One fine day Tess and 'Liza-Lu worked on here with their neighbours till the last rays of the sun smote flat upon the white pegs that divided the plots.As soon as twilight succeeded to sunset the flare of the couch-grass and cabbage-stalk fires began to light up the allotments fitfully, their outlines appearing and disappearing under the dense smoke as wafted by the wind.When a fire glowed, banks of smoke, blown level along the ground, would themselves become illuminated to an opaque lustre, screening the workpeople from one another; and the meaning of the `pillar of a cloud,'
which was a wall by day and a light by night, could be understood.
As evening thickened some of the gardening men and women gave over for the night, but the greater number remained to get their planting done, Tess being among them, though she sent her sister home.It was on one of the couch-burning plots that she laboured with her fork, its four shining prongs resounding against the stones and dry clods in little clicks.Sometimes she was completely involved in the smoke of her fire; then it would leave her figure free, irradiated by the brassy glare from the heap.She was oddly dressed to-night, and presented a somewhat staring aspect, her attire being a gown bleached by many washings, with a short black jacket over it, the effect of the whole being that of a wedding and funeral guest in one.The women further back wore white aprons, which, with their pale faces, were all that could be seen of them in the gloom, except when at moments they caught a flash from the flames.
Westward, the wiry boughs of the bare thorn hedge which formed the boundary of the field rose against the pale opalescence of the lower sky.Above, Jupiter hung like a full-blown jonquil, so bright as almost to throw a shade.A few small nondescript stars were appearing elsewhere.Iii the distance a dog barked, and wheels occasionally rattled along the dry road.
Still the prongs continued to click assiduously, for it was not late-, and though the air was fresh and keen there was a whisper of spring in it that cheered the workers on.Something in the place, the hour, the crackling fires, the fantastic mysteries of light and shade, made others as well as Tess enjoy being there.Nightfall, which in the frost of winter comes as a fiend and in the warmth of summer as a lover, came as a tranquillizer on this March day.
Nobody looked at his or her companions.The eyes of all were on the soil as its turned surface was revealed by the fires.Hence as Tess stirred the clods, and sang her foolish little songs with scarce now a hope that Clare would ever hear them, she did not for a long time notice the person who worked nearest to her - a man in a long smockfrock who, she found, was forking the same plot as herself, and whom she supposed her father had sent there to advance the work.She became more conscious of him when the direction of his digging brought him closer.Sometimes the smoke divided them; then it swerved, and the two were visible to each other but divided from all the rest.
Tess did not speak to her fellow-worker, nor did he speak to her.Nor did she think of him further than to recollect that he had not been there when it was broad daylight, and that she did not know him as any one of the Marlott labourers, which was no wonder, her absences having been so long and frequent of late years.By-and-by he dug so close to her that the fire-beams were reflected as distinctly from the steel prongs of his fork as from her own.On going up to the fire to throw a pitch of dead weeds upon it, she found that he did the same on the other side.The fire flared up, and she beheld the face of d'Urberville.
The unexpectedness of his presence, the grotesqueness of his appearance in a gathered smockfrock, such as was now worn only by the most old-fashioned of the labourers, had a ghastly comicality that chilled her as to its bearing.
D'Urberville emitted a low long laugh.
`If I were inclined to joke I should say, How much this seems like Paradise!'
he remarked whimsically, looking at her with an inclined head.
`What do you say?' she weakly asked.
`A jester might say this is just like Paradise.You are Eve, and I am the old Other One come to tempt you in the disguise of an inferior animal.
I used to be quite up in that scene of Milton's when I was theological.
Some of it goes--
"Empress, the way is ready, and not long, Beyond a row of myrtles...
...If thou accept My conduct, I can bring thee thither soon.""Lead then," said Eve.And so on.My dear, dear Tess, I am only putting this to you as a thing that you might have supposed or said quite untruly, because you think so badly of me.'
`I never said you were Satan, or thought it.I don't think of you in that way at all.My thoughts of you are quite cold, except when you affront me.What, did you come digging here entirely because of me?'
`Entirely.To see you; nothing more.The smockfrock, which I saw hanging for sale as I came along, was an after-thought, that I mightn't be noticed.
I come to protest against your working like this.'
`But I like doing it - it is for my father.'
`Your engagement at the other place is ended?'
`Yes.'
`Where are you going to next? To join your dear husband?'
She could not bear the humiliating reminder.
`O - I don't know!' she said bitterly.`I have no husband!'
`It is quite true - in the sense you mean.But you have a friend, and I have determined that you shall be comfortable in spite of yourself.When you get down to your house you will see what I have sent there for you.'
`O, Alec, I wish you wouldn't give me anything at all! I cannot take it from you! I don't like - it is not right!'
`It is right!' he cried lightly.`I am not going to see a woman whom I feel so tenderly for as I do for you, in trouble without trying to help her.'
`But I am very well off! I am only in trouble about - about - not about living at all!'
She turned, and desperately resumed her digging, tears dripping upon the fork-handle and upon the clods.
`About the children - your brothers and sisters,' he resumed.`I've been thinking of them.'
