The four sang on with the phlegmatic passivity of persons who had long ago settled the question, and there being no mistake about it, felt that further thought was not required. With features strained hard to enunciate the syllables they continued to regard the centre of the flickering fire, the notes of the youngest straying over into the pauses of the rest.
Tess turned from them, and went to the window again. Darkness had now fallen without, but she put her face to the pane as though to peer into the gloom. It was really to hide her tears. If she could only believe what the children were singing; if she were only sure, how different all would now be; how confidently she would leave them to Providence and their future kingdom! But, in default of that, it behoved her to do something; to be their Providence; for to Tess, as to not a few millions of others, there was ghastly satire in the poet’s lines—
Not in utter nakedness
But trailing clouds of glory do we come.
To her and her like, birth itself was an ordeal of degrading personal compulsion, whose gratuitousness nothing in the result seemed to justify, and at best could only palliate.
In the shades of the wet road she soon discerned her mother with tall ’Liza-Lu and Abraham. Mrs Durbeyfield’s pattens clicked up to the door, and Tess opened it.
“I see the tracks of a horse outside the window,” said Joan. “Hev somebody called?”
“No,” said Tess.
The children by the fire looked gravely at her, and one murmured—
“Why, Tess, the gentleman a-horseback!”
“He didn’t call,” said Tess. “He spoke to me in passing.”