“Ah—that’s owing to an accident—a misunderstanding; and we won’t argue it,” Tess answered, with tearfulness in her words. “Perhaps there’s a good deal to be said for him! He did not go away, like some husbands, without telling me; and I can always find out where he is.”
After this they continued for some long time in a reverie, as they went on seizing the ears of corn, drawing out the straw, gathering it under their arms, and cutting off the ears with their bill-hooks, nothing sounding in the barn but the swish of the straw and the crunch of the hook. Then Tess suddenly flagged, and sank down upon the heap of wheat-ears at her feet.
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to stand it!” cried Marian. “It wants harder flesh than yours for this work.”
Just then the farmer entered. “Oh, that’s how you get on when I am away,” he said to her.
“But it is my own loss,” she pleaded. “Not yours.”
“I want it finished,” he said doggedly, as he crossed the barn and went out at the other door.
“Don’t ’ee mind him, there’s a dear,” said Marian. “I’ve worked here before. Now you go and lie down there, and Izz and I will make up your number.”
“I don’t like to let you do that. I’m taller than you, too.”
However, she was so overcome that she consented to lie down awhile, and reclined on a heap of pull-tails—the refuse after the straight straw had been drawn—thrown up at the further side of the barn. Her succumbing had been as largely owning to agitation at the re-opening the subject of her separation from her husband as to the hard work. She lay in a state of percipience without volition, and the rustle of the straw and the cutting of the ears by the others had the weight of bodily touches.
She could hear from her corner, in addition to these noises, the murmur of their voices. She felt certain that they were continuing the subject already broached, but their voices were so low that she could not catch the words. At last Tess grew more and more anxious to know what they were saying, and, persuading herself that she felt better, she got up and resumed work.