when tess came to breakfast the next morning it gave me a real turn to look at her. somehow, at a single jump, she seemed to have changed from a girl to a woman—and to an old[198] woman at that. suddenly she had got to be all withered like, and the airs that she used to give herself and all the pretty ways of her were gone. she just moped in a chair in a corner—she who'd never been quiet for five minutes together, any more than a bird—with a far-away look in her beautiful eyes, and the glint of tears in them. sorrow had got into the very bones of her. "dost think i really am come of such foul folk that i'm not fit for honest company?" she asked my mother—and if she asked that question once that morning she asked it a dozen times.
in a way, of course, she had known what she was all her life long. "my sea-baby" was my mother's pet name for her at the first; and by that pet-name, when most tender with her, my mother called her till the last. how she had come to us, how i had found her where the waves had left her and had carried her home in my little tired arms, she had been told over and over again. sometimes she used to make up stories about herself in her light-fancied way: telling us that she was a great lady of spain, and that some fine morning the great spanish lord her father would come to southwold by some chance or other, and would know[199] her by the chain and the locket, and would take her home with him and marry her to a duke—or to a prince, even—in her own land. we'd see that she'd be pretending to herself while she told them to us that these stories were true, and i think that she did half believe in them. but it was not real believing that she had in them; it was the sort of believing that you have in things in dreams. her love was given to my mother and to my father—and to me, too, though not in the way that i wanted it—and we were the true kinsfolk of her heart. on our side, we all so loved her, and made her feel so truly that she was our very own, that the thought of her being a nobody's child never had a chance to get into her mind. and her own fancies about herself—always that her own dream people were great people in the dream land where they lived—kept her from seeing the other chance of the matter: that they as well might be mean people, who would put shame on her should ever she come to know who they were. into her head that cruel thought never got until grace gryce put it there; and put there with it the crueller thought that her being a nobody's child was what made john stand off from her, he thinking her not fit to be his wife.
[200]
tess was fearing, maybe, that even if john had not had that feeling about her he was like to have it after grace had set him in the way of it. and maybe she was thinking, too, that if she had been hurt for the sake of him, and so deserved loving pity from him, it was grace who for the sake of him had done the hurting—and that it was grace who had won. our girls are best pleased with the lover who fights to a finish some other man in love with them and well thrashes him. tess may have fancied that john would take it that way; and so end by settling that grace, having the most fire and fight in her, was the most to his mind. but what really came of it all with john, as far as i can make out, was that his getting them fairly set the one against the other cleared his thick wits up and brought him to a choice.
and so, being in every way sorrowful, tess was like a dead girl that day; and my heart was just breaking for her. when dinner time came she roused up a bit and helped my mother, as she always did—though my mother wanted her to keep resting—and tried in a pitiful sort of way to talk a little and to pretend that she was not in bitter pain; but those pretty feet of hers, so light always, dragged after her in her[201] walking, and she was all wizened-looking, and there were black marks under her beautiful sorrowing eyes. my mother helped to make talk with her, though my mother was wiping her own tears away when she got the chance; but as for me, i was tongue-tied by the hurt and the anger in me and could not say a word. what i was thinking was, how glad i'd be to wring grace gryce's neck for her if only she was a man!
after dinner i went out to a bench in front of our house, but a bit away from it, and sat there trying to comfort myself with a pipe—and not finding much even in a pipe to comfort me—until the sun, all yellow, began to drop down toward the gun hill into a bad looking yellow sky. all the while i had the tail of my eye bearing on our door, and at last i saw tess come out of it. she took a quick look at the back of me, sitting quiet there; and then, i not turning toward her, off she walked along the edge of the cliff to the northward. at first i didn't know what to do—thinking that if she wanted to be alone i ought to leave her to her loneliness—and i sat on and smoked another pipe before i could make up my mind. but the longer i sat there the stronger my drawing was to go to her. what was hurting her most, as[202] i well enough knew, was the thought of having neither kith nor kin for herself, along with the dread that even if she found her people they might only be a shame to her—and that was a hurt that having a husband would cure for her, seeing that she would get a new and a good rating in the world when she got her husband's name. and so, at last, i started after her to tell her all that was in the heart of me; and thinking more, and this is the truth, of what i could do to comfort her by taking the sting out of grace gryce's words than of how in that same way i could win my own happiness.
i walked on so far—across the dip in the land where the old river was, and up on the cliffs again—that i began to think she had turned about inland and so had gone that way home. but at last i came up with her, on the very top of covehithe ness.
she was sitting at the cliff-edge, bent forward a little with her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands; and as i came close to her i saw that she was crying in that quiet sort of way that people cry in when they have touched despair. i walked so softly on the grass that she did not hear my footsteps; but she was not put out when she looked up and saw me stand[203]ing over her—by which i think, and am the happier for thinking it, that she had not gone there of set purpose to meet with john.
"sit thee down here, george. i'm glad thou'rt come," she said, and she reached me her hand.
when i was on the grass beside her—she still keeping her hand in mine, as if the touch of something that loved her was a comfort to her—she had nothing to say for a bit, but just leaned her head against my shoulder and cried softly there.
the tide was out and a long stretch of the barnard bank lay bared below us, with here and there the black bones of some dead ship lying buried in them sticking up from the sands. slicing deep in the bank was the wreck gat, with the last of the ebb running out through it from the covehithe channel and the undercut sides of it falling down into the water and melting away. at the edge of it was the sunken ship that had made it: the ship that had brought tess to us from her birth-land beyond the seas. as i have said, no more of the wreck showed than her broken stern-post: a bit of black timber, all jagged with twisted iron bolts and weed-grown and barnacled, upstanding at one side of[204] the channel from the water and not high out of it even at low tide. when the tide was in, and any sort of a sea was running, you stood a good chance of finding just where it was by having your boat stove on it: for then it did not show at all, except now and then in the hollow of the waves.
tess was looking down on it, her head still resting on my shoulder, and after a while she said: "if only we could dig that ship up, george, we might find what would tell that i'm not come of foul folk, after all"—and then she began to cry again in the same silent sort of way. i couldn't get an answer for her—what she said hurt me so, and she crying on my shoulder, and i feeling the beating of her heart.
"it was good of thee, george," she went on again, presently, "to save the baby life of me; but it's a true truth thou'dst have done me more of a kindness hadst thou just thrown me back into the sea. i'd be glad to be there now, george. down there under the water it would make no difference what sort of folk i come of. and i'd be resting there as i can't rest here—for down there my pain would be gone."
my throat was so choked up that i had hard work to get my words out of it, and when they[205] did come they sounded queer. "tess! tess!" i said. "thou'lt kill me dead talking that way. as if the like of thee could come of foul folk! a lord duke would be the least to be fit father to thee—and proud of thee he well might be! but what does it matter, tess, what thy folk were who owned thee at the beginning? they gave thee to the sea's keeping—and the sea gave thee to me. by right of finding, thou'rt mine. it was i who found thee, down on the shingle there, and from the first minute that ever i laid eyes on thee i loved thee—and the only change in me has been that always i've loved thee more and more. whether thy people were foul folk or fair folk is all one to me. it's thyself that i'm loving—and with every bit of the love that is in my heart. let me make thee the wife of me, tess—and then thou'lt have no need to fret about who thy forbears were for thou'lt have no more to do with them, being made a part of me and mine."
i talked at such a rate, when i did get set a-going, that my own words ran away with me; and i got the feeling that they ran away with tess too. but when i had ended, and she lifted up her head from my shoulder and looked straight into the eyes of me, i knew by what[206] her eyes had in them—before ever she said a word back to me—that what i wanted most in the whole world for myself i could not have.
it seemed to me an hour before she spoke, she all the time looking straight into my eyes and her own eyes full of tears. at last she did speak. "george," said she, "if i could be wife to thee, as thou'dst have me be, i'd go down on my knees and thank god! but it can't be, george. it can't be! i've set my heart."
there was no doubting what she said. in the sound of her voice there was something that seemed as much as her words to settle the matter for good and all. whenever i am at a funeral and hear the reading of the burial service it brings back to me the sound of her voice that day. only there is a promise of hope in the burial service—and that there was not for me in tess's words.
"it's john that's between us?" i asked.
"yes," she said, speaking slow, "it's john." she was quiet for a minute and then went on again, still speaking slow: "i don't understand it myself, george. thou'rt a better-hearted man than he is, and i truly think i love him less than i do thee. but—but i love him in another way."
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"damn him!" said i.
that got out before i could stop it, but when it had got out i wasn't sorry. it told what i felt then—and it tells what i feel now. john's taking her from me was stealing, and nothing less. we were together when i found her, he and i; but i first saw her and i first touched her—and he gave me his share in her, though he had no real share in her, when he knew what my finding was. and so his taking her from me was stealing: and that is god's truth!
tess said nothing back to me. she only looked at me sorrowful for a minute, and then looked down again at the bit of wreck on the sands. by the sigh she gave i knew pretty well what was in her mind.
i'd had my answer, and that was the end of it. "i'll be going now, tess," i said; and i got up and she got up with me. i was not feeling steady on my legs, and like enough i had a queer look on me. as for tess, she was near as white as a dead woman, though some of her whiteness may have come from the yellow sunshine on her out of the western sky. up there on top of the ness we still had the sun with us, though he was almost gone among the foul weather yellow clouds.
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"thou'lt try to forgive me, george," she said, speaking low, and her mouth sort of twitching.
"i love thee, tess," i said; "and where there's love there can be no talk of forgiveness. but john has the hate of me, and i tell thee fairly i'll hurt him if i can!"
with that i left her—there on covehithe ness, over the very spot where the sea brought her to me—and went walking back along the cliff-edge: and not seeing anything clearly because i was thinking about john, and what i'd like to do to him, and there was a sort of red blur before my eyes.
after a while i turned and looked back. my eyes had cleared a bit, but what i saw made them red again. tess was not alone on the ness. john was with her. the two stood out strong in the last of the yellow sunshine against a cloud-bank on the far edge of the sky. i suppose that tess being hurt that way for him brought john to his bearings—making him love her the more for sorrow's sake, and for anger's sake making him ready to throw grace gryce over. like enough he had been watching for his chance to get to her, waiting till i was gone. anyway, there he was—and i knew what he was saying to her as well as if i'd heard the words. it is no won[209]der that the blood got into my eyes again as i started back along the path. but i did not go far. somehow i managed to pull myself together and turn again. what i had to settle with john heath could be settled best when he and i were alone.
