"Or I'll take off my best frock and help you wring up?
I thought you had finished long ago."
Her mother bore Tess no ill-will for leaving the housework to her single-handed efforts for so long; indeed, Joan seldom upbraided her thereon at any time, feeling but slightly the lack of Tess's assistance whilst her instinctive plan for relieving herself of her labours lay in postponing them.
To-night, however, she was even in a blither mood than usual.
There was a dreaminess, a pre-occupation, an exaltation, in the maternal look which the girl could not understand.
"Well, I'm glad you've come," her mother said, as soon as the last note had passed out of her.
"I want to go and fetch your father; but what's more'n that, I want to tell 'ee what have happened.
Y'll be fess enough, my poppet, when th'st know!" (Mrs Durbeyfield habitually spoke the dialect; her daughter, who had passed the Sixth Standard in the National School under a London-trained mistress, spoke two languages: the dialect at home, more or less; ordinary English abroad and to persons of quality.)
"Since I've been away?" Tess asked.
"Ay!"
"Had it anything to do with father's making such a mommet of himself in thik carriage this afternoon?
Why did 'er?
I felt inclined to sink into the ground with shame!"
"That wer all a part of the larry!
We've been found to be the greatest gentlefolk in the whole county-reaching all back long before Oliver Grumble's time-to the days of the Pagan Turks-with monuments, and vaults, and crests, and 'scutcheons, and the Lord knows what all.
In Saint Charles's days we was made Knights o' the Royal Oak, our real name being d'Urberville!...
Don't that make your bosom plim?
'Twas on this account that your father rode home in the vlee; not because he'd been drinking, as people supposed."
"I'm glad of that.
Will it do us any good, mother?"
"O yes!
'Tis thoughted that great things may come o't.
No doubt a mampus of volk of our own rank will be down here in their carriages as soon as 'tis known.
Your father learnt it on his way hwome from Shaston, and he has been telling me the whole pedigree of the matter."
"Where is father now?" asked Tess suddenly.
Her mother gave irrelevant information by way of answer:
"He called to see the doctor to-day in Shaston.
It is not consumption at all, it seems.
It is fat round his heart, 'a says.
There, it is like this."
Joan Durbeyfield, as she spoke, curved a sodden thumb and forefinger to the shape of the letter C, and used the other forefinger as a pointer. "'At the present moment,' he says to your father, 'your heart is enclosed all round there, and all round there; this space is still open,' 'a says.
'As soon as it do meet, so,'"-Mrs Durbeyfield closed her fingers into a circle complete-"'off you will go like a shadder, Mr Durbeyfield,' 'a says.
'You mid last ten years; you mid go off in ten months, or ten days.'"
Tess looked alarmed.
Her father possibly to go behind the eternal cloud so soon, notwithstanding this sudden greatness!
"But where IS father?" she asked again.
Her mother put on a deprecating look.
"Now don't you be bursting out angry!
The poor man-he felt so rafted after his uplifting by the pa'son's news-that he went up to Rolliver's half an hour ago.
He do want to get up his strength for his journey to-morrow with that load of beehives, which must be delivered, family or no.
He'll have to start shortly after twelve to-night, as the distance is so long."
"Get up his strength!" said Tess impetuously, the tears welling to her eyes.
"O my God!
Go to a public-house to get up his strength!
And you as well agreed as he, mother!"
Her rebuke and her mood seemed to fill the whole room, and to impart a cowed look to the furniture, and candle, and children playing about, and to her mother's face.
"No," said the latter touchily, "I be not agreed.
I have been waiting for 'ee to bide and keep house while I go fetch him."
"I'll go."
"O no, Tess.