In a sitting-room on the ground-floor, ensconced in an armchair with
her back to the light, was the owner and mistress of the estate, a
white-haired woman of not more than sixty, or even less, wearing a
large cap. She had the mobile face frequent in those whose sight
has decayed by stages, has been laboriously striven after, and
reluctantly let go, rather than the stagnant mien apparent in persons
long sightless or born blind. Tess walked up to this lady with her
feathered charges--one sitting on each arm.
"Ah, you are the young woman come to look after my birds?" said Mrs
d'Urberville, recognizing a new footstep. "I hope you will be kind
to them. My bailiff tells me you are quite the proper person.
Well, where are they? Ah, this is Strut! But he is hardly so
lively to-day, is he? He is alarmed at being handled by a stranger,
I suppose. And Phena too--yes, they are a little frightened--aren't
you, dears? But they will soon get used to you."
While the old lady had been speaking Tess and the other maid, in
obedience to her gestures, had placed the fowls severally in her lap,
and she had felt them over from head to tail, examining their beaks,
their combs, the manes of the cocks, their wings, and their claws.
Her touch enabled her to recognize them in a moment, and to discover
if a single feather were crippled or draggled. She handled their
crops, and knew what they had eaten, and if too little or too much;
her face enacting a vivid pantomime of the criticisms passing in her
mind. The birds that the two girls had brought in were duly returned to the
yard, and the process was repeated till all the pet cocks and hens
had been submitted to the old woman--Hamburghs, Bantams, Cochins,
Brahmas, Dorkings, and such other sorts as were in fashion just
then--her perception of each visitor being seldom at fault as she
received the bird upon her knees. It reminded Tess of a Confirmation, in which Mrs d'Urberville was the
bishop, the fowls the young people presented, and herself and the
maid-servant the parson and curate of the parish bringing them up.
At the end of the ceremony Mrs d'Urberville abruptly asked Tess,
wrinkling and twitching her face into undulations,
"Can you whistle?"
"Whistle, Ma'am?"
"Yes, whistle tunes." Tess could whistle like most other country-girls, though the
accomplishment was one which she did not care to profess in genteel
company. However, she blandly admitted that such was the fact.
"Then you will have to practise it every day. I had a lad who did it
very well, but he has left. I want you to whistle to my bullfinches;
as I cannot see them, I like to hear them, and we teach 'em airs
that way. Tell her where the cages are, Elizabeth. You must begin
to-morrow, or they will go back in their piping. They have been
neglected these several days."