Tess of the dUrbervilles | Page 5

upon her cheeks spread over her
face and neck. In a moment her eyes grew moist, and her glance
drooped to the ground. Perceiving that they had really pained her they
said no more, and order again prevailed. Tess's pride would not allow
her to turn her head again, to learn what her father's meaning was, if he
had any; and thus she moved on with the whole body to the enclosure
where there was to be dancing on the green. By the time the spot was
reached she has recovered her equanimity, and tapped her neighbour
with her wand and talked as usual.
Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of emotion
untinctured by experience. The dialect was on her tongue to some
extent, despite the village school: the characteristic intonation of that
dialect for this district being the voicing approximately rendered by the
syllable UR, probably as rich an utterance as any to be found in human
speech. The pouted-up deep red mouth to which this syllable was
native had hardly as yet settled into its definite shape, and her lower lip
had a way of thrusting the middle of her top one upward, when they
closed together after a word.
Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still. As she walked along
to-day, for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could
sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling
from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her
mouth now and then.
Yet few knew, and still fewer considered this. A small minority, mainly
strangers, would look long at her in casually passing by, and grow
momentarily fascinated by her freshness, and wonder if they would
ever see her again: but to almost everybody she was a fine and
picturesque country girl, and no more.
Nothing was seen or heard further of Durbeyfield in his triumphal
chariot under the conduct of the ostleress, and the club having entered
the allotted space, dancing began. As there were no men in the
company, the girls danced at first with each other, but when the hour
for the close of labour drew on, the masculine inhabitants of the village,

together with other idlers and pedestrians, gathered round the spot, and
appeared inclined to negotiate for a partner.
Among these on-lookers were three young men of a superior class,
carrying small knapsacks strapped to their shoulders, and stout sticks in
their hands. Their general likeness to each other, and their consecutive
ages, would almost have suggested that they might be, what in fact they
were, brothers. The eldest wore the white tie, high waistcoat, and
thin-brimmed hat of the regulation curate; the second was the normal
undergraduate; the appearance of the third and youngest would hardly
have been sufficient to characterize him; there was an uncribbed,
uncabined aspect in his eyes and attire, implying that he had hardly as
yet found the entrance to his professional groove. That he was a
desultory tentative student of something and everything might only
have been predicted of him.
These three brethren told casual acquaintance that they were spending
their Whitsun holidays in a walking tour through the Vale of
Blackmoor, their course being south-westerly from the town of Shaston
on the north-east.
They leant over the gate by the highway, and inquired as to the
meaning of the dance and the white-frocked maids. The two elder of
the brothers were plainly not intending to linger more than a moment,
but the spectacle of a bevy of girls dancing without male partners
seemed to amuse the third, and make him in no hurry to move on. He
unstrapped his knapsack, put it, with his stick, on the hedge-bank, and
opened the gate.
"What are you going to do, Angel?" asked the eldest.
"I am inclined to go and have a fling with them. Why not all of us--just
for a minute or two--it will not detain us long?"
"No--no; nonsense!" said the first. "Dancing in public with a troop of
country hoydens--suppose we should be seen! Come along, or it will be
dark before we get to Stourcastle, and there's no place we can sleep at
nearer than that; besides, we must get through another chapter of A

Counterblast to Agnosticism before we turn in, now I have taken the
trouble to bring the book."
"All right--I'll overtake you and Cuthbert in five minutes; don't stop; I
give my word that I will, Felix."
The two elder reluctantly left him and walked on, taking their brother's
knapsack to relieve him in following, and the youngest entered the
field.
"This is a thousand pities," he said gallantly, to two or three of the girls
nearest him, as soon as there was a pause