VI

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 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 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.

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

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

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 standing 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 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 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 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."

"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.

"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 wonder 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.