He had ordered by letter a vehicle from the nearest town, and
soon after breakfast it arrived. She saw in it the beginning of
the end--the temporary end, at least, for the revelation of his
tenderness by the incident of the night raised dreams of a possible
future with him. The luggage was put on the top, and the man drove
them off, the miller and the old waiting-woman expressing some
surprise at their precipitate departure, which Clare attributed to
his discovery that the mill-work was not of the modern kind which he
wished to investigate, a statement that was true so far as it went.
Beyond this there was nothing in the manner of their leaving to
suggest a fiasco, or that they were not going together to visit
friends. Their route lay near the dairy from which they had started with such
solemn joy in each other a few days back, and as Clare wished to wind
up his business with Mr Crick, Tess could hardly avoid paying Mrs
Crick a call at the same time, unless she would excite suspicion of
their unhappy state. To make the call as unobtrusive as possible, they left the carriage
by the wicket leading down from the high road to the dairy-house, and
descended the track on foot, side by side. The withy-bed had been
cut, and they could see over the stumps the spot to which Clare had
followed her when he pressed her to be his wife; to the left the
enclosure in which she had been fascinated by his harp; and far away
behind the cow-stalls the mead which had been the scene of their
first embrace. The gold of the summer picture was now gray, the
colours mean, the rich soil mud, and the river cold.
Over the barton-gate the dairyman saw them, and came forward,
throwing into his face the kind of jocularity deemed appropriate
in Talbothays and its vicinity on the re-appearance of the
newly-married. Then Mrs Crick emerged from the house, and several
others of their old acquaintance, though Marian and Retty did not
seem to be there. Tess valiantly bore their sly attacks and friendly humours, which
affected her far otherwise than they supposed. In the tacit
agreement of husband and wife to keep their estrangement a secret
they behaved as would have been ordinary. And then, although she
would rather there had been no word spoken on the subject, Tess had
to hear in detail the story of Marian and Retty. The later had gone
home to her father's, and Marian had left to look for employment
elsewhere. They feared she would come to no good.