`Now, punish me!' she said, turning up her eyes to him with the hopeless defiance of the sparrow's gaze before its captor twists its neck.`Whip me, crush me; you need not mind those people under the rick! I shall not cry out.Once victim, always victim - that's the law!'
`O no, no, Tess,' he said blandly.`I can make full allowance for this.
Yet you most unjustly forget one thing, that I would have married you if you had not put it out of my power to do so.Did I not ask you flatly to be my wife - hey? Answer me.'
`You did.'
`And you cannot be.But remember one thing!' His voice hardened as his temper got the better of him with the recollection of his sincerity in asking her and her present ingratitude, and he stepped across to her side and held her by the shoulders, so that she shook under his grasp.`Remember, my lady, I was your master once! I will be your master again.If you are any man's wife you are mine!'
The threshers now began to stir below.
`So much for our quarrel,' he said, letting her go.`Now I shall leave you, and shall come again for your answer during the afternoon.You don't know me yet! But I know you.' She had not spoken again, remaining as if stunned.D'Urberville retreated over the sheaves, and descended the ladder, while the workers below rose and stretched their arms, and shook down the beer they had drunk.Then the threshing-machine started afresh; and amid the renewed rustle of the straw Tess resumed her position by the buzzing drum as one in a dream, untying sheaf after sheaf in endless succession.
Chapter 48 In the afternoon the farmer made it known that the rick was to be finished that night, since there was a moon by which they could see to work, and the man with the engine was engaged for another farm on the morrow.Hence the twanging and humming and rustling proceeded with even less intermission than usual.
It was not till `nammet'-time, about three o'clock, that Tess raised her eyes and gave a momentary glance round.She felt but little surprise at seeing that Alec d'Urberville had come back, and was standing under the hedge by the gate.He had seen her lift her eyes, and waved his hand urbanely to her, while he blew her a kiss.It meant that their quarrel was over.Tess looked down again, and carefully abstained from gazing in that direction.
Thus the afternoon dragged on.The wheat-rick shrank lower, and the straw-rick grew higher, and the corn-sacks were carted away.At six o'clock the wheat-rick was about shoulder-high from the ground.But the unthreshed sheaves remaining untouched seemed countless still, notwithstanding the enormous numbers that had been gulped down by the insatiable swallower, fed by the man and Tess, through whose two young hands the greater part of them had passed.And the immense stack of straw where in the morning there had been nothing, appeared as the faeces of the same buzzing red glutton.From the west sky a wrathful shine - all that wild March could afford in the way of sunset - had burst forth after the cloudy day, flooding the tired and sticky faces of the threshers, and dyeing them with a coppery light, as also the flapping garments of the women, which clung to them like dull flames.
A panting ache ran through the rick.The man who fed was weary, and Tess could see that the red nape of his neck was encrusted with dirt and husks.She still stood at her post, her flushed and perspiring face coated with the corn-dust, and her white bonnet embrowned by it.She was the only woman whose place was upon the machine so as to be shaken bodily by its spinning, and the decrease of the stack now separated her from Marian and Izz, and prevented their changing duties with her as they had done.The incessant quivering, in which every fibre of her frame participated, had thrown her into a stupefied reverie in which her arms worked on independently of her consciousness.She hardy knew where she was, and did not hear Izz Huett tell her from below that her hair was tumbling down.
By degrees the freshest among them began to grow cadaverous and saucer-eyed.
Whenever Tess lifted her head she beheld always the great upgrown straw-stack, with the men in shirt-sleeves upon it, against the gray north sky; in front of it the long red elevator like a Jacob's ladder, on which a perpetual stream of threshed straw ascended, a yellow river running up-hill, and spouting out on the top of the rick.
She knew that Alec d'Urberville was still on the scene, observing her from some point or other, though she could not say where.There was an excuse for his remaining, for when the threshed rick drew near its final sheaves a little ratting was always done, and men unconnected with the threshing sometimes dropped in for that performance - sporting characters of all descriptions, gents with terriers and facetious pipes, roughs with sticks and stones.
But there was another hour's work before the layer of live rats at the base of the stack would be reached; and as the evening right in the direction of the Giant's Hill by Abbot's-Cernel dissolved away, the white-faced moon of the season arose from the horizon that lay towards Middleton Abbey and Shottsford on the other side.For the last hour or two Marian had felt uneasy about Tess, whom she could not get near enough to speak to, the other women having kept up their strength by drinking ale, and Tess having done without it through traditionary dread, owing to its results at her home in childhood.But Tess still kept going: if she could not fill her part she would have to leave; and this contingency, which she would have regarded with equanimity and even with relief a month or two earlier, had become a terror since d'Urberville had begun to hover round her.
