第77章

Those words of his seemed to reassure her on further reflection.She was whirled onward through the next couple of critical hours by the mastering tide of her devotion to him, which closed up further meditation.Her one desire, so long resisted, to make herself his, to call him her lord, her own - then, if necessary, to die - had at last lifted her up from her plodding reflective pathway.In dressing, she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness.

The church was a long way off, and they were obliged to drive, particularly as it was winter.A close carriage was ordered from a roadside inn, a vehicle which had been kept there ever since the old days of post-chaise travelling.

It had stout wheel-spokes, and heavy felloes, a great curved bed, immense straps and springs, and a pole like a battering-ram.The postilion was a venerable `boy' of sixty - a martyr to rheumatic gout, the result of excessive exposure in youth, counteracted by strong liquors - who had stood at inn-doors doing nothing for the whole five-and-twenty years that had elapsed since he had no longer been required to ride professionally, as if expecting the old times to come back again.He had a permanent running wound on the outside of his right leg, originated by the constant bruisings of aristocratic carriage-poles during the many years that he had been in regular employ at the King's Arms, Casterbridge.

Inside this cumbrous and creaking structure, and behind this decayed conductor, the partie carrée took their seats - the bride and bridegroom and Mr and Mrs Crick.Angel would have liked one at least of his brothers to be present as groomsman, but their silence after his gentle hint to that effect by letter had signified that they did not care to come.They disapproved of the marriage, and could not be expected to countenance it.Perhaps it was as well that they could not be present.

They were not worldly young fellows, but fraternizing with dairy-folk would have struck unpleasantly upon their biassed niceness, apart from their views of the match.

Upheld by the momentum of the time Tess knew nothing of this; did not see anything; did not know the road they were taking to the church.She knew that Angel was close to her; all the rest was a luminous mist.She was a sort of celestial person, who owed her being to poetry - one of those classical divinities Clare was accustomed to talk to her about when they took their walks together.

The marriage being by licence there were only a dozen or so of people in the church; had there been a thousand they would have produced no more effect upon her.They were at stellar distances from her present world.

In the ecstatic solemnity with which she swore her faith to him the ordinary sensibilities of sex seemed a flippancy.At a pause in the service, while they were kneeling together, she unconsciously inclined herself towards him, so that her shoulder touched his arm; she had been frightened by a passing thought, and the movement had been automatic, to assure herself that he was really there, and to fortify her belief that his fidelity would be proof against all things.

Clare knew that she loved him - every curve of her form showed that - but he did not know at that time the full depth of her devotion, its single-mindedness, its meekness; what long-suffering it guaranteed, what honesty, what endurance, what good faith.

As they came out of church the ringers swung the bells off their rests, and a modest peal of three notes broke forth - that limited amount of expression having been deemed sufficient by the church builders for the joys of such a small parish.Passing by the tower with her husband on the path to the gate she could feel the vibrant air humming round them from the louvred belfry in a circle of sound, and it matched the highly-charged mental atmosphere in which she was living.

This condition of mind, wherein she felt glorified by an irradiation not her own, like the angel whom St John saw in the sun, lasted till the sound of the church bells had died away, and the emotions of the wedding-service had calmed down.Her eyes could dwell upon details more clearly now, and Mr and Mrs Crick having directed their own gig to be sent for them, to leave the carriage to the young couple, she observed the build and character of that conveyance for the first time.Sitting in silence she regarded it long.

`I fancy you seem oppressed, Tessy,' said Clare.

`Yes,' she answered, putting her hand to her brow.`I tremble at many things.It is all so serious, Angel.Among other things I seem to have seen this carriage before, to be very well acquainted with it.It is very odd - I must have seen it in a dream.'

`Oh - you have heard the legend of the d'Urberville Coach - that well-known superstition of this county about your family when they were very popular here; and this lumbering old thing reminds you of it.'

`I have never heard of it to my knowledge,' said she.`What is the legend - may I know it?'

`Well - I would rather not tell it in detail just now.A certain d'Urberville of the sixteenth or seventeenth century committed a dreadful crime in his family coach; and since that time members of the family see or hear the old coach whenever - But I'll tell you another day - it is rather gloomy.

Evidently some dim knowledge of it has been brought back to your mind by the sight of this venerable caravan.'

`I don't remember hearing it before,' she murmured.`Is it when we are going to die, Angel, that members of my family see it, or is it when we have committed a crime?'

`Now, Tess!'

He silenced her by a kiss.

By the time they reached home she was contrite and spiritless.She was Mrs Angel Clare, indeed, but had she any moral right to the name? Was she not more truly Mrs Alexander d'Urberville? Could intensity of love justify what might be considered in upright souls as culpable reticence? She knew not what was expected of women in such cases; and she had no counsellor.