Tess of the dUrbervilles | Page 6

in the dance. "Where are your
partners, my dears?"
"They've not left off work yet," answered one of the boldest. "They'll
be here by and by. Till then, will you be one, sir?"
"Certainly. But what's one among so many!"
"Better than none. 'Tis melancholy work facing and footing it to one of
your own sort, and no clipsing and colling at all. Now, pick and
choose."
"'Ssh--don't be so for'ard!" said a shyer girl.
The young man, thus invited, glanced them over, and attempted some
discrimination; but, as the group were all so new to him, he could not
very well exercise it. He took almost the first that came to hand, which
was not the speaker, as she had expected; nor did it happen to be Tess
Durbeyfield. Pedigree, ancestral skeletons, monumental record, the
d'Urberville lineaments, did not help Tess in her life's battle as yet,
even to the extent of attracting to her a dancing-partner over the heads
of the commonest peasantry. So much for Norman blood unaided by
Victorian lucre.
The name of the eclipsing girl, whatever it was, has not been handed
down; but she was envied by all as the first who enjoyed the luxury of a
masculine partner that evening. Yet such was the force of example that

the village young men, who had not hastened to enter the gate while no
intruder was in the way, now dropped in quickly, and soon the couples
became leavened with rustic youth to a marked extent, till at length the
plainest woman in the club was no longer compelled to foot it on the
masculine side of the figure.
The church clock struck, when suddenly the student said that he must
leave--he had been forgetting himself--he had to join his companions.
As he fell out of the dance his eyes lighted on Tess Durbeyfield, whose
own large orbs wore, to tell the truth, the faintest aspect of reproach
that he had not chosen her. He, too, was sorry then that, owing to her
backwardness, he had not observed her; and with that in his mind he
left the pasture.
On account of his long delay he started in a flying-run down the lane
westward, and had soon passed the hollow and mounted the next rise.
He had not yet overtaken his brothers, but he paused to get breath, and
looked back. He could see the white figures of the girls in the green
enclosure whirling about as they had whirled when he was among them.
They seemed to have quite forgotten him already.
All of them, except, perhaps, one. This white shape stood apart by the
hedge alone. From her position he knew it to be the pretty maiden with
whom he had not danced. Trifling as the matter was, he yet
instinctively felt that she was hurt by his oversight. He wished that he
had asked her; he wished that he had inquired her name. She was so
modest, so expressive, she had looked so soft in her thin white gown
that he felt he had acted stupidly.
However, it could not be helped, and turning, and bending himself to a
rapid walk, he dismissed the subject from his mind.

III
As for Tess Durbeyfield, she did not so easily dislodge the incident
from her consideration. She had no spirit to dance again for a long time,

though she might have had plenty of partners; but ah! they did not
speak so nicely as the strange young man had done. It was not till the
rays of the sun had absorbed the young stranger's retreating figure on
the hill that she shook off her temporary sadness and answered her
would-be partner in the affirmative.
She remained with her comrades till dusk, and participated with a
certain zest in the dancing; though, being heart-whole as yet, she
enjoyed treading a measure purely for its own sake; little divining when
she saw "the soft torments, the bitter sweets, the pleasing pains, and the
agreeable distresses" of those girls who had been wooed and won, what
she herself was capable of in that kind. The struggles and wrangles of
the lads for her hand in a jig were an amusement to her--no more; and
when they became fierce she rebuked them.
She might have stayed even later, but the incident of her father's odd
appearance and manner returned upon the girl's mind to make her
anxious, and wondering what had become of him she dropped away
from the dancers and bent her steps towards the end of the village at
which the parental cottage lay.
While yet many score yards off, other rhythmic sounds than those she
had quitted became audible to her; sounds that she knew well--so well.
They were a regular series of thumpings from the