his words were nothing but the perfunctory babble
of the surface while the depths remained paralyzed. He turned away,
and bent over a chair. Tess followed him to the middle of the room,
where he was, and stood there staring at him with eyes that did not
weep. Presently she slid down upon her knees beside his foot, and
from this position she crouched in a heap.
"In the name of our love, forgive me!" she whispered with a dry
mouth. "I have forgiven you for the same!" And, as he did not answer, she said again-"Forgive me as you are forgiven! I forgive YOU, Angel."