`Ah - that's owing to an accident - a misunderstanding; and we won't argue it,' Tess answered, with tearfulness in her words.`Perhaps there's a good deal to be said for him! He did not go away, like some husbands, without telling me; and I can always find out where he is.'
After this they continued for some long time in a reverie, as they went on seizing the ears of corn, drawing out the straw, gathering it under their arms, and cutting off the ears with their bill-hooks, nothing sounding in the barn but the swish of the straw and the crunch of the hook.Then Tess suddenly flagged, and sank down upon the heap of wheat-ears at her feet.
`I knew you wouldn't be able to stand it!' cried Marian.`It wants harder flesh than yours for this work.'
Just then the farmer entered.`Oh, that's how you get on when I am away,'
he said to her.
`But it is my own loss,' she pleaded.`Not yours.'
`I want it finished,' he said doggedly, as he crossed the barn and went out at the other door.
`Don't 'ee mind him, there's a dear,' said Marian.`I've worked here before.Now you go and lie down there, and Izz and I will make up your number.'
`I don't like to let you do that.I'm taller than you, too.'
However, she was so overcome that she consented to lie down awhile, and reclined on a heap of pull-tails - the refuse after the straight straw had been drawn - thrown up at the further side of the barn.Her succumbing had been as largely owing to agitation at re-opening the subject of her separation from her husband as to the hard work.She lay in a state of percipience without volition, and the rustle of the straw and the cutting of the ears by the others had the weight of bodily touches.
She could hear from her corner, in addition to these noises, the murmur of their voices.She felt certain that they were continuing the subject already broached, but their voices were so low that she could not catch the words.At last Tess grew more and more anxious to know what they were saying, and, persuading herself that she felt better, she got up and resumed work.
Then Izz Huett broke down.She had walked more than a dozen miles the previous evening, had gone to bed at midnight, and had risen again at five o'clock.Marian alone, thanks to her bottle of liquor and her stoutness of build, stood the strain upon back and arms without suffering.Tess urged Izz to leave off, agreeing, as she felt better, to finish the day without her, and make equal division of the number of sheaves.
Izz accepted the offer gratefully, and disappeared through the great door into the snowy track to her lodging.Marian, as was the case every afternoon at this time on account of the bottle, began to feel in a romantic vein.
`I should not have thought it of him - never!' she said in a dreamy tone.'And I loved him so! I didn't mind his having you.But this about Izz is too bad!'
Tess, in her start at the words, narrowly missed cutting off a finger with the bill-hook.
`Is it about my husband?' she stammered.
`Well, yes.Izz said, "Don't 'ee tell her"; but I am sure I can't help it! It was what he wanted Izz to do.He wanted her to go off to Brazil with him.'
Tess's face faded as white as the scene without, and its curves straightened.
`And did Izz refuse to go?' she asked.
`I don't know.Anyhow he changed his mind.'
`Pooh - then he didn't mean it! 'Twas just a man's jest!'
`Yes he did; for he drove her a good-ways towards the station.'
`He didn't take her!'
They pulled on in silence till Tess, without any premonitory symptoms, burst out crying.
`There!' said Marian.`Now I wish I hadn't told 'ee!'
`No.It is a very good thing that you have done! I have been living on in a thirtover, lackaday way, and have not seen what it may lead to!
I ought to have sent him a letter oftener.He said I could not go to him, but he didn't say I was not to write as often as I liked.I won't dally like this any longer! I have been very wrong and neglectful in leaving everything to be done by him!' The dim light in the barn grew dimmer, and they could see to work no longer.When Tess had reached home that evening, and had entered into the privacy of her little white-washed chamber, she began impetuously writing a letter to Clare.But falling into doubt she could not finish it.Afterwards she took the ring from the ribbon on which she wore it next her heart, and retained it on her finger all night, as if to fortify herself in the sensation that she was really the wife of this elusive lover of hers, who could propose that Izz should go with him abroad, so shortly after he had left her.Knowing that, how could she write entreaties to him, or show that she cared for him any more?
Chapter 44 By the disclosure in the barn her thoughts were led anew in the direction which they had taken more than once of late - to the distant Emminster Vicarage.It was through her husband's parents that she had been charged to send a letter to Clare if she desired; and to write to them direct if in difficulty.But that sense of her having morally no claim upon him had always led Tess to suspend her impulse to send these notes; and to the family at the Vicarage, therefore, as to her own parents since her marriage, she was virtually non-existent.This self-effacement in both directions had been quite in consonance with her independent character of desiring nothing by way of favour or pity to which she was not entitled on a fair consideration of her deserts.She had set herself to stand or fall by her qualities, and to waive such merely technical claims upon a strange family as had been established for her by the flimsy fact of a member of that family, in a season of impulse, writing his name in a church book beside hers.
But now that she was stung to a fever by Izz's tale there was a limit to her powers of renunciation.Why had her husband not written to her?
He had distinctly implied that he would at least let her know of the locality to which he had journeyed; but he had not sent a line to notify his address.
