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Tess of the d'Urbervilles
A Pure Woman
Faithfully Presented
By Thomas Hardy
Transcribed by Steve Menyhert (phred sit.sps.mot.com)
Proofread by Meredith Ricker <m_ricker@unhh.unh.edu> and
and John Hamm <John_Hamm@Mindlink.bc.ca>
Contents
Phase the First: The Maiden, I-XI
Phase the Second: Maiden No More, XII-XV
Phase the Third: The Rally, XVI-XXIV
Phase the Fourth: The Consequence, XXV-XXXIV
Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays, XXXV-XLIV
Phase the Sixth: The Convert, XLV-LII
Phase the Seventh: Fulfillment, LIII-LIX
Phase the First: The Maiden
I
On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged
man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of
Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or
Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were
rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which
inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line.
He occasionally gave a smart nod, as if in confirmation
of some opinion, though he was not thinking of anything
in particular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon his
arm, the nap of his hat was ruffled, a patch being
quite worn away at its brim where his thumb came in
taking it off. Presently he was met by an elderly
parson astride on a gray mare, who, as he rode, hummed
a wandering tune.
"Good night t'ee," said the man with the basket.
"Good night, Sir John," said the parson.
The pedestrian, after another pace or two, halted,
and turned round.
"Now, sir, begging your pardon; we met last market-day
on this road about this time, and I said "Good night,"
and you made reply 'GOOD NIGHT, SIR JOHN,' as now."
"I did," said the parson.
"And once before that--near a month ago."
"I may have."
"Then what might your meaning be in calling me
'Sir John' these different times, when I be plain Jack
Durbeyfield, the haggler?"
The parson rode a step or two nearer.
"It was only my whim," he said; and, after a moment's
hesitation: "It was on account of a discovery I made
some little time ago, whilst I was hunting up pedigrees
for the new county history. I am Parson Tringham, the
antiquary, of Stagfoot Lane. Don't you really know,
Durbeyfield, that you are the lineal representative of
the ancient and knightly family of the d'Urbervilles,
who derive their descent from Sir Pagan d'Urberville,
that renowned knight who came from Normandy with
William the Conqueror, as appears by Battle Abbey
Roll?"
"Never heard it before, sir!"
"Well it's true. Throw up your chin a moment, so that
I may catch the profile of your face better. Yes,
that's the d'Urberville nose and chin--a little
debased. Your ancestor was one of the twelve knights
who assisted the Lord of Estremavilla in Normandy in
his conquest of Glamorganshire. Branches of your
family held manors over all this part of England; their
names appear in the Pipe Rolls in the time of King
Stephen. In the reign of King John one of them was
rich enough to give a manor to the Knights
Hospitallers; and in Edward the Second's time your
forefather Brian was summoned to Westminster to attend
the great Council there. You declined a little in
Oliver Cromwell's time, but to no serious extent, and
in Charles the Second's reign you were made Knights of
the Royal Oak for your loyalty. Aye, there have been
generations of Sir Johns among you, and if knighthood
were hereditary, like a baronetcy, as it practically
was in old times, when men were knighted from father to
son, you would be Sir John now."
"Ye don't say so!"
"In short," concluded the parson, decisively smacking
his leg with his switch, "there's hardly such another
family in England."
"Daze my eyes, and isn't there?" said Durbeyfield.
"And here have I been knocking about, year after year,
from pillar to post, as if I was no more than the
commonest feller in the parish....And how long hev this
news about me been knowed, Pa'son Tringham?"
The clergyman explained that, as far as he was aware,
it had quite died out of knowledge, and could hardly be
said to be known at all. His own investigations had
begun on a day in the preceding spring when, having
been engaged in tracing the vicissitudes of the
d'Urberville family, he had observed Durbeyfield's name
on his waggon, and had thereupon been led to make
inquiries about his father and grandfather till he had
no doubt on the subject.
"At first I resolved not to disturb you with such a
useless piece of information," said he. "However, our
impulses are too strong for our judgement sometimes.
I thought you might perhaps know something of it all the
while."
"Well, I have heard once or twice, 'tis true, that my
family had seen better days afore they came to
Blackmoor. But I took no notice o't, thinking it to
mean that we had once kept two horses where we now keep
only one. I've got a wold silver spoon, and a wold
graven seal at home, too; but, Lord, what's a spoon and
seal? ... And to think that I and these noble
d'Urbervilles were one flesh all the time. 'Twas said
that my gr't-granfer had secrets, and didn't care to
talk of where he came from.... And where do we raise
our smoke, now, parson, if I may make so bold; I mean,
where do we d'Urbervilles live?"
"You don't live anywhere. You are extinct--as a county
family."
"That's bad."
"Yes--what the mendacious family chronicles call
extinct in the male line--that is, gone down--gone
under."
"Then where do we lie?"
"At Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill: rows and rows of you in
your vaults, with your effigies under Purbeck-marble
canopies."
"And where be our family mansions and estates?"
"You haven't any."
"Oh? No lands neither?"
"None; though you once had 'em in abundance, as I said,
for you family consisted of numerous branches. In this
county there was a seat of yours at Kingsbere, and
another at Sherton, and another in Millpond, and
another at Lullstead, and another at Wellbridge."
"And shall we ever come into our own again?"
"Ah--that I can't tell!"
"And what had I better do about it, sir?" asked
Durbeyfield, after a pause.
"Oh--nothing, nothing; except chasten yourself with the
thought of 'how are the mighty fallen.' It is a fact
of some interest to the local historian and
genealogist, nothing more. There are several families
among the cottagers of this county of almost equal
lustre. Good night."
"But you'll turn back and have a quart of beer wi' me
on the strength o't, Pa'son Tringham? There's a very
pretty brew in tap at The Pure Drop--though, to be
sure, not so good as at Rolliver's."
"No, thank you--not this evening, Durbeyfield. You've
had enough already." Concluding thus the parson rode
on his way, with doubts as to his discretion in
retailing this curious bit of lore.
When he was gone Durbeyfield walked a few steps in a
profound reverie, and then sat down upon the grassy
bank by the roadside, depositing his basket before him.
In a few minutes a youth appeared in the distance,
walking in the same direction as that which had been
pursued by Durbeyfield. The latter, on seeing him,
held up his hand, and the lad quickened his pace and
came near.
"Boy, take up that basket! I want 'ee to go on an
errand for me."
The lath-like stripling frowned. "Who be you, then,
John Durbeyfield, to order me about and call me 'boy?'
You know my name as well as I know yours!"
"Do you, do you? That's the secret--that's the secret!
Now obey my orders, and take the message I'm going to
charge 'ee wi'.... Well, Fred, I don't mind telling you
that the secret is that I'm one of a noble race--it has
been just found out by me this present afternoon, P.M."
And as he made the announcement, Durbeyfield, declining
from his sitting position, luxuriously stretched
himself out upon the bank among the daisies.
The lad stood before Durbeyfield, and contemplated his
length from crown to toe.
"Sir John d'Urberville--that's who I am," continued the
prostrate man. "That is if knights were
baronets--which they be. "Tis recorded in history all
about me. Dost know of such a place, lad, as
Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill?"
"Ees, I've been there to Greenhill Fair."
"Well, under the church of that city there lie--"
"'Tisn't a city, the place I mean; leastwise 'twaddn'
when I was there--'twas a little one-eyed, blinking
sort o'place."
"Never you mind the place, boy, that's not the question
before us. Under the church of that there parish lie my
ancestors--hundreds of 'em--in coats of mail and
jewels, in gr't lead coffins weighing tons and tons.
There's not a man in the county o' South-Wessex that's
got grander and nobler skillentons in his family than
I."
"Oh?"
"Now take up that basket, and goo on to Marlott, and
when you've come to The Pure Drop Inn, tell 'em to send
a horse and carriage to me immed'ately, to carry me
hwome. And in the bottom o' the carriage they be to
put a noggin o' rum in a small bottle, and chalk it up
to my account. And when you've done that goo on to my
house with the basket, and tell my wife to put away
that washing, because she needn't finish it, and wait
till I come hwome, as I've news to tell her."
As the lad stood in a dubious attitude, Durbeyfield put
his hand in his pocket, and produced a shilling, one of
the chronically few that he possessed.
"Here's for your labour, lad."
This made a difference in the young man's estimate of
the position.
"Yes, Sir John. Thank 'ee. Anything else I can do for
'ee, Sir John?"
"Tell 'em at hwome that I should like for
supper,--well, lamb's fry if they can get it; and if
they can't, black-pot; and if they can't get that, well
chitterlings will do."
"Yes, Sir John."
The boy took up the basket, and as he set out the notes
of a brass band were heard from the direction of the
village.
"What's that?" said Durbeyfield. "Not on account o' I?"
"'Tis the women's club-walking, Sir John. Why, your
da'ter is one o' the members."
"To be sure--I'd quite forgot it in my thoughts of
greater things! Well, vamp on to Marlott, will ye, and
order that carriage, and maybe I'll drive round and
inspect the club."
The lad departed, and Durbeyfield lay waiting on the
grass and daisies in the evening sun. Not a soul passed
that way for a long while, and the faint notes of the
band were the only human sounds audible within the rim
of blue hills.
II
The village of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern
undulations of the beautiful Vale of Blakemore or
Blackmoor aforesaid, and engirdled and secluded region,
for the most part untrodden as yet by tourist or
landscape-painter, though within a four hours' journey
from London.
It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made by viewing
it from the summits of the hills that surround
it--except perhaps during the droughts of summer. An
unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather is apt
to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous,
and miry ways.
This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which
the fields are never brown and the springs never dry,
is bounded on the south by the bold chalk ridge that
embraces the prominences of Hambledon Hill, Bulbarrow,
Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, and Bubb Down.
The traveller from the coast, who, after plodding
northward for a score of miles over calcareous downs
and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the verge of one of
these escarpments, is surprised and delighted to
behold, extended like a map beneath him, a country
differing absolutely from that which he has passed
through. Behind him the hills are open, the sun blazes
down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed
character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the
hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere colourless.
Here, in the valley, the world seems to be constructed
upon a smaller and more delicate scale; the fields are
mere paddocks, so reduced that from this height their
hedgerows appear a network of dark green threads
overspreading the paler green of the grass. The
atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with
azure that what artists call the middle distance
partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is
of the deepest ultramarine. Arable lands are few and
limited; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a
broad rich mass of grass and trees, mantling minor
hills and dales within the major. Such is the Vale of
Blackmoor.
The district is of historic, no less than of
topographical interest. The Vale was known in former
times as the Forest of White Hart, from a curious
legend of King Henry III's reign, in which the killing
by a certain Thomas de la Lynd of a beautiful white
hart which the king had run down and spared, was made
the occasion of a heavy fine. In those days, and till
comparatively recent times, the country was densely
wooded. Even now, traces of its earlier condition are
to be found in the old oak copses and irregular belts
of timber that yet survive upon its slopes, and the
hollow-trunked trees that shade so many of its
pastures.
The forests have departed, but some old customs of
their shades remain. Many, however, linger only in a
metamorphosed or disguised form. The May-Day dance,
for instance, was to be discerned on the afternoon
under notice, in the guise of the club revel, or
"club-walking," as it was there called.
It was an interesting event to the younger inhabitants
of Marlott, though its real interest was not observed
by the participators in the ceremony. Its singularity
lay less in the retention of a custom of walking in
procession and dancing on each anniversary than in the
members being solely women. In men's clubs such
celebrations were, though expiring, less uncommon; but
either the natural shyness of the softer sex, or a
sarcastic attitude on the part of male relatives, had
denuded such women's clubs as remained (if any other
did) or this their glory and consummation. The club of
Marlott alone lived to uphold the local Cerealia.
It had walked for hundreds of years, if not as
benefit-club, as votive sisterhood of some sort; and it
walked still.
The banded ones were all dressed in white gowns--a gay
survival from Old Style days, when cheerfulness and
May-time were synonyms--days before the habit of
taking long views had reduced emotions to a monotonous
average. Their first exhibition of themselves was in a
processional march of two and two round the parish.
Ideal and real clashed slightly as the sun lit up their
figures against the green hedges and creeper-laced
house-fronts; for, though the whole troop wore white
garments, no two whites were alike among them. Some
approached pure blanching; some had a bluish pallor;
some worn by the older characters (which had possibly
lain by folded for many a year) inclined to a
cadaverous tint, and to a Georgian style.
In addition to the distinction of a white frock, every
woman and girl carried in her right hand a peeled
willow wand, and in her left a bunch of white flowers.
The peeling of the former, and the selection of the
latter, had been an operation of personal care.
There were a few middle-aged and even elderly women in
the train, their silver-wiry hair and wrinkled faces,
scourged by time and trouble, having almost a
grotesque, certainly a pathetic, appearance in such a
jaunty situation. In a true view, perhaps, there was
more to be gathered and told of each anxious and
experienced one, to whom the years were drawing nigh
when she should say, "I have no pleasure in them," than
of her juvenile comrades. But let the elder be passed
over here for those under whose bodices the life
throbbed quick and warm.
The young girls formed, indeed, the majority of the
band,and their heads of luxuriant hair reflected in the
sunshine every tone of gold, and black, and brown.
Some had beautiful eyes, others a beautiful nose,
others a beautiful mouth and figure: few, if any, had
all. A difficulty of arranging their lips in this
crude exposure to public scrutiny, an inability to
balance their heads, and to dissociate
self-consciousness from their features, was apparent in
them, and showed that they were genuine country girls,
unaccustomed to many eyes.
And as each and all of them were warmed without by the
sun, so each had a private little sun for her soul to
bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, at
least some remote and distant hope which, though
perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes
will. They they were all cheerful, and many of them
merry.
They came round by The Pure Drop Inn, and were turning
out of the high road to pass through a wicket-gate into
the meadows, when one of the women said--
"The Load-a-Lord! Why, Tess Durbeyfield, if there
isn't thy father riding hwome in a carriage!"
A young member of the band turned her head at the
exclamation. She was a fine and handsome girl--not
handsomer than some others, possibly--but her mobile
peony mouth and large innocent eyes added eloquence to
colour and shape. She wore a red ribbon in her hair,
and was the only one of the white company who could
boast of such a pronounced adornment. As she looked
round Durbeyfield was seen moving along the road in a
chaise belonging to the The Pure Drop, driven by a
frizzle-headed brawny damsel with her gown-sleeves
rolled above her elbows. This was the cheerful servant
of that establishment, who, in her part of factotum,
turned groom and ostler at times. Durbeyfield, leaning
back, and with his eyes closed luxuriously, was waving
his hand above his head, and singing in a slow
recitative--
"I've-got-a-gr't-family-vault-at-Kingsbere--and
knighted-forefathers-in-lead-coffins-there!"
The clubbists tittered, except the girl called Tess--
in whom a slow heat seemed to rise at the sense that her
father was making himself foolish in their eyes.
"He's tired, that's all," she said hastily, "and he has
got a lift home, because our own horse has to rest
today."
"Bless thy simplicity, Tess," said her companions.
"He's got his market-nitch. Haw-haw!"
"Look here; I won't walk another inch with you, if you
say any jokes about him!" Tess cried, and the colour
upon her cheeks spread over her face and neck. In a
moment her eyes grew moist, and her glance drooped to
the ground. Perceiving that they had really pained her
they said no more, and order again prevailed. Tess's
pride would not allow her to turn her head again, to
learn what her father's meaning was, if he had any; and
thus she moved on with the whole body to the enclosure
where there was to be dancing on the green. By the
time the spot was reached she has recovered her
equanimity, and tapped her neighbour with her wand and
talked as usual.
Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere
vessel of emotion untinctured by experience. The
dialect was on her tongue to some extent, despite the
village school: the characteristic intonation of that
dialect for this district being the voicing
approximately rendered by the syllable UR, probably as
rich an utterance as any to be found in human speech.
The pouted-up deep red mouth to which this syllable was
native had hardly as yet settled into its definite
shape, and her lower lip had a way of thrusting the
middle of her top one upward, when they closed together
after a word.
Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still.
As she walked along today, for all her bouncing handsome
womanliness, you could sometimes see her twelfth year
in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes;
and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her
mouth now and then.
Yet few knew, and still fewer considered this. A small
minority, mainly strangers, would look long at her in
casually passing by, and grow momentarily fascinated by
her freshness, and wonder if they would ever see her
again: but to almost everybody she was a fine and
picturesque country girl, and no more.
Nothing was seen or heard further of Durbeyfield in his
triumphal chariot under the conduct of the ostleress,
and the club having entered the allotted space, dancing
began. As there were no men in the company the girls
danced at first with each other, but when the hour for
the close of labour drew on, the masculine inhabitants
of the village, together with other idlers and
pedestrians, gathered round the spot, and appeared
inclined to negotiate for a partner.
Among these on-lookers were three young men of a
superior class, carrying small knapsacks strapped to
their shoulders, and stout sticks in their hands.
Their general likeness to each other, and their
consecutive ages, would almost have suggested that they
might be, what in fact they were, brothers. The eldest
wore the white tie, high waistcoat, and thin-brimmed
hat of the regulation curate; the second was the normal
undergraduate; the appearance of the third and youngest
would hardly have been sufficient to characterize him;
there was an uncribbed, uncabined aspect in his eyes
and attire, implying that he had hardly as yet found
the entrance to his professional groove. That he was a
desultory tentative student of something and everything
might only have been predicted of him.
These three brethren told casual acquaintance that they
were spending their Whitsun holidays in a walking tour
through the Vale of Blackmoor, their course being
southwesterly from the town of Shaston on the
north-east.
dh
They leant over the gate by the highway, and inquired
as to the meaning of the dance and the white-frocked
maids. The two elder of the brothers were plainly not
intending to linger more than a moment, but the
spectacle of a bevy of girls dancing without male
partners seemed to amuse the third, and make him in no
hurry to move on. He unstrapped his knapsack, put it,
with his stick, on the hedge-bank, and opened the gate.
"What are you going to do, Angel?" asked the eldest.
"I am inclined to go and have a fling with them. Why
not all of us--just for a minute or two--it will not
detain us long?"
"No--no; nonsense!" said the first. "Dancing in public
with a troop of country hoydens--suppose we should be
seen! Come along, or it will be dark before we get to
Stourcastle, and there's no place we can sleep at
nearer than that; besides, we must get through another
chapter of A COUNTERBLAST TO AGNOSTICISM before we turn
in, now I have taken the trouble to bring the book."
"All right--I'll overtake you and Cuthbert in five
minutes; don't stop; I give my word that I will,
Felix."
The two elder reluctantly left him and walked on,
taking their brother's knapsack to relieve him in
following, and the youngest entered the field.
"This is a thousand pities," he said gallantly, to two
or three of the girls nearest him, as soon as there was
a pause in the dance. "Where are your partners, my
dears?"
"They've not left off work yet," answered one of the
boldest. "They'll be here by and by. Till then, will
you be one, sir?"
"Certainly. But what's one among so many!"
"Better than none. 'Tis melancholy work facing and
footing it to one of your own sort, and no clipsing and
colling at all. Now, pick and choose."
"'Ssh--don't be so for'ard!" said a shyer girl.
The young man, thus invited, clanged them over, and
attempted some discrimination; but, as the group were
all so new to him, he could not very well exercise it.
He took almost the first that came to hand, which was
not the speaker, as she had expected; nor did it happen
to be Tess Durbeyfield. Pedigree, ancestral skeletons,
monumental record, the d'Urberville lineaments, did not
help Tess in her life's battle as yet, even to the
extent of attracting to her a dancing-partner over the
heads of the commonest peasantry. So much for Norman
blood unaided by Victorian lucre.
The name of the eclipsing girl, whatever it was, has
not been handed down; but she was envied by all as the
first who enjoyed the luxury of a masculine partner
that evening. Yet such was the force of example that
the village young men, who had not hastened to enter
the gate while no intruder was in the way, now dropped
in quickly, and soon the couples became leavened with
rustic youth to a marked extent, till at length the
plainest woman in the club was no longer compelled to
foot it on the masculine side of the figure.
The church clock struck, when suddenly the student said
that he must leave--he had been forgetting himself--
he had to join his companions. As he fell out of the
dance his eyes lighted on Tess Durbeyfield, whose own
large orbs wore, to tell the truth, the faintest aspect
of reproach that he had not chosen her. He, too, was
sorry then that, owing to her backwardness, he had not
observed her; and with that in his mind he left the
pasture.
On account of his long delay he started in a flying-run
down the lane westward, and had soon passed the hollow
and mounted the next rise. He had not yet overtaken
his brothers, but he paused to get breath, and looked
back. He could see the white figures of the girls in
the green enclosure whirling about as they had whirled
when he was among them. They seemed to have quite
forgotten him already.
All of them, except, perhaps, one. This white shape
stood apart by the hedge alone. From her position he
knew it to be the pretty maiden with whom he had not
danced. Trifling as the matter was, he yet
instinctively felt that she was hurt by his oversight.
He wished that he had asked her; he wished that he had
inquired her name. She was so modest, so expressive,
she had looked so soft in her thin white gown that he
felt he had acted stupidly.
However, it could not be helped, and turning, and
bending himself to a rapid walk, he dismissed the
subject from his mind.
III
As for Tess Durbeyfield, she did not so easily dislodge
the incident from her consideration. She had no spirit
to dance again for a long time, though she might have
had plenty of partners; but ah! they did not speak so
nicely as the strange young man had done. It was not
till the rays of the sun had absorbed the young
stranger's retreating figure on the hill that she shook
off her temporary sadness and answered her would-be
partner in the affirmative.
She remained with her comrades till dusk, and
participated with a certain zest in the dancing;
though, being heart-whole as yet, she enjoyed treading
a measure purely for its own sake; little divining when
she saw "the soft torments, the bitter sweets, the
pleasing pains, and the agreeable distresses" of those
girls who had been wooed and won, what she herself was
capable of in that kind. The struggles and wrangles of
the lads for her hand in a jig were an amusement to
her--no more; and when they became fierce she rebuked them.
She might have stayed even later, but the incident of
her father's odd appearance and manner returned upon
the girl's mind to make her anxious, and wondering what
had become of him she dropped away from the dancers and
bent her steps towards the end of the village at which
the parental cottage lay.
While yet many score yards off, other rhythmic sounds
than those she had quitted became audible to her;
sounds that she knew well--so well. They were a
regular series of thumpings from the interior of the
house, occasioned by the violent rocking of a cradle
upon a stone floor, to which movement a feminine voice
kept time by singing, in a vigorous gallopade, the
favourite ditty of "The Spotted Cow"--
I saw her lie do'--own in yon'--der green gro'--ove;
Come, love!' and I'll tell' you where!'
The cradle-rocking and the song would cease
simultaneously for a moment, and an explanation at
highest vocal pitch would take the place of the melody.
"God bless thy diment eyes! And thy waxen cheeks! And
thy cherry mouth! And thy Cubit's thighs! And every
bit o' thy blessed body!"
After this invocation the rocking and the singing would
recommence, and the "Spotted Cow" proceed as before.
So matters stood when Tess opened the door, and paused
upon the mat within it surveying the scene.
The interior, in spite of the melody, struck upon the
girl's senses with an unspeakable dreariness. From the
holiday gaieties of the field--the white gowns, the
nosegays, the willow-wands, the whirling movements on
the green, the flash of gentle sentiment towards the
stranger--to the yellow melancholy of this one-candled
spectacle, what a step! Besides the jar of contrast
there came to her a chill self-reproach that she had
not returned sooner, to help her mother in these
domesticities, instead of indulging herself
out-of-doors.
There stood her mother amid the group of children, as
Tess had left her, hanging over the Monday washing-tub,
which had now, as always, lingered on to the end of the
week. Out of that tub had come the day before--Tess
felt it with a dreadful sting of remorse--the very
white frock upon her back which she had so carelessly
greened about the skirt on the damping grass--which had
been wrung up and ironed by her mother's own hands.
As usual, Mrs Durbeyfield was balanced on one foot
beside the tub, the other being engaged in the
aforesaid business of rocking her youngest child.
The cradle-rockers had done hard duty for so many years,
under the weight of so many children, on that flagstone
floor, that they were worn nearly flat, in consequence
of which a huge jerk accompanied each swing of the cot,
flinging the baby from side to side like a weaver's
shuttle, as Mrs Durbeyfield, excited by her song, trod
the rocker with all the spring that was left in her
after a long day's seething in the suds.
Nick-knock, nick-knock, went the cradle; the
candle-flame stretched itself tall, and began jigging
up and down; the water dribbled from the matron's
elbows, and the song galloped on to the end of the
verse, Mrs Durbeyfield regarding her daughter the
while. Even now, when burdened with a young family,
Joan Durbeyfield was a passionate lover of tune. No
ditty floated into Blackmoor Vale from the outer world
but Tess's mother caught up its notation in a week.
There still faintly beamed from the woman's features
something of the freshness, and even the prettiness,
of her youth; rendering it probable that the personal
charms which Tess could boast of were in main part her
mother's gift, and therefore unknightly, unhistorical.
"I'll rock the cradle for 'ee, mother," said the
daughter gently. "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. Tonight, 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 today 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 tomorrow with that load of
beehives, which must be delivered, family or no. He'll
have to start shortly after twelve tonight, 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. You see, it would be no use."
Tess did not expostulate. She knew what her mother's
objection meant. Mrs Durbeyfield's jacket and bonnet
were already hanging slily upon a chair by her side, in
readiness for this contemplated jaunt, the reason for
which the matron deplored more than its necessity.
"And take the COMPLEAT FORTUNE-TELLER to the outhouse,"
Joan continued, rapidly wiping her hands, and donning
the garments.
The COMPLEAT FORTUNE-TELLER was an old thick volume,
which lay on a table at her elbow, so worn by pocketing
that the margins had reached the edge of the type.
Tess took it up, and her mother started.
This going to hunt up her shiftless husband at the inn
was one of Mrs Durbeyfield's still extant enjoyments in
the muck and muddle of rearing children. To discover
him at Rolliver's, to sit there for an hour or two by
his side and dismiss all thought and care of the
children during the interval, made her happy. A sort
of halo, an occidental glow, came over life then.
Troubles and other realities took on themselves a
meta-physical impalpability, sinking to mere mental
phenomena for serene contemplation, and no longer stood
as pressing concretions which chafed body and soul.
The youngsters, not immediately within sight, seemed
rather bright and desirable appurtenances than
otherwise; the incidents of daily life were not without
humorousness and jollity in their aspect there. She
felt a little as she had used to feel when she sat by
her now wedded husband in the same spot during his
wooing, shutting her eyes to his defects of character,
and regarding him only in his ideal presentation as
lover.
Tess, being left alone with the younger children, went
first to the outhouse with the fortune-telling book,
and stuffed it into the thatch. A curious fetichistic
fear of this grimy volume on the part of her mother
prevented her ever allowing it to stay in the house all
night, and hither it was brought back whenever it had
been consulted. Between the mother, with her
fast-perishing lumber of superstitions, folk-lore,
dialect, and orally transmitted ballads, and the
daughter, with her trained National teachings and
Standard knowledge under an infinitely Revised Code,
there was a gap of two hundred years as ordinarily
understood. When they were together the Jacobean and
the Victorian ages were juxtaposed.
Returning along the garden path Tess mused on what the
mother could have wished to ascertain from the book on
this particular day. She guessed the recent ancestral
discovery to bear upon it, but did not divine that it
solely concerned herself. Dismissing this, however,
she busied herself with sprinkling the linen dried
during the daytime, in company with her nine-year-old
brother Abraham, and her sister Eliza-Louisa of twelve
and a half, call "'Liza-Lu," the youngest ones being
put to bed. There was an interval of four years and
more between Tess and the next of the family, the two
who had filled the gap having died in their infancy,
and this lent her a deputy-maternal attitude when she
was alone with her juniors. Next in juvenility to
Abraham came two more girls, Hope and Modesty; then a
boy of three, and then the baby, who had just completed
his first year.
All these young souls were passengers in the
Durbeyfield ship--entirely dependent on the judgement
of the two Durbeyfield adults for their pleasures,
their necessities, their health, even their existence.
If the heads of the Durbeyfield household chose to sail
into difficulty, disaster, starvation, disease,
degradation, death, thither were these half-dozen
little captives under hatches compelled to sail with
them--six helpless creatures, who had never been asked
if they wished for life on any terms, much less if they
wished for it on such hard conditions as were involved
in being of the shiftless house of Durbeyfield. Some
people would like to know whence the poet whose
philosophy is in these days deemed as profound and
trustworthy as his song is breezy and pure, gets his
authority for speaking of "Nature's holy plan."
It grew later, and neither father nor mother
reappeared. Tess looked out of the door, and took a
mental journey through Marlott. The village was
shutting its eyes. Candles and lamps were being put out
everywhere: she could inwardly behold the extinguisher
and the extended hand.
Her mother's fetching simply meant one more to fetch.
Tess began to perceive that a man in indifferent
health, who proposed to start on a journey before one
in the morning, ought not to be at an inn at this late
hour celebrating his ancient blood.
"Abraham," she said to her little brother, "do you put
on your hat--you bain't afraid?--and go up to
Rolliver's, and see what has gone wi' father and
mother."
The boy jumped promptly from his seat, and opened the
door, and the night swallowed him up. Half an hour
passed yet again; neither man, woman, nor child
returned. Abraham, like his parents, seemed to have
been limed and caught by the ensnaring inn.
"I must go myself," she said.
'Liza-Lu then went to bed, and Tess, locking them all
in, started on her way up the dark and crooked lane or
street not made for hasty progress; a street laid out
before inches of land had value, and when one-handed
clocks sufficiently subdivided the day.
IV
Rolliver's inn, the single alehouse at this end of the
long and broken village, could only boast of an
off-licence; hence, as nobody could legally drink on
the premises, the amount of overt accommodation for
consumers was strictly limited to a little board about
six inches wide and two yards long, fixed to the garden
palings by pieces of wire, so as to form a ledge. On
this board thirsty strangers deposited their cups as
they stood in the road and drank, and threw the dregs
on the dusty ground to the pattern of Polynesia, and
wished they could have a restful seat inside.
Thus the strangers. But there were also local
customers who felt the same wish; and where there's a
will there's a way.
In a large bedroom upstairs, the window of which was
thickly curtained with a great woollen shawl lately
discarded by the landlady Mrs Rolliver, were gathered
on this evening nearly a dozen persons, all seeking
beatitude; all old inhabitants of the nearer end of
Marlott, and frequenters of this retreat. Not only did
the distance to the The Pure Drop, the fully-licensed
tavern at the further part of the dispersed village,
render its accommodation practically unavailable for
dwellers at this end; but the far more serious
question, the quality of the liquor, confirmed the
prevalent opinion that it was better to drink with
Rolliver in a corner of the housetop than with the
other landlord in a wide house.
A gaunt four-post bedstead which stood in the room
afforded sitting-space for several persons gathered
round three of its sides; a couple more men had
elevated themselves on a chest of drawers; another
rested on the oak-carved "cwoffer"; two on the
wash-stand; another on the stool; and thus all were,
somehow, seated at their ease. The stage of mental
comfort to which they had arrived at this hour was one
wherein their souls expanded beyond their skins, and
spread their personalities warmly through the room.
In this process the chamber and its furniture grew more
and more dignified and luxurious; the shawl hanging at
the window took upon itself the richness of tapestry;
the brass handles of the chest of drawers were as
golden knockers; and the carved bedposts seemed to have
some kinship with the magnificent pillars of Solomon's
temple.
Mrs Durbeyfield, having quickly walked hitherward after
parting from Tess, opened the front door, crossed the
downstairs room, which was in deep gloom, and then
unfastened the stair-door like one whose fingers knew
the tricks of the latches well. Her ascent of the
crooked staircase was a slower process, and her face,
as it rose into the light above the last stair,
encountered the gaze of all the party assembled in the
bedroom.
"----Being a few private friends I've asked in to keep
up club-walking at my own expense," the landlady
exclaimed at the sound of footsteps, as glibly as a
child repeating the Catechism, while she peered over
the stairs. "Oh, 'tis you, Mrs Durbeyfield--Lard--how
you frightened me!--I thought it might be some gaffer
sent by Gover'ment."
Mrs Durbeyfield was welcomed with glances and nods by
the remainder of the conclave, and turned to where her
husband sat. He was humming absently to himself, in a
low tone: "I be as good as some folks here and there!
I've got a great family vault at Kingsbere-
sub-Greenhill, and finer skillentons than any man in
Wessex!"
"I've something to tell 'ee that's come into my head
about that--a grand projick!" whispered his cheerful
wife. "Here, John, don't 'ee see me?" She nudged him,
while he, looking through her as through a window-pane,
went on with his recitative.
"Hush! Don't 'ee sing so loud, my good man," said the
landlady; "in case any member of the Gover'ment should
be passing, and take away my licends."
"He's told 'ee what's happened to us, I suppose?" asked
Mrs Durbeyfield.
"Yes--in a way. D'ye think there's any money hanging by
it?"
"Ah, that's the secret," said Joan Durbeyfield sagely.
"However, 'tis well to be kin to a coach, even if you
don't ride in 'en." She dropped her public voice, and
continued in a low tone to her husband: "I've been
thinking since you brought the news that there's a
great rich lady out by Trantridge, on the edge o' The
Chase, of the name of d'Urberville."
"Hey--what's that?" said Sir John.
She repeated the information. "That lady must be our
relation," she said. "And my projick is to send Tess to
claim kin."
"There IS a lady of the name, now you mention it," said
Durbeyfield. "Pa'son Tringham didn't think of that.
But she's nothing beside we--a junior branch of us, no
doubt, hailing long since King Norman's day."
While this question was being discussed neither of the
pair noticed, in their preoccupation, that little
Abraham had crept into the room, and was awaiting an
opportunity of asking them to return.
"She is rich, and she'd be sure to take notice o' the
maid," continued Mrs Durbeyfield; "and 'twill be a very
good thing. I don't see why two branches o' one family
should not be on visiting terms."
"Yes; and we'll all claim kin!" said Abraham brightly
from under the bedstead. "And we'll all go and see her
when Tess has gone to live with her; and we'll ride in
her coach and wear black clothes!"
"How do you come here, child? What nonsense be ye
talking! Go away, and play on the stairs till father
and mother be ready! ... Well, Tess ought to go to this
other member of our family. She'd be sure to win the
lady--Tess would; and likely enough 'twould lead to
some noble gentleman marrying her. In short, I know it."
"How?"
"I tried her fate in the FORTUNE-TELLER, and it brought
out that very thing! ... You should ha' seen how pretty
she looked today; her skin is as sumple as a
duchess's."
"What says the maid herself to going?"
"I've not asked her. She don't know there is any such
lady-relation yet. But it would certainly put her in
the way of a grand marriage, and she won't say nay to
going."
"Tess is queer."
"But she's tractable at bottom. Leave her to me."
Though this conversation had been private, sufficient
of its import reached the understandings of those
around to suggest to them that the Durbeyfields had
weightier concerns to talk of now than common folks
had, and that Tess, their pretty eldest daughter, had
fine prospects in store.
"Tess is a fine figure o' fun, as I said to myself
today when I zeed her vamping round parish with the
rest," observed one of the elderly boozers in an
undertone. "But Joan Durbeyfield must mind that she
don't get green malt in floor." It was a local phrase
which had a peculiar meaning, and there was no reply.
The conversation became inclusive, and presently other
footsteps were heard crossing the room below.
"----Being a few private friends asked in tonight to
keep up club-walking at my own expense." The landlady
had rapidly re-used the formula she kept on hand for
intruders before she recognized that the newcomer was
Tess.
Even to her mother's gaze the girl's young features
looked sadly out of place amid the alcoholic vapours
which floated here as no unsuitable medium for wrinkled
middle-age; and hardly was a reproachful flash from
Tess's dark eyes needed to make her father and mother
rise from their seats, hastily finish their ale, and
descend the stairs behind her, Mrs Rolliver's caution
following their footsteps.
"No noise, please, if ye'll be so good, my dears; or I
mid lose my licends, and be summons'd, and I don't know
what all! 'Night t'ye!"
They went home together, Tess holding one arm of her
father, and Mrs Durbeyfield the other. He had, in
truth, drunk very little--not a fourth of the quantity
which a systematic tippler could carry to church on a
Sunday afternoon without a hitch in his eastings of
genuflections; but the weakness of Sir John's
constitution made mountains of his petty sins in this
kind. On reaching the fresh air he was sufficiently
unsteady to incline the row of three at one moment as
if they were marching to London, and at another as if
they were marching to Bath--which produced a comical
effect, frequent enough in families on nocturnal
homegoings; and, like most comical effects, not quite
so comic after all. The two women valiantly disguised
these forced excursions and countermarches as well as
they could from Durbeyfield their cause, and from
Abraham, and from themselves; and so they approached by
degrees their own door, the head of the family bursting
suddenly into his former refrain as he drew near, as if
to fortify his soul at sight of the smallness of his
present residence--
"I've got a fam--ily vault at Kingsbere!"
"Hush--don't be so silly, Jacky," said his wife.
"Yours is not the only family that was of 'count in
wold days. Look at the Anktells, and Horseys, and the
Tringhams themselves--gone to seed a'most as much as
you--though you was bigger folks then they, that's
true. Thank God, I was never of no family, and have
nothing to be ashamed of in that way!"
"Don't you be so sure o' that. From you nater 'tis my
belief you've disgraced yourselves more than any o' us,
and was kings and queens outright at one time."
Tess turned the subject by saying what was far more
prominent in her own mind at the moment than thoughts
of her ancestry--"I am afraid father won't be able to
take the journey with the beehives tomorrow so early."
"I? I shall be all right in an hour or two," said
Durbeyfield.
It was eleven o'clock before the family were all in
bed, and two o'clock next morning was the latest hour
for starting with the beehives if they were to be
delivered to the retailers in Casterbridge before the
Saturday market began, the way thither lying by bad
roads over a distance of between twenty and thirty
miles, and the horse and waggon being of the slowest.
At half-past one Mrs Durbeyfield came into the large
bedroom where Tess and all her little brothers and
sisters slept.
"The poor man can't go," she said to her eldest
daughter, whose great eyes had opened the moment her
mother's hand touched the door.
Tess sat up in bed, lost in a vague interspace between
a dream and this information.
"But somebody must go," she replied. "It is late for
the hives already. Swarming will soon be over for the
year; and it we put off taking 'em till next week's
market the call for 'em will be past, and they'll be
thrown on our hands."
Mrs Durbeyfield looked unequal to the emergency. "Some
young feller, perhaps, would go? One of them who were
so much after dancing with 'ee yesterday," she
presently suggested.
"O no--I wouldn't have it for the world!" declared Tess
proudly. "And letting everybody know the reason--such a
thing to be ashamed of! I think I could go if Abraham
could go with me to kip me company."
Her mother at length agreed to this arrangement.
Little Abraham was aroused from his deep sleep in a
corner of the same apartment, and made to put on his
clothes while still mentally in the other world.
Meanwhile Tess had hastily dressed herself; and the
twain, lighting a lantern, went out to the stable.
The rickety little waggon was already laden, and the girl
led out the horse Prince, only a degree less rickety
than the vehicle.
The poor creature looked wonderingly round at the
night, at the lantern, at their two figures, as if he
could not believe that at that hour, when every living
thing was intended to be in shelter and at rest, he was
called upon to go out and labour. They put a stock of
candle-ends into the lantern, hung the latter to the
off-side of the load, and directed the horse onward,
walking at his shoulder at first during the uphill
parts of the way, in order not to overload an animal of
so little vigour. To cheer themselves as well as they
could, they made an artificial morning with the
lantern, some bread and butter, and their own
conversation, the real morning being far from come.
Abraham, as he more fully awoke (for he had moved in a
sort of trance so far), began to talk of the strange
shapes assumed by the various dark objects against the
sky; of this tree that looked like a raging tiger
springing from a lair; of that which resembled a
giant's head.
When they had passed the little town of Stourcastle,
dumbly somnolent under its thick brown thatch, they
reached higher ground. Still higher, on their left, the
elevation called Bulbarrow or Bealbarrow, well-nigh the
highest in South Wessex, swelled into the sky,
engirdled by its earthen trenches. From hereabout the
long road was fairly level for some distance onward.
They mounted in front of the waggon, and Abraham grew
reflective.
"Tess!" he said in a preparatory tone, after a silence.
"Yes, Abraham."
"Bain't you glad that we've become gentlefolk?"
"Not particular glad."
"But you be glad that you 'm going to marry a
gentleman?"
"What?" said Tess, lifting her face.
"That our great relation will help 'ee to marry a
gentleman."
"I? Our great relation? We have no such relation.
What has put that into your head?"
"I heard 'em talking about it up at Rolliver's when I
went to find father. There's a rich lady of our family
out at Trantridge, and mother said that if you claimed
kin with the lady, she'd put 'ee in the way of marrying
a gentleman."
His sister became abruptly still, and lapsed into a
pondering silence. Abraham talked on, rather for the
pleasure of utterance than for audition, so that his
sister's abstraction was of no account. He leant back
against the hives, and with upturned face made
observations on the stars, whose cold pulses were
beating amid the black hollows above, in serene
dissociation from these two wisps of human life. He
asked how far away those twinklers were, and whether
God was on the other side of them. But ever and anon
his childish prattle recurred to what impressed his
imagination even more deeply than the wonders of
creation. If Tess were made rich by marrying a
gentleman, would she have money enough to buy a
spyglass so large that it would draw the stars as near
to her as Nettlecombe-Tout?
The renewed subject, which seemed to have impregnated
the whole family, filled Tess with impatience.
"Never mind that now!" she exclaimed.
"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"
"Yes."
"All like ours?"
"I don't know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to
be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them
splendid and sound--a few blighted."
"Which do we live on--a splendid one or a blighted
one?"
"A blighted one."
"'Tis very unlucky that we didn't pitch on a sound one,
when there were so many more of 'em!"
"Yes."
"Is it like that REALLY, Tess?" said Abraham, turning
to her much impressed, on reconsideration of this rare
information. "How would it have been if we had pitched
on a sound one?"
"Well, father wouldn't have coughed and creeped about
as he does, and wouldn't have got too tipsy to go on
this journey; and mother wouldn't have been always
washing, and never getting finished."
"And you would have been a rich lady ready-made, and
not have had to be made rich by marrying a gentleman?"
"O Aby, don't--don't talk of that any more!"
Left to his reflections Abraham soon grew drowsy. Tess
was not skilful in the management of a horse, but she
thought that she could take upon herself the entire
conduct of the load for the present, and allow Abraham
to go to sleep if he wished to do so. She made him a
sort of nest in front of the hives, in such a manner
that he could not fall, and, taking the reins into her
own hands, jogged on as before.
Prince required but slight attention, lacking energy
for superfluous movements of any sort. With no longer
a companion to distract her, Tess fell more deeply into
reverie than ever, her back leaning against the hives.
The mute procession past her shoulders of trees and
hedges became attached to fantastic scenes outside
reality, and the occasional heave of the wind became
the sigh of some immense sad soul, conterminous with
the universe in space, and with history in time.
Then, examining the mesh of events in her own life, she
seemed to see the vanity of her father's pride; the
gentlemanly suitor awaiting herself in her mother's
fancy; to see him as a grimacing personage, laughing at
her poverty, and her shrouded knightly ancestry.
Everything grew more and more extravagant, and she no
longer knew how time passed. A sudden jerk shook her in
her seat, and Tess awoke from the sleep into which she,
too, had fallen.
They were a long way further on than when she had lost
consciousness, and the waggon had stopped. A hollow
groan, unlike anything she had ever heard in her life,
came from the front, followed by a shout of "Hoi
there!"
The lantern hanging at her waggon had gone out, but
another was shining in her face--much brighter than her
own had been. Something terrible had happened. The
harness was entangled with an object which blocked the way.
In consternation Tess jumped down, and discovered the
dreadful truth. The groan has proceeded from her
father's poor horse Prince. The morning mail-cart, with
its two noiseless wheels, speeding along these lanes
like an arrow, as it always did, had driven into her
slow and unlighted equipage. The pointed shaft of the
cart had entered the breast of the unhappy Prince like
a sword, and from the wound his life's blood was
spouting in a stream, and falling with a hiss into the
road.
In her despair Tess sprang forward and put her hand
upon the hole, with the only result that she became
splashed from face to skirt with the crimson drops.
Then she stood helplessly looking on. Prince also stood
firm and motionless as long as he could; till he
suddenly sank down in a heap.
By this time the mail-cart man had joined her, and
began dragging and unharnessing the hot form of Prince.
But he was already dead, and, seeing that nothing more
could be done immediately, the mail-cart man returned
to his own animal, which was uninjured.
"You was on the wrong side," he said. "I am bound to
go on with the mail-bags, so that the best thing for
you to do is bide here with your load. I'll send
somebody to help you as soon as I can. It is getting
daylight, and you have nothing to fear."
He mounted and sped on his way; while Tess stood and
waited. The atmosphere turned pale, the birds shook
themselves in the hedges, arose, and twittered; the
lane showed all its white features, and Tess showed
hers, still whiter. The huge pool of blood in front of
her was already assuming the iridescence of
coagulation; and when the sun rose a hundred prismatic
hues were reflected from it. Prince lay alongside still
and stark; his eyes half open, the hole in his chest
looking scarcely large enough to have let out all that
had animated him.
"'Tis all my doing--all mine!" the girl cried, gazing
at the spectacle. "No excuse for me--none. What will
mother and father live on now? Aby, Aby!" She shook
the child, who had slept soundly through the whole
disaster. "We can't go on with our load--Prince is
killed!"
When Abraham realized all, the furrows of fifty years
were extemporized on his young face.
"Why, I danced and laughed only yesterday!" she went on
to herself. "To think that I was such a fool!"
"'Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound
one, isn't it, Tess?" murmured Abraham through his
tears.
In silence they waited through an interval which seemed
endless. At length a sound, and an approaching object,
proved to them that the driver of the mail-car had been
as good as his word. A farmer's man from near
Stourcastle came up, leading a strong cob. He was
harnessed to the waggon of beehives in the place of
Prince, and the load taken on towards Casterbridge.
The evening of the same day saw the empty waggon reach
again the spot of the accident. Prince had lain there
in the ditch since the morning; but the place of the
blood-pool was still visible in the middle of the road,
though scratched and scraped over by passing vehicles.
All that was left of Prince was now hoisted into the
waggon he had formerly hauled, and with his hoofs in
the air, and his shoes shining in the setting sunlight,
he retracted the eight or nine miles to Marlott.
Tess had gone back earlier. How to break the news was
more than she could think. It was a relief to her
tongue to find from the faces of her parents that they
already knew of their loss, though this did not lessen
the self-reproach which she continued to heap upon
herself for her negligence.
But the very shiftlessness of the household rendered
the misfortune a less terrifying one to them than it
would have been to a thriving family, though in the
present case it meant ruin, and in the other it would
only have meant inconvenience. In the Durbeyfield
countenances there was nothing of the red wrath that
would have burnt upon the girl from parents more
ambitious for her welfare. Nobody blamed Tess as she
blamed herself.
When it was discovered that the knacker and tanner
would give only a very few shillings for Prince's
carcase because of his decrepitude, Durbeyfield rose to
the occasion.
"No," said he stoically, "I won't sell his old body.
When we d'Urbervilles was knights in the land, we
didn't sell our chargers for cat's meat. Let 'em keep
their shillings. He've served me well in his lifetime,
and I won't part from him now."
He worked harder the next day in digging a grave for
Prince in the garden than he had worked for months to
grow a crop for his family. When the hole was ready,
Durbeyfield and his wife tied a rope round the horse
and dragged him up the path towards it, the children
following in funeral train. Abraham and 'Liza-Lu
sobbed, Hope and Modest discharged their griefs in loud
blares which echoed from the walls; and when Prince was
tumbled in they gathered round the grave. The
bread-winner had been taken away from them; what would
they do?
"Is he gone to heaven?" asked Abraham, between the
sobs.
Then Durbeyfield began to shovel in the earth, and the
children cried anew. All except Tess. Her face was
dry and pale, as though she regarded herself in the
light of a murderess.
V
The haggling business, which had mainly depended on the
horse, became disorganized forthwith. Distress, if not
penury, loomed in the distance. Durbeyfield was what
was locally called a slack-twisted fellow; he had good
strength to work at times; but the times could not be
relied on to coincide with the hours of requirement;
and, having been unaccustomed to the regular toil of
the day-labourer, he was not particularly persistent
when they did so coincide.
Tess, meanwhile, as the one who had dragged her parents
into this quagmire, was silently wondering what she
could do to help them out of it; and then her mother
broached her scheme.
"We must take the ups wi' the downs, Tess," said she;
"and never could your high blood have been found out at
a more called-for moment. You must try your friends.
Do ye know that there is a very rich Mrs d'Urberville
living on the outskirts o' The Chase, who must be our
relation? You must go to her and claim kin, and ask
for some help in our trouble."
"I shouldn't care to do that," says Tess. "If there is
such a lady, 'twould be enough for us if she were
friendly--not to expect her to give us help."
"You could win her round to do anything, my dear.
Besides, perhaps there's more in it than you know of.
I've heard what I've heard, good-now."
The oppressive sense of the harm she had done led Tess
to be more deferential than she might otherwise have
been to the maternal wish; but she could not understand
why her mother should find such satisfaction in
contemplating an enterprise of, to her, such doubtful
profit. Her mother might have made inquiries, and have
discovered that this Mrs d'Urberville was a lady of
unequalled virtues and charity. But Tess's pride made
the part of poor relation one of particular distaste to
her.
"I'd rather try to get work," she murmured.
"Durbeyfield, you can settle it," said his wife,
turning to where he sat in the background. "If you say
she ought to go, she will go."
"I don't like my children going and making themselves
beholden to strange kin," murmured he. "I'm the head
of the noblest branch o' the family, and I ought to
live up to it."
His reasons for staying away were worse to Tess than
her own objections to going. "Well, as I killed the
horse, mother," she said mournfully, "I suppose I ought
to do something. I don't mind going and seeing her, but
you must leave it to me about asking for help. And
don't go thinking about her making a match for me--it
is silly." "Very well said, Tess!" observed her father
sententiously.
"Who said I had such a thought?" asked Joan.
"I fancy it is in your mind, mother. But I'll go."
Rising early next day she walked to the hill-town
called Shaston, and there took advantage of a van which
twice in the week ran from Shaston eastward to
Chaseborough, passing near Trantridge, the parish in
which the vague and mysterious Mrs d'Urberville had her
residence.
Tess Durbeyfield's route on this memorable morning lay
amid the north-eastern undulations of the Vale in which
she had been born, and in which her life had unfolded.
The Vale of Blackmoor was to her the world, and its
inhabitants the races thereof. From the gates and
stiles of Marlott she had looked down its length in the
wondering days of infancy, and what had been mystery to
her then was not much less than mystery to her now.
She had seen daily from her chamber-window towers,
villages, faint white mansions; above all the town of
Shaston standing majestically on its height; its
windows shining like lamps in the evening sun. She had
hardly ever visited the place, only a small tract even
of the Vale and its environs being known to her by
close inspection. Much less had she been far outside
the valley. Every contour of the surrounding hills was
as personal to her as that of her relatives' faces; but
for what lay beyond her judgment was dependent on the
teaching of the village school, where she had held a
leading place at the time of her leaving, a year or two
before this date.
In those early days she had been much loved by others
of her own sex and age, and had used to be seen about
the village as one of three--all nearly of the same
year--walking home from school side by side; Tess the
middle one--in a pink print pinafore, of a finely
reticulated pattern, worn over a stuff frock that had
lost its original colour for a nondescript
tertiary--marching on upon long stalky legs, in tight
stockings which had little ladder-like holes at the
knees, torn by kneeling in the roads and banks in
search of vegetable and mineral treasures; her then
earth-coloured hair handing like pot-hooks; the arms of
the two outside girls resting round the waist of Tess;
her arms on the shoulders of the two supporters.
As Tess grew older, and began to see how matters stood,
she felt quite a Malthusian towards her mother for
thoughtlessly giving her so many little sisters and
brothers, when it was such a trouble to nurse and
provide for them. Her mother's intelligence was that
of a happy child: Joan Durbeyfield was simply an
additional one, and that not the eldest, to her own
long family of waiters on Providence. However, Tess
became humanely beneficent towards the small ones, and
to help them as much as possible she used, as soon as
she left school, to lend a hand at haymaking or
harvesting on neighbouring farms; or, by preference,
at milking or butter-making processes, which she had
learnt when her father had owned cows; and being
deft-fingered it was a kind of work in which she
excelled.
Every day seemed to throw upon her young shoulders more
of thefamily burdens, and that Tess should be the
representative of the Durbeyfields at the d'Urberville
mansion came as a thing of course. In this instance it
must be admitted that the Durbeyfields were putting
their fairest side outward.
She alighted from the van at Trantridge Cross, and
ascended on foot a hill in the direction of the
district known as The Chase, on the borders of which,
as she had been informed, Mrs d'Urberville's seat, The
Slopes, would be found. It was not a manorial home in
the ordinary sense, with fields, and pastures, and a
grumbling farmer, out of whom the owner had to squeeze
an income for himself and his family by hook or by
crook. It was more, far more; a country-house built
for enjoyment pure and simple, with not an acre of
troublesome land attached to it beyond what was
required for residential purposes, and for a little
fancy farm kept in hand by the owner, and tended by a
bailiff.
The crimson brick lodge came first in sight, up to its
eaves in dense evergreens. Tess thought this was the
mansion itself till, passing through the side wicket
with some trepidation, and onward to a point at which
the drive took a turn, the house proper stood in full
view. It was of recent erection--indeed almost
new--and of the same rich red colour that formed such a
contrast with the evergreens of the lodge. Far behind
the corner of the house--which rose like a geranium
bloom against the subdued colours around--stretched
the soft azure landscape of The Chase--a truly
venerable tract of forest land, one of the few
remaining woodlands in England of undoubted primaeval
date, wherein Druidical mistletoe was still found on
aged oaks, and where enormous yew-trees, not planted by
the hand of man grew as they had grown when they were
pollarded for bows. All this sylvan antiquity,
however, though visible from The Slopes, was outside
the immediate boundaries of the estate.
Everything on this snug property was bright, thriving,
and well kept; acres of glass-houses stretched down the
inclines to the copses at their feet. Everything
looked like money--like the last coin issued from the
Mint. The stables, partly screened by Austrian pines
and evergreen oaks, and fitted with every late
appliance, were as dignified as Chapels-of-Ease. On
the extensive lawn stood an ornamental tent, its door
being towards her.
Simple Tess Durbeyfield stood at gaze, in a
half-alarmed attitude, on the edge of the gravel sweep.
Her feet had brought her onward to this point before
she had quite realized where she was; and now all was
contrary to her expectation.
"I thought we were an old family; but this is all new!"
she said, in her artlessness. She wished that she had
not fallen in so readily with her mother's plans for
"claiming kin," and had endeavoured to gain assistance
nearer home.
The d'Urbervilles--or Stoke-d'Urbervilles, as they at
first called themselves--who owned all this, were a
somewhat unusual family to find in such an
old-fashioned part of the country. Parson Tringham had
spoken truly when he said that our shambling John
Durbeyfield was the only really lineal representative
of the old d'Urbervillefamily existing in the county,
or near it; he might have added, what he knew very
well, that the Stoke-d'Urbervilles were no more
d'Urbervilles of the true tree then he was himself.
Yet it must be admitted that this family formed a very
good stock whereon to regraft a name which sadly wanted
such renovation.
When old Mr Simon Stoke, latterly deceased, had made
his fortune as an honest merchant (some said
money-lender) in the North, he decided to settle as a
county man in the South of England, out of hail of his
business district; and in doing this he felt the
necessity of recommencing with a name that would not
too readily identify him with the smart tradesman of
the past, and that would be less commonplace than the
original bald stark words. Conning for an hour in the
British Museum the pages of works devoted to extinct,
half-extinct, obscured, and ruined families
appertaining to the quarter of England in which he
proposed to settle, he considered that D'URBERVILLE
looked and sounded as well as any of them: and
d'Urberville accordingly was annexed to his own name
for himself and his heirs eternally. Yet he was not an
extravagant-minded man in this, and in constructing his
family tree on the new basis was duly reasonable in
framing his inter-marriages and aristocratic links,
never inserting a single title above a rank of strict
moderation.
Of this work of imagination poor Tess and her parents
were naturally in ignorance--much to their
discomfiture; indeed, the very possibility of such
annexations was unknown to them; who supposed that,
though to be well-favoured might be the gift of
fortune, a family name came by nature.
Tess still stood hesitating like a bather about to make
his plunge, hardly knowing whether to retreat or to
persevere, when a figure came forth from the dark
triangular door of the tent. It was that of a tall
young man, smoking.
He had an almost swarthy complexion, with full lips,
badly moulded, though red and smooth, above which was a
well-groomed black moustache with curled points, though
his age could not be more than three-or
four-and-twenty. Despite the touches of barbarism in
his contours, there was a singular force in the
gentleman's face, and in his bold rolling eye.
"Well, my Beauty, what can I do for you?" said he,
coming forward. And perceiving that she stood quite
confounded: "Never mind me. I am Mr d'Urberville.
Have you come to see me or my mother?"
This embodiment of a d'Urberville and a namesake
differed even more from what Tess had expected than the
house and grounds had differed. She had dreamed of an
aged and dignified face, the sublimation of all the
d'Urberville lineaments, furrowed with incarnate
memories representing in hieroglyphic the centuries of
her family's and England's history. But she screwed
herself up to the work in hand, since she could not get
out of it, and answered--
"I came to see your mother, sir."
"I am afraid you cannot see her--she is an invalid,"
replied thepresent representative of the spurious
house; for this was Mr Alec, the only son of the lately
deceased gentleman. "Cannot I answer your purpose?
What is the business you wish to see her about?"
"It isn't business--it is--I can hardly say what!"
"Pleasure?"
"Oh no. Why, sir, if I tell you, it will seem---"
Tess's sense of a certain ludicrousness in her errand
was now so strong that, notwithstanding her awe of him,
and her general discomfort at being here, her rosy lips
curved towards a smile, much to the attraction of the
swarthy Alexander.
"It is so very foolish," she stammered; "I fear can't
tell you!"
"Never mind; I like foolish things. Try again, my
dear," said he kindly.
"Mother asked me to come," Tess continued; "and,
indeed, I was in the mind to do so myself likewise.
But I did not think it would be like this. I came,
sir, to tell you that we are of the same family as you."
"Ho! Poor relations?"
"Yes."
"Stokes?"
"No; d'Urbervilles."
"Ay, ay; I mean d'Urbervilles."
"Our names are worn away to Durbeyfield; but we have
several proofs that we are d'Urbervilles. Antiquarians
hold we are,--and--and we have an old seal, marked with
a ramping lion on a shield, and a castle over him. And
we have a very old silver spoon, round in the bowl like
a little ladle, and marked with the same castle. But
it is so worn that mother uses it to stir the
pea-soup."
"A castle argent is certainly my crest," said he
blandly. "And my arms a lion rampant."
"And so mother said we ought to make ourselves beknown
to you--as we've lost our horse by a bad accident, and
are the oldest branch o' the family."
"Very kind of your mother, I'm sure. And I, for one,
don't regret her step." Alec looked at Tess as he
spoke, in a way that made her blush a little. "And so,
my pretty girl, you've come on a friendly visit to us,
as relations?"
"I suppose I have," faltered Tess, looking
uncomfortable again.
"Well--there's no harm in it. Where do you live?
What are you?"
She gave him brief particulars; and responding to
further inquiries told him that she was intending to go
back by the same carrier who had brought her.
"It is a long while before he returns past Trantridge
Cross. Supposing we walk round the grounds to pass the
time, my pretty Coz?"
Tess wished to abridge her visit as much as possible;
but the young man was pressing, and she consented to
accompany him. He conducted her about the lawns, and
flower-beds, and conservatories; and thence to the
fruit-garden and greenhouses, where he asked her if she
liked strawberries.
"Yes," said Tess, "when they come."
"They are already here." D'Urberville began gathering
specimens of the fruit for her, handing them back to
her as he stooped; and, presently, selecting a
specially fine product of the "British Queen" variety,
he stood up and held it by the stem to her mouth.
"No--no!" she said quickly, putting her fingers between
his hand and her lips. "I would rather take it in my
own hand."
"Nonsense!" he insisted; and in a slight distress she
parted her lips and took it in.
They had spent some time wandering desultorily thus,
Tess eating in a half-pleased, half-reluctant state
whatever d'Urberville offered her. When she could
consume no more of the strawberries he filled her
little basket with them; and then the two passed round
to the rose trees, whence he gathered blossoms and gave
her to put in her bosom. She obeyed like one in a
dream, and when she could affix no more he himself
tucked a bud or two into her hat, and heaped her basket
with others in the prodigality of his bounty. At last,
looking at his watch, he said, "Now, by the time you
have had something to eat, it will be time for you to
leave, if you want to catch the carrier to Shaston.
Come here, and I'll see what grub I can find."
Stoke d'Urberville took her back to the lawn and into
the tent, where he left her, soon reappearing with a
basket of light luncheon, which he put before her
himself. It was evidently the gentleman's wish not to
be disturbed in this pleasant TETE-A-TETE by the
servantry.
"Do you mind my smoking?" he asked.
"Oh, not at all, sir."
He watched her pretty and unconscious munching through
the skeins of smoke that pervaded the tent, and Tess
Durbeyfield did not divine, as she innocently looked
down at the roses in her bosom, that there behind the
blue narcotic haze was potentially the "tragic
mischief" of her drama--one who stood fair to be the
blood-red ray in the spectrum of her young life. She
had an attribute which amounted to a disadvantage just
now; and it was this that caused Alec d'Urberville's
eyes to rivet themselves upon her. It was a luxuriance
of aspect, a fulness of growth, which made her appear
more of a woman than she really was. She had inherited
the feature from her mother without the quality it
denoted. It had troubled her mind occasionally, till
her companions had said that it was a fault which time
would cure.
She soon had finished her lunch. "Now I am going home,
sir," she said, rising.
"And what do they call you?" he asked, as he
accompanied her along the drive till they were out of
sight of the house.
"Tess Durbeyfield, down at Marlott."
"And you say your people have lost their horse?"
"I--killed him!" she answered, her eyes filling with
tears as she gave particulars of Prince's death. "And
I don't know what to do for father on account of it!"
"I must think if I cannot do something. My mother must
find a berth for you. But, Tess, no nonsense about
'd'Urberville';--'Durbeyfield' only, you know--quite
another name."
"I wish for no better, sir," said she with something of
dignity.
For a moment--only for a moment--when they were in the
turning of the drive, between the tall rhododendrons
and conifers, before the lodge became visible, he
inclined his face towards her as if--but, no: he
thought better of it, and let her go.
Thus the thing began. Had she perceived this meeting's
import she might have asked why she was doomed to be
seen and coveted that day by the wrong man, and not by
some other man, the right and desired one in all
respects--as nearly as humanity can supply the right
and desired; yet to him who amongst her acquaintance
might have approximated to this kind, she was but a
transient impression, half forgotten.
In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of
things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to
love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature
does not often say "See!" to her poor creature at a
time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply
"Here!" to a body's cry of "Where?" till the
hide-and-seek has become an irksome, outworn game. We
may wonder whether at the acme and summit of the human
progress these anachronisms will be corrected by a
finer intuition, a close interaction of the social
machinery than that which now jolts us round and along;
but such completeness is not to be prophesied, or even
conceived as possible. Enough that in the present
case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a
perfect whole that confronted each other at the perfect
moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently
about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness till the
late time came. Out of which maladroit delay sprang
anxieties,disappointments, shocks, catastrophes, and
passing-strange destinies.
When d'Urberville got back to the tent he sat down
astride on a chair reflecting, with a pleased gleam in
his face. Then he broke into a loud laugh.
"Well, I'm damned! What a funny thing! Ha-ha-ha!
And what a crumby girl!"
VI
Tess went down the hill to Trantridge Cross, and
inattentively waited to take her seat in the van
returning from Chaseborough to Shaston. She did not
know what the other occupants said to her as she
entered, though she answered them; and when they had
started anew she rode along with an inward and not an
outward eye.
One among her fellow-travellers addressed her more
pointedly than any had spoken before: "Why, you be
quite a posy! And such roses in early June!"
Then she became aware of the spectacle she presented to
their surprised vision: roses at her breasts; roses in
her hat; roses and strawberries in her basket to the
brim. She blushed, and said confusedly that the
flowers had been given to her. When the passengers
were not looking she stealthily removed the more
prominent blooms from her hat and placed them in
basket, where she covered them with her handkerchief.
Then she fell to reflecting again, and in looking
downwards a thorn of the rose remaining in her breast
accidentally pricked her chin. Like all the cottagers
in Blackmoor Vale, Tess was steeped in fancies and
prefigurative superstitions; she thought this an ill
omen--the first she had noticed that day.
The van travelled only so far as Shaston, and there
were several miles of pedestrian descent from that
mountain-town into the vale of Marlott. Her mother had
advised her to stay here for the night, at the house of
a cottage-woman they knew, if she should feel too tired
to come on; and this Tess did, not descending to her
home till the following afternoon.
When she entered the house she perceived in a moment
from her mother's triumphant manner that something had
occurred in the interim.
"Oh yes; I know all about it! I told 'ee it would be
all right, and now 'tis proved!"
"Since I've been away? What has?" said Tess rather
wearily.
Her mother surveyed the girl up and down with arch
approval, and went on banteringly: "So you've brought
'em round!"
"How do you know, mother?"
"I've had a letter."
Tess then remembered that there would have been time
for this.
"They say--Mrs d'Urberville says--that she wants you to
look after a little fowl-farm which is her hobby. But
this is only her artful way of getting 'ee there
without raising your hopes. She's going to own 'ee as
kin--that's the meaning o't."
"But I didn't see her."
"You zid somebody, I suppose?"
"I saw her son."
"And did he own 'ee?"
"Well--he called me Coz."
"An' I knew it! Jacky--he called her Coz!" cried Joan
to her husband. "Well, he spoke to his mother, of
course, and she do want 'ee there."
"But I don't know that I am apt at tending fowls," said
the dubious Tess.
"Then I don't know who is apt. You've be'n born in the
business, and brought up in it. They that be born in a
business always know more about it than any 'prentice.
Besides, that's only just a show of something for you
to do, that you midn't feel beholden."
"I don't altogether think I ought to go," said Tess
thoughtfully. "Who wrote the letter? Will you let me
look at it?"
"Mrs d'Urberville wrote it. Here it is."
The letter was in the third person, and briefly
informed Mrs Durbeyfield that her daughter's services
would be useful to that lady in the management of her
poultry-farm, that a comfortable room would be provided
for her if she could come, and that the wages would be
on a liberal scale if they liked her.
"Oh--that's all!" said Tess.
"You couldn't expect her to throw her arms round 'ee,
an' to kiss and to coll 'ee all at once."
Tess looked out of the window.
"I would rather stay here with father and you," she said.
"But why?"
"I'd rather not tell you why, mother; indeed, I don't
quite know why."
A week afterwards she came in one evening from an
unavailing search for some light occupation in the
immediate neighbourhood. Her idea had been to get
together sufficient money during the summer to purchase
another horse. Hardly had she crossed the threshold
before one of the children danced across the room,
saying, "The gentleman's been here!"
Her mother hastened to explain, smiles breaking from
every inch of her person. Mrs d'Urberville's son had
called on horseback, having been riding by chance in
the direction of Marlott. He had wished to know,
finally, in the name of his mother, if Tess could
really come to manage the old lady's fowl-farm or not;
the lad who had hitherto superintended the birds having
proved untrustworthy. "Mr d'Urberville says you must be
a good girl if you are at all as you appear; he knows
you must be worth your weight in gold. He is very much
interested in 'ee--truth to tell."
Tess seemed for the moment really pleased to hear that
she had won such high opinion from a stranger when, in
her own esteem, she had sunk so low.
"It is very good of him to think that," she murmured;
"and if I was quite sure how it would be living there,
I would go any-when."
"He is a mighty handsome man!"
"I don't think so," said Tess coldly.
"Well, there's your chance, whether or no; and I'm sure
he wears a beautiful diamond ring!"
"Yes," said little Abraham, brightly, from the
window-bench; "and I seed it! and it did twinkle when
he put his hand up to his mistarshers. Mother, why did
our grand relation keep on putting his hand up to his
mistarshers?"
"Hark at that child!" cried Mrs Durbeyfield, with
parenthetic admiration.
"Perhaps to show his diamond ring," murmured Sir John,
dreamily, from his chair.
"I'll think it over," said Tess, leaving the room.
"Well, she's made a conquest o' the younger branch of
us, straight off," continued the matron to her husband,
"and she's a fool if she don't follow it up."
"I don't quite like my children going away from home,"
said the haggler. "As the head of the family, the rest
ought to come to me."
"But do let her go, Jacky," coaxed his poor witless
wife. "He's struck wi' her--you can see that. He
called her Coz! He'll marry her, most likely, and make
a lady of her; and then she'll be what her forefathers
was."
John Durbeyfield had more conceit than energy or
health, and this supposition was pleasant to him.
"Well, perhaps, that's what young Mr d'Urberville
means," he admitted; "and sure enough he mid have
serious thoughts about improving his blood by linking
on to the old line. Tess, the little rogue! And have
she really paid 'em a visit to such an end as this?"
Meanwhile Tess was walking thoughtfully among the
gooseberry-bushes in the garden, and over Prince's
grave. When she came in her mother pursued her
advantage.
"Well, what be you going to do?" she asked.
"I wish I had seen Mrs d'Urberville," said Tess.
"I think you mid as well settle it. Then you'll see her
soon enough."
Her father coughed in his chair.
"I don't know what to say!" answered the girl
restlessly. "It is for you to decide. I killed the
old horse, and I suppose I ought to do something to get
ye a new one. But--but--I don't quite like Mr
d'Urberville being there!"
The children, who had made use of this idea of Tess
being taken up by their wealthy kinsfolk (which they
imagined the other family to be) as a species of
dolorifuge after the death of the horse, began to cry
at Tess's reluctance, and teased and reproached her for
hesitating.
"Tess won't go--o--o and be made a la--a--dy of!--no,
she says she wo--o--on't!" they wailed, with square
mouths. "And we shan't have a nice new horse, and lots
o' golden money to buy fairlings! And Tess won't look
pretty in her best cloze no mo--o--ore!"
Her mother chimed in to the same tune: a certain way
she had of making her labours in the house seem heavier
than they were by prolonging them indefinitely, also
weighed in the argument. Her father alone preserved an
attitude of neutrality.
"I will go," said Tess at last.
Her mother could not repress her consciousness of the
nuptial Vision conjured up by the girl's consent.
"That's right! For such a pretty maid as 'tis, this is
a fine chance!"
Tess smiled crossly.
"I hope it is a chance for earning money. It is no
other kind of chance. You had better say nothing of
that silly sort about parish." Mrs Durbeyfield did not
promise. She was not quite sure that she did not feel
proud enough, after the visitor's remarks, to say a
good deal.
Thus it was arranged; and the young girl wrote,
agreeing to be ready to set out on any day on which she
might be required. She was duly informed that Mrs
d'Urberville was glad of her decision, and that a
spring-cart should be sent to meet her and her luggage
at the top of the Vale on the day after the morrow,
when she must hold herself prepared to start. Mrs
d'Urberville's handwriting seemed rather masculine.
"A cart?" murmured Joan Durbeyfield doubtingly.
"It might have been a carriage for her own kin!"
Having at last taken her course Tess was less restless
and abstracted, going about her business with some
self-assurance in the thought of acquiring another
horse for her father by an occupation which would not
be onerous. She had hoped to be a teacher at the
school, but the fates seemed to decide otherwise. Being
mentally older than her mother she did not regard Mrs
Durbeyfield's matrimonial hopes for her in a serious
aspect for a moment. The light-minded woman had been
discovering good matches for her daughter almost from
the year of her birth.
VII
On the morning appointed for her departure Tess was
awake before dawn--at the marginal minute of the dark
when the grove is still mute, save for one prophetic
bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he
at least knows the correct time of day, the rest
preserving silence as if equally convinced that he is
mistaken. She remained upstairs packing till
breakfast-time, and then came down in her ordinary
week-day clothes, her Sunday apparel being carefully
folded in her box.
Her mother expostulated. "You will never set out to see
your folks without dressing up more the dand than
that?"
"But I am going to work!" said Tess.
"Well, yes," said Mrs Durbeyfield; and in a private
tone, "at first there mid be a little pretence o't....
But I think it will be wiser of 'ee to put your best
side outward," she added.
"Very well; I suppose you know best," replied Tess with
calm abandonment.
And to please her parent the girl put herself quite in
Joan's hands, saying serenely--"Do what you like with
me, mother."
Mrs Durbeyfield was only too delighted at this
tractability. First she fetched a great basin, and
washed Tess's hair with such thoroughness that when
dried and brushed it looked twice as much as at other
times. She tied it with a broader pink ribbon than
usual. Then she put upon her the white frock that Tess
had worn at the club-walking, the airy fulness of
which, supplementing her enlarged COIFFURE, imparted to
her developing figure an amplitude which belied her
age, and might cause her to be estimated as a woman
when she was not much more than a child.
"I declare there's a hole in my stocking-heel!" said
Tess.
"Never mind holes in your stockings--they don't speak!
When I was a maid, so long as I had a pretty bonnet the
devil might ha' found me in heels."
Her mother's pride in the girl's appearance led her to
step back, like a painter from his easel, and survey
her work as a whole.
"You must zee yourself!" she cried. "It is much better
than you was t'other day."
As the looking-glass was only large enough to reflect a
very small portion of Tess's person at one time, Mrs
Durbeyfield hung a black cloak outside the casement,
and so made a large reflector of the panes, as it is
the wont of bedecking cottagers to do. After this she
went downstairs to her husband, who was sitting in the
lower room.
"I'll tell 'ee what 'tis, Durbeyfield," said she
exultingly; "he'll never have the heart not to love
her. But whatever you do, don't zay too much to Tess
of his fancy for her, and this chance she has got. She
is such an odd maid that it mid zet her against him, or
against going there, even now. If all goes well, I
shall certainly be for making some return to pa'son at
Stagfoot Lane for telling us--dear, good man!"
However, as the moment for the girl's setting out drew
nigh, when the first excitement of the dressing had
passed off, a slight misgiving found place in Joan
Durbeyfield's mind. It prompted the matron to say that
she would walk a little way--as far as to the point
where the acclivity from the valley began its first
steep ascent to the outer world. At the top Tess was
going to be met with the spring-cart sent by the
Stoke-d'Urbervilles, and her box had already been
wheeled ahead towards this summit by a lad with trucks,
to be in readiness.
Seeing their mother put on her bonnet the younger
children clamoured to go with her.
"I do want to walk a little-ways wi' Sissy, now she's
going to marry our gentleman-cousin, and wear fine
cloze!"
"Now," said Tess, flushing and turning quickly, "I'll
hear no more o' that! Mother, how could you ever put
such stuff into their heads?"
"Going to work, my dears, for our rich relation, and
help get enough money for a new horse," said Mrs
Durbeyfield pacifically.
"Goodbye, father," said Tess, with a lumpy throat.
"Goodbye, my maid," said Sir John, raising his head
from his breast as he suspended his nap, induced by a
slight excess this morning in honour of the occasion.
"Well, I hope my young friend will like such a comely
sample of his own blood. And tell'n, Tess, that being
sunk, quite, from our former grandeur, I'll sell him
the title--yes, sell it--and at no onreasonable
figure."
"Not for less than a thousand pound!" cried Lady
Durbeyfield.
"Tell'n--I'll take a thousand pound. Well, I'll take
less, when I come to think o't. He'll adorn it better
than a poor lammicken feller like myself can. Tell'n
he shall hae it for a hundred. But I won't stand upon
trifles--tell'n he shall hae it for fifty--for twenty
pound! Yes, twenty pound--that's the lowest. Dammy,
family honour is family honour, and I won't take a
penny less!"
Tess's eyes were too full and her voice too choked to
utter the sentiments that were in her. She turned
quickly, and went out.
So the girls and their mother all walked together,
a child on each side of Tess, holding her hand, and
looking at her meditatively from time to time, as at
one who was about to do great things; her mother just
behind with the smallest; the group forming a picture
of honest beauty flanked by innocence, and backed by
simple-souled vanity. They followed the way till they
reached the beginning of the ascent, on the crest of
which the vehicle from Trantridge was to receive her,
this limit having been fixed to save the horse the
labour of the last slope. Far away behind the first
hills the cliff-like dwellings of Shaston broke the
line of the ridge. Nobody was visible in the elevated
road which skirted the ascent save the lad whom they
had sent on before them, sitting on the handle of the
barrow that contained all Tess's worldly possessions.
"Bide here a bit, and the cart will soon come, no
doubt," said Mrs Durbeyfield. "Yes, I see it yonder!"
It had come--appearing suddenly from behind the
forehead of the nearest upland, and stopping beside the
boy with the barrow. Her mother and the children
thereupon decided to go no farther, and bidding them a
hasty goodbye Tess bent her steps up the hill.
They saw her white shape draw near to the spring-cart,
on which her box was already placed. But before she
had quite reached it another vehicle shot out from a
clump of trees on the summit, came round the bend of
the road there, passed the luggage-cart, and halted
beside Tess, who looked up as if in great surprise.
Her mother perceived, for the first time, that the
second vehicle was not a humble conveyance like the
first, but a spick-and-span gig or dog-cart, highly
varnished and equipped. The driver was a young man of
three-or four-and-twenty, with a cigar between his
teeth; wearing a dandy cap, drab jacket, breeches of
the same hue, white neckcloth, stick-up collar, and
brown driving-gloves--in short, he was the handsome,
horsey young buck who had visited Joan a week or two
before to get her answer about Tess.
Mrs Durbeyfield clapped her hands like a child. Then
she looked down, then stared again. Could she be
deceived as to the meaning of this?
"Is dat the gentleman-kinsman who'll make Sissy a
lady?" asked the youngest child.
Meanwhile the muslined form of Tess could be seen
standing still, undecided, beside this turn-out, whose
owner was talking to her. Her seeming indecision was,
in fact, more than indecision: it was misgiving. She
would have preferred the humble cart. The young man
dismounted, and appeared to urge her to ascend. She
turned her face down the hill to her relatives, and
regarded the little group. Something seemed to quicken
her to a determination; possibly the thought that she
had killed Prince. She suddenly stepped up; he mounted
beside her, and immediately whipped on the horse. In a
moment they had passed the slow cart with the box, and
disappeared behind the shoulder of the hill.
Directly Tess was out of sight, and the interest of the
matter as a drama was at an end, the little ones' eyes
filled with tears. The youngest child said, "I wish
poor, poor Tess wasn't gone away to be a lady!" and,
lowering the corners of his lips, burst out crying.
The new point of view was infectious, and the next
child did likewise, and then the next, till the whole
three of them wailed loud.
There were tears also in Joan Durbeyfield's eyes as she
turned to go home. But by the time she had got back to
the village she was passively trusting to the favour of
accident. However, in bed that night she sighed, and
her husband asked her what was the matter.
"Oh, I don't know exactly," she said. "I was thinking
that perhaps it would ha' been better if Tess had not
gone."
"Oughtn't ye to have thought of that before?"
"Well, 'tis a chance for the maid ---- Still, if 'twere
the doing again, I wouldn't let her go till I had found
out whether the gentleman is really a good-hearted
young man and choice over her as his kinswoman."
"Yes, you ought, perhaps, to ha' done that," snored Sir
John.
Joan Durbeyfield always managed to find consolation
somewhere: "Well, as one of the genuine stock, she
ought to make her way with 'en, if she plays her trump
card aright. And if he don't marry her afore he will
after. For that he's all afire wi' love for her any
eye can see."
"What's her trump card? Her d'Urberville blood, you
mean?"
"No, stupid; her face--as 'twas mine."
VIII
Having mounted beside her, Alec d'Urberville drove
rapidly along the crest of the first hill, chatting
compliments to Tess as they went, the cart with her box
being left far behind. Rising still, an immense
landscape stretched around them on every side; behind,
the green valley of her birth, before, a gray country
of which she knew nothing except from her first brief
visit to Trantridge. Thus they reached the verge of an
incline down which the road stretched in a long
straight descent of nearly a mile.
Ever since the accident with her father's horse Tess
Durbeyfield, courageous as she naturally was, had been
exceedingly timid on wheels; the least irregularity of
motion startled her. She began to get uneasy at a
certain recklessness in her conductor's driving.
"You will go down slow, sir, I suppose?" she said with
attempted unconcern.
D'Urberville looked round upon her, nipped his cigar
with the tips of his large white centre-teeth, and
allowed his lips to smile slowly of themselves.
"Why, Tess," he answered, after another whiff or two,
"it isn't a brave bouncing girl like you who asks that?
Why, I always go down at full gallop. There's nothing
like it for raising your spirits."
"But perhaps you need not now?"
"Ah," he said, shaking his head, "there are two to be
reckoned with. It is not me alone. Tib had to be
considered, and she has a very queer temper."
"Who?"
"Why, this mare. I fancy she looked round at me in a
very grim way just then. Didn't you notice it?"
"Don't try to frighten me, sir," said Tess stiffly.
"Well, I don't. If any living man can manage this
horse I can: I won't say any living man can do it--but
if such has the power, I am he."
"Why do you have such a horse?"
"Ah, well may you ask it! It was my fate, I suppose.
Tib has killed one chap; and just after I bought her
she nearly killed me. And then, take my word for it,
I nearly killed her. But she's touchy still, very
touchy; and one's life is hardly safe behind her
sometimes."
They were just beginning to descend; and it was evident
that the horse, whether of her own will or of his (the
latter being the more likely), knew so well the
reckless performance expected of her that she hardly
required a hint from behind.
Down, down, they sped, the wheels humming like a top,
the dog-cart rocking right and left, its axis acquiring
a slightly oblique set in relation to the line of
progress; the figure of the horse rising and falling in
undulations before them. Sometimes a wheel was off the
ground, it seemed, for many yards; sometimes a stone
was sent spinning over the hedge, and flinty sparks
from the horse's hoofs outshone the daylight. The
aspect of the straight road enlarged with their
advance, the two banks dividing like a splitting stick;
one rushing past at each shoulder.
The wind blew through Tess's white muslin to her very
skin, and her washed hair flew out behind. She was
determined to show no open fear, but she clutched
d'Urberville's rein-arm.
"Don't touch my arm! We shall be thrown out if you do!
Hold on round my waist!"
She grasped his waist, and so they reached the bottom.
"Safe, thank God, in spite of your fooling!" said she,
her face on fire.
"Tess--fie! that's temper!" said d'Urberville.
"'Tis truth."
"Well, you need not let go your hold of me so
thanklessly the moment you feel yourself our of
danger."
She had not considered what she had been doing; whether
he were man or woman, stick or stone, in her
involuntary hold on him. Recovering her reserve she sat
without replying, and thus they reached the summit of
another declivity.
"Now then, again!" said d'Urberville.
"No, no!" said Tess. "Show more sense, do, please."
"But when people find themselves on one of the highest
points in the county, they must get down again," he
retorted.
He loosened rein, and away they went a second time.
D'Urberville turned his face to her as they rocked, and
said, in playful raillery: "Now then, put your arms
round my waist again, as you did before, my Beauty."
"Never!" said Tess independently, holding on as well as
she could without touching him.
"Let me put one little kiss on those holmberry lips,
Tess, or even on that warmed cheek, and I'll stop--on
my honour, I will!"
Tess, surprised beyond measure, slid farther back still
on her seat, at which he urged the horse anew, and
rocked her the more.
"Will nothing else do?" she cried at length, in
desperation, her large eyes staring at him like those
of a wild animal. This dressing her up so prettily by
her mother had apparently been to lamentable purpose.
"Nothing, dear Tess," he replied.
"Oh, I don't know--very well; I don't mind!" she panted
miserably.
He drew rein, and as they slowed he was on the point of
imprinting the desired salute, when, as if hardly yet
aware of her own modesty, she dodged aside. His arms
being occupied with the reins there was left him no
power to prevent her manoeuvre.
"Now, damn it--I'll break both our necks!" swore her
capriciously passionate companion. "So you can go from
your word like that, you young witch, can you?"
"Very well," said Tess, "I'll not more since you be so
determined! But I--thought you would be kind to me, and
protect me, as my kinsman!"
"Kinsman be hanged! Now!"
"But I don't want anybody to kiss me, sir!" she
implored, a big tear beginning to roll down her face,
and the corners of her mouth trembling in her attempts
not to cry. "And I wouldn't ha' come if I had known!"
He was inexorable, and she sat still, and d'Urberville
gave her the kiss of mastery. No sooner had he done so
than she flushed with shame, took out her handkerchief,
and wiped the spot on her cheek that had been touched
by his lips. His ardour was nettled at the sight, for
the act on her part had been unconsciously done.
"You are mighty sensitive for a cottage girl!" said the
young man.
Tess made no reply to this remark, of which, indeed,
she did not quite comprehend the drift, unheeding the
snub she had administered by her instinctive rub upon
her cheek. She had, in fact, undone the kiss, as far
as such a thing was physically possible. With a dim
sense that he was vexed she looked steadily ahead as
they trotted on near Melbury Down and Wingreen, till
she saw, to her consternation, that there was yet
another descent to be undergone.
"You shall be made sorry for that!" he resumed, his
injured tone still remaining, as he flourished the whip
anew. "Unless, that is, you agree willingly to let me
do it again, and no handkerchief."
She sighed. "Very well, sir!" she said. "Oh--let me
get my hat!"
At the moment of speaking her hat had blown off into
the road, their present speed on the upland being by no
means slow. D'Urberville pulled up, and said he would
get it for her, but Tess was down on the other side.
She turned back and picked up the article.
"You look prettier with it off, upon my soul, if that's
possible," he said, contemplating her over the back of
the vehicle. "Now then, up again! What's the matter?"
The hat was in place and tied, but Tess had not stepped
forward.
"No, sir," she said, revealing the red and ivory of her
mouth as her eye lit in defiant triumph; "not again, if
I know it!"
"What--you won't get up beside me?"
"No; I shall walk."
"'Tis five or six miles yet to Trantridge."
"I don't care if 'tis dozens. Besides, the cart is
behind."
"You artful hussy! Now, tell me--didn't you make that
hat blow off on purpose? I'll swear you did!"
Her strategic silence confirmed his suspicion.
Then d'Urberville cursed and swore at her, and called
her everything he could think of for the trick.
Turning the horse suddenly he tried to drive back upon
her, and so hem her in between the gig and the hedge.
But he could not do this short of injuring her.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself for using such
wicked words!" cried Tess with spirit, from the top of
the hedge into which she had scrambled. "I don't like
'ee at all! I hate and detest you! I'll go back to
mother, I will!"
D'Urberville's bad temper cleared up at sight of hers;
and he laughed heartily.
"Well, I like you all the better," he said. "Come, let
there be peace. I'll never do it any more against your
will. My life upon it now!"
Still Tess could not be induced to remount. She did
not, however, object to his keeping his gig alongside
her; and in this manner, at a slow pace, they advanced
towards the village of Trantridge. From time to time
d'Urberville exhibited a sort of fierce distress at the
sight of the tramping he had driven her to undertake by
his misdemeanour. She might in truth have safely
trusted him now; but he had forfeited her confidence
for the time, and she kept on the ground progressing
thoughtfully, as if wondering whether it would be wiser
to return home. Her resolve, however, had been taken,
and it seemed vacillating even to childishness to
abandon it now, unless for graver reasons. How could
she face her parents, get back her box, and disconcert
the whole scheme for the rehabilitation of her family
on such sentimental grounds?
A few minutes later the chimneys of The Slopes appeared
in view, and in a snug nook to the right the
poultry-farm and cottage of Tess' destination.
IX
The community of fowls to which Tess had been appointed
as supervisor, purveyor, nurse, surgeon, and friend,
made its headquarters in an old thatched cottage
standing in an enclosure that had once been a garden,
but was now a trampled and sanded square. The house
was overrun with ivy, its chimney being enlarged by the
boughs of the parasite to the aspect of a ruined tower.
The lower rooms were entirely given over to the birds,
who walked about them with a proprietary air, as though
the place had been built by themselves, and not by
certain dusty copyholders who now lay east and west in
the churchyard. The descendants of these bygone owners
felt it almost as a slight to their family when the
house which had so much of their affection, had cost so
much of their forefathers' money, and had been in their
possession for several generations before the
d'Urbervilles came and built here, was indifferently
turned into a fowl-house by Mrs Stoke-d'Urberville as
soon as the property fell into hand according to law.
"'Twas good enough for Christians in grandfather's
time," they said.
The rooms wherein dozens of infants had wailed at their
nursing now resounded with the tapping of nascent
chicks. Distracted hens in coops occupied spots where
formerly stood chairs supporting sedate agriculturists.
The chimney-corner and once blazing hearth was now
filled with inverted beehives, in which the hens laid
their eggs; while out of doors the plots that each
succeeding householder had carefully shaped with his
spade were torn by the cocks in wildest fashion.
The garden in which the cottage stood was surrounded by
a wall, and could only be entered through a door.
When Tess had occupied herself about an hour the next
morning in altering and improving the arrangements,
according to her skilled ideas as the daughter of a
professed poulterer, the door in the wall opened and a
servant in white cap and apron entered. She had come
from the manor-house.
"Mrs d'Urberville wants the fowls as usual," she said;
but perceiving that Tess did not quite understand, she
explained, "Mis'ess is a old lady, and blind."
"Blind!" said Tess.
Almost before her misgiving at the news could find time
to shape itself she took, under her companion's
direction, two of the most beautiful of the Hamburghs
in her arms, and followed the maid-servant, who had
likewise taken two, to the adjacent mansion, which,
though ornate and imposing, showed traces everywhere on
this side that some occupant of its chambers could bend
to the love of dumb creatures--feathers floating within
view of the front, and hen-coops standing on the grass.
In a sitting-room on the ground-floor, ensconced in an
armchair with her back to the light, was the owner and
mistress of the estate, a white-haired woman of not
more than sixty, or even less, wearing a large cap.
She had the mobile face frequent in those whose sight
has decayed by stages, has been laboriously striven
after, and reluctantly let go, rather than the stagnant
mien apparent in persons long sightless or born blind.
Tess walked up to this lady with her feathered
charges--one sitting on each arm.
"Ah, you are the young woman come to look after my
birds?" said Mrs d'Urberville, recognizing a new
footstep. "I hope you will be kind to them. My
bailiff tells me you are quite the proper person. Well,
where are they? Ah, this is Strut! But he is hardly
so lively today, is he? He is alarmed at being handled
by a stranger, I suppose. And Phena too--yes, they are
a little frightened--aren't you, dears? But they will
soon get used to you."
While the old lady had been speaking Tess and the other
maid, in obedience to her gestures, had placed the
fowls severally in her lap, and she had felt them over
from head to tail, examining their beaks, their combs,
the manes of the cocks, their winds, and their claws.
Her touch enabled her to recognize them in a moment,
and to discover if a single feather were crippled or
draggled. She handled their crops, and knew what they
had eaten, and if too little or too much; her face
enacting a vivid pantomime of the criticisms passing in
her mind.
The birds that the two girls had brought in were duly
returned to the yard, and the process was repeated till
all the pet cocks and hens had been submitted to the
old woman--Hamburghs, Bantams, Cochins, Brahmas,
Dorkings, and such other sorts as were in fashion just
then--her perception of each visitor being seldom at
fault as she received the bird upon her knees.
It reminded Tess of a Confirmation, in which Mrs
d'Urberville was the bishop, the fowls the young people
presented, and herself and the maid-servant the parson
and curate of the parish bringing them up. At the end
of the ceremony Mrs d'Urberville abruptly asked Tess,
wrinkling and twitching her face into undulations,
"Can you whistle?"
"Whistle, Ma'am?"
"Yes, whistled tunes."
Tess could whistle like most other country girls,
though the accomplishment was one which she did not
care to profess in genteel company. However, she
blandly admitted that such was the fact.
"Then you will have to practise it every day. I had a
lad who did it very well, but he has left. I want you
to whistle to my bullfinches; as I cannot see them I
like to hear them, and we teach 'em airs that way.
Tell her where the cages are, Elizabeth. You must
begin tomorrow, or they will go back in their piping.
They have been neglected these several days."
"Mr d'Urberville whistled to 'em this morning, ma'am,"
said Elizabeth.
"He! Pooh!"
The old lady's face creased into furrows of repugnance,
and she made no further reply.
Thus the reception of Tess by her fancied kinswoman
terminated, and the birds were taken back to their
quarters. The girl's surprise at Mrs d'Urberville's
manner was not great; for since seeing the size of the
house she had expected no more. But she was far from
being aware that the old lady had never heard a word of
the so-called kinship. She gathered that no great
affection flowed between the blind woman and her son.
But in that, too, she was mistaken. Mrs d'Urberville
was not the first mother compelled to love her
offspring resentfully, and to be bitterly fond.
In spite of the unpleasant initiation of the day
before, Tess inclined to the freedom and novelty of her
new position in the morning when the sun shone, now
that she was once installed there; and she was curious
to test her powers in the unexpected direction asked of
her, so as to ascertain her chance of retaining her
post. As soon as she was alone within the walled garden
she sat herself down on a coop, and seriously screwed
up her mouth for the long-neglected practice. She
found her former ability to have generated to the
production of a hollow rush of wind through the lips,
and no clear note at all.
She remained fruitlessly blowing and blowing, wondering
how she could have so grown out of the art which had
come by nature, till she became aware of a movement
among the ivy-boughs which cloaked the garden-wall no
less then the cottage. Looking that way she beheld a
form springing from the coping to the plot. It was
Alec d'Urberville, whom she had not set eyes on since
he had conducted her the day before to the door of the
gardener's cottage where she had lodgings.
"Upon my honour!" cried he, "there was never before
such a beautiful thing in Nature or Art as you look,
'Cousin' Tess ('Cousin' had a faint ring of mockery).
I have been watching you from over the wall--sitting
like IM-patience on a monument, and pouting up that
pretty red mouth to whistling shape, and whooing and
whooing, and privately swearing, and never being able
to produce a note. Why, you are quite cross because
you can't do it."
"I may be cross, but I didn't swear."
"Ah! I understand why you are trying--those bullies!
My mother wants you to carry on their musical
education. How selfish of her! As if attending to
these curst cocks and hens here were not enough work
for any girl. I would flatly refuse, if I were you."
"But she wants me particularly to do it, and to be
ready by tomorrow morning."
"Does she? Well then--I'll give you a lesson or two."
"Oh no, you won't!" said Tess, withdrawing towards the
door.
"Nonsense; I don't want to touch you. See--I'll stand
on this side of the wire-netting, and you can keep on
the other; so you may feel quite safe. Now, look here;
you screw up your lips too harshly. There 'tis--so."
He suited the action to the word, and whistled a line
of "Take, O take those lips away." But the allusion
was lost upon Tess.
"Now try," said d'Urberville.
She attempted to look reserved; her face put on a
sculptural severity. But he persisted in his demand,
and at last, to get rid of him, she did put up her lips
as directed for producing a clear note; laughing
distressfully, however, and then blushing with vexation
that she had laughed.
He encouraged her with "Try again!"
Tess was quite serious, painfully serious by this time;
and she tried--ultimately and unexpectedly emitting a
real round sound. The momentary pleasure of success got
the better of her; her eyes enlarged, and she
involuntarily smiled in his face.
"That's it! Now I have started you--you'll go on
beautifully. There--I said I would not come near you;
and, in spite of such temptation as never before fell
to mortal man, I'll keep my word. ... Tess, do you
think my mother a queer old soul?"
"I don't know much of her yet, sir."
"You'll find her so; she must be, to make you learn to
whistle to her bullfinches. I am rather out of her
books just now, but you will be quite in favour if you
treat her live-stock well. Good morning. If you meet
with any difficulties and want help here, don't go to
the bailiff, come to me."
It was in the economy of this REGIME that Tess
Durbeyfield had undertaken to fill a place. Her first
day's experiences were fairly typical of those which
followed through many succeeding days. A familiarity
with Alec d'Urberville's presence--which that young man
carefully cultivated in her by playful dialogue, and by
jestingly calling her his cousin when they were
alone--removed much of her original shyness of him,
without, however, implanting any feeling which could
engender shyness of a new and tenderer kind. But she
was more pliable under his hands than a mere
companionship would have made her, owing to her
unavoidable dependence upon his mother, and, through
that lady's comparative helplessness, upon him.
She soon found that whistling to the bullfinches in Mrs
d'Urberville's room was no such onerous business when
she had regained the art, for she had caught from her
musical mother numerous airs that suited those
songsters admirably. A far more satisfactory time than
when she practised in the garden was this whistling by
the cages each morning. Unrestrained by the young
man's presence she threw up her mouth, put her lips
near the bars, and piped away in easeful grace to the
attentive listeners.
Mrs d'Urberville slept in a large four-post bedstead
hung with heavy damask curtains, and the bullfinches
occupied the same apartment, where they flitted about
freely at certain hours, and made little white spots on
the furniture and upholstery. Once while Tess was at
the window where the cages were ranged, giving her
lesson as usual, she thought she heard a rustling
behind the bed. The old lady was not present, and
turning round the girl had an impression that the toes
of a pair of boots were visible below the fringe of the
curtains. Thereupon her whistling became so disjointed
that the listener, if such there were, must have
discovered her suspicion of his presence. She searched
the curtains every morning after that, but never found
anybody within them. Alec d'Urberville had evidently
thought better of his freak to terrify her by an ambush
of that kind.
X
Every village has its idiosyncrasy, its constitution,
often its own code of morality. The levity of some of
the younger women in and about Trantridge was marked,
and was perhaps symptomatic of the choice spirit who
ruled The Slopes in that vicinity. The place had also
a more abiding defect; it drank hard. The staple
conversation on the farms around was on the uselessness
of saving money; and smockfrocked arithmeticians,
leaning on their ploughs or hoes, would enter into
calculations of great nicety to prove that parish
relief was a fuller provision for a man in his old age
than any which could result from savings out of their
wages during a whole lifetime.
The chief pleasure of these philosophers lay in going
every Saturday night, when work was done, to
Chaseborough, a decayed market-town two or three miles
distant; and, returning in the small hours of the next
morning, to spend Sunday in sleeping off the dyspeptic
effects of the curious compounds sold to them as beer
by the monopolizers of the once independent inns.
For a long time Tess did not join in the weekly
pilgrimages. But under pressure from matrons not much
older than herself--for a field-man's wages being as
high at twenty-one as at forty, marriage was early
here--Tess at length consented to go. Her first
experience of the journey afforded her more enjoyment
than she had expected, the hilariousness of the others
being quite contagious after her monotonous attention
to the poultry-farm all the week. She went again and
again. Being graceful and interesting, standing
moreover on the momentary threshold of womanhood, her
appearance drew down upon her some sly regards from
loungers in the streets of Chaseborough; hence, though
sometimes her journey to the town was made
independently, she always searched for her fellows at
nightfall, to have the protection of their
companionship homeward.
This had gone on for a month or two when there came a
Saturday in September, on which a fair and a market
coincided; and the pilgrims from Trantridge sought
double delights at the inns on that account. Tess's
occupations made her late in setting out, so that her
comrades reached the town long before her. It was a
fine September evening, just before sunset, when yellow
lights struggle with blue shades in hairlike lines, and
the atmosphere itself forms a prospect without aid from
more solid objects, except the innumerable winged
insects that dance in it. Through this low-lit
mistiness Tess walked leisurely along.
She did not discover the coincidence of the market with
the fair till she had reached the place, by which time
it was close upon dusk. Her limited marketing was soon
completed; and then as usual she began to look about
for some of the Trantridge cottagers.
At first she could not find them, and she was informed
that most of them had gone to what they called a
private little jig at the house of a hay-trusser and
peat-dealer who had transactions with their farm. He
lived in an out-of-the-way nook of the townlet, and in
trying to find her course thither her eyes fell upon
Mr d'Urberville standing at a street corner.
"What--my Beauty? You here so late?" he said.
She told him that she was simply waiting for company
homeward.
"I'll see you again," said he over her shoulder as she
went on down the back lane.
Approaching the hay-trussers she could hear the fiddled
notes of a reel proceeding from some building in the
rear; but no sound of dancing was audible--an
exceptional state of things for these parts, where as a
rule the stamping drowned the music. The front door
being open she could see straight through the house
into the garden at the back as far as the shades of
night would allow; and nobody appearing to her knock
she traversed the dwelling and went up the path to the
outhouse whence the sound had attracted her.
It was a windowless erection used for storage, and from
the open door there floated into the obscurity a mist
of yellow radiance, which at first Tess thought to be
illuminated smoke. But on drawing nearer she perceived
that it was a cloud of dust, lit by candles within the
outhouse, whose beams upon the haze carried forward the
outline of the doorway into the wide night of the
garden.
When she came close and looked in she beheld indistinct
forms racing up and down to the figure of the dance,
the silence of their footfalls arising from their being
overshoe in "scroff"--that is to say, the powdery
residuum from the storage of peat and other products,
the stirring of which by their turbulent feet created
the nebulosity that involved the scene. Through this
floating, fusty DEBRIS of peat and hay, mixed with the
perspirations and warmth of the dancers, and forming
together a sort of vegeto-human pollen, the muted
fiddles feebly pushed their notes, in marked contrast
to the spirit with which the measure was trodden out.
They coughed as they danced, and laughed as they
coughed. Of the rushing couples there could barely be
discerned more than the high lights--the indistinctness
shaping them to satyrs clasping nymphs--a multiplicity
of Pans whirling a multiplicity of Syrinxes; Lotis
attempting to elude Priapus, and always failing.
At intervals a couple would approach the doorway for
air, and the haze no longer veiling their features, the
demigods resolved themselves into the homely
personalities of her own next-door neighbours.
Could Trantridge in two or three short hours have
metamorphosed itself thus madly!
Some Sileni of the throng sat on benches and
hay-trusses by the wall; and one of them recognized
her.
"The maids don't think it respectable to dance at The
Flower-de-Luce," he explained. "They don't like to
let everybody see which be their fancy-men. Besides,
the house sometimes shuts up just when their jints
begin to get greased. So we come here and send out for
liquor."
"But when be any of you going home?" asked Tess with
some anxiety.
"Now--a'most directly. This is all but the last jig."
She waited. The reel drew to a close, and some of the
party were in the mind of starting. But others would
not, and another dance was formed. This surely would
end it, thought Tess. But it merged in yet another.
She became restless and uneasy; yet, having waited so
long, it was necessary to wait longer; on account of
the fair the roads were dotted with roving characters
of possibly ill intent; and, though not fearful of
measurable dangers, she feared the unknown. Had she
been near Marlott she would have had less dread.
"Don't ye be nervous, my dear good soul," expostulated,
between his coughs, a young man with a wet face, and
his straw hat so far back upon his head that the brim
encircled it like the nimbus of a saint. "What's yer
hurry? Tomorrow is Sunday, thank God, and we can sleep
it off in church-time. Now, have a turn with me?"
She did not abhor dancing, but she was not going to
dance here. The movement grew more passionate: the
fiddlers behind the luminous pillar of cloud now and
then varied the air by playing on the wrong side of the
bridge or with the back of the bow. But it did not
matter; the panting shapes spun onwards.
They did not vary their partners if their inclination
were to stick to previous ones. Changing partners
simply meant that a satisfactory choice had not as yet
been arrived at by one or other of the pair, and by
this time every couple had been suitable matched. It
was then that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which
emotion was the matter of the universe, and matter but
an adventitious intrusion likely to hinder you from
spinning where you wanted to spin.
Suddenly there was a dull thump on the ground: a couple
had fallen, and lay in a mixed heap. The next couple,
unable to check its progress, came toppling over the
obstacle. An inner cloud of dust rose around the
prostrate figures amid the general one of the room, in
which a twitching entanglement of arms and legs was
discernible.
"You shall catch it for this, my gentleman, when you
get home!" burst in female accents from the human
heap--those of the unhappy partner of the man whose
clumsiness had caused the mishap; she happened also to
be his recently married wife, in which assortment there
was nothing unusual at Trantridge as long as any
affection remained between wedded couples; and, indeed,
it was not uncustomary in their later lives, to avoid
making odd lots of the single people between whom there
might be a warm understanding.
A loud laugh from behind Tess's back, in the shade of
the garden, united with the titter within the room.
She looked round, and saw the red coal of a cigar: Alec
d'Urberville was standing there alone. He beckoned to
her, and she reluctantly retreated towards him.
"Well, my Beauty, what are you doing here?"
She was so tired after her long day and her walk that
she confided her trouble to him--that she had been
waiting ever since he saw her to have their company
home, because the road at night was strange to her.
"But it seems they will never leave off, and I really
think I will wait no longer."
"Certainly do not. I have only a saddle-horse here
today; but come to The Flower-de-Luce, and I'll hire a
trap, and drive you home with me."
Tess, though flattered, had never quite got over her
original mistrust of him, and, despite their tardiness,
she preferred to walk home with the work-folk. So she
answered that she was much obliged to him, but would
not trouble him. "I have said that I will wait for
'em, and they will expect me to now."
"Very well, Miss Independence. Please yourself....
Then I shall not hurry.... My good Lord, what a kick-up
they are having there!"
He had not put himself forward into the light, but some
of them had perceived him, and his presence led to a
slight pause and a consideration of how the time was
flying. As soon as he had re-lit a cigar and walked
away the Trantridge people began to collect themselves
from amid those who had come in from other farms, and
prepared to leave in a body. Their bundles and baskets
were gathered up, and half an hour later, when the
clock-chime sounded a quarter past eleven, they were
straggling along the lane which led up the hill towards
their homes.
It was a three-mile walk, along a dry white road, made
whiter tonight by the light of the moon.
Tess soon perceived as she walked in the flock,
sometimes with this one, sometimes with that, that the
fresh night air was producing staggerings and
serpentine courses among then men who had partaken too
freely; some of the more careless women also were
wandering in their gait--to wit, a dark virago, Car
Darch, dubbed Queen of Spades, till lately a favourite
of d'Urberville's; Nancy, her sister, nicknamed the
Queen of Diamonds; and the young married woman who had
already tumbled down. Yet however terrestrial and
lumpy their appearance just now to the mean unglamoured
eye, to themselves the case was different. They
followed the road with a sensation that they were
soaring along in a supporting medium, possessed of
original and profound thoughts, themselves and
surrounding nature forming an organism of which all the
parts harmoniously and joyously interpenetrated each
other. They were as sublime as the moon and stars
above them, and the moon and stars were as ardent as
they.
Tess, however, had undergone such painful experiences
of this kind in her father's house, that the discovery
of their condition spoilt the pleasure she was
beginning to feel in the moonlight journey. Yet she
stuck to the party, for reasons above given.
In the open highway they had progressed in scattered
order; but now their route was through a field-gate,
and the foremost finding a difficulty in opening it
they closed up together.
This leading pedestrian was Car the Queen of Spades,
who carried a wicker-basket containing her mother's
groceries, her own draperies, and other purchases for
the week. The basket being large and heavy, Car had
placed it for convenience of porterage on the top of
her head, where it rode on in jeopardized balance as
she walked with arms akimbo.
"Well--whatever is that a-creeping down thy back, Car
Darch?" said one of the group suddenly.
All looked at Car. Her gown was a light cotton print,
and from the back of her head a kind of rope could be
seen descending to some distance below her waist, like
a Chinaman's queue.
"'Tis her hair falling down," said another.
No; it was not her hair: it was a black stream of
something oozing from her basket, and it glistened like
a slimy snake in the cold still rays of the moon.
"'Tis treacle," said an observant matron.
Treacle it was. Car's poor old grandmother had a
weakness for the sweet stuff. Honey she had in plenty
out of her own hives, but treacle was what her soul
desired, and Car had been about to give her a treat of
surprise. Hastily lowering the basket the dark girl
found that the vessel containing the syrup had been
smashed within.
By this time there had arisen a shout of laughter at
the extraordinary appearance of Car's back, which
irritated the dark queen into getting rid of the
disfigurement by the first sudden means available, and
independently of the help of the scoffers. She rushed
excitedly into the field they were about to cross, and
flinging herself flat on her back upon the grass, began
to wipe her gown as well as she could by spinning
horizontally on the herbage and dragging herself over
it upon her elbows.
The laughter rang louder; they clung to the gate, to
the posts, rested on their staves, in the weakness
engendered by their convulsions at the spectacle of
Car. Our heroine, who had hitherto held her peace, at
this wild moment could not help joining in with the
rest.
It was a misfortune--in more ways than one. No sooner
did the dark queen hear the soberer richer note of Tess
among those of the other work-people than a long
smouldering sense of rivalry inflamed her to madness.
She sprang to her feet and closely faced the object of
her dislike.
"How darest th' laugh at me, hussy!" she cried.
"I couldn't really help it when t'others did,"
apologized Tess, still tittering.
"Ah, th'st think th' beest everybody, dostn't, because
th' beest first favourite with He just now! But stop a
bit, my lady, stop a bit! I'm as good as two of such!
Look here--here's at 'ee!"
To Tess's horror the dark queen began stripping off the
bodice of her gown--which for the added reason of its
ridiculed condition she was only too glad to be free
of--till she had bared her plump neck, shoulders, and
arms to the moonshine, under which they looked as
luminous and beautiful as some Praxitelean creation, in
their possession of the faultless rotundities of a
lusty country girl. She closed her fists and squared up
at Tess.
"Indeed, then, I shall not fight!" said the latter
majestically; "and if I had know you was of that sort,
I wouldn't have so let myself down as to come with such
a whorage as this is!"
The rather too inclusive speech brought down a torrent
of vituperation from other quarters upon fair Tess's
unlucky head, particularly from the Queen of Diamonds,
who having stood in the relations to d'Urberville that
Car had also been suspected of, united with the latter
against the common enemy. Several other women also
chimed in, with an animus which none of them would have
been so fatuous as to show but for the rollicking
evening they had passed. Thereupon, finding Tess
unfairly browbeaten, the husbands and lovers tried to
make peace by defending her; but the result of that
attempt was directly to increase the war.
Tess was indignant and ashamed. She no longer minded
the loneliness of the way and the lateness of the hour;
her one object was to get away from the whole crew as
soon as possible. She knew well enough that the better
among them would repent of their passion next day.
They were all now inside the field, and she was edging
back to rush off alone when a horseman emerged almost
silently from the corner of the hedge that screened the
road, and Alec d'Urberville looked round upon them.
"What the devil is all this row about, work-folk?" he
asked.
The explanation was not readily forthcoming; and, in
truth, he did not require any. Having heard their
voices while yet some way off he had ridden creepingly
forward, and learnt enough to satisfy himself.
Tess was standing apart from the rest, near the gate.
He bent over towards her. "Jump up behind me," he
whispered, "and we'll get shot of the screaming cats in
a jiffy!"
She felt almost ready to faint, so vivid was her sense
of the crisis. At almost any other moment of her life
she would have refused such proffered aid and company,
as she had refused them several times before; and now
the loneliness would not of itself have forced her to
do otherwise. But coming as the invitation did at the
particular juncture when fear and indignation at these
adversaries could be transformed by a spring of the
foot into a triumph over them, she abandoned herself to
her impulse, climbed the gate, put her toe upon his
instep, and scrambled into the saddle behind him. The
pair were speeding away into the distant gray by the
time that the contentious revellers became aware of
what had happened.
The Queen of Spades forgot the stain on her bodice, and
stood beside the Queen of Diamonds and the new-married,
staggering young woman--all with a gaze of fixity in
the direction in which the horse's tramp was
diminishing into silence on the road.
"What be ye looking at?" asked a man who had not
observed the incident.
"Ho-ho-ho!" laughed dark Car.
"Hee-hee-hee!" laughed the tippling bride, as she
steadied herself on the arm of her fond husband.
"Heu-heu-heu!" laughed dark Car's mother, stroking her
moustache as she explained laconically: "Out of the
frying-pan into the fire!"
Then these children of the open air, whom even excess
of alcohol could scarce injure permanently, betook
themselves to the field-path; and as they went there
moved onward with them, around the shadow of each one's
head, a circle of opalized light, formed by the moon's
rays upon the glistening sheet of dew. Each pedestrian
could see no halo but his or her own, which never
deserted the head-shadow, whatever its vulgar
unsteadiness might be; but adhered to it, and
persistently beautified it; till the erratic motions
seemed an inherent part of the irradiation, and the
fumes of their breathing a component of the night's
mist; and the spirit of the scene, and of the
moonlight, and of Nature, seemed harmoniously to mingle
with the spirit of wine.
XI
The twain cantered along for some time without speech,
Tess as she clung to him still panting in her triumph,
yet in other respects dubious. She had perceived that
the horse was not the spirited one he sometimes rose,
and felt no alarm on that score, though her seat was
precarious enough despite her tight hold of him. She
begged him to slow the animal to a walk which Alec
accordingly did.
"Neatly done, was it not, dear Tess?" he said by and
by.
"Yes!" said she. "I am sure I ought to be much obliged
to you."
"And are you?"
She did not reply.
"Tess, why do you always dislike my kissing you?"
"I suppose--because I don't love you."
"You are quite sure?"
"I am angry with you sometimes!"
"Ah, I half feared as much." Nevertheless, Alec did
not object to that confession. He knew that anything
was better then frigidity. "Why haven't you told me
when I have made you angry?"
"You know very well why. Because I cannot help myself
here."
"I haven't offended you often by love-making?"
"You have sometimes."
"How many times?"
"You know as well as I--too many times."
"Every time I have tried?"
She was silent, and the horse ambled along for a
considerable distance, till a faint luminous fog, which
had hung in the hollows all the evening, became general
and enveloped them. It seemed to hold the moonlight in
suspension, rendering it more pervasive than in clear
air. Whether on this account, or from
absent-mindedness, or from sleepiness, she did not
perceive that they had long ago passed the point at
which the lane to Trantridge branched from the highway,
and that her conductor had not taken the Trantridge
track.
She was inexpressibly weary. She had risen at five
o'clock every morning of that week, had been on foot
the whole of each day, and on this evening had in
addition walked the three miles to Chaseborough, waited
three hours for her neighbours without eating or
drinking, her impatience to start them preventing
either; she had then walked a mile of the way home, and
had undergone the excitement of the quarrel, till, with
the slow progress of their steed, it was now nearly one
o'clock. Only once, however, was she overcome by
actual drowsiness. In that moment of oblivion her head
sank gently against him.
D'Urberville stopped the horse, withdrew his feet from
the stirrups, turned sideways on the saddle, and
enclosed her waist with his arm to support her.
This immediately put her on the defensive, and with one
of those sudden impulses of reprisal to which she was
liable she gave him a little push from her. In his
ticklish position he nearly lost his balance and only
just avoided rolling over into the road, the horse,
though a powerful one, being fortunately the quietest
he rode.
"That is devilish unkind!" he said. "I mean no
harm--only to keep you from falling."
She pondered suspiciously; till, thinking that this
might after all be true, she relented, and said quite
humbly, "I beg your pardon, sir."
"I won't pardon you unless you show some confidence in
me. Good God!" he burst out, "what am I, to be
repulsed so by a mere chit like you? For near three
mortal months have you trifled with my feelings, eluded
me, and snubbed me; and I won't stand it!"
"I"ll leave you tomorrow, sir."
"No, you will not leave me tomorrow! Will you, I ask
once more, show your belief in me by letting me clasp
you with my arm? Come, between us two and nobody else,
now. We know each other well; and you know that I love
you, and think you the prettiest girl in the world,
which you are. Mayn't I treat you as a lover?"
She drew a quick pettish breath of objection, writhing
uneasily on her seat, looked far ahead, and murmured,
"I don't know--I wish--how can I say yes or no when--"
He settled the matter by clasping his arm round her as
he desired, and Tess expressed no further negative.
Thus they sidled slowly onward till it struck her they
had been advancing for an unconscionable time--far
longer than was usually occupied by the short journey
from Chaseborough, even at this walking pace, and that
they were no longer on hard road, but in a mere
trackway.
"Why, where be we?" she exclaimed.
"Passing by a wood."
"A wood--what wood? Surely we are quite out of the
road?"
"A bit of The Chase--the oldest wood in England. It is
a lovely night, and why should we not prolong our ride
a little?"
"How could you be so treacherous!" said Tess, between
archness and real dismay, and getting rid of his arm by
pulling open his fingers one by one, though at the risk
of slipping off herself. "Just when I've been putting
such trust in you, and obliging you to please you,
because I thought I had wronged you by that push!
Please set me down, and let me walk home."
"You cannot walk home, darling, even if the air were
clear. We are miles away from Trantridge, if I must
tell you, and in this growing fog you might wander for
hours among these trees."
"Never mind that," she coaxed. "Put me down, I beg
you. I don't mind where it is; only let me get down,
sir, please!"
"Very well, then, I will--on one condition. Having
brought you here to this out-of-the-way place, I feel
myself responsible for your safe-conduct home, whatever
you may yourself feel about it. As to your getting to
Trantridge without assistance, it is quite impossible;
for, to tell the truth, dear, owing to this fog, which
so disguises everything, I don't quite know where we
are myself. Now, if you will promise to wait beside the
horse while I walk through the bushes till I come to
some road or house, and ascertain exactly our
whereabouts, I'll deposit you here willingly. When I
come back I'll give you full directions, and if you
insist upon walking you may; or you may ride--at your
pleasure."
She accepted these terms, and slid off on the near
side, though not till he had stolen a cursory kiss.
He sprang down on the other side.
"I suppose I must hold the horse?" said she.
"Oh no; it's not necessary," replied Alec, patting the
panting creature. "He's had enough of it for tonight."
He turned the horse's head into the bushes, hitched him
on to a bough, and made a sort of couch or nest for her
in the deep mass of dead leaves.
"Now, you sit there," he said. "The leaves have not
got damp as yet. Just give an eye to the horse--it
will be quite sufficient."
He took a few steps away from her, but, returning,
said, "By the bye, Tess, your father has a new cob
today. Somebody gave it to him."
"Somebody? You!"
D'Urberville nodded.
"O how very good of you that is!" she exclaimed, with a
painful sense of the awkwardness of having to thank him
just then.
"And the children have some toys."
"I didn't know--you ever sent them anything!" she
murmured, much moved. "I almost wish you had not--yes,
I almost with it!"
"Why, dear?"
"It--hampers me so."
"Tessy--don't you love me ever so little now?"
"I'm grateful," she reluctantly admitted. "But I fear
I do not---" The sudden vision of his passion for
herself as a factor in this result so distressed her
that, beginning with one slow tear, and then following
with another, she wept outright.
"Don't cry, dear, dear one! Now sit down here, and
wait till I come." She passively sat down amid the
leaves he had heaped, and shivered slightly. "Are you
cold?" he asked.
"Not very--a little."
He touched her with his fingers, which sank into her as
into down. "You have only that puffy muslin dress
on--how's that?"
"It's my best summer one. 'Twas very warm when I
started, and I didn't know I was going to ride, and
that it would be night."
"Nights grow chilly in September. Let me see." He
pulled off a light overcoat that he had worn, and put
it round her tenderly. "That's it--now you'll feel
warmer," he continued. "Now, my pretty, rest there; I
shall soon be back again."
Having buttoned the overcoat round her shoulders he
plunged into the webs of vapour which by this time
formed veils between the trees. She could hear the
rustling of the branches as he ascended the adjoining
slope, till his movements were no louder than the
hopping of a bird, and finally died away. With the
setting of the moon the pale light lessened, and Tess
became invisible as she fell into reverie upon the
leaves where he had left her.
In the meantime Alec d'Urberville had pushed on up the
slope to clear his genuine doubt as to the quarter of
The Chase they were in. He had, in fact, ridden quite
at random for over an hour, taking any turning that
came to hand in order to prolong companionship with
her, and giving far more attention to Tess's moonlit
person than to any wayside object. A little rest for
the jaded animal being desirable, he did not hasten his
search for landmarks. A clamber over the hill into the
adjoining vale brought him to the fence of a highway
whose contours he recognized, which settled the
question of their whereabouts. D'Urberville thereupon
turned back; but by this time the moon had quite gone
down, and partly on account of the fog The Chase was
wrapped in thick darkness, although morning was not far
off. He was obliged to advance with outstretched hands
to avoid contact with the boughs, and discovered that
to hit the exact spot from which he had started was at
first entirely beyond him. Roaming up and down, round
and round, he at length heard a slight movement of the
horse close at hand; and the sleeve of his overcoat
unexpectedly caught his foot.
"Tess!" said d'Urberville.
There was no answer. The obscurity was now so great
that he could see absolutely nothing but a pale
nebulousness at his feet, which represented the white
muslin figure he had left upon the dead leaves.
Everything else was blackness alike. D'Urberville
stooped; and heard a gentle regular breathing. He
knelt and bent lower, till her breath warmed his face,
and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers.
She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there
lingered tears.
Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Above
them rose the primeval yews and oaks of The Chase, in
which there poised gentle roosting birds in their last
nap; and about them stole the hopping rabbits and
hares. But, might some say, where was Tess's guardian
angel? where was the providence of her simple faith?
Perhaps, like that other god of whom the ironical
Tishbite spoke, he was talking, or he was pursuing, or
he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and not to be
awaked.
Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue,
sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as
yet, there should have been traced such a coarse
pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the
coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the
woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of
analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our
sense of order. One may, indeed, admit the possibility
of a retribution lurking in the present catastrophe.
Doubtless some of Tess d'Urberville's mailed ancestors
rollicking home from a fray had dealt the same measure
even more ruthlessly towards peasant girls of their
time. But though to visit the sins of the fathers upon
the children may be a morality good enough for
divinities, it is scorned by average human nature; and
it therefore does not mend the matter.
As Tess's own people down in those retreats are never
tired of saying among each other in their fatalistic
way: "It was to be." There lay the pity of it. An
immeasurable social chasm was to divide our heroine's
personality thereafter from that previous self of hers
who stepped from her mother's door to try her fortune
at Trantridge poultry-farm.
END OF PHASE THE FIRST
Phase the Second: Maiden No More
XII
The basket was heavy and the bundle was large, but she
lugged them along like a person who did not find her
especial burden in material things. Occasionally she
stopped to rest in a mechanical way by some gate or
post; and then, giving the baggage another hitch upon
her full round arm, went steadily on again.
It was a Sunday morning in late October, about four
months after Tess Durbeyfield's arrival at Trantridge,
and some few weeks subsequent to the night ride in The
Chase. The time was not long past daybreak, and the
yellow luminosity upon the horizon behind her back
lighted the ridge towards which her face was set--the
barrier of the vale wherein she had of late been a
stranger--which she would have to climb over to reach
her birthplace. The ascent was gradual on this side,
and the soil and scenery differed much from those
within Blackmore Vale. Even the character and accent
of the two peoples had shades of difference, despite
the amalgamating effects of a roundabout railway; so
that, though less than twenty miles from the place of
her sojourn at Trantridge, her native village had
seemed a far-away spot. The field-folk shut in there
traded northward and westward, travelled, courted, and
married northward and westward, thought northward and
westward; those on this side mainly directed their
energies and attention to the east and south.
The incline was the same down which d'Urberville had
driven her so wildly on that day in June. Tess went up
the remainder of its length without stopping, and on
reaching the edge of the escarpment gazed over the
familiar green world beyond, now half-veiled in mist.
It was always beautiful from here; it was terribly
beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell
upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where
the sweet birds sing, and her views of life had been
totally changed for her by the lesson. Verily another
girl than the simple one she had been at home was she
who, bowed by thought, stood still here, and turned to
look behind her. She could not bear to look forward
into the Vale.
Ascending by the long white road that Tess herself had
just laboured up, she saw a two-wheeled vehicle, beside
which walked a man, who held up his hand to attract her
attention.
She obeyed the signal to wait for him with
unspeculative repose, and in a few minutes man and
horse stopped beside her.
"Why did you slip away by stealth like this?" said
d'Urberville, with upbraiding breathlessness; "on a
Sunday morning, too, when people were all in bed! I
only discovered it by accident, and I have been driving
like the deuce to overtake you. Just look at the mare.
Why go off like this? You know that nobody wished to
hinder your going. And how unnecessary it has been for
you to toil along on foot, and encumber yourself with
this heavy load! I have followed like a madman, simply
to drive you the rest of the distance, if you won't
come back."
"I shan't come back," said she.
"I thought you wouldn't--I said so! Well, then, put up
your basket, and let me help you on."
She listlessly placed her basket and bundle within the
dog-cart, and stepped up, and they sat side by side.
She had no fear of him now, and in the cause of her
confidence her sorrow lay.
D'Urberville mechanically lit a cigar, and the journey
was continued with broken unemotional conversation on
the commonplace objects by the wayside. He had quite
forgotten his struggle to kiss her when, in the early
summer, they had driven in the opposite direction along
the same road. But she had not, and she sat now, like
a puppet, replying to his remarks in monosyllables.
After some miles they came in view of the clump of
trees beyond which the village of Marlott stood.
It was only then that her still face showed the least
emotion, a tear or two beginning to trickle down.
"What are you crying for?" he coldly asked.
"I was only thinking that I was born over there,"
murmured Tess.
"Well--we must all be born somewhere."
"I wish I had never been born--there or anywhere else!"
"Pooh! Well, if you didn't wish to come to Trantridge
why did you come?"
She did not reply.
"You didn't come for love of me, that I'll swear."
"'Tis quite true. If I had gone for love o' you, if I
had ever sincerely loved you, if I loved you still, I
should not so loathe and hate myself for my weakness as
I do now! ... My eyes were dazed by you for a little,
and that was all."
He shrugged his shoulders. She resumed--
"I didn't understand your meaning till it was too
late."
"That"s what every woman says."
"How can you dare to use such words!" she cried,
turning impetuously upon him, her eyes flashing as the
latent spirit (of which he was to see more some day)
awoke in her. "My God! I could knock you out of the
gig! Did it never strike your mind that what every
woman says some women may feel?"
"Very well," he said, laughing; "I am sorry to wound
you. I did wrong--I admit it." He dropped into some
little bitterness as he continued: "Only you needn't be
so everlastingly flinging it in my face. I am ready to
pay to the uttermost farthing. You know you need not
work in the fields or the dairies again. You know you
may clothe yourself with the best, instead of in the
bald plain way you have lately affected, as if you
couldn't get a ribbon more than you earn."
Her lip lifted slightly, though there was little scorn,
as a rule, in her large and impulsive nature.
"I have said I will not take anything more from you,
and I will not--I cannot! I SHOULD be your creature to
go on doing that, and I won't!"
"One would think you were a princess from your manner,
in addition to a true and original d'Urberville--ha!
ha! Well, Tess, dear, I can say no more. I suppose I
am a bad fellow--a damn bad fellow. I was born bad, and
I have lived bad, and I shall die bad in all
probability. But, upon my lost soul, I won't be bad
towards you again, Tess. And if certain circumstances
should arise--you understand--in which you are in the
least need, the least difficulty, send me one line, and
you shall have by return whatever you require. I may
not be at Trantridge--I am going to London for a
time--I can't stand the old woman. But all letters
will be forwarded."
She said that she did not wish him to drive her
further, and they stopped just under the clump of
trees. D'Urberville alighted, and lifted her down
bodily in his arms, afterwards placing her articles on
the ground beside her. She bowed to him slightly, her
eye just lingering in his; and then she turned to take
the parcels for departure.
Alec d'Urberville removed his cigar, bent towards her,
and said--
"You are not going to turn away like that, dear!
Come!"
"If you wish," she answered indifferently. "See how
you've mastered me!"
She thereupon turned round and lifted her face to his,
and remained like a marble term while he imprinted a
kiss upon her cheek--half perfunctorily, half as if
zest had not yet quite died out. Her eyes vaguely
rested upon the remotest trees in the lane while the
kiss was given, as though she were nearly unconscious
of what he did.
"Now the other side, for old acquaintance' sake."
She turned her head in the same passive way, as one
might turn at the request of a sketcher or hairdresser,
and he kissed the other side, his lips touching cheeks
that were damp and smoothly chill as the skin of the
mushrooms in the fields around.
"You don't give me your mouth and kiss me back. You
never willingly do that--you'll never love me, I fear."
"I have said so, often. It is true. I have never
really and truly loved you, and I think I never can."
She added mournfully, "Perhaps, of all things, a lie on
this thing would do the most good to me now; but I have
honour enough left, little as 'tis, not to tell that
lie. If I did love you I may have the best o' causes
for letting you know it. But I don't."
He emitted a laboured breath, as if the scene were
getting rather oppressive to his heart, or to his
conscience, or to his gentility.
"Well, you are absurdly melancholy, Tess. I have no
reason for flattering you now, and I can say plainly
that you need not be so sad. You can hold your own for
beauty against any woman of these parts, gentle or
simple; I say it to you as a practical man and
well-wisher. If you are wise you will show it to the
world more than you do before it fades.... And yet,
Tess, will you come back to me! Upon my soul I don't
like to let you go like this!"
"Never, never! I made up my mind as soon as I
saw--what I ought to have seen sooner; and I won't
come."
"Then good morning, my four months' cousin--goodbye!"
He leapt up lightly, arranged the reins, and was gone
between the tall red-berried hedges.
Tess did not look after him, but slowly wound along the
crooked lane. It was still early, and though the sun's
lower limb was just free of the hill, his rays,
ungenial and peering, addressed the eye rather than the
touch as yet. There was not a human soul near. Sad
October and her sadder self seemed the only two
existences haunting that lane.
As she walked, however, some footsteps approached
behind her, the footsteps of a man; and owing to the
briskness of his advance he was close at her heels and
had said "Good morning" before she had been long aware
of his propinquity. He appeared to be an artisan of
some sort, and carried a tin pot of red paint in his
hand. He asked in a business-like manner if he should
take her basket, which she permitted him to do, walking
beside him.
"It is early to be astir this Sabbath morn!" he said
cheerfully.
"Yes," said Tess.
"When most people are at rest from their week's work."
She also assented to this.
"Though I do more real work today than all the week
besides."
"Do you?"
"All the week I work for the glory of man, and on
Sunday for the glory of God. That's more real than the
other--hey? I have a little to do here at this stile."
The man turned as he spoke to an opening at the
roadside leading into a pasture. "If you'll wait a
moment," he added, "I shall not be long."
As he had her basket she could not well do otherwise;
and she waited, observing him. He set down her basket
and the tin pot, and stirring the paint with the brush
that was in it began painting large square letters on
the middle board of the three composing the stile,
placing a comma after each word, as if to give pause
while that word was driven well home to the reader's
heart--
THY, DAMNATION, SLUMBERETH, NOT.
2 Pet. ii. 3.
Against the peaceful landscape, the pale, decaying
tints of the copses, the blue air of the horizon and
the lichened stileboards, these staring vermilion words
shone forth. They seemed to shout themselves out and
make the atmosphere ring. Some people might have cried
"Alas, poor Theology!" at the hideous defacement--the
last grotesque phase of a creed which had served
mankind well in its time. But the words entered Tess
with accusatory horror. It was as if this man had
known her recent history; yet he was a total stranger.
Having finished his text he picked up her basket, and
she mechanically resumed her walk beside him.
"Do you believe what you paint?" she asked in low
tones.
"Believe that tex? Do I believe in my own existence!"
"But," said she tremulously, "suppose your sin was not
of your own seeking?"
He shook his head.
"I cannot split hairs on that burning query," he said.
"I have walked hundreds of miles this past summer,
painting these texes on every wall, gate, and stile the
length and breadth of this district. I leave their
application to the hearts of the people who read 'em."
"I think they are horrible," said Tess. "Crushing!
killing!"
"That's what they are meant to be!" he replied in a
trade voice. "But you should read my hottest ones--them
I kips for slums and seaports. They'd make ye wriggle!
Not but what this is a very good tex for rural
districts. ... Ah--there's a nice bit of blank wall up
by that barn standing to waste. I must put one
there--one that it will be good for dangerous young
females like yerself to heed. Will ye wait, missy?"
"No," said she; and taking her basket Tess trudged on.
A little way forward she turned her head. The old gray
wall began to advertise a similar fiery lettering to
the first, with a strange and unwonted mien, as if
distressed at duties it had never before been called
upon to perform. It was with a sudden flush that she
read and realized what was to be the inscription he was
now halfway through--
THOU, SHALT, NOT, COMMIT--
Her cheerful friend saw her looking, stopped his brush,
and shouted--
"If you want to ask for edification on these things of
moment, there's a very earnest good man going to preach
a charity-sermon today in the parish you are going
to--Mr Clare of Emminster. I'm not of his persuasion
now, but he's a good man, and he'll expound as well as
any parson I know. 'Twas he began the work in me."
But Tess did not answer; she throbbingly resumed her
walk, her eyes fixed on the ground. "Pooh--I don't
believe God said such things!" she murmured
contemptuously when her flush had died away.
A plume of smoke soared up suddenly from her father's
chimney, the sight of which made her heart ache. The
aspect of the interior, when she reached it, made her
heart ache more. Her mother, who had just come down
stairs, turned to greet her from the fireplace, where
she was kindling barked-oak twigs under the breakfast
kettle. The young children were still above, as was
also her father, it being Sunday morning, when he felt
justified in lying an additional half-hour.
"Well!--my dear Tess!" exclaimed her surprised mother,
jumping up and kissing the girl. "How be ye? I didn't
see you till you was in upon me! Have you come home to
be married?"
"No, I have not come for that, mother."
"Then for a holiday?"
"Yes--for a holiday; for a long holiday," said Tess.
"What, isn't your cousin going to do the handsome
thing?"
"He's not my cousin, and he's not going to marry me."
Her mother eyed her narrowly.
"Come, you have not told me all," she said.
Then Tess went up to her mother, put her face upon
Joan's neck, and told.
"And yet th'st not got him to marry 'ee!" reiterated
her mother. "Any woman would have done it but you,
after that!"
"Perhaps any woman would except me."
"It would have been something like a story to come back
with, if you had!" continued Mrs Durbeyfield, ready to
burst into tears of vexation. "After all the talk
about you and him which has reached us here, who would
have expected it to end like this! Why didn't ye think
of doing some good for your family instead o' thinking
only of yourself? See how I've got to teave and slave,
and your poor weak father with his heart clogged like a
dripping-pan. I did hope for something to come out o'
this! To see what a pretty pair you and he made that
day when you drove away together four months ago! See
what he has given us--all, as we thought, because we
were his kin. But if he's not, it must have been done
because of his love for 'ee. And yet you've not got
him to marry!"
Get Alec d'Urberville in the mind to marry her! He
marry HER! On matrimony he had never once said a word.
And what if he had? How a convulsive snatching at
social salvation might have impelled her to answer him
she could not say. But her poor foolish mother little
knew her present feeling towards this man. Perhaps it
was unusual in the circumstances, unlucky,
unaccountable; but there it was; and this, as she had
said, was what made her detest herself. She had never
wholly cared for him, she did not at all care for him
now. She had dreaded him, winced before him, succumbed
to adroit advantages he took of her helplessness; then,
temporarily blinded by his ardent manners, had been
stirred to confused surrender awhile: had suddenly
despised and disliked him, and had run away. That was
all. Hate him she did not quite; but he was dust and
ashes to her, and even for her name's sake she scarcely
wished to marry him.
"You ought to have been more careful if you didn't mean
to get him to make you his wife!"
"O mother, my mother!" cried the agonized girl, turning
passionately upon her parent as if her poor heart would
break. "How could I be expected to know? I was a child
when I left this house four months ago. Why didn't you
tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why didn't you
warn me? Ladies know what to fend hands against,
because they read novels that tell them of these
tricks; but I never had the chance o' learning in that
way, and you did not help me!"
Her mother was subdued.
"I thought if I spoke of his fond feelings and what
they might lead to, you would be hontish wi' him and
lose your chance," she murmured, wiping her eyes with
her apron. "Well, we must make the best of it, I
suppose. 'Tis nater, after all, and what do please
God!"
XIII
The event of Tess Durbeyfield's return from the manor
of her bogus kinsfolk was rumoured abroad, if rumour be
not too large a word for a space of a square mile. In
the afternoon several young girls of Marlott, former
schoolfellows and acquaintances of Tess, called to see
her, arriving dressed in their best starched and
ironed, as became visitors to a person who had made a
transcendent conquest (as they supposed), and sat round
the room looking at her with great curiosity. For the
fact that it was this said thirty-first cousin, Mr
d'Urberville, who had fallen in love with her, a
gentleman not altogether local, whose reputation as a
reckless gallant and heartbreaker was beginning to
spread beyond the immediate boundaries of Trantridge,
lent Tess's supposed position, by its fearsomeness, a
far higher fascination that it would have exercised if
unhazardous.
Their interest was so deep that the younger ones
whispered when her back was turned--
"How pretty she is; and how that best frock do set her
off! I believe it cost an immense deal, and that it
was a gift from him."
Tess, who was reaching up to get the tea-things from
the corner-cupboard, did not hear these commentaries.
If she had heard them, she might soon have set her
friends right on the matter. But her mother heard, and
Joan's simple vanity, having been denied the hope of a
dashing marriage, fed itself as well as it could upon
the sensation of a dashing flirtation. Upon the whole
she felt gratified, even though such a limited and
evanescent triumph should involve her daughter's
reputation; it might end in marriage yet, and in the
warmth of her responsiveness to their admiration she
invited her visitors to stay to tea.
Their chatter, their laughter, their good-humoured
innuendoes, above all, their flashes and flickerings of
envy, revived Tess's spirits also; and, as the evening
wore on, she caught the infection of their excitement,
and grew almost gay. The marble hardness left her
face, she moved with something of her old bounding
step, and flushed in all her young beauty.
At moments, in spite of thought, she would reply to
their inquiries with a manner of superiority, as if
recognizing that her experiences in the field of
courtship had, indeed, been slightly enviable. But so
far was she from being, in the words of Robert South,
"in love with her own ruin," that the illusion was
transient as lightning; cold reason came back to mock
her spasmodic weakness; the ghastliness of her
momentary pride would convict her, and recall her to
reserved listlessness again.
And the despondency of the next morning's dawn, when it
was no longer Sunday, but Monday; and no best clothes;
and the laughing visitors were gone, and she awoke
alone in her old bed, the innocent younger children
breathing softly around her. In place of the
excitement of her return, and the interest it had
inspired, she saw before her a long and stony highway
which she had to tread, without aid, and with little
sympathy. Her depression was then terrible, and she
could have hidden herself in a tomb.
In the course of a few weeks Tess revived sufficiently
to show herself so far as was necessary to get to
church one Sunday morning. She liked to hear the
chanting--such as it was--and the old Psalms, and to
join in the Morning Hymn. That innate love of melody,
which she had inherited from her ballad-singing mother,
gave the simplest music a power over her which could
well-nigh drag her heart out of her bosom at times.
To be as much out of observation as possible for
reasons of her own, and to escape the gallantries of
the young men, she set out before the chiming began,
and took a back seat under the gallery, close to the
lumber, where only old men and women came, and where
the bier stood on end among the churchyard tools.
Parishioners dropped in by twos and threes, deposited
themselves in rows before her, rested three-quarters of
a minute on their foreheads as if they were praying,
though they were not; then sat up, and looked around.
When the chants came on one of her favourites happened
to be chosen among the rest--the old double chant
"Langdon"--but she did not know what it was called,
though she would much have liked to know. She thought,
without exactly wording the thought, how strange and
godlike was a composer's power, who from the grave
could lead through sequences of emotion, which he alone
had felt at first, a girl like her who had never heard
of his name, and never would have a clue to his
personality.
The people who had turned their heads turned them again
as the service proceeded; and at last observing her
they whispered to each other. She knew what their
whispers were about, grew sick at heart, and felt that
she could come to church no more.
The bedroom which she shared with some of the children
formed her retreat more continually than ever. Here,
under her few square yards of thatch, she watched
winds, and snows, and rains, gorgeous sunsets, and
successive moons at their full. So close kept she that
at length almost everybody thought she had gone away.
The only exercise that Tess took at this time was after
dark; and it was then, when out in the woods, that she
seemed least solitary. She knew how to hit to a
hair's-breadth that moment of evening when the light
and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the
constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize
each other, leaving absolute mental liberty. It is
then that the plight of being alive becomes attenuated
to its least possible dimensions. She had no fear of
the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun
mankind--or rather that cold accretion called the
world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so
unformidable, even pitiable, in its units.
On these lonely hills and dales her quiescent glide was
of a piece with the element she moved in. Her flexuous
and stealthy figure became an integral part of the
scene. At times her whimsical fancy would intensify
natural processes around her till they seemed a part of
her own story. Rather they became a part of it; for
the world is only a psychological phenomenon, and what
they seemed they were. The midnight airs and gusts,
moaning amongst the tightly-wrapped buds and bark of
the winter twigs, were formulae of bitter reproach.
A wet day was the expression of irremediable grief at her
weakness in the mind of some vague ethical being whom
she could not class definitely as the God of her
childhood, and could not comprehend as any other.
But this encompassment of her own characterization,
based on shreds of convention, peopled by phantoms and
voices antipathetic to her, was a sorry and mistaken
creation of Tess's fancy--a cloud of moral hobgoblins
by which she was terrified without reason. It was they
that were out of harmony with the actual world, not
she. Walking among the sleeping birds in the hedges,
watching the skipping rabbits on a moonlit warren, or
standing under a pheasant-laden bough, she looked upon
herself as a figure of Guilt intruding into the haunts
of Innocence. But all the while she was making a
distinction where there was no difference. Feeling
herself in antagonism she was quite in accord. She had
been made to break an accepted social law, but no law
know to the environment in which she fancied herself
such an anomaly.
XIV
It was a hazy sunrise in August. The denser nocturnal
vapours, attacked by the warm beams, were dividing and
shrinking into isolated fleeces within hollows and
coverts, where they waited till they should be dried
away to nothing.
The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious
sentient, personal look, demanding the masculine
pronoun for its adequate expression. His present
aspect, coupled with the lack of all human forms in the
scene, explained the old-time heliolatries in a moment.
One could feel that a saner religion had never
prevailed under the sky. The luminary was a
golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like creature,
gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon
an earth that was brimming with interest for him.
His light, a little later, broke though chinks of
cottage shutters, throwing stripes like red-hot pokers
upon cupboards, chests of drawers, and other furniture
within; and awakening harvesters who were not already
astir.
But of all ruddy things that morning the brightest were
two broad arms of painted wood, which rose from the
margin of yellow cornfield hard by Marlott village.
They, with two others below, formed the revolving
Maltese cross of the reaping-machine, which had been
brought to the field on the previous evening to be
ready for operations this day. The paint with which
they were smeared, intensified in hue by the sunlight,
imparted to them a look of having been dipped in liquid
fire.
The field had already been "opened"; that is to say,
a lane a few feet wide had been hand-cut through the
wheat along the whole circumference of the field for
the first passage of the horses and machine.
Two groups, one of men and lads, the other of women,
had come down the lane just at the hour when the
shadows of the eastern hedge-top struck the west hedge
midway, so that the heads of the groups were enjoying
sunrise while their feet were still in the dawn. They
disappeared from the lane between the two stone posts
which flanked the nearest field-gate.
Presently there arose from within a ticking like the
love-making of the grasshopper. The machine had begun,
and a moving concatenation of three horses and the
aforesaid long rickety machine was visible over the
gate, a driver sitting upon one of the hauling horses,
and an attendant on the seat of the implement. Along
one side of the field the whole wain went, the arms of
the mechanical reaper revolving slowly, till it passed
down the hill quite out of sight. In a minute it came
up on the other side of the field at the same equable
pace; the glistening brass star in the forehead of the
fore horse first catching the eye as it rose into view
over the stubble, then the bright arms, and then the
whole machine.
The narrow lane of stubble encompassing the field grew
wider with each circuit, and the standing corn was
reduced to smaller area as the morning wore on.
Rabbits, hares, snakes, rats, mice, retreated inwards
as into a fastness, unaware of the ephemeral nature of
their refuge, and of the doom that awaited them later
in the day when, their covert shrinking to a more and
more horrible narrowness, they were huddled together,
friends and foes, till the last few yards of upright
wheat fell also under the teeth of the unerring reaper,
and they were every one put to death by the sticks and
stones of the harvesters.
The reaping-machine left the fallen corn behind it in
little heaps, each heap being of the quantity for a
sheaf; and upon these the active binders in the rear
laid their hands--mainly women, but some of them men in
print shirts, and trousers supported round their waists
by leather straps, rendering useless the two buttons
behind, which twinkled and bristled with sunbeams at
every movement of each wearer, as if they were a pair
of eyes in the small of his back.
But those of the other sex were the most interesting of
this company of binders, by reason of the charm which
is acquired by woman when she becomes part and parcel
of outdoor nature, and is not merely an object set down
therein as at ordinary times. A field-man is a
personality afield; a field-woman is a portion of the
field; she had somehow lost her own margin, imbibed the
essence of her surrounding, and assimilated herself
with it.
The women--or rather girls, for they were mostly
young--wore drawn cotton bonnets with great flapping
curtains to keep off the sun, and gloves to prevent
their hands being wounded by the stubble. There was one
wearing a pale pink jacket, another in a cream-coloured
tight-sleeved gown, another in a petticoat as red as
the arms of the reaping-machine; and others, older, in
the brown-rough "wropper" or over-all--the
old-established and most appropriate dress of the
field-woman, which the young ones were abandoning.
This morning the eye returns involuntarily to the girl
in the pink cotton jacket, she being the most flexuous
and finely-drawn figure of them all. But her bonnet is
pulled so far over her brow that none of her face is
disclosed while she binds, though her complexion may be
guessed from a stray twine or two of dark brown hair
which extends below the curtain of her bonnet. Perhaps
one reason why she seduces casual attention is that she
never courts it, though the other women often gaze
around them.
Her binding proceeds with clock-like monotony. From
the sheaf last finished she draws a handful of ears,
patting their tips with her left palm to bring them
even. Then stooping low she moves forward, gathering
the corn with both hands against her knees, and pushing
her left gloved hand under the bundle to meet the right
on the other side, holding the corn in an embrace like
that of a lover. She brings the ends of the bond
together, and kneels on the sheaf while she ties it,
beating back her skirts now and then when lifted by the
breeze. A bit of her naked arm is visible between the
buff leather of the gauntlet and the sleeve of her
gown; and as the day wears on its feminine smoothness
becomes scarified by the stubble, and bleeds.
At intervals she stands up to rest, and to retie her
disarranged apron, or to pull her bonnet straight.
Then one can see the oval face of a handsome young
woman with deep dark eyes and long heavy clinging
tresses, which seem to clasp in a beseeching way
anything they fall against. The cheeks are paler, the
teeth more regular, the red lips thinner than is usual
in a country-bred girl.
It is Tess Durbeyfield, otherwise d'Urberville,
somewhat changed--the same, but not the same; at the
present stage of her existence living as a stranger and
an alien here, though it was no strange land that she
was in. After a long seclusion she had come to a
resolve to undertake outdoor work in her native
village, the busiest season of the year in the
agricultural world having arrived, and nothing that she
could do within the house being so remunerative for the
time as harvesting in the fields.
The movements of the other women were more or less
similar to Tess's, the whole bevy of them drawing
together like dancers in a quadrille at the completion
of a sheaf by each, every one placing her sheaf on end
against those of the rest, till a shock, or "stitch" as
it was here called, of ten or a dozen was formed.
They went to breakfast, and came again, and the work
proceeded as before. As the hour of eleven drew near a
person watching her might have noticed that every now
and then Tess's glance flitted wistfully to the brow of
the hill, though she did not pause in her sheafing. On
the verge of the hour the heads of a group of children,
of ages ranging from six to fourteen, rose over the
stubbly convexity of the hill.
The face of Tess flushed slightly, but still she did
not pause.
The eldest of the comers, a girl who wore a triangular
shawl, its corners draggling on the stubble, carried in
her arms what at first sight seemed to be a doll, but
proved to be an infant in long clothes. Another
brought some lunch. The harvesters ceased working,
took their provisions, and sat down against one of the
shocks. Here they fell to, the men plying a stone jar
freely, and passing round a cup.
Tess Durbeyfield had been one of the last to suspend
her labours. She sat down at the end of the shock, her
face turned somewhat away from her companions. When
she had deposited herself a man in a rabbit-skin cap
and with a red handkerchief tucked into his belt, held
the cup of ale over the top of the shock for her to
drink. But she did not accept his offer. As soon as
her lunch was spread she called up the big girl her
sister, and took the baby off her, who, glad to be
relieved of the burden, went away to the next shock and
joined the other children playing there. Tess, with a
curiously stealthy yet courageous movement, and with a
still rising colour, unfastened her frock and began
suckling the child.
The men who sat nearest considerately turned their
faces towards the other end of the field, some of them
beginning to smoke; one, with absent-minded fondness,
regretfully stroking the jar that would no longer yield
a stream. All the women but Tess fell into animated
talk, and adjusted the disarranged knots of their hair.
When the infant had taken its fill the young mother sat
it upright in her lap, and looking into the far
distance dandled it with a gloomy indifference that was
almost dislike; then all of a sudden she fell to
violently kissing it some dozens of times, as if she
could never leave off, the child crying at the
vehemence of an onset which strangely combined
passionateness with contempt.
"She's fond of that there child, though she mid pretend
to hate en, and say she wishes the baby and her too
were in the churchyard," observed the woman in the red
petticoat.
"She'll soon leave off saying that," replied the one in
buff. "Lord, 'tis wonderful what a body can get used to
o' that sort in time!"
"A little more than persuading had to do wi' the coming
o't, I reckon. There were they that heard a sobbing
one night last year in The Chase; and it mid ha' gone
hard wi' a certain party if folks had come along."
"Well, a little more, or a little less, 'twas a
thousand pities that it should have happened to she, of
all others. But 'tis always the comeliest! The plain
ones be as safe as churches--hey, Jenny?" The speaker
turned to one of the group who certainly was not
ill-defined as plain.
It was a thousand pities, indeed; it was impossible for
even an enemy to feel otherwise on looking at Tess as
she sat there, with her flower-like mouth and large
tender eyes, neither black nor blue nor grey nor
violet; rather all those shades together, and a hundred
others, which could be seen if one looked into their
irises--shade behind shade--tint beyond tint--around
pupils that had no bottom; an almost standard woman,
but for the slight incautiousness of character
inherited from her race.
A resolution which had surprised herself had brought
her into the fields this week for the first time during
many months. After wearing and wasting her palpitating
heart with every engine of regret that lonely
inexperience could devise, commonsense had illuminated
her. She felt that she would do well to be useful
again--to taste anew sweet independence at any price.
The past was past; whatever it had been it was no more
at hand. Whatever its consequences, time would close
over them; they would all in a few years be as if they
had never been, and she herself grassed down and
forgotten. Meanwhile the trees were just as green as
before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now
as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened
because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain.
She might have seen that what had bowed her head so
profoundly--the thought of the world's concern at her
situation--was founded on an illusion. She was not an
existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of
sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind
besides Tess was only a passing thought. Even to
friends she was no more than a frequently passing
thought. If she made herself miserable the livelong
night and day it was only this much to them--"Ah, she
makes herself unhappy." If she tried to be cheerful,
to dismiss all care, to take pleasure in the daylight,
the flowers, the baby, she could only be this idea to
them--"Ah, she bears it very well." Moreover, alone in
a desert island would she have been wretched at what
had happened to her? Not greatly. If she could have
been but just created, to discover herself as a
spouseless mother, with no experience of life except as
the parent of a nameless child, would the position have
caused her to despair? No, she would have taken it
calmly, and found pleasure therein. Most of the misery
had been generated by her conventional aspect, and not
by her innate sensations.
Whatever Tess's reasoning, some spirit had induced her
to dress herself up neatly as she had formerly done,
and come out into the fields, harvest-hands being
greatly in demand just then. This was why she had
borne herself with dignity, and had looked people
calmly in the face at times, even when holding the baby
in her arms.
The harvest-men rose from the shock of corn, and
stretched their limbs, and extinguished their pipes.
The horses, which had been unharnessed and fed, were
again attached to the scarlet machine. Tess, having
quickly eaten her own meal, beckoned to her eldest
sister to come and take away the baby, fastened her
dress, put on the buff gloves again, and stooped anew
to draw a bond from the last completed sheaf for the
tying of the next.
In the afternoon and evening the proceedings of the
morning were continued, Tess staying on till dusk with
the body of harvesters. Then they all rode home in one
of the largest wagons, in the company of a broad
tarnished moon that had risen from the ground to the
eastwards, its face resembling the outworn gold-leaf
halo of some worm-eaten Tuscan saint. Tess's female
companions sang songs, and showed themselves very
sympathetic and glad at her reappearance out of doors,
though they could not refrain from mischievously
throwing in a few verses of the ballad about the maid
who went to the merry green wood and came back a
changed state. There are counterpoises and
compensations in life; and the event which had made of
her a social warning had also for the moment made her
the most interesting personage in the village to many.
Their friendliness won her still farther away from
herself, their lively spirits were contagious, and she
became almost gay.
But now that her moral sorrows were passing away a
fresh one arose on the natural side of her which knew
no social law. When she reached home it was to learn
to her grief that the baby had been suddenly taken ill
since the afternoon. Some such collapse had been
probable, so tender and puny was its frame; but the
event came as a shock nevertheless.
The baby's offence against society in coming into the
world was forgotten by the girl-mother; her soul's
desire was to continue that offence by preserving the
life of the child. However, it soon grew clear that
the hour of emancipation for that little prisoner of
the flesh was to arrive earlier than her worst
misgiving had conjectured. And when she had discovered
this she was plunged into a misery which transcended
that of the child's simple loss. Her baby had not been
baptized.
Tess had drifted into a frame of mind which accepted
passively the consideration that if she should have to
burn for what she had done, burn she must, and there
was an end of it. Like all village girls she was well
grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and had dutifully
studied the histories of Aholah and Aholibah, and knew
the inferences to be drawn therefrom. But when the
same question arose with regard to the baby, it had a
very different colour. Her darling was about to die,
and no salvation.
It was nearly bedtime, but she rushed downstairs and
asked if she might send for the parson. The moment
happened to be one at which her father's sense of the
antique nobility of his family was highest, and his
sensitiveness to the smudge which Tess had set upon
that nobility most pronounced, for he had just returned
from his weekly booze at Rolliver's Inn. No parson
should come inside his door, he declared, prying into
his affairs, just then, when, by her shame, it had
become more necessary than ever to hide them. He locked
the door and put the key in his pocket.
The household went to bed, and, distressed beyond
measure, Tess retired also. She was continually waking
as she lay, and in the middle of the night found that
the baby was still worse. It was obviously
dying--quietly and painlessly, but none the less
surely.
In her misery she rocked herself upon the bed. The
clock struck the solemn hour of one, that hour when
fancy stalks outside reason, and malignant
possibilities stand rock-firm as facts. She thought of
the child consigned to the nethermost corner of hell,
as its double doom for lack of baptism and lack of
legitimacy; saw the arch-fiend tossing it with his
three-pronged fork, like the one they used for heating
the oven on baking days; to which picture she added
many other quaint and curious details of torment
sometimes taught the young in this Christian country.
The lurid presentment so powerfully affected her
imagination in the silence of the sleeping house that
her nightgown became damp with perspiration, and the
bedstead shook with each throb of her heart.
The infant's breathing grew more difficult, and the
mother's mental tension increased. It was useless to
devour the little thing with kisses; she could stay in
bed no longer, and walked feverishly about the room.
"O merciful God, have pity; have pity upon my poor
baby!" she cried. "Heap as much anger as you want to
upon me, and welcome; but pity the child!"
She leant against the chest of drawers, and murmured
incoherent supplications for a long while, till she
suddenly started up.
"Ah! perhaps baby can be saved! Perhaps it will be
just the same!"
She spoke so brightly that it seemed as though her face
might have shone in the gloom surrounding her. She lit
a candle, and went to a second and a third bed under
the wall, where she awoke her young sisters and
brothers, all of whom occupied the same room. Pulling
out the washing-stand so that she could get behind it,
she poured some water from a jug, and made them kneel
around, putting their hands together with fingers
exactly vertical. While the children, scarcely awake,
awe-stricken at her manner, their eyes growing larger
and larger, remained in this position, she took the
baby from her bed--a child's child--so immature as
scarce to seem a sufficient personality to endow its
producer with the maternal title. Tess then stood
erect with the infant on her arm beside the basin, the
next sister held the Prayer-Book open before her, as
the clerk at church held it before the parson; and thus
the girl set about baptizing her child.
Her figure looked singularly tall and imposing as she
stood in her long white nightgown, a thick cable of
twisted dark hair hanging straight down her back to her
waist. The kindly dimness of the weak candle
abstracted from her form and features the little
blemishes which sunlight might have revealed--the
stubble scratches upon her wrists, and the weariness of
her eyes--her high enthusiasm having a transfiguring
effect upon the face which had been her undoing,
showing it as a thing of immaculate beauty, with a
touch of dignity which was almost regal. The little
ones kneeling round, their sleepy eyes blinking and
red, awaited her preparations full of a suspended
wonder which their physical heaviness at that hour
would not allow to become active.
The most impressed of them said:
"Be you really going to christen him, Tess?"
The girl-mother replied in a grave affirmative.
"What's his name going to be?"
She had not thought of that, but a name suggested by a
phrase in the book of Genesis came into her head as she
proceeded with the baptismal service, and now she
pronounced it:
"SORROW, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
She sprinkled the water, and there was silence.
"Say 'Amen,' children."
The tiny voices piped in obedient response "Amen!"
Tess went on:
"We receive this child"--and so forth--"and do sign him
with the sign of the Cross."
Here she dipped her hand into the basin, and fervently
drew an immense cross upon the baby with her
forefinger, continuing with the customary sentences as
to his manfully fighting against sin, the world, and
the devil, and being a faithful soldier and servant
unto his life's end. She duly went on with the Lord's
Prayer, the children lisping it after her in a thin
gnat-like wail, till, at the conclusion, raising their
voices to clerk's pitch, they again piped into silence,
"Amen!"
Then their sister, with much augmented confidence in
the efficacy of the sacrament, poured forth from the
bottom of her heart the thanksgiving that follows,
uttering it boldly and triumphantly in the
stopt-diapason note which her voice acquired when her
heart was in her speech, and which will never be
forgotten by those who knew her. The ecstasy of faith
almost apotheosized her; it set upon her face a glowing
irradiation, and brought a red spot into the middle of
each cheek; while the miniature candle-flame inverted
in her eye-pupils shone like a diamond. The children
gazed up at her with more and more reverence, and no
longer had a will for questioning. She did not look
like Sissy to them now, but as a being large, towering,
and awful--a divine personage with whom they had
nothing in common.
Poor Sorrow's campaign against sin, the world, and the
devil was doomed to be of limited brilliancy--luckily
perhaps for himself, considering his beginnings. In
the blue of the morning that fragile soldier and
servant breathed his last, and when the other children
awoke they cried bitterly, and begged Sissy to have
another pretty baby. The calmness which had possessed
Tess since the christening remained with her in the
infant's loss. In the daylight, indeed, she felt her
terrors about his soul to have been somewhat
exaggerated; whether well founded or not she had no
uneasiness now, reasoning that if Providence would not
ratify such an act of approximation she, for one, did
not value the kind of heaven lost by the
irregularity--either for herself or for her child.
So passed away Sorrow the Undesired--that intrusive
creature, that bastard gift of shameless Nature who
respects not the social law; a waif to whom eternal
Time had been a matter of days merely, who knew not
that such things as years and centuries ever were; to
whom the cottage interior was the universe, the week's
weather climate, new-born babyhood human existence, and
the instinct to suck human knowledge.
Tess, who mused on the christening a good deal,
wondered if it were doctrinally sufficient to secure a
Christian burial for the child. Nobody could tell this
but the parson of the parish, and he was a new-comer,
and did not know her. She went to his house after
dusk, and stood by the gate, but could not summon
courage to go in. The enterprise would have been
abandoned if she had not by accident met him coming
homeward as she turned away. In the gloom she did not
mind speaking freely.
"I should like to ask you something, sir."
He expressed his willingness to listen, and she told
the story of the baby's illness and the extemporized
ordinance. "And now, sir," she added earnestly, "can
you tell me this--will it be just the same for him as
if you had baptized him?"
Having the natural feelings of a tradesman at finding
that a job he should have been called in for had been
unskilfully botched by his customers among themselves,
he was disposed to say no. Yet the dignity of the
girl, the strange tenderness in her voice, combined to
affect his nobler impulses--or rather those that he had
left in him after ten years of endeavour to graft
technical belief on actual scepticism. The man and the
ecclesiastic fought within him, and the victory fell to
the man.
"My dear girl," he said, "it will be just the same."
"Then will you give him a Christian burial?" she asked
quickly.
The Vicar felt himself cornered. Hearing of the baby's
illness, he had conscientiously gone to the house after
nightfall to perform the rite, and, unaware that the
refusal to admit him had come from Tess's father and
not from Tess, he could not allow the plea of necessity
for its irregular administration.
"Ah--that's another matter," he said.
"Another matter--why?" asked Tess, rather warmly.
"Well--I would willingly do so if only we two were
concerned. But I must not--for certain reasons."
"Just for once, sir!"
"Really I must not."
"O sir!" She seized his hand as she spoke.
He withdrew it, shaking his head.
"Then I don't like you!" she burst out, "and I'll never
come to your church no more!"
"Don't talk so rashly."
"Perhaps it will be just the same to him if you don't?
... Will it be just the same? Don't for God's sake
speak as saint to sinner, but as you yourself to me
myself--poor me!"
How the Vicar reconciled his answer with the strict
notions he supposed himself to hold on these subjects
it is beyond a layman's power to tell, though not to
excuse. Somewhat moved, he said in this case also--
"It will be just the same."
So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an
ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night,
and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling
and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner
of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and
where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards,
suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are
laid. In spite of the untoward surroundings, however,
Tess bravely made a little cross of two laths and a
piece of string, and having bound it with flowers, she
stuck it up at the head of the grave one evening when
she could enter the churchyard without being seen,
putting at the foot also a bunch of the same flowers in
a little jar of water to keep them alive. What matter
was it that on the outside of the jar the eye of mere
observation noted the words "Keelwell's Marmalade"?
The eye of maternal affection did not see them in its
vision of higher things.
XV
"By experience," says Roger Ascham, "we find out a
short way by a long wandering." Not seldom that long
wandering unfits us for further travel, and of what use
is our experience to us then? Tess Durbeyfield's
experience was of this incapacitating kind. At last she
had learned what to do; but who would now accept her
doing?
If before going to the d'Urbervilles' she had
vigorously moved under the guidance of sundry gnomic
texts and phrases known to her and to the world in
general, no doubt she would never have been imposed on.
But it had not been in Tess's power--nor is it in
anybody's power--to feel the whole truth of golden
opinions while it is possible to profit by them.
She--and how many more--might have ironically said to
God with Saint Augustine: "Thou hast counselled a
better course than Thou hast permitted."
She remained at her father's house during the winter
months, plucking fowls, or cramming turkeys and geese,
or making clothes for her sisters and brothers out of
some finery which d'Urberville had given her, and she
had put by with contempt. Apply to him she would not.
But she would often clasp her hands behind her head and
muse when she was supposed to be working hard.
She philosophically noted dates as they came past in
the revolution of the year; the disastrous night of her
undoing at Trantridge with its dark background of The
Chase; also the dates of the baby's birth and death;
also her own birthday; and every other day
individualized by incidents in which she had taken some
share. She suddenly thought one afternoon, when
looking in the glass at her fairness, that there was
yet another date, of greater importance to her than
those; that of her own death, when all these charms
would had disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen
among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or
sound when she annually passed over it; but not the
less surely there. When was it? Why did she not feel
the chill of each yearly encounter with such a cold
relation? She had Jeremy Taylor's thought that some
time in the future those who had known her would say:
"It is the--th, the day that poor Tess Durbeyfield
died"; and there would be nothing singular to their
minds in the statement. Of that day, doomed to be her
terminus in time through all the ages, she did not know
the place in month, week, season or year.
Almost at a leap Tess thus changed from simple girl to
complex woman. Symbols of reflectiveness passed into
her face, and a note of tragedy at times into her
voice. Her eyes grew larger and more eloquent. She
became what would have been called a fine creature; her
aspect was fair and arresting; her soul that of a woman
whom the turbulent experiences of the last year or two
had quite failed to demoralize. But for the world's
opinion those experiences would have been simply a
liberal education.
She had held so aloof of late that her trouble, never
generally known, was nearly forgotten in Marlott. But
it became evident to her that she could never be really
comfortable again in a place which had seen the
collapse of her family's attempt to "claim kin"--
and, through her, even closer union--with the rich
d'Urbervilles. At least she could not be comfortable
there till long years should have obliterated her keen
consciousness of it. Yet even now Tess felt the pulse
of hopeful like still warm within her; she might be
happy in some nook which had no memories. To escape
the past and all that appertained thereto was to
annihilate it, and to do that she would have to get
away.
Was once lost always lost really true of chastity? she
would ask herself. She might prove it false if she
could veil bygones. The recuperative power which
pervaded organic nature was surely not denied to
maidenhood alone.
She waited a long time without finding opportunity for
a new departure. A particularly fine spring came
round, and the stir of germination was almost audible
in the buds; it moved her, as it moved the wild
animals, and made her passionate to go. At last, one
day in early May, a letter reached her from a former
friend of her mother's, to whom she had addressed
inquiries long before--a person whom she had never
seen--that a skilful milkmaid was required at a
dairy-house many miles to the southward, and that the
dairyman would be glad to have her for the summer
months.
It was not quite so far off as could have been wished;
but it was probably far enough, her radius of movement
and repute having been so small. To persons of limited
spheres, miles are as geographical degrees, parishes as
counties, counties as provinces and kingdoms. On one
point she was resolved: there should be no more
d'Urberville air-castles in the dreams and deeds of her
new life. She would be the dairymaid Tess, and nothing
more. Her mother knew Tess's feeling on this point so
well, though no words had passed between them on the
subject, that she never alluded to the knightly
ancestry now.
Yet such is human inconsistency that one of the
interests of the new place to her was the accidental
virtues of its lying near her forefathers' country (for
they were not Blakemore men, though her mother was
Blakemore to the bone). The dairy called Talbothays,
for which she was bound, stood not remotely from some
of the former estates of the d'Urbervilles, near the
great family vaults of her granddames and their
powerful husbands. She would be able to look at them,
and think not only that d'Urberville, like Babylon, had
fallen, but that the individual innocence of a humble
descendant could lapse as silently. All the while she
wondered if any strange good thing might come of her
being in her ancestral land; and some spirit within her
rose automatically as the sap in the twigs. It was
unexpected youth, surging up anew after its temporary
check, and bringing with it hope, and the invincible
instinct towards self-delight.
END OF PHASE THE SECOND
Phase the Third: The Rally
XVI
On a thyme-scented, bird-hatching morning in May,
between two and three years after the return from
Trantridge--silent reconstructive years for Tess
Durbeyfield--she left her home for the second time.
Having packed up her luggage so that it could be sent
to her later, she started in a hired trap for the
little town of Stourcastle, through which it was
necessary to pass on her journey, now in a direction
almost opposite to that of her first adventuring. On
the curve of the nearest hill she looked back
regretfully at Marlott and her father's house, although
she had been so anxious to get away.
Her kindred dwelling there would probably continue
their daily lives as heretofore, with no great
diminution of pleasure in their consciousness, although
she would be far off, and they deprived of her smile.
In a few days the children would engage in their games
as merrily as ever, without the sense of any gap left
by her departure. This leaving of the younger children
she had decided to be for the best; were she to remain
they would probably gain less good by her precepts than
harm by her example.
She went through Stourcastle without pausing, and
onward to a junction of highways, where she could await
a carrier's van that ran to the south-west; for the
railways which engirdled this interior tract of country
had never yet struck across it. While waiting,
however, there came along a farmer in his spring cart,
driving approximately in the direction that she wished
to pursue. Though he was a stranger to her she accepted
his offer of a seat beside him, ignoring that its
motive was a mere tribute to her countenance. He was
going to Weatherbury, and by accompanying him thither
she could walk the remainder of the distance instead of
travelling in the van by way of Casterbridge.
Tess did not stop at Weatherbury, after this long
drive, further than to make a slight nondescript meal
at noon at a cottage to which the farmer recommended
her. Thence she started on foot, basket in hand, to
reach the wide upland of heath dividing this district
from the low-lying meads of a further valley in which
the dairy stood that was the aim and end of her day's
pilgrimage.
Tess had never before visited this part of the country,
and yet she felt akin to the landscape. Not so very
far to the left of her she could discern a dark patch
in the scenery, which inquiry confirmed her in
supposing to be trees marking the environs of
Kingsbere--in the church of which parish the bones of
her ancestors--her useless ancestors--lay entombed.
She had no admiration for them now; she almost hated
them for the dance they had led her; not a thing of all
that had been theirs did she retain but the old seal
and spoon. "Pooh--I have as much of mother as father in
me!" she said. "All my prettiness comes from her, and
she was only a dairymaid."
The journey over the intervening uplands and lowlands
of Egdon, when she reached them, was a more troublesome
walk than she had anticipated, the distance being
actually but a few miles. It was two hours, owing to
sundry wrong turnings, ere she found herself on a
summit commanding the long-sought-for vale, the Valley
of the Great Dairies, the valley in which milk and
butter grew to rankness, and were produced more
profusely, if less delicately, than at her home--the
verdant plain so well watered by the river Var or
Froom.
It was intrinsically different from the Vale of Little
Dairies, Blackmoor Vale, which, save during her
disastrous sojourn at Trantridge, she had exclusively
known till now. The world was drawn to a larger
pattern here. The enclosures numbered fifty acres
instead of ten, the farmsteads were more extended, the
groups of cattle formed tribes hereabout; there only
families. These myriads of cows stretching under her
eyes from the far east to the far west outnumbered any
she had ever seen at one glance before. The green lea
was speckled as thickly with them as a canvas by Van
Alsloot or Sallaert with burghers. The ripe hue of the
red and dun kine absorbed the evening sunlight, which
the white-coated animals returned to the eye in rays
almost dazzling, even at the distant elevation on which
she stood.
The bird's-eye perspective before her was not so
luxuriantly beautiful, perhaps, as that other one which
she knew so well; yet it was more cheering. It lacked
the intensely blue atmosphere of the rival vale, and
its heavy soils and scents; the new air was clear,
bracing, ethereal. The river itself, which nourished
the grass and cows of these renowned dairies, flowed
not like the streams in Blackmoor. Those were slow,
silent, often turbid; flowing over beds of mud into
which the incautious wader might sink and vanish
unawares. The Froom waters were clear as the pure
River of Life shown to the Evangelist, rapid as the
shadow of a cloud, with pebbly shallows that prattled
to the sky all day long. There the water-flower was
the lily; the crowfoot here.
Either the change in the quality of the air from heavy
to light, or the sense of being amid new scenes where
there were no invidious eyes upon her, sent up her
spirits wonderfully. Her hopes mingled with the
sunshine in an ideal photosphere which surrounded her
as she bounded along against the soft south wind.
She heard a pleasant voice in every breeze, and in every
bird's note seemed to lurk a joy.
Her face had latterly changed with changing states of
mind, continually fluctuating between beauty and
ordinariness, according as the thoughts were gay or
grave. One day she was pink and flawless; another pale
and tragical. When she was pink she was feeling less
then when pale; her more perfect beauty accorded with
her less elevated mood; her more intense mood with her
less perfect beauty. It was her best face physically
that was now set against the south wind.
The irresistible, universal, automatic tendency to find
sweet pleasure somewhere, which pervades all life, from
the meanest to the highest, had at length mastered
Tess. Being even now only a young woman of twenty, one
who mentally and sentimentally had not finished
growing, it was impossible that any event should have
left upon her an impression that was not in time
capable of transmutation.
And thus her spirits, and her thankfulness, and her
hopes, rose higher and higher. She tried several
ballads, but found them inadequate; till, recollecting
the psalter that her eyes had so often wandered over of
a Sunday morning before she had eaten of the tree of
knowledge, she chanted: "O ye Sun and Moon ... O ye
Stars ... ye Green Things upon the Earth ... ye Fowls
of the Air ... Beasts and Cattle ... Children of Men
... bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for
ever!"
She suddenly stopped and murmured: "But perhaps I don't
quite know the Lord as yet."
And probably the half-unconscious rhapsody was a
Fetichistic utterance in a Monotheistic setting; women
whose chief companions are the forms and forces of
outdoor Nature retain in their souls far more of the
Pagan fantasy of their remote forefathers than of the
systematized religion taught their race at later date.
However, Tess found at least approximate expression for
her feelings in the old BENEDICITE that she had lisped
from infancy; and it was enough. Such high contentment
with such a slight initial performance as that of
having started towards a means of independent living
was a part of the Durbeyfield temperament. Tess really
wished to walk uprightly, while her father did nothing
of the kind; but she resembled him in being content
with immediate and small achievements, and in having no
mind for laborious effort towards such petty social
advancement as could alone be effected by a family so
heavily handicapped as the once powerful d'Urbervilles
were now.
There was, it might be said, the energy of her mother's
unexpected family, as well as the natural energy of
Tess's years, rekindled after the experience which had
so overwhelmed her for the time. Let the truth be
told--women do as a rule live through such
humiliations, and regain their spirits, and again look
about them with an interested eye. While there's life
there's hope is a conviction not so entirely unknown to
the "betrayed" as some amiable theorists would have us
believe.
Tess Durbeyfield, then, in good heart, and full of zest
for life, descended the Egdon slopes lower and lower
towards the dairy of her pilgrimage.
The marked difference, in the final particular, between
the rival vales now showed itself. The secret of
Blackmoor was best discovered from the heights around;
to read aright the valley before her it was necessary
to descend into its midst. When Tess had accomplished
this feat she found herself to be standing on a
carpeted level, which stretched to the east and west as
far as the eye could reach.
The river had stolen from the higher tracts and brought
in particles to the vale all this horizontal land; and
now, exhausted, aged, and attenuated, lay serpentining
along through the midst of its former spoils.
Not quite sure of her direction Tess stood still upon
the hemmed expanse of verdant flatness, like a fly on a
billiard-table of indefinite length, and of no more
consequence to the surroundings than that fly. The
sole effect of her presence upon the placid valley so
far had been to excite the mind of a solitary heron,
which, after descending to the ground not far from her
path, stood with neck erect, looking at her.
Suddenly there arose from all parts of the lowland a
prolonged and repeated call--"Waow! waow! waow!"
From the furthest east to the furthest west the cries
spread as if by contagion, accompanied in some cases by
the barking of a dog. It was not the expression of the
valley's consciousness that beautiful Tess had arrived,
but the ordinary announcement of
milking-time--half-past four o'clock, when the dairymen
set about getting in the cows.
The red and white herd nearest at hand, which had been
phlegmatically waiting for the call, now trooped
towards the steading in the background, their great
bags of milk swinging under them as they walked.
Tess followed slowly in their rear, and entered the barton
by the open gate through which they had entered before
her. Long thatched sheds stretched round the
enclosure, their slopes encrusted with vivid green
moss, and their eaves supported by wooden posts rubbed
to a glossy smoothness by the flanks of infinite cows
and calves of bygone years, now passed to an oblivion
almost inconceivable in its profundity. Between the
post were ranged the milchers, each exhibiting herself
at the present moment to a whimsical eye in the rear as
a circle on two stalks, down the centre of which a
switch moved pendulum-wise; while the sun, lowering
itself behind this patient row, threw their shadows
accurately inwards upon the wall. Thus it threw
shadows of these obscure and homely figures every
evening with as much care over each contour as if it
had been the profile of a court beauty on a palace
wall; copied them as diligently as it had copied
Olympian shapes on marble FACADES long ago, or the
outline of Alexander, Caesar, and the Pharaohs.
They were the less restful cows that were stalled.
Those that would stand still of their own will were
milked in the middle of the yard, where many of such
better behaved ones stood waiting now--all prime
milchers, such as were seldom seen out of this valley,
and not always within it; nourished by the succulent
feed which the water-meads supplied at this prime
season of the year. Those of them that were spotted
with white reflected the sunshine in dazzling
brilliancy, and the polished brass knobs of their horns
glittered with something of military display. Their
large-veined udders hung ponderous as sandbags, the
teats sticking out like the legs of a gipsy's crock;
and as each animal lingered for her turn to arrive the
milk oozed forth and fell in drops to the ground.
XVII
The dairymaids and men had flocked down from their
cottages and out of the dairy-house with the arrival of
the cows from the meads; the maids walking in patterns,
not on account of the weather, but to keep their shoes
above the mulch of the barton. Each girl sat down on
her three-legged stool, her face sideways, her right
cheek resting against the cow; and looked musingly
along the animal's flank at Tess as she approached.
The male milkers, with hat-brims turned down, resting
flat on their foreheads and gazing on the ground, did
not observe her.
One of these was a sturdy middle-aged man--whose long
white "pinner" was somewhat finer and cleaner than the
wraps of the others, and whose jacket underneath had a
presentable marketing aspect--the master-dairyman, of
whom she was in quest, his double character as a
working milker and butter maker here during six days,
and on the seventh as a man in shining broad-cloth in
his family pew at church, being so marked as to have
inspired a rhyme-
Dairyman Dick
All the week:--
On Sundays Mister Richard Crick.
Seeing Tess standing at gaze he went across to her.
The majority of dairymen have a cross manner at milking
time, but it happened that Mr Crick was glad to get a
new hand--for the days were busy ones now--and he
received her warmly; inquiring for her mother and the
rest of the family--(though this as a matter of form
merely, for in reality he had not been aware of Mrs
Durbeyfield's existence till apprised of the fact by a
brief business-letter about Tess).
"Oh--ay, as a lad I knowed your part o' the country
very well," he said terminatively. "Though I've never
been there since. And a aged woman of ninety that use
to live nigh here, but is dead and gone long ago, told
me that a family of some such name as yours in
Blackmoor Vale came originally from these parts, and
that 'twere a old ancient race that had all but
perished off the earth--though the new generations
didn't know it. But, Lord, I took no notice of the old
woman's ramblings, not I."
"Oh no--it is nothing," said Tess.
Then the talk was of business only.
"You can milk 'em clean, my maidy? I don't want my cow
going azew at this time o' year."
She reassured him on that point, and he surveyed her up
and down. She had been staying indoors a good deal, and
her complexion had grown delicate.
"Quite sure you can stand it? 'Tis comfortable enough
here for rough folk; but we don't live in a cowcumber
frame."
She declared that she could stand it, and her zest and
willingness seemed to win him over.
"Well, I suppose you'll want a dish o' tay, or victuals
of some sort, hey? Not yet? Well, do as ye like about
it. But faith, if 'twas I, I should be as dry as a kex
wi' travelling so far."
"I'll begin milking now, to get my hand in," said Tess.
She drank a little milk as temporary refreshment--
to the surprise--indeed, slight contempt--of Dairyman
Crick, to whose mind it had apparently never occurred
that milk was good as a beverage.
"Oh, if ye can swaller that, be it so," he said
indifferently, while holding up the pail that she
sipped from. "'Tis what I hain't touched for years--
not I. Rot the stuff; it would lie in my innerds like
lead. You can try your hand upon she," he pursued,
nodding to the nearest cow. "Not but what she do milk
rather hard. We've hard ones and we've easy ones, like
other folks. However, you'll find out that soon
enough."
When Tess had changed her bonnet for a hood, and was
really on her stool under the cow, and the milk was
squirting from her fists into the pail, she appeared to
feel that she really had laid a new foundation for her
future. The conviction bred serenity, her pulse
slowed, and she was able to look about her.
The milkers formed quite a little battalion of men and
maids, the men operating on the hard-teated animals,
the maids on the kindlier natures. It was a large
dairy. There were nearly a hundred milchers under
Crick's management, all told; and of the herd the
master-dairyman milked six or eight with his own hands,
unless away from home. These were the cows that milked
hardest of all; for his journey-milkmen being more or
less casually hired, he would not entrust this
half-dozen to their treatment, lest, from indifference,
they should not milk them fully; nor to the maids, lest
they should fail in the same way for lack of
finger-grip; with the result that in course of time the
cows would "go azew"--that is, dry up. It was not the
loss for the moment that made slack milking so serious,
but that with the decline of demand there came decline,
and ultimately cessation, of supply.
After Tess had settled down to her cow there was for a
time no talk in the barton, and not a sound interfered
with the purr of the milk-jets into the numerous pails,
except a momentary exclamation to one or other of the
beast requesting her to turn round or stand still. The
only movements were those of the milkers' hands up and
down, and the swing of the cows' tails. Thus they all
worked on, encompassed by the vast flat mead which
extended to either slope of the valley--a level
landscape compounded of old landscapes long forgotten,
and, no doubt, differing in character very greatly from
the landscape they composed now.
"To my thinking," said the dairyman, rising suddenly
from a cow he had just finished off, snatching up his
three-legged stool in one hand and the pail in the
other, and moving on to the next hard-yielder in his
vicinity; "to my thinking, the cows don't gie down
their milk today as usual. Upon my life, if Winker do
begin keeping back like this, she'll not be worth going
under by midsummer."
"'Tis because there's a new hand come among us,' said
Jonathan Kail. "I've noticed such things afore."
"To be sure. It may be so. I didn't think o't."
"I've been told that it goes up into their horns at
such times," said a dairymaid.
"Well, as to going up into their horns," replied
Dairyman Crick dubiously, as though even witchcraft
might be limited by anatomical possibilities, "I
couldn't say; I certainly could not. But as nott cows
will keep it back as well as the horned ones, I don't
quite agree to it. Do ye know that riddle about the
nott cows, Jonathan? Why do nott cows give less milk in
a year than horned?"
"I don't!" interposed the milkmaid, "Why do they?"
"Because there bain't so many of 'em," said the
dairyman. "Howsomever, these gam'sters do certainly
keep back their milk today. Folks, we must lift up a
stave or two--that's the only cure for't."
Songs were often resorted to in dairies hereabout as an
enticement to the cows when they showed signs of
withholding their usual yield; and the band of milkers
at this request burst into melody--in purely
business-like tones, it is true, and with no great
spontaneity; the result, according to their own belief,
being a decided improvement during the song's
continuance. When they had gone through fourteen or
fifteen verses of a cheerful ballad about a murderer
who was afraid to go to bed in the dark because he saw
certain brimstone flames around him, one of the male
milkers said--
"I wish singing on the stoop didn't use up so much of a
man's wind! You should get your harp, sir; not but what
a fiddle is best."
Tess, who had given ear to this, thought the words were
addressed to the dairyman, but she was wrong. A reply,
in the shape of "Why?" came as it were out of the belly
of a dun cow in the stalls; it had been spoken by a
milker behind the animal, whom she had not hitherto
perceived.
"Oh yes; there's nothing like a fiddle," said the
dairyman. "Though I do think that bulls are more moved
by a tune than cows--at least that's my experience.
Once there was an old aged man over at
Mellstock--William Dewy by name--one of the family that
used to do a good deal of business as tranters over
there, Jonathan, do ye mind?--I knowed the man by sight
as well as I know my own brother, in a manner of
speaking. Well, this man was a coming home-along from
a wedding where he had been playing his fiddle, one
fine moonlight night, and for shortness' sake he took a
cut across Forty-acres, a field lying that way, where a
bull was out to grass. The bull seed William, and took
after him, horns aground, begad; and though William
runned his best, and hadn't MUCH drink in him
(considering 'twas a wedding, and the folks well off),
he found he'd never reach the fence and get over in
time to save himself. Well, as a last thought, he
pulled out his fiddle as he runned, and struck up a
jig, turning to the bull, and backing towards the
corner. The bull softened down, and stood still,
looking hard at William Dewy, who fiddled on and on;
till a sort of a smile stole over the bull's face. But
no sooner did William stop his playing and turn to get
over hedge than the bull would stop his smiling and
lower his horns towards the seat of William's breeches.
Well, William had to turn about and play on,
willy-nilly; and 'twas only three o'clock in the world,
and 'a knowed that nobody would come that way for
hours, and he so leery and tired that 'a didn't know
what to do. When he had scraped till about four
o'clock he felt that he verily would have to give over
soon, and he said to himself, 'There's only this last
tune between me and eternal welfare! Heaven save me, or
I'm a done man.' Well, then he called to mind how he'd
seen the cattle kneel o' Christmas Eves in the dead o'
night. It was not Christmas Eve then, but it came into
his head to play a trick upon the bull. So he broke
into the 'Tivity Hymm, just as at Christmas
carol-singing; when, lo and behold, down went the bull
on his bended knees, in his ignorance, just as if
'twere the true 'Tivity night and hour. As soon as his
horned friend were down, William turned, clinked off
like a long-dog, and jumped safe over hedge, before
the praying bull had got on his feet again to take
after him. William used to say that he'd seen a man
look a fool a good many times, but never such a fool as
that bull looked when he found his pious feelings had
been played upon, and 'twas not Christmas Eve. ... Yes,
William Dewy, that was the man's name; and I can tell
you to a foot where's he a-lying in Mellstock
Churchyard at this very moment--just between the second
yew-tree and the north aisle."
"It's a curious story; it carries us back to medieval
times, when faith was a living thing!"
The remark, singular for a dairy-yard, was murmured by
the voice behind the dun cow; but as nobody understood
the reference no notice was taken, except that the
narrator seemed to think it might imply scepticism as
to his tale.
"Well, 'tis quite true, sir, whether or no. I knowed
the man well."
"Oh yes; I have no doubt of it," said the person behind
the dun cow.
Tess's attention was thus attracted to the dairyman's
interlocutor, of whom she could see but the merest
patch, owing to his burying his head so persistently in
the flank of the milcher. She could not understand why
he should be addressed as "sir" even by the dairyman
himself. But no explanation was discernible; he
remained under to cow long enough to have milked three,
uttering a private ejaculation now and then, as if he
could not get on.
"Take it gentle, sir; take it gentle," said the
dairyman. "'Tis knack, not strength that does it."
"So I find," said the other, standing up at last and
stretching his arms. "I think I have finished her,
however, though she made my fingers ache."
Tess could then see him at full length. He wore the
ordinary white pinner and leather leggings of a
dairy-farmer when milking, and his boots were clogged
with the mulch of the yard; but this was all his local
livery. Beneath it was something educated, reserved,
subtle, sad, differing.
But the details of his aspect were temporarily thrust
aside by the discovery that he was one whom she had
seen before. Such vicissitudes had Tess passed through
since that time that for a moment she could not
remember where she had met him; and then it flashed
upon her that he was the pedestrian who had joined in
the club-dance at Marlott--the passing stranger who had
come she knew not whence, had danced with others but
not with her, and slightingly left her, and gone on his
way with his friends.
The flood of memories brought back by this revival of
an incident anterior to her troubles produced a
momentary dismay lest, recognizing her also, he should
by some means discover her story. But it passed away
when she found no sign of remembrance in him. She saw
by degrees that since their first and only encounter
his mobile face had grown more thoughtful, and had
acquired a young man's shapely moustache and beard--the
latter of the palest straw colour where it began upon
his cheeks, and deepening to a warm brown farther from
its root. Under his linen milking-pinner he wore a
dark velveteen jacket, cord breeches and gaiters, and a
starched white shirt. Without the milking-gear nobody
could have guessed what he was. He might with equal
probability have been an eccentric landowner or a
gentlemanly ploughman. That he was but a novice at
dairy work she had realized in a moment, from the time
he had spent upon the milking of one cow.
Meanwhile many of the milkmaids had said to one another
of the newcomer, "How pretty she is!" with something of
real generosity and admiration, though with a half hope
that the auditors would qualify the assertion--which,
strictly speaking, they might have done, prettiness
being an inexact definition of what struck the eye in
Tess. When the milking was finished for the evening
they straggled indoors, where Mrs Crick, the dairyman's
wife--who was too respectable to go out milking
herself, and wore a hot stuff gown in warm weather
because the dairymaids wore prints--was giving an eye
to the leads and things.
Only two or three of the maids, Tess learnt, slept in
the dairy-house besides herself; most of the helpers
going to their homes. She saw nothing at supper-time of
the superior milker who had commented on the story, and
asked no questions about him, the remainder of the
evening being occupied in arranging her place in the
bed-chamber. It was a large room over the milk-house,
some thirty feet long; the sleeping-cots of the other
three indoor milkmaids being in the same apartment.
They were blooming young women, and, except one, rather
older than herself. By bedtime Tess was thoroughly
tired, and fell asleep immediately.
But one of the girls who occupied an adjoining bed was
more wakeful than Tess, and would insist upon relating
to the latter various particulars of the homestead into
which she had just entered. The girl's whispered words
mingled with the shades, and, to Tess's drowsy mind,
they seemed to be generated by the darkness in which
they floated.
"Mr Angel Clare--he that is learning milking, and that
plays the harp--never says much to us. He is a pa'son's
son, and is too much taken up wi' his own thoughts to
notice girls. He is the dairyman's pupil--learning
farming in all its branches. He has learnt
sheep-farming at another place, and he's now mastering
dairy-work.... Yes, he is quite the gentleman-born. His
father is the Reverent Mr Clare at Emminster--a good
many miles from here."
"Oh--I have heard of him," said her companion, now
awake. "A very earnest clergyman, is he not?"
"Yes--that he is--the earnestest man in all Wessex,
they say--the last of the old Low Church sort, they
tell me--for all about here be what they call High.
All his sons, except our Mr Clare, be made pa'sons too."
Tess had not at this hour the curiosity to ask why the
present Mr Clare was not made a parson like his
brethren, and gradually fell asleep again, the words of
her informant coming to her along with the smell of the
cheeses in the adjoining cheeseloft, and the measured
dripping of the whey from the wrings downstairs.
XVIII
Angel Clare rises out of the past not altogether as a
distinct figure, but as an appreciative voice, a long
regard of fixed, abstracted eyes, and a mobility of
mouth somewhat too small and delicately lined for a
man's, though with an unexpectedly firm close of the
lower lip now and then; enough to do away with any
inference of indecision. Nevertheless, something
nebulous, preoccupied, vague, in his bearing and
regard, marked him as one who probably had no very
definite aim or concern about his material future.
Yet as a lad people had said of him that he was one who
might do anything if he tried.
He was the youngest son of his father, a poor parson at
the other end of the county, and had arrived at
Talbothays Dairy as a six months' pupil, after going
the round of some other farms, his object being to
acquire a practical skill in the various processes of
farming, with a view either to the Colonies, or the
tenure of a home-farm, as circumstances might decide.
His entry into the ranks of the agriculturists and
breeders was a step in the young man's career which had
been anticipated neither by himself nor by others.
Mr Clare the elder, whose first wife had died and left
him a daughter, married a second late in life. This
lady had somewhat unexpectedly brought him three sons,
so that between Angel, the youngest, and his father the
Vicar there seemed to be almost a missing generation.
Of these boys the aforesaid Angel, the child of his old
age, was the only son who had not taken a University
degree, though he was the single one of them whose
early promise might have done full justice to an
academical training.
Some two or three years before Angel's appearance at
the Marlott dance, on a day when he had left school and
was pursuing his studies at home, a parcel came to the
Vicarage from the local bookseller's, directed to the
Reverend James Clare. The Vicar having opened it and
found it to contain a book, read a few pages; whereupon
he jumped up from his seat and went straight to the
shop with the book under his arm.
"Why has this been sent to my house?" he asked
peremptorily, holding up the volume.
"It was ordered, sir."
"Not by me, or any one belonging to me, I am happy to
say."
The shopkeeper looked into his order-book.
"Oh, it has been misdirected, sir," he said. "It was
ordered by Mr Angel Clare, and should have been sent to
him."
Mr Clare winced as if he had been struck. He went home
pale and dejected, and called Angel into his study.
"Look into this book, my boy," he said. "What do you
know about it?"
"I ordered it," said Angel simply.
"What for?"
"To read." "How can you think of reading it?"
"How can I? Why--it is a system of philosophy.
There is no more moral, or even religious, work published."
"Yes--moral enough; I don't deny that. But
religious!--and for YOU, who intend to be a minister of
the Gospel!"
"Since you have alluded to the matter, father," said
the son, with anxious thought upon his face, "I should
like to say, once for all, that I should prefer not to
take Orders. I fear I could not conscientiously do so.
I love the Church as one loves a parent. I shall always
have the warmest affection for her. There is no
institution for whose history I have a deeper
admiration; but I cannot honestly be ordained her
minister, as my brothers are, while she refuses to
liberate her mind from an untenable redemptive
theolarty."
It had never occurred to the straightforward and
simple-minded Vicar that one of his own flesh and blood
could come to this! He was stultified, shocked,
paralysed. And if Angel were not going to enter the
Church, what was the use of sending him to Cambridge?
The University as a step to anything but ordination
seemed, to this man of fixed ideas, a preface without a
volume. He was a man not merely religious, but devout;
a firm believer--not as the phrase is now elusively
construed by theological thimble-riggers in the Church
and out of it, but in the old and ardent sense of the
Evangelical school: one who could
Indeed opine
That the Eternal and Divine
Did, eighteen centuries ago
In very truth...
Angel's father tried argument, persuasion, entreaty.
"No, father; I cannot underwrite Article Four (leave
alone the rest), taking it 'in the literal and
grammatical sense' as required by the Declaration; and,
therefore, I can't be a parson in the present state of
affairs," said Angel. "My whole instinct in matters of
religion is towards reconstruction; to quote your
favorite Epistle to the Hebrews, 'THE REMOVING OF THOSE
THINGS THAT ARE SHAKEN, AS OF THINGS THAT ARE MADE,
THAT THOSE THINGS WHICH CANNOT BE SHAKEN MAY REMAIN.'"
His father grieved so deeply that it made Angel quite
ill to see him.
"What is the good of your mother and me economizing and
stinting ourselves to give you a University education,
if it is not to be used for the honour and glory of
God?" his father repeated.
"Why, that it may be used for the honour and glory of
man, father."
Perhaps if Angel had persevered he might have gone to
Cambridge like his brothers. But the Vicar's view of
that seat of learning as a stepping-stone to Orders
alone was quite a family tradition; and so rooted was
the idea in his mind that perseverance began to appear
to the sensitive son akin to an intent to
misappropriate a trust, and wrong the pious heads of
the household, who had been and were, as his father had
hinted, compelled to exercise much thrift to carry out
his uniform plan of education for the three young men.
"I will do without Cambridge," said Angel at last.
"I feel that I have no right to go there in the
circumstances."
The effects of this decisive debate were not long in
showing themselves. He spent years and years in
desultory studies, undertakings, and meditations; he
began to evince considerable indifference to social
forms and observances. The material distinctions of
rank and wealth he increasingly despised. Even the
"good old family" (to use a favourite phrase of a late
local worthy) had no aroma for him unless there were
good new resolutions in its representatives. As a
balance to these austerities, when he went to live in
London to see what the world was like, and with a view
to practising a profession or business there, he was
carried off his head, and nearly entrapped by a woman
much older than himself, though luckily he escaped not
greatly the worse for the experience.
Early association with country solitudes had bred in
him an unconquerable, and almost unreasonable, aversion
to modern town life, and shut him out from such success
as he might have aspired to by following a mundane
calling in the impracticability of the spiritual one.
But something had to be done; he had wasted many
valuable years; and having an acquaintance who was
starting on a thriving life as a Colonial farmer, it
occurred to Angel that this might be a lead in the
right direction. Farming, either in the Colonies,
America, or at home--farming, at any rate, after
becoming well qualified for the business by a careful
apprenticeship--that was a vocation which would
probably afford an independence without the sacrifice
of what he valued even more than a
competency--intellectual liberty.
So we find Angel Clare at six-and-twenty here at
Talbothays as a student of kine, and, as there were no
houses near at hand in which he could get a comfortable
lodging, a boarder at the dairyman's.
His room was an immense attic which ran the whole
length of the dairy-house. It could only be reached by
a ladder from the cheese-loft, and had been closed up
for a long time till he arrived and selected it as his
retreat. Here Clare had plenty of space, and could
often be heard by the dairy-folk pacing up and down
when the household had gone to rest. A portion was
divided off at one end by a curtain, behind which was
his bed, the outer part being furnished as a homely
sitting-room.
At first he lived up above entirely, reading a good
deal, and strumming upon an old harp which he had
bought at a sale, saying when in a bitter humour that
he might have to get his living by it in the streets
some day. But he soon preferred to read human nature
by taking his meals downstairs in the general
dining-kitchen, with the dairyman and his wife, and the
maids and men, who all together formed a lively
assembly; for though but few milking hands slept in the
house, several joined the family at meals. The longer
Clare resided here the less objection had he to his
company, and the more did he like to share quarters
with them in common.
Much to his surprise he took, indeed, a real delight in
their companionship. The conventional farm-folk of his
imagination--personified in the newspaper-press by the
pitiable dummy known as Hodge--were obliterated after a
few days' residence. At close quarters no Hodge was to
be seen. At first, it is true, when Clare's
intelligence was fresh from a contrasting society,
these friends with whom he now hobnobbed seemed a
little strange. Sitting down as a level member of the
dairyman's household seemed at the outset an
undignified proceeding. The ideas, the modes, the
surroundings, appeared retrogressive and unmeaning.
But with living on there, day after day, the acute
sojourner became conscious of a new aspect in the
spectacle. Without any objective change whatever,
variety had taken the place of monotonousness. His host
and his host's household, his men and his maids, as
they became intimately known to Clare, began to
differentiate themselves as in a chemical process. The
thought of Pascal's was brought home to him: "A MESURE
QU'ON A PLUS D'ESPRIT, ON TROUVE QU'IL Y A PLUS
D'HOMMES ORIGINAUX. LES GENS DU COMMUN NE TROUVENT PAS
DE DIFFERENCE ENTRE LES HOMMES." The typical and
unvarying Hodge ceased to exist. He had been
disintegrated into a number of varied
fellow-creatures--beings of many minds, beings infinite
in difference; some happy, many serene, a few
depressed, one here and there bright even to genius,
some stupid, others wanton, others austere; some mutely
Miltonic, some potentially Cromwellian; into men who
had private views of each other, as he had of his
friends; who could applaud or condemn each other, amuse
or sadden themselves by the contemplation of each
other's foibles or vices; men every one of whom walked
in his own individual way the road to dusty death.
Unexpectedly he began to like the outdoor life for its
own sake, and for what it brought, apart from its
bearing on his own proposed career. Considering his
position he became wonderfully free from the chronic
melancholy which is taking hold of the civilized races
with the decline of belief in a beneficent Power. For
the first time of late years he could read as his
musings inclined him, without any eye to cramming for a
profession, since the few farming handbooks which he
deemed it desirable to master occupied him but little
time.
He grew away from old associations, and saw something
new in life and humanity. Secondarily, he made close
acquaintance with phenomena which he had before known
but darkly--the seasons in their moods, morning and
evening, night and noon, winds in their different
tempers, trees, waters and mists, shades and silences,
and the voices of inanimate things.
The early mornings were still sufficiently cool to
render a fire acceptable in the large room wherein they
breakfasted; and, by Mrs Crick's orders, who held that
he was too genteel to mess at their table, it was Angel
Clare's custom to sit in the yawning chimney-corner
during the meal, his cup-and-saucer and plate being
placed on a hinged flap at his elbow. The light from
the long, wide, mullioned window opposite shone in upon
his nook, and, assisted by a secondary light of cold
blue quality which shone down the chimney, enabled him
to read there easily whenever disposed to do so.
Between Clare and the window was the table at which his
companions sat, their munching profiles rising sharp
against the panes; while to the side was the milk-house
door, through which were visible the rectangular leads
in rows, full to the brim with the morning's milk. At
the further end the great churn could be seen
revolving, and its slip-slopping heard--the moving
power being discernible through the window in the form
of a spiritless horse walking in a circle and driven by
a boy.
For several days after Tess's arrival Clare, sitting
abstractedly reading from some book, periodical, or
piece of music just come by post, hardly noticed that
she was present at table. She talked so little, and
the other maids talked so much, that the babble did not
strike him as possessing a new note, and he was ever in
the habit of neglecting the particulars of an outward
scene for the general impression. One day, however,
when he had been conning one of his music-scores, and
by force of imagination was hearing the tune in his
head, he lapsed into listlessness, and the music-sheet
rolled to the hearth. He looked at the fire of logs,
with its one flame pirouetting on the top in a dying
dance after the breakfast-cooking and boiling, and it
seemed to jig to his inward tune; also at the two
chimney crooks dangling down from the cotterel or
cross-bar, plumed with soot which quivered to the same
melody; also at the half-empty kettle whining an
accompaniment. The conversation at the table mixed in
with his phantasmal orchestra till he thought: "What a
fluty voice one of those milkmaids has! I suppose it is
the new one."
Clare looked round upon her, seated with the others.
She was not looking towards him. Indeed, owing to his
long silence, his presence in the room was almost
forgotten.
"I don't know about ghosts," she was saying; "but I do
know that our souls can be made to go outside our
bodies when we are alive."
The dairyman turned to her with his mouth full, his
eyes charged with serious inquiry, and his great knife
and fork (breakfasts were breakfasts here) planted
erect on the table, like the beginning of a gallows.
"What--really now? And is it so, maidy?" he said.
"A very easy way to feel 'em go," continued Tess, "is
to lie on the grass at night and look straight up at
some big bright star; and, by fixing your mind upon it,
you will soon find that you are hundreds and hundreds
o' miles away from your body, which you don't seem to
want at all."
The dairyman removed his hard gaze from Tess, and fixed
it on his wife.
"Now that's a rum thing, Christianner--hey? To think
o' the miles I've vamped o' starlight nights these last
thirty year, courting, or trading, or for doctor, or
for nurse, and yet never had the least notion o' that
till now, or feeled my soul rise so much as an inch
above my shirt-collar."
The general attention being drawn to her, including
that of the dairyman's pupil, Tess flushed, and
remarking evasively that it was only a fancy, resumed
her breakfast.
Clare continued to observe her. She soon finished her
eating, and having a consciousness that Clare was
regarding her, began to trace imaginary patterns on the
tablecloth with her forefinger with the constraint of a
domestic animal that perceives itself to be watched.
"What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature that
milkmaid is!" he said to himself.
And then he seemed to discern in her something that was
familiar, something which carried him back into a
joyous and unforeseeing past, before the necessity of
taking thought had made the heavens gray. He concluded
that he had beheld her before; where he could not tell.
A casual encounter during some country ramble it
certainly had been, and he was not greatly curious
about it. But the circumstance was sufficient to lead
him to select Tess in preference to the other pretty
milkmaids when he wished to contemplate contiguous
womankind.
XIX
In general the cows were milked as they presented
themselves, without fancy or choice. But certain cows
will show a fondness for a particular pair of hands,
sometimes carrying this predilection so far as to
refuse to stand at all except to their favourite, the
pail of a stranger being unceremoniously kicked over.
It was Dairyman Crick's rule to insist on breaking down
these partialities and aversions by constant
interchange, since otherwise, in the event of a milkman
or maid going away from the dairy, he was placed in a
difficulty. The maids' private aims, however, were the
reverse of the dairyman's rule, the daily selection by
each damsel of the eight or ten cows to which she had
grown accustomed rendering the operation on their
willing udders surprising easy and effortless.
Tess, like her compeers, soon discovered which of the
cows had a preference for her style of manipulation,
and her fingers having become delicate from the long
domiciliary imprisonments to which she had subjected
herself at intervals during the last two or three
years, she would have been glad to meet the milchers'
views in this respect. Out of the whole ninety-five
there were eight in particular--Dumpling, Fancy, Lofty,
Mist, Old Pretty, Young Pretty, Tidy, and Loud--who,
though the teats of one or two were as hard as carrots,
gave down to her with a readiness that made her work on
them a mere touch of the fingers. Knowing, however, the
dairyman's wish, she endeavoured conscientiously to
take the animals just as they came, expecting the very
hard yielders which she could not yet manage.
But she soon found a curious correspondence between the
ostensibly chance position of the cows and her wishes
in this matter, till she felt that their order could
not be the result of accident. The dairyman's pupil
had lent a hand in getting the cows together of late,
and at the fifth or sixth time she turned her eyes, as
she rested against the cow, full of sly inquiry upon
him.
"Mr Clare, you have ranged the cows!" she said,
blushing; and in making the accusation symptoms of a
smile gently lifted her upper lip in spite of her, so
as to show the tips of her teeth, the lower lip
remaining severely still.
"Well, it makes no difference," said he. "You will
always be here to milk them."
"Do you think so? I HOPE I shall! But I don't KNOW."
She was angry with herself afterwards, thinking that
he, unaware of her grave reasons for liking this
seclusion, might have mistaken her meaning. She had
spoken so earnestly to him, as if his presence were
somehow a factor in her wish. Her misgiving was such
that at dusk, when the milking was over, she walked in
the garden alone, to continue her regrets that she had
disclosed to him her discovery of his considerateness.
It was a typical summer evening in June, the atmosphere
being in such delicate equilibrium and so transmissive
that inanimate objects seemed endowed with two or three
senses, if not five. There was no distinction between
the near and the far, and an auditor felt close to
everything within the horizon. The soundlessness
impressed her as a positive entity rather than as the
mere negation of noise. It was broken by the strumming
of strings. Tess had heard those notes in the attic
above her head. Dim, flattened, constrained by their
confinement, they had never appealed to her as now,
when they wandered in the still air with a stark
quality like that of nudity. To speak absolutely, both
instrument and execution were poor; but the relative is
all, and as she listened Tess, like a fascinated bird,
could not leave the spot. Far from leaving she drew up
towards the performer, keeping behind the hedge that he
might not guess her presence.
The outskirt of the garden in which Tess found herself
had been left uncultivated for some years, and was now
damp and rank with juicy grass which sent up mists of
pollen at a touch; and with tall blooming weeds
emitting offensive smells--weeds whose red and yellow
and purple hues formed a polychrome as dazzling as that
of cultivated flowers. She went stealthily as a cat
through this profusion of growth, gathering
cuckoo-spittle on her skirts, cracking snails that were
underfoot, staining her hands with thistle-milk and
slug-slime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms sticky
blights which, though snow-white on the apple-tree
trunks, made madder stains on her skin; thus she drew
quite near to Clare, still unobserved of him.
Tess was conscious of neither time nor space. The
exaltation which she had described as being producible
at will by gazing at a star, came now without any
determination of hers; she undulated upon the thin
notes of the second-hand harp, and their harmonies
passed like breezes through her, bringing tears into
her eyes. The floating pollen seemed to be his notes
made visible, and the dampness of the garden the
weeping of the garden's sensibility. Though near
nightfall, the rank-smelling weed-flowers glowed as if
they would not close for intentness, and the waves of
colour mixed with the waves of sound.
The light which still shone was derived mainly from a
large hole in the western bank of cloud; it was like a
piece of day left behind by accident, dusk having
closed in elsewhere. He concluded his plaintive
melody, a very simple performance, demanding no great
skill; and she waited, thinking another might be begun.
But, tired of playing, he had desultorily come round
the fence, and was rambling up behind her. Tess, her
cheeks on fire, moved away furtively, as if hardly
moving at all.
Angel, however, saw her light summer gown, and he
spoke; his low tones reaching her, though he was some
distance off.
"What makes you draw off in that way, Tess?" said he.
"Are you afraid?"
"Oh no, sir ... not of outdoor things; especially just
now when the apple-blooth is falling, and everything is
so green."
"But you have your indoor fears--eh?"
"Well--yes, sir."
"What of?"
"I couldn't quite say."
"The milk turning sour?"
"No."
"Life in general?"
"Yes, sir."
"Ah--so have I, very often. This hobble of being alive
is rather serious, don't you think so?"
"It is--now you put it that way."
"All the same, I shouldn't have expected a young girl
like you to see it so just yet. How is it you do?"
She maintained a hesitating silence.
"Come, Tess, tell me in confidence."
She thought that he meant what were the aspects of
things to her, and replied shyly --
"The trees have inquisitive eyes, haven't they?--that
is, seem as if they had. And the river says,--'Why do
ye trouble me with your looks?' And you seem to see
numbers of tomorrows just all in a line, the first of
them the biggest and clearest, the others getting
smaller and smaller as they stand farther away; but
they all seem very fierce and cruel and as if they
said, 'I'm coming! Beware of me! Beware of me!' ...
But YOU, sir, can raise up dreams with your music, and
drive all such horrid fancies away!"
He was surprised to find this young woman--who though
but a milkmaid had just that touch of rarity about her
which might make her the envied of her
housemates--shaping such sad imaginings. She was
expressing in her own native phrases--assisted a little
by her Sixth Standard training--feelings which might
almost have been called those of the age--the ache of
modernism. The perception arrested him less when he
reflected that what are called advanced ideas are
really in great part but the latest fashion in
definition--a more accurate expression, by words in
LOGY and ISM, of sensations which men and women have
vaguely grasped for centuries.
Still, it was strange that they should have come to her
while yet so young; more than strange; it was
impressive, interesting, pathetic. Not guessing the
cause, there was nothing to remind him that experience
is as to intensity, and not as to duration. Tess's
passing corporeal blight had been her mental harvest.
Tess, on her part, could not understand why a man of
clerical family and good education, and above physical
want, should look upon it as a mishap to be alive. For
the unhappy pilgrim herself there was very good reason.
But how could this admirable and poetic man ever have
descended into the Valley of Humiliation, have felt
with the man of Uz--as she herself had felt two or
three years ago--'My soul chooseth strangling and death
rather than my life. I loathe it; I would not live
alway."
It was true that he was at present out of his class.
But she knew that was only because, like Peter the
Great in a shipwright's yard, he was studying what he
wanted to know. He did not milk cows because he was
obliged to milk cows, but because he was learning to be
a rich and prosperous dairyman, landowner,
agriculturist, and breeder of cattle. He would become
an American or Australian Abraham, commanding like a
monarch his flocks and his herds, his spotted and his
ring-straked, his men-servants and his maids. At times,
nevertheless, it did seem unaccountable to her that a
decidedly bookish, musical, thinking young man should
have chosen deliberately to be a farmer, and not a
clergyman, like his father and brothers.
Thus, neither having the clue to the other's secret,
they were respectively puzzled at what each revealed,
and awaited new knowledge of each other's character and
mood without attempting to pry into each other's
history.
Every day, every hour, brought to him one more little
stroke of her nature, and to her one more of his. Tess
was trying to lead a repressed life, but she little
divined the strength of her own vitality.
At first Tess seemed to regard Angel Clare as an
intelligence rather than as a man. As such she compared
him with herself; and at every discovery of the
abundance of his illuminations, and the unmeasurable,
Andean altitude of his, she became quite dejected,
disheartened from all further effort on her own part
whatever.
He observed her dejection one day, when he had casually
mentioned something to her about pastoral life in
ancient Greece. She was gathering the buds called
"lords and ladies" from the bank while he spoke.
"Why do you look so woebegone all of a sudden?" he
asked.
"Oh, 'tis only--about my own self," she said, with a
frail laugh of sadness, fitfully beginning to peel "a
lady" meanwhile. "Just a sense of what might have been
with me! My life looks as if it had been wasted for
want of chances! When I see what you know, what you
have read, and seen, and thought, I feel what a nothing
I am! I'm like the poor Queen of Sheba who lived in
the Bible. There is no more spirit in me."
"Bless my soul, don't go troubling about that! Why,"
he said with some enthusiasm, "I should be only too
glad, my dear Tess, to help you to anything in the way
of history, or any line of reading you would like to
take up--"
"It is a lady again," interrupted she, holding out the
bud she had peeled.
"What?"
"I meant that there are always more ladies than lords
when you come to peel them."
"Never mind about the lords and ladies. Would you like
to take up any course of study--history, for example?"
"Sometimes I feel I don't want to know anything more
about it than I know already."
"Why not?"
"Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a
long row only--finding out that there is set down in
some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I
shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all.
The best is not to remember that your nature and your
past doings have been just like thousands' and
thousands', and that your coming life and doings 'll be
like thousands's and thousands'."
"What, really, then, you don't want to learn anything?"
"I shouldn't mind learning why--why the sun do shine on
the just and the unjust alike," she answered, with a
slight quaver in her voice. "But that's what books
will not tell me." "Tess, fie for such bitterness!"
Of course he spoke with a conventional sense of duty only,
for that sort of wondering had not been unknown to
himself in bygone days. And as he looked at the
unpracticed mouth and lips, he thought that such a
daughter of the soil could only have caught up the
sentiment by rote. She went on peeling the lords and
ladies till Clare, regarding for a moment the wave-like
curl of her lashes as they dropped with her bent gaze
on her soft cheek, lingeringly went away. When he was
gone she stood awhile, thoughtfully peeling the last
bud; and then, awakening from her reverie, flung it and
all the crowd of floral nobility impatiently on the
ground, in an ebullition of displeasure with herself
for her NIAISERIES, and with a quickening warmth in her
heart of hearts.
How stupid he must think her! In an access of hunger
for his good opinion she bethought herself of what she
had latterly endeavoured to forget, so unpleasant had
been its issues--the identity of her family with that
of the knightly d'Urbervilles. Barren attribute as it
was, disastrous as its discovery had been in many ways
to her, perhaps Mr Clare, as a gentleman and a student
of history, would respect her sufficiently to forget
her childish conduct with the lords and ladies if he
knew that those Purbeck-marble and alabaster people in
Kingsbere Church really represented her own lineal
forefathers; that she was no spurious d'Urberville,
compounded of money and ambition like those at
Trantridge, but true d'Urberville to the bone.
But, before venturing to make the revelation, dubious
Tess indirectly sounded the dairyman as to its possible
effect upon Mr Clare, by asking the former if Mr Clare
had any great respect for old county families when they
had lost all their money and land.
"Mr Clare," said the dairyman emphatically, "is one of
the most rebellest rozums you ever knowed--not a bit
like the rest of his family; and if there's one thing
that he do hate more than another 'tis the notion of
what's called a' old family. He says that it stands to
reason that old families have done their spurt of work
in past days, and can't have anything left in 'em now.
There's the Billets and the Drenkhards and the Greys
and the St Quintins and the Hardys and the Goulds, who
used to own the lands for miles down this valley; you
could buy 'em all up now for an old song a'most. Why,
our little Retty Priddle here, you know, is one of the
Paridelles--the old family that used to own lots o' the
lands out by King's Hintock now owned by the Earl o'
Wessex, afore even he or his was heard of. Well, Mr
Clare found this out, and spoke quite scornful to the
poor girl for days. 'Ah!' he says to her, 'you'll never
make a good dairymaid! All your skill was used up ages
ago in Palestine, and you must lie fallow for a
thousand years to git strength for more deeds!' A boy
came here t'other day asking for a job, and said his
name was Matt, and when we asked him his surname he
said he'd never heard that 'a had any surname, and when
we asked why, he said he supposed his folks hadn't been
'stablished long enough. 'Ah! you're the very boy I
want!' says Mr Clare, jumping up and shaking hands
wi'en; 'I've great hopes of you;' and gave him
half-a-crown. O no! he can't stomach old families!'
After hearing this caricature of Clare's opinion poor
Tess was glad that she had not said a word in a weak
moment about her family--even though it was so
unusually old almost to have gone round the circle and
become a new one. Besides, another diary-girl was as
good as she, it seemed, in that respect. She held her
tongue about the d'Urberville vault, the Knight of the
Conqueror whose name she bore. The insight afforded
into Clare's character suggested to her that it was
largely owing to her supposed untraditional newness
that she had won interest in his eyes.
XX
The season developed and matured. Another year's
instalment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes,
finches, and such ephemeral creatures, took up their
positions where only a year ago others had stood in
their place when these were nothing more than germs and
inorganic particles. Rays from the sunrise drew forth
the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up
sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out
scents in invisible jets and breathings.
Dairyman Crick's household of maids and men lived on
comfortably, placidly, even merrily. Their position
was perhaps the happiest of all positions in the social
scale, being above the line at which neediness ends,
and below the line at which the CONVENANCES begin to
cramp natural feelings, and the stress of threadbare
modishness makes too little of enough.
Thus passed the leafy time when arborescence seems to
be the one thing aimed at out of doors. Tess and Clare
unconsciously studied each other, ever balanced on the
edge of a passion, yet apparently keeping out of it.
All the while they were converging, under an
irresistible law, as surely as two streams in one vale.
Tess had never in her recent life been so happy as she
was now, possibly never would be so happy again. She
was, for one thing, physically and mentally suited
among these new surroundings. The sapling which had
rooted down to a poisonous stratum on the spot of its
sowing had been transplanted to a deeper soil.
Moreover she, and Clare also, stood as yet on the
debatable land between predilection and love; where no
profundities have been reached; no reflections have set
in, awkwardly inquiring, "Whither does this new current
tend to carry me? What does it mean to my future? How
does it stand towards my past?"
Tess was the merest stray phenomenon to Angel Clare as
yet--a rosy warming apparition which had only just
acquired the attribute of persistence in his
consciousness. So he allowed his mind to be occupied
with her, deeming his preoccupation to be no more than
a philosopher's regard of an exceedingly novel, fresh,
and interesting specimen of womankind.
They met continually; they could not help it. They met
daily in that strange and solemn interval, the twilight
of the morning, in the violet or pink dawn; for it was
necessary to rise early, so very early, here. Milking
was done betimes; and before the milking came the
skimming, which began at a little past three. It
usually fell to the lot of some one or other of them to
wake the rest, the first being aroused by an
alarm-clock; and, as Tess was the latest arrival, and
they soon discovered that she could be depended upon
not to sleep though the alarm as others did, this task
was thrust most frequently upon her. No sooner had the
hour of three struck and whizzed, than she left her
room and ran to the dairyman's door; then up the ladder
to Angel's, calling him in a loud whisper; then woke
her fellow-milkmaids. By the time that Tess was
dressed Clare was downstairs and out in the humid air.
The remaining maids and the dairyman usually gave
themselves another turn on the pillow, and did not
appear till a quarter of an hour later.
The gray half-tones of daybreak are not the gray
half-tones of the day's close, though the degree of
their shade may be the same. In the twilight of the
morning light seems active, darkness passive; in the
twilight of evening it is the darkness which is active
and crescent, and the light which is the drowsy
reverse.
Being so often--possibly not always by chance--the
first two persons to get up at the dairy-house, they
seemed to themselves the first persons up of all the
world. In these early days of her residence here Tess
did not skim, but went out of doors at once after
rising, where he was generally awaiting her. The
spectral, half-compounded, aqueous light which pervaded
the open mead, impressed them with a feeling of
isolation, as if they were Adam and Eve. At this dim
inceptive stage of the day Tess seemed to Clare to
exhibit a dignified largeness both of disposition and
physique, an almost regnant power, possibly because he
knew that at that preternatural time hardly any woman
so well endowed in person as she was likely to be
walking in the open air within the boundaries of his
horizon; very few in all England. Fair women are
usually asleep at mid-summer dawns. She was close at
hand, and the rest were nowhere.
The mixed, singular, luminous gloom in which they
walked along together to the spot where the cows lay,
often made him think of the Resurrection hour. He
little thought that the Magdalen might be at his side.
Whilst all the landscape was in neutral shade his
companion's face, which was the focus of his eyes,
rising above the mist stratum, seemed to have a sort of
phosphorescence upon it. She looked ghostly, as if she
were merely a soul at large. In reality her face,
without appearing to do so, had caught the cold gleam
of day from the north-east; his own face, though he did
not think of it, wore the same aspect to her.
It was then, as has been said, that she impressed him
most deeply. She was no longer the milkmaid, but a
visionary essence of woman--a whole sex condensed into
one typical form. He called her Artemis, Demeter, and
other fanciful names half teasingly, which she did not
like because she did not understand them.
"Call me Tess," she would say askance; and he did.
Then it would grow lighter, and her features would
become simply feminine; they had changed from those of
a divinity who could confer bliss to those of a being
who craved it.
At these non-human hours they could get quite close to
the waterfowl. Herons came, with a great bold noise as
of opening doors and shutters, out of the boughs of a
plantation which they frequented at the side of the
mead; or, if already on the spot, hardily maintained
their standing in the water as the pair walked by,
watching them by moving their heads round in a slow,
horizontal, passionless wheel, like the turn of puppets
by clockwork.
They could then see the faint summer fogs in layers,
woolly, level, and apparently no thicker than
counterpanes, spread about the meadows in detached
remnants of small extent. On the gray moisture of the
grass were marks where the cows had lain through the
night--dark-green islands of dry herbage the size of
their carcasses, in the general sea of dew. From each
island proceeded a serpentine trail, by which the cow
had rambled away to feed after getting up, at the end
of which trail they found her; the snoring puff from
her nostrils, when she recognized them, making an
intenser little fog of her own amid the prevailing one.
Then they drove the animals back to the barton, or sat
down to milk them on the spot, as the case might
require.
Or perhaps the summer fog was more general, and the
meadows lay like a white sea, out of which the
scattered trees rose like dangerous rocks. Birds would
soar through it into the upper radiance, and hang on
the wing sunning themselves, or alight on the wet rails
subdividing the mead, which now shone like glass rods.
Minute diamonds of moisture from the mist hung, too,
upon Tess's eyelashes, and drops upon her hair, like
seed pearls. When the day grew quite strong and
commonplace these dried off her; moreover, Tess then
lost her strange and ethereal beauty; her teeth, lips,
and eyes scintillated in the sunbeams and she was again
the dazzlingly fair dairymaid only, who had to hold her
own against the other women of the world.
About this time they would hear Dairyman Crick's voice,
lecturing the non-resident milkers for arriving late,
and speaking sharply to old Deborah Fyander for not
washing her hands.
"For Heaven's sake, pop thy hands under the pump, Deb!
Upon my soul, if the London folk only knowed of thee
and thy slovenly ways, they'd swaller their milk and
butter more mincing than they do a'ready; and that's
saying a good deal."
The milking progressed, till towards the end Tess and
Clare, in common with the rest, could hear the heavy
breakfast table dragged out from the wall in the
kitchen by Mrs Crick, this being the invariable
preliminary to each meal; the same horrible scrape
accompanying its return journey when the table had been
cleared.
XXI
There was a great stir in the milk-house just after
breakfast. The churn revolved as usual, but the butter
would not come. Whenever this happened the dairy was
paralyzed. Squish, squash, echoed the milk in the great
cylinder, but never arose the sound they waited for.
Dairyman Crick and his wife, the milkmaids Tess,
Marian, Retty Priddle, Izz Huett, and the married ones
from the cottages; also Mr Clare, Jonathan Kail, old
Deborah, and the rest, stood gazing hopelessly at the
churn; and the boy who kept the horse going outside put
on moon-like eyes to show his sense of the situation.
Even the melancholy horse himself seemed to look in at
the window in inquiring despair at each walk round.
"'Tis years since I went to Conjuror Trendle's son in
Egdon--years!" said the dairyman bitterly. "And he was
nothing to what his father had been. I have said fifty
times, if I have said once, that I DON'T believe in en;
though 'a do cast folks' waters very true. But I shall
have to go to 'n if he's alive. O yes, I shall have to
go to 'n, if this sort of thing continnys!"
Even Mr Clare began to feel tragical at the dairyman's
desperation.
"Conjuror Fall, t'other side of Casterbridge, that they
used to call 'Wide-O', was a very good man when I was a
boy," said Jonathan Kail. "But he's rotten as
touchwood by now."
"My grandfather used to go to Conjuror Mynterne, out at
Owlscombe, and a clever man a' were, so I've heard
grandf'er say," continued Mr Crick. "But there's no
such genuine folk about nowadays!"
Mrs Crick's mind kept nearer to the matter in hand.
"Perhaps somebody in the house is in love," she said
tentatively. "I've heard tell in my younger days that
that will cause it. Why, Crick--that maid we had years
ago, do ye mind, and how the butter didn't come
then---"
"Ah yes, yes!--but that isn't the rights o't. It had
nothing to do with the love-making. I can mind all
about it--'twas the damage to the churn."
He turned to Clare.
"Jack Dollop, a 'hore's-bird of a fellow we had here as
milker at one time, sir, courted a young woman over at
Mellstock, and deceived her as he had deceived many
afore. But he had another sort o' woman to reckon wi'
this time, and it was not the girl herself. One Holy
Thursday of all days in the almanack, we was here as we
mid be now, only there was no churning in hand, when we
zid the girl's mother coming up to the door, wi' a
great brass-mounted umbrella in her hand that would ha'
felled an ox, and saying 'Do Jack Dollop work
here?--because I want him! I have a big bone to pick
with he, I can assure 'n!' And some way behind her
mother walked Jack's young woman, crying bitterly into
her handkercher. 'O Lard, here's a time!' said Jack,
looking out o' winder at 'em. 'She'll murder me! Where
shall I get--where shall I--? Don't tell her where I
be!' And with that he scrambled into the churn through
the trap-door, and shut himself inside, just as the
young woman's mother busted into the milk-house. 'The
villain--where is he?' says she, 'I'll claw his face
for'n, let me only catch him!' Well, she hunted about
everywhere, ballyragging Jack by side and by seam, Jack
lying a'most stifled inside the churn, and the poor
maid--or young woman rather--standing at the door
crying her eyes out. I shall never forget it, never!
'Twould have melted a marble stone! But she couldn't
find him nowhere at all."
The dairyman paused, and one or two words of comment
came from the listeners.
Dairyman Crick's stories often seemed to be ended when
they were not really so, and strangers were betrayed
into premature interjections of finality; though old
friends knew better. The narrator went on--
"Well, how the old woman should have had the wit to
guess it I could never tell, but she found out that he
was inside that there churn. Without saying a word she
took hold of the winch (it was turned by handpower
then), and round she swung him, and Jack began to flop
about inside. 'O Lard! stop the churn! let me out!'
says he, popping out his head, 'I shall be churned into
a pummy!' (he was a cowardly chap in his heart, as such
men mostly be). 'Not till ye make amends for ravaging
her virgin innocence!' says the old woman. 'Stop the
churn you old witch!' screams he. 'You call me old
witch, do ye, you deceiver!' says she, 'when ye ought
to ha' been calling me mother-law these last five
months!' And on went the churn, and Jack's bones
rattled round again. Well, none of us ventured to
interfere; and at last 'a promised to make it right wi'
her. 'Yes--I'll be as good as my word!' he said. And so
it ended that day."
While the listeners were smiling their comments there
was a quick movement behind their backs, and they
looked round. Tess, pale-faced, had gone to the door.
"How warm 'tis today!" she said, almost inaudibly.
It was warm, and none of them connected her withdrawal
with the reminiscences of the dairyman. He went
forward and opened the door for her, saying with tender
raillery--
"Why, maidy" (he frequently, with unconscious irony,
gave her this pet name), "the prettiest milker I've got
in my dairy; you mustn't get so fagged as this at the
first breath of summer weather, or we shall be finely
put to for want of 'ee by dog-days, shan't we, Mr Clare?"
"I was faint--and--I think I am better out o' doors,"
she said mechanically; and disappeared outside.
Fortunately for her the milk in the revolving churn at
that moment changed its squashing for a decided
flick-flack.
"'Tis coming!" cried Mrs Crick, and the attention of
all was called off from Tess.
That fair sufferer soon recovered herself externally;
but she remained much depressed all the afternoon.
When the evening milking was done she did not care to
be with the rest of them, and went out of doors
wandering along she knew not whither. She was
wretched--O so wretched--at the perception that to her
companions the dairyman's story had been rather a
humorous narration than otherwise; none of them but
herself seemed to see the sorrow of it; to a certainty,
not one knew how cruelly it touched the tender place in
her experience. The evening sun was now ugly to her,
like a great inflamed wound in the sky. Only a
solitary cracked-voice reed-sparrow greeted her from
the bushes by the river, in a sad, machine-made tone,
resembling that of a past friend whose friendship she
had outworn.
In these long June days the milkmaids, and, indeed,
most of the household, went to bed at sunset or sooner,
the morning work before milking being so early and
heavy at a time of full pairs. Tess usually
accompanied her fellows upstairs. Tonight, however,
she was the first to go to their common chamber; and
she had dozed when the other girls came in. She saw
them undressing in the orange light of the vanished
sun, which flushed their forms with its colour; she
dozed again, but she was reawakened by their voices,
and quietly turned her eyes towards them.
Neither of her three chamber-companions had got into
bed. They were standing in a group, in their
nightgowns, barefooted, at the window, the last red
rays of the west still warming their faces and necks,
and the walls around them. All were watching somebody
in the garden with deep interest, their three faces
close together: a jovial and round one, a pale one with
dark hair, and a fair one whose tresses were auburn.
"Don't push! You can see as well as I," said Retty,
the auburn-haired and youngest girl, without removing
her eyes from the window.
"'Tis no use for you to be in love with him any more
than me, Retty Priddle," said jolly-faced Marian, the
eldest, slily. "His thoughts be of other cheeks than
thine!"
Retty Priddle still looked, and the other looked again.
"There he is again!" cried Izz Huett, the pale girl
with dark damp hair and keenly cut lips.
"You needn't say anything, Izz," answered Retty.
"For I zid you kissing his shade."
"WHAT did you see her doing?" asked Marian.
"Why--he was standing over the whey-tub to let off the
whey, and the shade of his face came upon the wall
behind, close to Izz, who was standing there filling a
vat. She put her mouth against the wall and kissed the
shade of his mouth; I zid her, though he didn't."
"O Izz Huett!" said Marian.
A rosy spot came into the middle of Izz Huett's cheek.
"Well, there was no harm in it," she declared, with
attempted coolness. "And if I be in love wi'en, so is
Retty, too; and so be you, Marian, come to that."
Marian's full face could not blush past its chronic
pinkness.
"I!" she said. "What a tale! Ah, there he is again!
Dear eyes--dear face--dear Mr Clare!"
"There--you've owned it!"
"So have you--so have we all," said Marian, with the
dry frankness of complete indifference to opinion.
"It is silly to pretend otherwise amongst ourselves, though
we need not own it to other folks. I would just marry
'n to-morrow!"
"So would I--and more," murmured Izz Huett.
"And I too," whispered the more timid Retty.
The listener grew warm.
"We can't all marry him," said Izz.
"We shan't, either of us; which is worse still," said
the eldest. "There he is again!"
They all three blew him a silent kiss.
"Why?" asked Retty quickly.
"Because he likes Tess Durbeyfield best," said Marian,
lowering her voice. "I have watched him every day, and
have found it out."
There was a reflective silence.
"But she don't care anything for 'n?" at length
breathed Retty.
"Well--I sometimes think that too."
"But how silly all this is!" said Izz Huett
impatiently. "Of course he won't marry any one of us,
or Tess either--a gentleman's son, who's going to be a
great landowner and farmer abroad! More likely to ask
us to come wi'en as farm-hands at so much a year!"
One sighed, and another sighed, and Marian's plump
figure sighed biggest of all. Somebody in bed hard by
sighed too. Tears came into the eyes of Retty Priddle,
the pretty red-haired youngest--the last bud of the
Paridelles, so important in the county annals. They
watched silently a little longer, their three faces
still close together as before, and the triple hues of
their hair mingling. But the unconscious Mr Clare had
gone indoors, and they saw him no more; and, the shades
beginning to deepen, they crept into their beds. In a
few minutes they heard him ascend the ladder to his own
room. Marian was soon snoring, but Izz did not drop
into forgetfulness for a long time. Retty Priddle
cried herself to sleep.
The deeper-passioned Tess was very far from sleeping
even then. This conversation was another of the bitter
pills she had been obliged to swallow that day. Scarce
the least feeling of jealousy arose in her breast. For
that matter she knew herself to have the preference.
Being more finely formed, better educated, and, though
the youngest except Retty, more woman than either, she
perceived that only the slightest ordinary care was
necessary for holding her own in Angel Clare's heart
against these her candid friends. But the grave
question was, ought she to do this? There was, to be
sure, hardly a ghost of a chance for either of them, in
a serious sense; but there was, or had been, a chance
of one or the other inspiring him with a passing fancy
for her, and enjoying the pleasure of his attentions
while he stayed here. Such unequal attachments had led
to marriage; and she had heard from Mrs Crick that Mr
Clare had one day asked, in a laughing way, what would
be the use of his marrying a fine lady, and all the
while ten thousand acres of Colonial pasture to feed,
and cattle to rear, and corn to reap. A farm-woman
would be the only sensible kind of wife for him. But
whether Mr Clare had spoken seriously or not, why
should she, who could never conscientiously allow any
man to marry her now, and who had religiously
determined that she never would be tempted to do so,
draw off Mr Clare's attention from other women, for the
brief happiness of sunning herself in his eyes while he
remained at Talbothays?
XXII
They came downstairs yawning next morning; but skimming
and milking were proceeded with as usual, and they went
indoors to breakfast. Dairyman Crick was discovered
stamping about the house. He had received a letter, in
which a customer had complained that the butter had a
twang.
"And begad, so 't have!" said the dairyman, who held in
his left hand a wooden slice on which a lump of butter
was stuck. "Yes--taste for yourself!"
Several of them gathered round him; and Mr Clare
tasted, Tess tasted, also the other indoor milkmaids,
one or two of the milking-men, and last of all Mrs
Crick, who came out from the waiting breakfast-table.
There certainly was a twang.
The dairyman, who had thrown himself into abstraction
to better realize the taste, and so divine the
particular species of noxious weed to which it
appertained, suddenly exclaimed--
"'Tis garlic! and I thought there wasn't a blade left
in that mead!"
Then all the old hands remembered that a certain dry
mead, into which a few of the cows had been admitted of
late, had, in years gone by, spoilt the butter in the
same way. The dairyman had not recognized the taste at
that time, and thought the butter bewitched.
"We must overhaul that mead," he resumed; "this mustn't
continny!"
All having armed themselves with old pointed knives
they went out together. As the inimical plant could
only be present in very microscopic dimensions to have
escaped ordinary observation, to find it seemed rather
a hopeless attempt in the stretch of rich grass before
them. However, they formed themselves into line, all
assisting, owing to the importance of the search; the
dairyman at the upper end with Mr Clare, who had
volunteered to help; then Tess, Marian, Izz Huett, and
Retty; then Bill Lewell, Jonathan, and the married
dairywomen--Beck Knibbs, with her wooly black hair and
rolling eyes; and flaxen Frances, consumptive from the
winter damps of the water-meads--who lived in their
respective cottages.
With eyes fixed upon the ground they crept slowly
across a strip of the field, returning a little further
down in such a manner that, when they should have
finished, not a single inch of the pasture but would
have fallen under the eye of some one of them. It was
a most tedious business, not more than half a dozen
shoots of garlic being discoverable in the whole field;
yet such was the herb's pungency that probably one bite
of it by one cow had been sufficient to season the
whole dairy's produce for the day.
Differing one from another in natures and moods so
greatly as they did, they yet formed, bending, a
curiously uniform row--automatic, noiseless; and an
alien observer passing down the neighbouring lane might
well have been excused for massing them as "Hodge". As
they crept along, stooping low to discern the plant, a
soft yellow gleam was reflected from the buttercups
into their shaded faces, giving them an elfish, moonlit
aspect, though the sun was pouring upon their backs in
all the strength of noon.
Angel Clare, who communistically stuck to his rule of
taking part with the rest in everything, glanced up now
and then. It was not, of course, by accident that he
walked next to Tess.
"Well, how are you?" he murmured.
"Very well, thank you, sir," she replied demurely.
As they had been discussing a score of personal matters
only half-an-hour before, the introductory style seemed
a little superfluous. But they got no further in
speech just then. They crept and crept, the hem of her
petticoat just touching his gaiter, and his elbow
sometimes brushing hers. At last the dairyman, who
came next, could stand it no longer.
"Upon my soul and body, this here stooping do fairly
make my back open and shut!" he exclaimed,
straightening himself slowly with an excruciated look
till quite upright. "And you, maidy Tess, you wasn't
well a day or two ago--this will make your head ache
finely! Don't do any more, if you feel fainty; leave
the rest to finish it."
Dairyman Crick withdrew, and Tess dropped behind. Mr
Clare also stepped out of line, and began privateering
about for the weed. When she found him near her, her
very tension at what she had heard the night before
made her the first to speak.
"Don't they look pretty?" she said.
"Who?"
"Izzy Huett and Retty."
Tess had moodily decided that either of these maidens
would make a good farmer's wife, and that she ought to
recommend them, and obscure her own wretched charms.
"Pretty? Well, yes--they are pretty girls--fresh
looking. I have often thought so."
"Though, poor dears, prettiness won't last long!"
"O no, unfortunately."
"They are excellent dairywomen."
"Yes: though not better than you."
"They skim better than I."
"Do they?"
Clare remained observing them--not without their
observing him.
"She is colouring up," continued Tess heroically.
"Who?"
"Retty Priddle."
"Oh! Why it that?"
"Because you are looking at her."
Self-sacrificing as her mood might be Tess could not
well go further and cry, "Marry one of them, if you
really do want a dairywoman and not a lady; and don't
think of marrying me!" She followed Dairyman Crick,
and had the mournful satisfaction of seeing that Clare
remained behind.
From this day she forced herself to take pains to avoid
him--never allowing herself, as formerly, to remain
long in his company, even if their juxtaposition were
purely accidental. She gave the other three every
chance.
Tess was woman enough to realize from their avowals to
herself that Angel Clare had the honour of all the
dairymaids in his keeping, and her perception of his
care to avoid compromising the happiness of either in
the least degree bred a tender respect in Tess for what
she deemed, rightly or wrongly, the self-controlling
sense of duty shown by him, a quality which she had
never expected to find in one of the opposite sex, and
in the absence of which more than one of the simple
hearts who were his house-mates might have gone weeping
on her pilgrimage.
XXIII
The hot weather of July had crept upon them unawares,
and the atmosphere of the flat vale hung heavy as an
opiate over the dairy-folk, the cows, and the trees.
Hot steaming rains fell frequently, making the grass
where the cows fed yet more rank, and hindering the
late haymaking in the other meads.
It was Sunday morning; the milking was done; the
outdoor milkers had gone home. Tess and the other
three were dressing themselves rapidly, the whole bevy
having agreed to go together to Mellstock Church, which
lay some three or four miles distant from the
dairy-house. She had now been two months at
Talbothays, and this was her first excursion.
All the preceding afternoon and night heavy
thunderstorms had hissed down upon the meads, and
washed some of the hay into the river; but this morning
the sun shone out all the more brilliantly for the
deluge, and the air was balmy and clear.
The crooked lane leading from their own parrish to
Mellstock ran along the lowest levels in a portion of
its length, and when the girls reached the most
depressed spot they found that the result of the rain
had been to flood the lane over-shoe to a distance of
some fifty yards. This would have been no serious
hindrance on a week-day; they would have clicked
through it in their high patterns and boots quite
unconcerned; but on this day of vanity, this Sun's-day,
when flesh went forth to coquet with flesh while
hypocritically affecting business with spiritual
things; on this occasion for wearing their white
stockings and thin shoes, and their pink, white, and
lilac gowns, on which every mud spot would be visible,
the pool was an awkward impediment. They could hear
the church-bell calling--as yet nearly a mile off.
"Who would have expected such a rise in the river in
summer-time!" said Marian, from the top of the
roadside bank on which they had climbed, and were
maintaining a precarious footing in the hope of
creeping along its slope till they were past the pool.
"We can't get there anyhow, without walking right
through it, or else going round the Turnpike way; and
that would make us so very late!" said Retty, pausing
hopelessly.
"And I do colour up so hot, walking into church late,
and all the people staring round," said Marian,
"that I hardly cool down again till we get into the
That-it-may-please-Thees."
While they stood clinging to the bank they heard a
splashing round the bend of the road, and presently
appeared Angel Clare, advancing along the lane towards
them through the water.
Four hearts gave a big throb simultaneously.
His aspect was probably as un-Sabbatarian a one as a
dogmatic parson's son often presented; his attire being
his dairy clothes, long wading boots, a cabbage-leaf
inside his hat to keep his head cool, with a
thistle-spud to finish him off. "He's not going to
church," said Marian.
"No--I wish he was!" murmured Tess.
Angel, in fact, rightly or wrongly (to adopt the safe
phrase of evasive controversialists), preferred sermons
in stones to sermons in churches and chapels on fine
summer days. This morning, moreover, he had gone out
to see if the damage to the hay by the flood was
considerable or not. On his walk he observed the girls
from a long distance, though they had been so occupied
with their difficulties of passage as not to notice
him. He knew that the water had risen at that spot,
and that it would quite check their progress. So he
had hastened on, with a dim idea of how he could help
them--one of them in particular.
The rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed quartet looked so
charming in their light summer attire, clinging to the
roadside bank like pigeons on a roof-slope, that he
stopped a moment to regard them before coming close.
Their gauzy skirts had brushed up from the grass
innumerable flies and butterflies which, unable to
escape, remained caged in the transparent tissue as in
an aviary. Angel's eye at last fell upon Tess, the
hindmost of the four; she, being full of suppressed
laughter at their dilemma, could not help meeting his
glance radiantly.
He came beneath them in the water, which did not rise
over his long boots; and stood looking at the entrapped
flies and butterflies.
"Are you trying to get to church?" he said to Marian,
who was in front, including the next two in his remark,
but avoiding Tess.
"Yes, sir; and 'tis getting late; and my colour do come
up so----"
"I'll carry you through the pool--every Jill of you."
The whole four flushed as if one heart beat through
them.
"I think you can't, sir," said Marian.
"It is the only way for you to get past. Stand still.
Nonsense--you are not too heavy! I'd carry you all
four together. Now, Marian, attend," he continued, "and
put your arms round my shoulders, so. Now! Hold on.
That's well done."
Marian had lowered herself upon his arm and shoulder as
directed, and Angel strode off with her, his slim
figure, as viewed from behind, looking like the mere
stem to the great nosegay suggested by hers. They
disappeared round the curve of the road, and only his
sousing footsteps and the top ribbon of Marian's bonnet
told where they were. In a few minutes he reappeared.
Izz Huett was the next in order upon the bank.
"Here he comes," she murmured, and they could hear that
her lips were dry with emotion. "And I have to put my
arms round his neck and look into his face as Marian
did."
"There's nothing in that," said Tess quickly.
"There's a time for everything," continued Izz,
unheeding. "A time to embrace, and a time to refrain
from embracing; the first is now going to be mine."
"Fie--it is Scripture, Izz!"
"Yes," said Izz, "I've always a' ear at church for
pretty verses."
Angel Clare, to whom three-quarters of this performance
was a commonplace act of kindness, now approached Izz.
She quietly and dreamily lowered herself into his arms,
and Angel methodically marched off with her. When he
was heard returning for the third time Retty's
throbbing heart could be almost seen to shake her. He
went up to the red-haired girl, and while he was
seizing her he glanced at Tess. His lips could not
have pronounced more plainly, "It will soon be you and
I." Her comprehension appeared in her face; she could
not help it. There was an understanding between them.
Poor little Retty, though by far the lightest weight,
was the most troublesome of Clare's burdens. Marian
had been like a sack of meal, a dead weight of
plumpness under which he has literally staggered.
Izz had ridden sensibly and calmly. Retty was a bunch of
hysterics.
However, he got through with the disquieted creature,
deposited her, and returned. Tess could see over the
hedge the distant three in a group, standing as he had
placed them on the next rising ground. It was now her
turn. She was embarrassed to discover that excitement
at the proximity of Mr Clare's breath and eyes, which
she had contemned in her companions, was intensified in
herself; and as if fearful of betraying her secret she
paltered with him at the last moment.
"I may be able to clim' along the bank perhaps--I can
clim' better than they. You must be so tired, Mr Clare!"
"No, no, Tess," said he quickly. And almost before she
was aware she was seated in his arms and resting
against his shoulder.
"Three Leahs to get one Rachel," he whispered.
"They are better women than I," she replied,
magnanimously sticking to her resolve.
"Not to me," said Angel.
He saw her grow warm at this; and they went some steps
in silence.
"I hope I am not too heavy?" she said timidly.
"O no. You should lift Marian! Such a lump. You are
like an undulating billow warmed by the sun. And all
this fluff of muslin about you is the froth."
"It is very pretty--if I seem like that to you."
"Do you know that I have undergone three-quarters of
this labour entirely for the sake of the fourth
quarter?"
"No."
"I did not expect such an event today."
"Nor I.... The water came up so sudden."
That the rise in the water was what she understood him
to refer to, the state of breathing belied. Clare
stood still and inclinced his face towards hers.
"O Tessy!" he exclaimed.
The girl's cheeks burned to the breeze, and she could
not look into his eyes for her emotion. It reminded
Angel that he was somewhat unfairly taking advantage of
an accidental position; and he went no further with it.
No definite words of love had crossed their lips as
yet, and suspension at this point was desirable now.
However, he walked slowly, to make the remainder of the
distance as long as possible; but at last they came to
the bend, and the rest of their progress was in full
view of the other three. The dry land was reached, and
he set her down.
Her friends were looking with round thoughtful eyes at
her and him, and she could see that they had been
talking of her. He hastily bade them farewell, and
splashed back along the stretch of submerged road.
The four moved on together as before, till Marian broke
the silence by saying--
"No--in all truth; we have no chance against her!"
She looked joylessly at Tess.
"What do you mean?" asked the latter.
"He likes 'ee best--the very best! We could see it as
he brought 'ee. He would have kissed 'ee, if you had
encouraged him to do it, ever so little."
"No, no," said she.
The gaiety with which they had set out had somehow
vanished; and yet there was no enmity or malice between
them. They were generous young souls; they had been
reared in the lonely country nooks where fatalism is a
strong sentiment, and they did not blame her. Such
supplanting was to be.
Tess's heart ached. There was no concealing from
herself the fact that she loved Angel Clare, perhaps
all the more passionately from knowing that the others
had also lost their hearts to him. There is contagion
in this sentiment, especially among women. And yet
that same hungry nature had fought against this, but
too feebly, and the natural result had followed.
"I will never stand in your way, nor in the way of
either of you!" she declared to Retty that night in the
bedroom (her tears running down). "I can't help this,
my dear! I don't think marrying is in his mind at all;
but if he were ever to ask me I should refuse him, as I
should refuse any man."
"Oh! would you? Why?" said wondering Retty.
"It cannot be! But I will be plain. Putting myself
quite on one side. I don't think he will choose either
of you."
"I have never expected it--thought of it!" moaned
Retty. "But O! I wish I was dead!"
The poor child, torn by a feeling which she hardly
understood, turned to the other two girls who came
upstairs just then.
"We be friends with her again," she said to them.
"She thinks no more of his choosing her than we do."
So the reserve went off, and they were confiding and
warm.
"I don't seem to care what I do now," said Marian,
whose mood was turned to its lowest bass. "I was going
to marry a dairyman at Stickleford, who's asked me
twice; but--my soul--I would put an end to myself
rather'n be his wife now! Why don't ye speak, Izz?"
"To confess, then," murmured Izz, "I made sure today
that he was going to kiss me as he held me; and I lay
still against his breast, hoping and hoping, and never
moved at all. But he did not. I don't like biding
here at Talbothays any longer! I shall go hwome."
The air of the sleeping-chamber seemed to palpitate
with the hopeless passion of the girls. They writhed
feverishly under the oppressiveness of an emotion
thrust on them by cruel Nature's law--an emotion which
they had neither expected nor desired. The incident of
the day had fanned the flame that was burning the
inside of their hearts out, and the torture was almost
more than they could endure. The differences which
distinguished them as individuals were abstracted by
this passion, and each was but portion of one organism
called sex. There was so much frankness and so little
jealousy because there was no hope. Each one was a
girl of fair common sense, and she did not delude
herself with any vain conceits, or deny her love, or
give herself airs, in the idea of outshining the
others. The full recognition of the futility of their
infatuation, from a social point of view; its
purposeless beginning; its self-bounded outlook; its
lack of everything to justify its existence in the eye
of civilization (while lacking nothing in the eye of
Nature); the one fact that it did exist, ecstasizing
them to a killing joy; all this imparted to them a
resignation, a dignity, which a practical and sordid
expectation of winning him as a husband would have
destroyed.
They tossed and turned on their little beds, and the
cheese-wring dripped monotonously downstairs.
"B' you awake, Tess?" whispered one, half-an-hour
later.
It was Izz Huett's voice.
Tess replied in the affirmative, whereupon also Retty
and Marian suddenly flung the bedclothes off them, and
sighed--
"So be we!"
"I wonder what she is like--the lady they say his
family have looked out for him!"
"I wonder," said Izz.
"Some lady looked out for him?" gasped Tess, starting.
"I have never heard o' that!"
"O yes--'tis whispered; a young lady of his own rank,
chosen by his family; a Doctor of Divinity's daughter
near his father's parish of Emminster; he don't much
care for her, they say. But he is sure to marry her."
They had heard so very little of this; yet it was
enough to build up wretched dolorous dreams upon, there
in the shade of the night. They pictured all the
details of his being won round to consent, of the
wedding preparations, of the bride's happiness, of her
dress and veil, of her blissful home with him, when
oblivion would have fallen upon themselves as far as he
and their love were concerned. Thus they talked, and
ached, and wept till sleep charmed their sorrow away.
After this disclosure Tess nourished no further foolish
thought that there lurked any grave and deliberate
import in Clare's attentions to her. It was a passing
summer love of her face, for love's own temporary
sake--nothing more. And thorny crown of this sad
conception was that she whom he really did prefer in a
cursory way to the rest, she who knew herself to be
more impassioned in nature, cleverer, more beautiful
than they, was in the eyes of propriety far less worthy
of him than the homelier ones whom he ignored.
XXIV
Amid the oozing fatness and warm ferments of the Froom
Vale, at a season when the rush of juices could almost
be heard below the hiss of fertilization, it was
impossible that the most fanciful love should not grow
passionate. The ready bosoms existing there were
impregnated by their surroundings.
July passed over their heads, and the Thermidorean
weather which came in its wake seemed an effort on the
part of Nature to match the state of hearts at
Talbothays Dairy. The air of the place, so fresh in
the spring and early summer, was stagnant and
enervating now. Its heavy scents weighed upon them,
and at mid-day the landscape seemed lying in a swoon.
Ethiopic scorchings browned the upper slopes of the
pastures, but there was still bright green herbage here
where the watercourses purled. And as Clare was
oppressed by the outward heats, so was he burdened
inwardly by waxing fervour of passion for the soft and
silent Tess.
The rains having passed the uplands were dry. The
wheels of the dairyman's spring cart, as he sped home
from market, licked up the pulverized surface of the
highway, and were followed by white ribands of dust, as
if they had set a thin powertrain on fire. The cows
jumped wildly over the five-barred barton-gate,
maddened by the gad-fly; Dairyman Crick kept his
shirt-sleeves permanently rolled up from Monday to
Saturday; open windows had no effect in ventilation
without open doors, and in the dairy-garden the
blackbirds and thrushes crept about under the
currant-bushes, rather in the manner of quadrupeds than
of winged creatures. The flies in the kitchen were
lazy, teasing, and familiar, crawling about in the
unwonted places, on the floors, into drawers, and over
the backs of the milkmaids' hands. Conversations were
concerning sunstroke; while butter-making, and still
more butter-keeping, was a despair.
They milked entirely in the meads for coolness and
convenience, without driving in the cows. During the
day the animals obsequiously followed the shadow of the
smallest tree as it moved round the stem with the
diurnal roll; and when the milkers came they could
hardly stand still for the flies.
On one of these afternoons four or five unmilked cows
chanced to stand apart from the general herd, behind
the corner of a hedge, among them being Dumpling and
Old Pretty, who loved Tess's hands above those of any
other maid. When she rose from her stool under a
finished cow Angel Clare, who had been observing her
for some time, asked her if she would take the
aforesaid creatures next. She silently assented, and
with her stool at arm's length, and the pail against
her knee, went round to where they stood. Soon the
sound of Old Pretty's milk fizzing into the pail came
through the hedge, and then Angel felt inclined to go
round the corner also, to finish off a hard-yielding
milcher who had strayed there, he being now as capable
of this as the dairyman himself.
All the men, and some of the women, when milking, dug
their foreheads into the cows and gazed into the pail.
But a few--mainly the younger ones--rested their heads
sideways. This was Tess Durbeyfield's habit, her
temple pressing the milcher's flank, her eyes fixed on
the far end of the meadow with the quiet of one lost in
meditation. She was milking Old Pretty thus, and the
sun chancing to be on the milking-side it shone flat
upon her pink-gowned form and her white curtain-bonnet,
and upon her profile, rendering it keen as a cameo cut
from the dun background of the cow.
She did not know that Clare had followed her round, and
that he sat under his cow watching her. The stillness
of her head and features was remarkable: she might have
been in a trance, her eyes open, yet unseeing. Nothing
in the picture moved but Old Pretty's tail and Tess's
pink hands, the latter so gently as to be a rhythmic
pulsation only, as if they were obeying a reflex
stimulus, like a beating heart.
How very lovable her face was to him. yet there was
nothing ethereal about it; all was real vitality, real
warmth, real incarnation. And it was in her mouth that
this culminated. Eyes almost as deep and speaking he
had seen before, and cheeks perhaps as fair; brows as
arched, a chin and throat almost as shapely; her mouth
he had seen nothing to equal on the face of the earth.
To a young man with the least fire in him that little
upward lift in the middle of her red top lip was
distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had never
before seen a woman's lips and teeth which forced upon
his mind with such persistent iteration the old
Elizabethan simile of roses filled with snow. Perfect,
he, as a lover, might have called them off-hand. But
no--they were not perfect. And it was the touch of the
imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the
sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity.
Clare had studied the curves of those lips so many
times that he could reproduce them mentally with ease:
and now, as they again confronted him, clothed with
colour and life, they sent an AURA over his flesh, a
breeze through his nerves, which wellnigh produced a
qualm; and actually produced, by some mysterious
physiological process, a prosaic sneeze.
She then became conscious that he was observing her;
but she would not show it by any change of position,
though the curious dream-like fixity disappeared, and a
close eye might easily have discerned that the rosiness
of her face deepened, and then faded till only a tinge
of it was left.
The influence that had passed into Clare like an
excitation from the sky did not die down. Resolutions,
reticences, prudences, fears, fell back like a defeated
battalion. He jumped up from his seat, and, leaving his
pail to be kicked over if the milcher had such a mind,
went quickly towards the desire of his eyes, and,
kneeling down beside her, clasped her in his arms.
Tess was taken completely by surprise, and she yielded
to his embrace with unreflecting inevitableness.
Having seen that it was really her lover who had
advanced, and no one else, her lips parted, and she
sank upon him in her momentary joy, with something very
like an ecstatic cry.
He had been on the point of kissing that too tempting
mouth, but he checked himself, for tender conscience'
sake.
"Forgive me, Tess dear!" he whispered. "I ought to
have asked. I--did not know what I was doing. I do
not mean it as a liberty. I am devoted to you, Tessy,
dearest, in all sincerity!"
Old Pretty by this time had looked round, puzzled; and
seeing two people crouching under her where, by
immemorial custom, there should have been only one,
lifted her hind left crossly.
"She is angry--she doesn't know what we mean--she'll
kick over the milk!" exclaimed Tess, gently striving to
free herself, her eyes concerned with the quadruped's
actions, her heart more deeply concerned with herself
and Clare.
She slipped up from her seat, and they stood together,
his arm still encircling her. Tess's eyes, fixed on
distance, began to fill.
"Why do you cry, my darling?" he said.
"O--I don't know!" she murmured.
As she saw and felt more clearly the position she was
in she became agitated and tried to withdraw.
"Well, I have betrayed my feeling, Tess, at last," said
he, with a curious sigh of desperation, signifying
unconsciously that his heart had outrun his judgement.
"That I--love you dearly and truly I need not say. But
I--it shall go no further now--it distresses you--I am
as surprised as you are. You will not think I have
presumed upon your defencelessness--been too quick and
unreflecting, will you?"
"N'--I can't tell."
He had allowed her to free herself; and in a minute or
two the milking of each was resumed. Nobody had beheld
the gravitation of the two into one; and when the
dairyman came round by that screened nook a few minutes
later there was not a sign to reveal that the markedly
sundered pair were more to each other than mere
acquaintance. Yet in the interval since Crick's last
view of them something had occurred which changed the
pivot of the universe for their two natures; something
which, had he known its quality, the dairyman would
have despised, as a practical man; yet which was based
upon a more stubborn and resistless tendency than a
whole heap of so-called practicalities. A veil had
been whisked aside; the tract of each one's outlook was
to have a new horizon thenceforward--for a short time
or for a long.
END OF PHASE THE THIRD
Phase the Fourth: The Consequence
XXV
Clare, restless, went out into the dusk when evening
drew on, she who had won him having retired to her
chamber.
The night was as sultry as the day. There was no
coolness after dark unless on the grass. Roads,
garden-paths, the house-fronts, the barton-walls were
warm as hearths, and reflected the noontime temperature
into the noctambulist's face.
He sat on the east gate of the dairy-yard, and knew not
what to think of himself. Feeling had indeed smothered
judgement that day.
Since the sudden embrace, three hours before, the twain
had kept apart. She seemed stilled, almost alarmed, at
what had occurred, while the novelty, unpremeditation,
mastery of circumstance disquieted him--palpitating,
contemplative being that he was. He could hardly
realize their true relations to each other as yet, and
what their mutual bearing should be before third
parties thenceforward.
Angel had come as pupil to this dairy in the idea that
his temporary existence here was to be the merest
episode in his life, soon passed through and early
forgotten; he had come as to a place from which as from
a screened alcove he could calmly view the absorbing
world without, and, apostrophizing it with Walt
Whitman--
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes,
How curious you are to me!--
resolve upon a plan for plunging into that world anew.
But behold, the absorbing scene had been imported
hither. What had been the engrossing world had
dissolved into an uninteresting outer dumb-show; while
here, in this apparently dim and unimpassioned place,
novelty had volcanically started up, as it had never,
for him, started up elsewhere.
Every window of the house being open Clare could hear
across the yard each trivial sound of the retiring
household. The dairy-house, so humble, so
insignificant, so purely to him a place of constrained
sojourn that he had never hitherto deemed it of
sufficient importance to be reconnoitred as an object
of any quality whatever in the landscape; what was it
now? The aged and lichened brick gables breathed forth
"Stay!" The windows smiled, the door coaxed and
beckoned, the creeper blushed confederacy. A
personality within it was so far-reaching in her
influence as to spread into and make the bricks,
mortar, and whole overhanging sky throb with a burning
sensibility. Whose was this mighty personality? A
milkmaid's. It was amazing, indeed, to find how great a
matter the life of the obscure dairy had become to him.
And though new love was to be held partly responsible
for this it was not solely so. Many besides Angel have
learnt that the magnitude of lives is not as to their
external displacements, but as to their subjective
experiences. The impressionable peasant leads a
larger, fuller, more dramatic life than the
pachydermatous king. Looking at it thus he found that
life was to be seen of the same magnitude here as
elsewhere.
Despite his heterodoxy, faults, and weaknesses, Clare
was a man with a conscience. Tess was no insignificant
creature to toy with and dismiss; but a woman living
her precious life--a life which, to herself who
endured or enjoyed it, possessed as great a dimension
as the life of the mightiest to himself. Upon her
sensations the whole world depended to Tess; through
her existence all her fellow-creatures existed, to her.
The universe itself only came into being for Tess on
the particular day in the particular year in which she
was born.
This consciousness upon which he had intruded was the
single opportunity of existence ever vouchsafed to Tess
by an unsympathetic First Cause--her all; her every and
only chance. How then should he look upon her as of
less consequence than himself; as a pretty trifle to
caress and grow weary of; and not deal in the greatest
seriousness with the affection which he knew that he
had awakened in her--so fervid and so impressionable as
she was under her reserve; in order that it might not
agonize and wreck her?
To encounter her daily in the accustomed manner would
be to develop what had begun. Living in such close
relations, to meet meant to fall into endearment; flesh
and blood could not resist it; and, having arrived at
no conclusion as to the issue of such a tendency, he
decided to hold aloof for the present from occupations
in which they would be mutually engaged. As yet the
harm done was small.
But it was not easy to carry out the resolution never
to approach her. He was driven towards her by every
heave of his pulse.
He thought he would go and see his friends. It might
be possible to sound them upon this. In less than five
months his term here would have ended, and after a few
additional months spent upon other farms he would be
fully equipped in agricultural knowledge, and in a
position to start on his own account. Would not a
farmer want a wife, and should a farmer's wife be a
drawing-room wax-figure, or a woman who understood
farming? Notwithstanding the pleasing answer returned
to him by the silence he resolved to go his journey.
One morning when they sat down to breakfast at
Talbothays Dairy some maid observed that she had not
seen anything of Mr Clare that day.
"O no," said Dairyman Crick. "Mr Clare has gone hwome
to Emminster to spend a few days wi' his kinsfolk."
For four impassioned ones around that table the
sunshine of the morning went out at a stroke, and the
birds muffled their song. But neither girl by word or
gesture revealed her blankness. "He's getting on
towards the end of his time wi' me," added the
dairyman, with a phlegm which unconsciously was brutal;
"and so I suppose he is beginning to see about his
plans elsewhere."
"How much longer is he to bide here?" asked Izz Huett,
the only one of the gloom-stricken bevy who could trust
her voice with the question.
The others waited for the dairyman's answer as if their
lives hung upon it; Retty, with parted lips, gazing on
the tablecloth, Marian with heat added to her redness,
Tess throbbing and looking out at the meads.
"Well, I can't mind the exact day without looking at my
memorandum-book," replied Crick, with the same
intolerable unconcern. "And even that may be altered a
bit. He'll bide to get a little practice in the
calving out at the straw-yard, for certain. He'll
hang on till the end of the year I should say."
Four months or so of torturing ecstasy in his
society--of "pleasure girdled about with pain".
After that the blackness of unutterable night.
At this moment of the morning Angel Clare was riding
along a narrow lane ten miles distant from the
breakfasters, in the direction of his father's Vicarage
at Emminster, carrying, as well as he could, a little
basket which contained some black-puddings and a bottle
of mead, sent by Mrs Crick, with her kind respects, to
his parents. The white lane stretched before him, and
his eyes were upon it; but they were staring into next
year, and not at the lane. He loved her; ought he to
marry her? Dared he to marry her? What would his
mother and his brothers say? What would he himself say
a couple of years after the event? That would depend
upon whether the germs of staunch comradeship underlay
the temporary emotion, or whether it were a sensuous
joy in her form only, with no substratum of
everlastingness.
His father's hill-surrounded little town, the Tudor
church-tower of red stone, the clump of trees near the
Vicarage, came at last into view beneath him, and he
rode down towards the well-known gate. Casting a
glance in the direction of the church before entering
his home, he beheld standing by the vestry-door a group
of girls, of ages between twelve and sixteen,
apparently awaiting the arrival of some other one, who
in a moment became visible; a figure somewhat older
than the school-girls, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and
highly-starched cambric morning-gown, with a couple of
books in her hand.
Clare knew her well. He could not be sure that she
observed him; he hoped she did not, so as to render it
unnecessary that he should go and speak to her,
blameless creature that she was. An overpowering
reluctance to greet her made him decide that she had
not seen him. The young lady was Miss Mercy Chant, the
only daughter of his father's neighbour and friend,
whom it was his parents' quiet hope that he might wed
some day. She was great at Antinomianism and Bible-
classes, and was plainly going to hold a class now.
Clare's mind flew to the impassioned, summer-steeped
heathens in the Var Vale, their rosy faces
court-patched with cow-droppings; and to one the most
impassioned of them all. It was on the impulse of the
moment that he had resolved to trot over to Emminster,
and hence had not written to apprise his mother and
father, aiming, however, to arrive about the breakfast
hour, before they should have gone out to their parish
duties. He was a little late, and they had already sat
down to the morning meal. The group at the table
jumped up to welcome him as soon as he entered. They
were his father and mother, his brother the Reverend
Felix--curate at a town in the adjoining county, home
for the inside of a fortnight--and his other brother,
the Reverend Cuthbert, the classical scholar, and
Fellow and Dean of his College, down from Cambridge for
the long vacation. His mother appeared in a cap and
silver spectacles, and his father looked what in fact
he was--an earnest, God-fearing man, somewhat gaunt, in
years about sixty-five, his pale face lined with
thought and purpose. Over their heads hung the picture
of Angel's sister, the eldest of the family, sixteen
years his senior, who had married a missionary and gone
out to Africa.
Old Mr Clare was a clergyman of a type which, within
the last twenty years, has wellnigh dropped out of
contemporary life. A spiritual descendant in the
direct line from Wycliff, Huss, Luther, Calvin; an
Evangelical of the Evangelicals, a Conversionist, a man
of Apostolic simplicity in life and thought, he had in
his raw youth made up his mind once for all in the
deeper questions of existence, and admitted no further
reasoning on them thenceforward. He was regarded even
by those his own date and school of thinking as
extreme; while, on the other hand, those totally
opposed to him were unwillingly won to admiration for
his thoroughness, and for the remarkable power he
showed in dismissing all question as to principles in
his energy for applying them. He loved Paul of Tarsus,
liked St John, hated St James as much as he dared, and
regarded with mixed feelings Timothy, Titus, and
Philemon. The New Testament was less a Christiad then
a Pauliad to his intelligence--less an argument than an
intoxication. His creed of determinism was such that
it almost amounted to a vice, and quite amounted, on
its negative side, to a renunciative philosophy which
had cousinship with that of Schopenhauer and Leopardi.
He despised the Canons and Rubric, swore by the
Articles, and deemed himself consistent through the
whole category--which in a way he might have been. One
thing he certainly was--sincere.
To the aesthetic, sensuous, pagan pleasure in natural
life and lush womanhood which his son Angel had lately
been experiencing in Var Vale, his temper would have
been antipathetic in a high degree, had he either by
inquiry or imagination been able to apprehend it. Once
upon a time Angel had been so unlucky as to say to his
father, in a moment of irritation, that it might have
resulted far better for mankind if Greece had been the
source of the religion of modern civilization, and not
Palestine; and his father's grief was of that blank
description which could not realize that there might
lurk a thousandth part of a truth, much less a half
truth or a whole truth, in such a proposition. He had
simply preached austerely at Angel for some time after.
But the kindness of his heart was such that he never
resented anything for long, and welcomed his son today
with a smile which was as candidly sweet as a child's.
Angel sat down, and the place felt like home; yet he
did not so much as formerly feel himself one of the
family gathered there. Every time that he returned
hither he was conscious of this divergence, and since
he had last shared in the Vicarage life it had grown
even more distinctly foreign to his own than usual.
Its transcendental aspirations--still unconsciously
based on the geocentric view of things, a zenithal
paradise, a nadiral hell--were as foreign to his own as
if they had been the dreams of people on another
planet. Latterly he had seen only Life, felt only the
great passionate pulse of existence, unwarped,
uncontorted, untrammelled by those creeds which
futilely attempt to check what wisdom would be content
to regulate.
On their part they saw a great difference in him, a
growing divergence from the Angel Clare of former
times. It was chiefly a difference in his manner that
they noticed just now, particularly his brothers. He
was getting to behave like a farmer; he flung his legs
about; the muscles of his face had grown more
expressive; his eyes looked as much information as his
tongue spoke, and more. The manner of the scholar had
nearly disappeared; still more the manner of the
drawing-room young man. A prig would have said that he
had lost culture, and a prude that he had become
coarse. Such was the contagion of domiciliary
fellowship with the Talbothays nymphs and swains.
After breakfast he walked with his two brothers,
non-evangelical, well-educated, hall-marked young men,
correct to their remotest fibre, such unimpeachable
models as are turned out yearly by the lathe of a
systematic tuition. They were both somewhat
short-sighted, and when it was the custom to wear a
single eyeglass and string they wore a single eyeglass
and string; when it was the custom to wear a double
glass they wore a double glass; when it was the custom
to wear spectacles they wore spectacles straightway,
all without reference to the particular variety of
defect in their own vision. When Wordsworth was
enthroned they carried pocket copies; and when Shelley
was belittled they allowed him to grow dusty on their
shelves. When Correggio's Holy Families were admired,
they admired Correggio's Holy Families; when he was
decried in favour of Velasquez, they sedulously
followed suit without any personal objection.
If these two noticed Angel's growing social ineptness,
he noticed their growing mental limitations. Felix
seemed to him all Church; Cuthbert all College. His
Diocesan Synod and Visitations were the mainsprings of
the world to the one; Cambridge to the other. Each
brother candidly recognized that there were a few
unimportant score of millions of outsiders in civilized
society, persons who were neither University men nor
churchmen; but they were to be tolerated rather than
reckoned with and respected.
They were both dutiful and attentive sons, and were
regular in their visits to their parents. Felix, though
an offshoot from a far more recent point in the
devolution of theology than his father, was less
self-sacrificing and disinterested. More tolerant than
his father of a contradictory opinion, in its aspect as
a danger to its holder, he was less ready than his
father to pardon it as a slight to his own teaching.
Cuthbert was, upon the whole, the more liberal-minded,
though, with greater subtlety, he had not so much
heart.
As they walked along the hillside Angel's former
feeling revived in him--that whatever their advantages
by comparison with himself, neither saw or set forth
life as it really was lived. Perhaps, as with many
men, their opportunities of observation were not so
good as their opportunities of expression. Neither had
an adequate conception of the complicated forces at
work outside the smooth and gentle current in which
they and their associates floated. Neither saw the
difference between local truth and universal truth;
that what the inner world said in their clerical and
academic hearing was quite a different thing from what
the outer world was thinking.
"I suppose it is farming or nothing for you now, my
dear fellow," Felix was saying, among other things, to
his youngest brother, as he looked through his
spectacles at the distant fields with sad austerity.
"And, therefore, we must make the best of it. But I do
entreat you to endeavour to keep as much as possible in
touch with moral ideals. Farming, of course, means
roughing it externally; but high thinking may go with
plain living, nevertheless."
"Of course it may," said Angel. "Was it not proved
nineteen hundred years ago--if I may trespass upon your
domain a little? Why should you think, Felix, that I
am likely to drop my high thinking and my moral
ideals?"
"Well, I fancied, from the tone of your letters and our
conversation--it may be fancy only--that you were
somehow losing intellectual grasp. Hasn't it struck
you, Cuthbert?"
"Now, Felix," said Angel drily, "we are very good
friends, you know; each of us treading our allotted
circles; but if it comes to intellectual grasp, I think
you, as a contented dogmatist, had better leave mine
alone, and inquire what has become of yours."
They returned down the hill to dinner, which was fixed
at any time at which their father's and mother's
morning work in the parish usually concluded.
Convenience as regarded afternoon callers was the last
thing to enter into the consideration of unselfish Mr
and Mrs Clare; though the three sons were sufficiently
in unison on this matter to wish that their parents
would conform a little to modern notions.
The walk had made them hungry, Angel in particular, who
was now an outdoor man, accustomed to the profuse DAPES
INEMPTAE of the dairyman's somewhat coarsely-laden
table. But neither of the old people had arrived, and
it was not till the sons were almost tired of waiting
that their parents entered. The self-denying pair had
been occupied in coaxing the appetites of some of their
sick parishioners, whom they, somewhat inconsistently,
tried to keep imprisoned in the flesh, their own
appetites being quite forgotten.
The family sat down to table, and a frugal meal of cold
viands was deposited before them. Angel looked round
for Mrs Crick's black-puddings, which he had directed
to be nicely grilled as they did them at the dairy, and
of which he wished his father and mother to appreciate
the marvellous herbal savours as highly as he did
himself.
"Ah! you are looking for the black-puddings, my dear
boy," observed Clare's mother. "But I am sure you will
not mind doing without them as I am sure your father
and I shall not, when you know the reason. I suggested
to him that we should take Mrs Crick's kind present to
the children of the man who can earn nothing just now
because of his attacks of delirium tremens; and he
agreed that it would be a great pleasure to them; so we
did."
"Of course," said Angel cheerfully, looking round for
the mead.
"I found the mead so extremely alcoholic," continued
his mother, "that it was quite unfit for use as a
beverage, but as valuable as rum or brandy in an
emergency; so I have put it in my medicine-closet."
"We never drink spirits at this table, on principle,"
added his father.
"But what shall I tell the dairyman's wife?" said Angel.
"The truth, of course," said his father.
"I rather wanted to say we enjoyed the mead and the
black-puddings very much. She is a kind, jolly sort
of body, and is sure to ask me directly I return."
"You cannot, if we did not," Mr Clare answered lucidly.
"Ah--no; though that mead was a drop of pretty tipple."
"A what?" said Cuthbert and Felix both.
"Oh--'tis an expression they use down at Talbothays,"
replied Angel, blushing. He felt that his parents were
right in their practice if wrong in their want of
sentiment, and said no more.
XXVI
It was not till the evening, after family prayers, that
Angel found opportunity of broaching to his father one
or two subjects near his heart. He had strung himself
up to the purpose while kneeling behind his brothers on
the carpet, studying the little nails in the heels of
their walking boots. When the service was over they
went out of the room with their mother, and Mr Clare
and himself were left alone.
The young man first discussed with the elder his plans
for the attainment of his position as a farmer on an
extensive scale--either in England or in the Colonies.
His father then told him that, as he had not been put
to the expense of sending Angel up to Cambridge, he had
felt it his duty to set by a sum of money every year
towards the purchase or lease of land for him some day,
that he might not feel himself unduly slighted.
"As far as worldly wealth goes," continued his father,
"you will no doubt stand far superior to your brothers
in a few years."
This considerateness on old Mr Clare's part led Angel
onward to the other and dearer subject. He observed to
his father that he was then six-and-twenty, and that
when he should start in the farming business he would
require eyes in the back of his head to see to all
matters--some one would be necessary to superintend the
domestic labours of his establishment whilst he was
afield. Would it not be well, therefore, for him to
marry?
His father seemed to think this idea not unreasonable;
and then Angel put the question--
"What kind of wife do you think would be best for me as
a thrifty hard-working farmer?"
"A truly Christian woman, who will be a help and a
comfort to you in your goings-out and your comings-in.
Beyond that, it really matters little. Such an one can
be found; indeed, my earnest-minded friend and
neighbour, Dr Chant--"
"But ought she not primarily to be able to milk cows,
churn good butter, make immense cheeses; know how to
sit hens and turkeys and rear chickens, to direct a
field of labourers in an emergency, and estimate the
value of sheep and calves?"
"Yes; a farmer's wife; yes, certainly. It would be
desirable." Mr Clare, the elder, had plainly never
thought of these points before. "I was going to add,"
he said, "that for a pure and saintly woman you will
not find one more to your true advantage, and certainly
not more to your mother's mind and my own, than your
friend Mercy, whom you used to show a certain interest
in. It is true that my neighbour Chant's daughter had
lately caught up the fashion of the younger clergy
round about us for decorating the Communion-
table--alter, as I was shocked to hear her call it one
day--with flowers and other stuff on festival
occasions. But her father, who is quite as opposed to
such flummery as I, says that can be cured. It is a
mere girlish outbreak which, I am sure, will not be
permanent."
"Yes, yes; Mercy is good and devout, I know. But,
father, don't you think that a young woman equally pure
and virtuous as Miss Chant, but one who, in place of
that lady's ecclesiastical accomplishments, understands
the duties of farm life as well as a farmer himself,
would suit me infinitely better?"
His father persisted in his conviction that a knowledge
of a farmer's wife's duties came second to a Pauline
view of humanity; and the impulsive Angel, wishing to
honour his father's feelings and to advance the cause
of his heart at the same time, grew specious. He said
that fate or Providence had thrown in his way a woman
who possessed every qualification to be the helpmate of
an agriculturist, and was decidedly of a serious turn
of mind. He would not say whether or not she had
attached herself to the sound Low Church School of his
father; but she would probably be open to conviction on
that point; she was a regular church-goer of simple
faith; honest-hearted, receptive, intelligent, graceful
to a degree, chaste as a vestal, and, in personal
appearance, exceptionally beautiful.
"Is she of a family such as you would care to marry
into--a lady, in short?" asked his startled mother, who
had come softly into the study during the conversation.
"She is not what in common parlance is called a lady,"
said Angel, unflinchingly, "for she is a cottager's
daughter, as I am proud to say. But she IS a lady,
nevertheless--in feeling and nature."
"Mercy Chant is of a very good family."
"Pooh!--what's the advantage of that, mother?" said
Angel quickly. "How is family to avail the wife of a
man who has to rough it as I have, and shall have to
do?"
"Mercy is accomplished. And accomplishments have their
charm," returned his mother, looking at him through her
silver spectacles.
"As to external accomplishments, what will be the use
of them in the life I am going to lead?--while as to
her reading, I can take that in hand. She'll be apt
pupil enough, as you would say if you knew her. She's
brim full of poetry--actualized poetry, if I may use
the expression. She LIVES what paper-poets only
write.... And she is an unimpeachable Christian, I am
sure; perhaps of the very tribe, genus, and species you
desire to propagate."
"O Angel, you are mocking!"
"Mother, I beg pardon. But as she really does attend
Church almost every Sunday morning, and is a good
Christian girl, I am sure you will tolerate any social
shortcomings for the sake of that quality, and feel
that I may do worse than choose her." Angel waxed
quite earnest on that rather automatic orthodoxy in his
beloved Tess which (never dreaming that it might stand
him in such good stead) he had been prone to slight
when observing it practised by her and the other
milkmaids, because of its obvious unreality amid
beliefs essentially naturalistic.
In their sad doubts as to whether their son had himself
any right whatever to the title he claimed for the
unknown young woman, Mr and Mrs Clare began to feel it
as an advantage not to be overlooked that she at least
was sound in her views; especially as the conjunction
of the pair must have arisen by an act of Providence;
for Angel never would have made orthodoxy a condition
of his choice. They said finally that it was better
not to act in a hurry, but that they would not object
to see her.
Angel therefore refrained from declaring more
particulars now. He felt that, single-minded and
self-sacrificing as his parents were, there yet existed
certain latent prejudices of theirs, as middle-class
people, which it would require some tact to overcome.
For though legally at liberty to do as he chose, and
though their daughter-in-law's qualifications could
make no practical difference to their lives, in the
probability of her living far away from them, he wished
for affection's sake not to wound their sentiment in
the most important decision of his life.
He observed his own inconsistencies in dwelling upon
accidents in Tess's life as if they were vital
features. It was for herself that he loved Tess; her
soul, her heart, her substance--not for her skill in
the dairy, her aptness as his scholar, and certainly
not for her simple formal faith-professions. Her
unsophisticated open-air existence required no varnish
of conventionality to make it palatable to him. He held
that education had as yet but little affected the beats
of emotion and impulse on which domestic happiness
depends. It was probable that, in the lapse of ages,
improved systems of moral and intellectual training
would appreciably, perhaps considerably, elevate the
involuntary and even the unconscious instincts of human
nature; but up to the present day culture, as far as he
could see, might be said to have affected only the
mental epiderm of those lives which had been brought
under its influence. This belief was confirmed by his
experience of women, which, having latterly been
extended from the cultivated middle-class into the
rural community, had taught him how much less was the
intrinsic difference between the good and wise woman of
one social stratum and the good and wise woman of
another social stratum, than between the good and bad,
the wise and the foolish, of the same stratum or class.
It was the morning of his departure. His brothers had
already left the Vicarage to proceed on a walking tour
in the north, whence one was to return to his college,
and the other to his curacy. Angel might have
accompanied them, but preferred to rejoin his
sweetheart at Talbothays. He would have been an
awkward member of the party; for, though the most
appreciative humanist, the most ideal religionist, even
the best-versed Christologist of the three, there was
alienation in the standing consciousness that his
squareness would not fit the round hole that had been
prepared for him. To neither Felix nor Cuthbert had he
ventured to mention Tess.
His mother made him sandwiches, and his father
accompanied him, on his own mare, a little way along
the road. Having fairly well advanced his own affairs
Angel listened in a willing silence, as they jogged on
together through the shady lanes, to his father's
account of his parish difficulties, and the coldness of
brother clergymen whom he loved, because of his strict
interpretations of the New Testament by the light of
what they deemed a pernicious Calvinistic doctrine.
"Pernicious!" said Mr Clare, with genial scorn; and he
proceeded to recount experiences which would show the
absurdity of that idea. He told of wondrous
conversions of evil livers of which he had been the
instrument, not only amongst the poor, but amongst the
rich and well-to-do; and he also candidly admitted many
failures.
As an instance of the latter, he mentioned the case of
a young upstart squire named d'Urberville, living some
forty miles off, in the neighbourhood of Trantridge.
"Not one of the ancient d'Urbervilles of Kingsbere and
other places?" asked his son. "That curiously historic
worn-out family with its ghostly legend of the
coach-and-four?"
"O no. The original d'Urbervilles decayed and
disappeared sixty or eighty years ago--at least,
I believe so. This seems to be a new family which had
taken the name; for the credit of the former knightly
line I hope they are spurious, I'm sure. But it is odd
to hear you express interest in old families.
I thought you set less store by them even than I."
"You misapprehend me, father; you often do," said Angel
with a little impatience. "Politically I am sceptical
as to the virtue of their being old. Some of the wise
even among themselves 'exclaim against their own
succession,' as Hamlet puts it; but lyrically,
dramatically, and even historically, I am tenderly
attached to them."
This distinction, though by no means a subtle one, was
yet too subtle for Mr Clare the elder, and he went on
with the story he had been about to relate; which was
that after the death of the senior so-called
d'Urberville the young man developed the most culpable
passions, though he had a blind mother, whose condition
should have made him know better. A knowledge of his
career having come to the ears of Mr Clare, when he was
in that part of the country preaching missionary
sermons, he boldly took occasion to speak to the
delinquent on his spiritual state. Though he was a
stranger, occupying another's pulpit, he had felt this
to be his duty, and took for his text the words from St
Luke: "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required
of thee!" The young man much resented this directness
of attack, and in the war of words which followed when
they met he did not scruple publicly to insult Mr
Clare, without respect for his gray hairs.
Angel flushed with distress.
"Dear father," he said sadly, "I wish you would not
expose yourself to such gratuitous pain from
scoundrels!"
"Pain?" said his father, his rugged face shining in the
ardour of self-abnegation. "The only pain to me was
pain on his account, poor, foolish young man. Do you
suppose his incensed words could give me any pain, or
even his blows? 'Being reviled we bless; being
persecuted we suffer it; being defamed we entreat; we
are made as the filth of the world, and as the
offscouring of all things unto this day.' Those ancient
and noble words to the Corinthians are strictly true at
this present hour."
"Not blows, father? He did not proceed to blows?"
"No, he did not. Though I have borne blows from men in
a mad state of intoxication."
"No!" "A dozen times, my boy. What then? I have saved
them from the guilt of murdering their own flesh and
blood thereby; and they have lived to thank me, and
praise God."
"May this young man do the same!" said Angel fervently.
"But I fear otherwise, from what you say."
"We'll hope, nevertheless," said Mr Clare. "And I
continue to pray for him, though on this side of the
grave we shall probably never meet again. But, after
all, one of those poor words of mine may spring up in
his heart as a good seed some day."
Now, as always, Clare's father was sanguine as a child;
and though the younger could not accept his parent's
narrow dogma he revered his practice, and recognized
the hero under the pietist. Perhaps he revered his
father's practice even more now than ever, seeing that,
in the question of making Tessy his wife, his father
had not once thought of inquiring whether she were well
provided or penniless. The same unworldliness was what
had necessitated Angel's getting a living as a farmer,
and would probably keep his brothers in the position of
poor parsons for the term of their activities; yet
Angel admired it none the less. Indeed, despite his
own heterodoxy, Angel often felt that he was nearer to
his father on the human side than was either of his
brethren.
XXVII
An up-hill and down-hill ride of twenty-odd miles
through a garish mid-day atmosphere brought him in the
afternoon to a detached knoll a mile or two west of
Talbothays, whence he again looked into that green
trough of sappiness and humidity, the valley of the Var
or Froom. Immediately he began to descend from the
upland to the fat alluvial soil below, the atmosphere
grew heavier; the languid perfume of the summer fruits,
the mists, the hay, the flowers, formed therein a vast
pool of odour which at this hour seemed to make the
animals, the very bees and butterflies drowsy. Clare
was now so familiar with the spot that he knew the
individual cows by their names when, a long distance
off, he saw them dotted about the meads. It was with a
sense of luxury that he recognized his power of viewing
life here from its inner side, in a way that had been
quite foreign to him in his student-days; and, much as
he loved his parents, he could not help being aware
that to come here, as now, after an experience of
home-life, affected him like throwing off splints and
bandages; even the one customary curb on the humours of
English rural societies being absent in this place,
Talbothays having no resident landlord.
Not a human being was out of doors at the dairy. The
denizens were all enjoying the usual afternoon nap of
an hour or so which the exceedingly early hours kept in
summer-time rendered a necessity. At the door the
wood-hooped pails, sodden and bleached by infinite
scrubbings, hung like hats on a stand upon the forked
and peeled limb of an oak fixed there for that purpose;
all of them ready and dry for the evening milking.
Angel entered, and went through the silent passages of
the house to the back quarters, where he listened for a
moment. Sustained snores came from the cart-house,
where some of the men were lying down; the grunt and
squeal of sweltering pigs arose from the still further
distance. The large-leaved rhubarb and cabbage plants
slept too, their broad limp surfaces hanging in the sun
like half-closed umbrellas.
He unbridled and fed his horse, and as he re-entered
the house the clock struck three. Three was the
afternoon skimming-hour; and, with the stroke, Clare
heard the creaking of the floor-boards above, and then
the touch of a descending foot on the stairs. It was
Tess's, who in another moment came down before his
eyes.
She had not heard him enter, and hardly realized his
presence there. She was yawning, and he saw the red
interior of her mouth as if it had been a snake's. She
had stretched one arm so high above her coiled-up cable
of hair that he could see its satin delicacy above the
sunburn; her face was flushed with sleep, and her
eyelids hung heavy over their pupils. The brim-fulness
of her nature breathed from her. It was a moment when a
woman's soul is more incarnate than at any other time;
when the most spiritual beauty bespeaks itself flesh;
and sex takes the outside place in the presentation.
Then those eyes flashed brightly through their filmy
heaviness, before the remainder of her face was well
awake. With an oddly compounded look of gladness,
shyness, and surprise, she exclaimed--"O Mr Clare!
How you frightened me--I----"
There had not at first been time for her to think of
the changed relations which his declaration had
introduced; but the full sense of the matter rose up in
her face when she encountered Clare's tender look as he
stepped forward to the bottom stair.
"Dear, darling Tessy!" he whispered, putting his arm
round her, and his face to her flushed cheek. "Don't,
for Heaven's sake, Mister me any more. I have hastened
back so soon because of you!"
Tess's excitable heart beat against his by way of
reply; and there they stood upon the red-brick floor of
the entry, the sun slanting in by the window upon his
back, as he held her tightly to his breast; upon her
inclining face, upon the blue veins of her temple, upon
her naked arm, and her neck, and into the depths of her
hair. Having been lying down in her clothes she was
warm as a sunned cat. At first she would not look
straight up at him, but her eyes soon lifted, and his
plumbed the deepness of the ever-varying pupils, with
their radiating fibrils of blue, and black, and gray,
and violet, while she regarded him as Eve at her second
waking might have regarded Adam.
"I've got to go a-skimming," she pleaded, "and I have
on'y old Deb to help me today. Mrs Crick is gone to
market with Mr Crick, and Retty is not well, and the
others are gone out somewhere, and won't be home till
milking."
As they retreated to the milk-house Deborah Fyander
appeared on the stairs.
"I have come back, Deborah," said Mr Clare, upwards.
"So I can help Tess with the skimming; and, as you are
very tired, I am sure, you needn't come down till
milking-time."
Possibly the Talbothays milk was not very thoroughly
skimmed that afternoon. Tess was in a dream wherein
familiar objects appeared as having light and shade and
position, but no particular outline. Every time she
held the skimmer under the pump to cool it for the work
her hand trembled, the ardour of his affection being so
palpable that she seemed to flinch under it like a
plant in too burning a sun.
Then he pressed her again to his side, and when she had
done running her forefinger round the leads to cut off
the cream-edge, he cleaned it in nature's way; for the
unconstrained manners of Talbothays dairy came
convenient now.
"I may as well say it now as later, dearest," he
resumed gently. "I wish to ask you something of a very
practical nature, which I have been thinking of ever
since that day last week in the meads. I shall soon
want to marry, and, being a farmer, you see I shall
require for my wife a woman who knows all about the
management of farms. Will you be that woman, Tessy?"
He put it that way that she might not think he had
yielded to an impulse of which his head would
disapprove.
She turned quite careworn. She had bowed to the
inevitable result of proximity, the necessity of loving
him; but she had not calculated upon this sudden
corollary, which, indeed, Clare had put before her
without quite meaning himself to do it so soon. With
pain that was like the bitterness of dissolution she
murmured the words of her indispensable and sworn
answer as an honourable woman.
"O Mr Clare--I cannot be your wife--I cannot be!"
The sound of her own decision seemed to break Tess's
very heart, and she bowed her face in her grief.
"But, Tess!" he said, amazed at her reply, and holding
her still more greedily close. "Do you say no? Surely
you love me?"
"O yes, yes! And I would rather by yours than
anybody's in the world," returned the sweet and honest
voice of the distressed girl. "But I CANNOT marry you!"
"Tess," he said, holding her at arm's length, "you are
engaged to marry some one else!"
"No, no!"
"Then why do you refuse me?"
"I don't want to marry! I have not thought of doing
it. I cannot! I only want to love you."
"But why?"
Driven to subterfuge, she stammered--
"Your father is a parson, and your mother wouldn' like
you to marry such as me. She will want you to marry a
lady."
"Nonsense--I have spoken to them both. That was partly
why I went home."
"I feel I cannot--never, never!" she echoed.
"Is it too sudden to be asked thus, my Pretty?"
"Yes--I did not expect it."
"If you will let it pass, please, Tessy, I will give
you time," he said. "It was very abrupt to come home
and speak to you all at once. I'll not allude to it
again for a while."
She again took up the shining skimmer, held it beneath
the pump, and began anew. But she could not, as at
other times, hit the exact under-surface of the cream
with the delicate dexterity required, try as she might;
sometimes she was cutting down into the milk, sometimes
in the air. She could hardly see, her eyes having
filled with two blurring tears drawn forth by a grief
which, to this her best friend and dear advocate she
could never explain.
"I can't skim--I can't!" she said, turning away from
him.
Not to agitate and hinder her longer the considerate
Clare began talking in a more general way:
"You quite misapprehend my parents. They are the most
simple-mannered people alive, and quite unambitious.
They are two of the few remaining Evangelical school.
Tessy, are you an Evangelical?"
"I don't know."
"You go to church very regularly, and our parson here
is not very High, they tell me."
Tess's ideas on the views of the parish clergyman, whom
she heard every week, seemed to be rather more vague
than Clare's, who had never heard him at all.
"I wish I could fix my mind on what I hear there more
firmly than I do," she remarked as a safe generality.
"It is often a great sorrow to me."
She spoke so unaffectedly that Angel was sure in his
heart that his father could not object to her on
religious grounds, even though she did not know whether
her principles were High, Low or Broad. He himself
knew that, in reality, the confused beliefs which she
held, apparently imbibed in childhood, were, if
anything, Tractarian as to phraseology, and Pantheistic
as to essence. Confused or otherwise, to disturb them
was his last desire:
Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
He had occasionally thought the counsel less honest
than musical; but he gladly conformed to it now.
He spoke further of the incidents of his visit, of his
father's mode of life, of his zeal for his principles;
she grew serener, and the undulations disappeared from
her skimming; as she finished one lead after another he
followed her, and drew the plugs for letting down the
milk.
"I fancied you looked a little downcast when you came
in," she ventured to observe, anxious to keep away from
the subject of herself.
"Yes--well, my father had been talking a good deal to
me of his troubles and difficulties, and the subject
always tends to depress me. He is so zealous that he
gets many snubs and buffetings from people of a
different way of thinking from himself, and I don't
like to hear of such humiliations to a man of his age,
the more particularly as I don't think earnestness does
any good when carried so far. He has been telling me
of a very unpleasant scene in which he took part quite
recently. He went as the deputy of some missionary
society to preach in the neighbourhood of Trantridge, a
place forty miles from here, and made it his business
to expostulate with a lax young cynic he met with
somewhere about there--son of some landowner up that
way--and who has a mother afflicted with blindness. My
father addressed himself to the gentleman point-blank,
and there was quite a disturbance. It was very foolish
of my father, I must say, to intrude his conversation
upon a stranger when the probabilities were so obvious
that it would be useless. But whatever he thinks to be
his duty, that he'll do, in season or out of season;
and, of course, he makes many enemies, not only among
the absolutely vicious, but among the easy-going, who
hate being bothered. He says he glories in what
happened, and that good may be done indirectly; but I
wish he would not wear himself out now he is getting
old, and would leave such pigs to their wallowing."
Tess's look had grown hard and worn, and her ripe mouth
tragical; but she no longer showed any tremulousness.
Clare's revived thoughts of his father prevented his
noticing her particularly; and so they went on down the
white row of liquid rectangles till they had finished
and drained them off, when the other maids returned,
and took their pails, and Deb came to scald out the
leads for the new milk. As Tess withdrew to go afield
to the cows he said to her softly--
"And my question, Tessy?"
"O no--no!" replied she with grave hopelessness, as one
who had heard anew the turmoil of her own past in the
allusion to Alec d'Urberville. "It CAN'T be!"
She went out towards the mead, joining the other
milkmaids with a bound, as if trying to make the open
air drive away her sad constraint. All the girls drew
onward to the spot where the cows were grazing in the
farther mead, the bevy advancing with the bold grace of
wild animals--the reckless unchastened motion of women
accustomed to unlimited space--in which they abandoned
themselves to the air as a swimmer to the wave. It
seemed natural enough to him now that Tess was again in
sight to choose a mate from unconstrained Nature, and
not from the abodes of Art.
XXVIII
Her refusal, though unexpected, did not permanently
daunt Clare. His experience of women was great enough
for him to be aware that the negative often meant
nothing more than the preface to the affirmative; and
it was little enough for him not to know that in the
manner of the present negative there lay a great
exception to the dallyings of coyness. That she had
already permitted him to make love to her he read as an
additional assurance, not fully trowing that in the
fields and pastures to "sigh gratis" is by no means
deemed waste; love-making being here more often
accepted inconsiderately and for its own sweet sake
than in the carking anxious homes of the ambitious,
where a girl's craving for an establishment paralyzes
her healthy thought of a passion as an end.
"Tess, why did you say 'no' in such a positive way?"
he asked her in the course of a few days.
She started.
"Don't ask me. I told you why--partly. I am not good
enough--not worthy enough."
"How? Not fine lady enough?"
"Yes--something like that," murmured she. "Your
friends would scorn me."
"Indeed, you mistake them--my father and mother.
As for my brothers, I don't care----" He clasped his
fingers behind her back to keep her from slipping away.
"Now--you did not mean it, sweet?--I am sure you did
not! You have made me so restless that I cannot read,
or play, or do anything. I am in no hurry, Tess, but I
want to know--to hear from your own warm lips--that you
will some day be mine--any time you may choose; but
some day?"
She could only shake her head and look away from him.
Clare regarded her attentively, conned the characters
of her face as if they had been hieroglyphics. The
denial seemed real.
"Then I ought not to hold you in this way--ought I?
I have no right to you--no right to seek out where you
are, or walk with you! Honestly, Tess, do you love any
other man?"
"How can you ask?" she said, with continued self-suppression.
"I almost know that you do not. But then, why do you
repulse me?"
"I don't repulse you. I like you to--tell me you love
me; and you may always tell me so as you go about with
me--and never offend me."
"But you will not accept me as a husband?"
"Ah--that's different--it is for your good, indeed, my
dearest! O, believe me, it is only for your sake!
I don't like to give myself the great happiness o'
promising to be yours in that way--because--because I
am SURE I ought not to do it."
"But you will make me happy!"
"Ah--you think so, but you don't know!"
At such times as this, apprehending the grounds of her
refusal to be her modest sense of incompetence in
matters social and polite, he would say that she was
wonderfully well-informed and versatile--which was
certainly true, her natural quickness, and her
admiration for him, having led her to pick up his
vocabulary, his accent, and fragments of his knowledge,
to a surprising extent. After these tender contests
and her victory she would go away by herself under the
remotest cow, if at milking-time, or into the sedge, or
into her room, if at a leisure interval, and mourn
silently, not a minute after an apparently phlegmatic
negative.
The struggle was so fearful; her own heart was so
strongly on the side of his--two ardent hearts against
one poor little conscience--that she tried to fortify
her resolution by every means in her power. She had
come to Talbothays with a made-up mind. On no account
could she agree to a step which might afterwards cause
bitter rueing to her husband for his blindness in
wedding her. And she held that what her conscience had
decided for her when her mind was unbiassed ought not
to be overruled now.
"Why don't somebody tell him all about me?" she said.
"It was only forty miles off--why hasn't it reached
here? Somebody must know!"
Yet nobody seemed to know; nobody told him.
For two or three days no more was said. She guessed
from the sad countenances of her chamber companions
that they regarded her not only as the favourite, but
as the chosen; but they could see for themselves that
she did not put herself in his way.
Tess had never before known a time in which the thread
of her life was so distinctly twisted of two strands,
positive pleasure and positive pain. At the next
cheese-making the pair were again left alone together.
The dairyman himself had been lending a hand; but Mr
Crick, as well as his wife, seemed latterly to have
acquired a suspicion of mutual interest between these
two; though they walked so circumspectly that suspicion
was but of the faintest. Anyhow, the dairyman left them
to themselves.
They were breaking up the masses of curd before putting
them into the vats. The operation resembled the act of
crumbling bread on a large scale; and amid the
immaculate whiteness of the curds Tess Durbeyfield's
hands showed themselves of the pinkness of the rose.
Angel, who was filling the vats with his handful,
suddenly ceased, and laid his hands flat upon hers.
Her sleeves were rolled far above the elbow, and
bending lower he kissed the inside vein of her soft arm.
Although the early September weather was sultry, her
arm, from her dabbling in the curds, was as cold and
damp to his mouth as a new-gathered mushroom, and
tasted of the whey. But she was such a sheaf of
susceptibilities that her pulse was accelerated by the
touch, her blood driven to her finder-ends, and the
cool arms flushed hot. Then, as though her heart had
said, "Is coyness longer necessary? Truth is truth
between man and woman, as between man and man," she
lifted her eyes and they beamed devotedly into his, as
her lip rose in a tender half-smile.
"Do you know why I did that, Tess?" he said.
"Because you love me very much!"
"Yes, and as a preliminary to a new entreaty."
"Not AGAIN!"
She looked a sudden fear that her resistance might
break down under her own desire.
"O, Tessy!" he went on, "I CANNOT think why you are so
tantalizing. Why do you disappoint me so? You seem
almost like a coquette, upon my life you do--a coquette
of the first urban water! They blow hot and blow cold,
just as you do, and it is the very last sort of thing
to expect to find in a retreat like Talbothays. ... And
yet, dearest," he quickly added, observing now the
remark had cut her, "I know you to be the most honest,
spotless creature that ever lived. So how can I
suppose you a flirt? Tess, why don't you like the idea
of being my wife, if you love me as you seem to do?"
"I have never said I don't like the idea, and I never
could say it; because--it isn't true!"
The stress now getting beyond endurance her lip
quivered, and she was obliged to go away. Clare was so
pained and perplexed that he ran after and caught her
in the passage.
"Tell me, tell me!" he said, passionately clasping her,
in forgetfulness of his curdy hands: "do tell me that
you won't belong to anybody but me!"
"I will, I will tell you!" she exclaimed. "And I will
give you a complete answer, if you will let me go now.
I will tell you my experiences--all about myself--all!"
"Your experiences, dear; yes, certainly; and number."
He expressed assent in loving satire, looking into her
face. "My Tess, no doubt, almost as many experiences as
that wild convolvulus out there on the garden hedge,
that opened itself this morning for the first time.
Tell me anything, but don't use that wretched
expression any more about not being worthy of me."
"I will try--not! And I'll give you my reasons
tomorrow--next week."
"Say on Sunday?"
"Yes, on Sunday."
At last she got away, and did not stop in her retreat
till she was in the thicket of pollard willows at the
lower side of the barton, where she could be quite
unseen. Here Tess flung herself down upon the rustling
undergrowth of spear-grass, as upon a bed, and
remained crouching in palpitating misery broken by
momentary shoots of joy, which her fears about the
ending could not altogether suppress.
In reality, she was drifting into acquiescence. Every
see-saw of her breath, every wave of her blood, every
pulse singing in her ears, was a voice that joined with
nature in revolt against her scrupulousness. Reckless,
inconsiderate acceptance of him; to close with him at
the altar, revealing nothing, and chancing discovery;
to snatch ripe pleasure before the iron teeth of pain
could have time to shut upon her: that was what love
counselled; and in almost a terror of ecstasy Tess
divined that, despite her many months of lonely
self-chastisement, wrestlings, communings, schemes to
lead a future of austere isolation, love's counsel
would prevail.
The afternoon advanced, and still she remained among
the willows. She heard the rattle of taking down the
pails from the forked stands; the "waow-waow!" which
accompanied the getting together of the cows. But she
did not go to the milking. They would see her
agitation; and the dairyman, thinking the cause to be
love alone, would good-naturedly tease her; and that
harassment could not be borne.
Her lover must have guessed her overwrought state, and
invented some excuse for her non-appearance, for no
inquiries were made or calls given. At half-past six
the sun settled down upon the levels, with the aspect
of a great forge in the heavens; and presently a
monstrous pumpkin-like moon arose on the other hand.
The pollard willows, tortured out of their natural
shape by incessant choppings, became spiny-haired
monsters as they stood up against it. She went in,
and upstairs without a light.
It was now Wednesday. Thursday came, and Angel looked
thoughtfully at her from a distance, but intruded in no
way upon her. The indoor milkmaids, Marian and the
rest, seemed to guess that something definite was
afoot, for they did not force any remarks upon her in
the bedchamber. Friday passed; Saturday. Tomorrow was
the day.
"I shall give way--I shall say yes--I shall let myself
marry him--I cannot help it!" she jealously panted,
with her hot face to the pillow that night, on hearing
one of the other girls sigh his name in her sleep.
"I can't bear to let anybody have him but me! Yet it is a
wrong to him, and may kill him when he knows! O my
heart--O--O--O!"
XXIX
"Now, who mid ye think I've heard news o' this
morning?" said Dairyman Crick, as he sat down to
breakfast next day, with a riddling gaze round upon the
munching men and maids. "Now, just who mid ye think?"
One guessed, and another guessed. Mrs Crick did not
guess, because she knew already.
"Well," said the dairyman, "'tis that slack-twisted
'hore's-bird of a feller, Jack Dollop. He's lately
got married to a widow-woman."
"Not Jack Dollop? A villain--to think o' that!" said a
milker.
The name entered quickly into Tess Durbeyfield's
consciousness, for it was the name of the lover who had
wronged his sweetheart, and had afterwards been so
roughly used by the young woman's mother in the
butter-churn.
"And had he married the valiant matron's daughter, as
he promised?" asked Angel Clare absently, as he turned
over the newspaper he was reading at the little table
to which he was always banished by Mrs Crick, in her
sense of his gentility.
"Not he, sir. Never meant to," replied the dairyman.
"As I say, 'tis a widow-woman, and she had money, it
seems--fifty poun' a year or so; and that was all he
was after. They were married in a great hurry; and
then she told him that by marrying she had lost her
fifty poun' a year. Just fancy the state o' my
gentleman's mind at that news! Never such a cat-
and-dog life as they've been leading ever since! Serve
him will beright. But onluckily the poor woman gets
the worst o't."
"Well, the silly body should have told en sooner that
the ghost of her first man would trouble him," said Mrs
Crick.
"Ay; ay," responded the dairyman indecisively.
"Still, you can see exactly how 'twas. She wanted a home,
and didn't like to run the risk of losing him. Don't ye
think that was something like it, maidens?"
He glanced towards the row of girls.
"She ought to ha' told him just before they went to
church, when he could hardly have backed out,"
exclaimed Marian.
"Yes, she ought," agreed Izz.
"She must have seen what he was after, and should ha'
refused him," cried Retty spasmodically.
"And what do you say, my dear?" asked the dairyman of
Tess.
"I think she ought--to have told him the true state of
things--or else refused him--I don't know," replied
Tess, the bread-and-butter choking her.
"Be cust if I'd have done either o't," said Beck
Knibbs, a married helper from one of the cottages.
"All's fair in love and war. I'd ha' married en just
as she did, and if he'd said two words to me about not
telling him beforehand anything whatsomdever about my
first chap that I hadn't chose to tell, I'd ha' knocked
him down wi' the rolling-pin--a scram little feller
like he! Any woman could do it."
The laughter which followed this sally was supplemented
only by a sorry smile, for form's sake, from Tess.
What was comedy to them was tragedy to her; and she
could hardly bear their mirth. She soon rose from
table, and, with an impression that Clare would soon
follow her, went along a little wriggling path, now
stepping to one side of the irrigating channels, and
now to the other, till she stood by the main stream of
the Var. Men had been cutting the water-weeds higher
up the river, and masses of them were floating past
her--moving islands of green crow-foot, whereon she
might almost have ridden; long locks of which weed had
lodged against the piles driven to keep the cows from
crossing.
Yes, there was the pain of it. This question of a
woman telling her story--the heaviest of crosses to
herself--seemed but amusement to others. It was as if
people should laugh at martyrdom.
"Tessy!" came from behind her, and Clare sprang across
the gully, alighting beside her feet. "My wife--soon!"
"No, no; I cannot. For your sake, O Mr Clare; for your
sake, I say no!"
"Tess!"
"Still I say no!" she repeated.
Not expecting this he had put his arm lightly round her
waist the moment after speaking, beneath her hanging
tail of hair. (The younger dairymaids, including Tess,
breakfasted with their hair loose on Sunday mornings
before building it up extra high for attending church,
a style they could not adopt when milking with their
heads against the cows.) If she had said "Yes" instead
of "No" he would have kissed her; it had evidently been
his intention; but her determined negative deterred his
scrupulous heart. Their condition of domiciliary
comradeship put her, as the woman, to such disadvantage
by its enforced intercourse, that he felt it unfair to
her to exercise any pressure of blandishment which he
might have honestly employed had she been better able
to avoid him. He release her momentarily-imprisoned
waist, and withheld the kiss.
It all turned on that release. What had given her
strength to refuse him this time was solely the tale of
the widow told by the dairyman; and that would have
been overcome in another moment. But Angel said no
more; his face was perplexed; he went away.
Day after day they met--somewhat less constantly than
before; and thus two or three weeks went by. The end
of September drew near, and she could see in his eye
that he might ask her again.
His plan of procedure was different now--as though he
had made up his mind that her negatives were, after
all, only coyness and youth startled by the novelty of
the proposal. The fitful evasiveness of her manner when
the subject was under discussion countenanced the idea.
So he played a more coaxing game; and while never going
beyond words, or attempting the renewal of caresses, he
did his utmost orally.
In this way Clare persistently wooed her in undertones
like that of the purling milk--at the cow's side, at
skimmings, at butter-makings, at cheese-makings, among
broody poultry, and among farrowing pigs--as no
milkmaid was ever wooed before by such a man.
Tess knew that she must break down. Neither a
religious sense of a certain moral validity in the
previous union nor a conscientious wish for candour
could hold out against it much longer. She loved him
so passionately, and he was so godlike in her eyes; and
being, though untrained, instinctively refined, her
nature cried for his tutelary guidance. And thus,
though Tess kept repeating to herself, "I can never be
his wife," the words were vain. A proof of her
weakness lay in the very utterance of what calm
strength would not have taken the trouble to formulate.
Every sound of his voice beginning on the old subject
stirred her with a terrifying bliss, and she coveted
the recantation she feared.
His manner was--what man's is not?--so much that of one
who would love and cherish and defend her under any
conditions, changes, charges, or revelations, that her
gloom lessened as she basked in it. The season
meanwhile was drawing onward to the equinox, and though
it was still fine, the days were much shorter. The
dairy had again worked by morning candlelight for a
long time; and a fresh renewal of Clare's pleading
occurred one morning between three and four.
She had run up in her bedgown to his door to call him
as usual; then had gone back to dress and call the
others; and in ten minutes was walking to the head of
the stairs with the candle in her hand. At the same
moment he came down his steps from above in his
shirt-sleeves and put his arm across the stairway.
"Now, Miss Flirt, before you go down," he said
peremptorily. "It is a fortnight since I spoke, and
this won't do any longer. You MUST tell me what you
mean, or I shall have to leave this house. My door was
ajar just now, and I saw you. For your own safety I
must go. You don't know. Well? Is it to be yes at
last?"
"I am only just up, Mr Clare, and it is too early to
take me to task!" she pouted. "You need not call me
Flirt. 'Tis cruel and untrue. Wait till by and by.
Please wait till by and by! I will really think
seriously about it between now and then. Let me go
downstairs!"
She looked a little like what he said she was as,
holding the candle sideways, she tried to smile away
the seriousness of her words.
"Call me Angel, then and not Mr Clare."
"Angel."
"Angel dearest--why not?"
"'Twould mean that I agree, wouldn't it?" "It would
only mean that you love me, even if you cannot marry
me; and you were so good as to own that long ago."
"Very well, then, 'Angel dearest', if I MUST," she
murmured, looking at her candle, a roguish curl coming
upon her mouth, notwithstanding her suspense.
Clare had resolved never to kiss her until he had
obtained her promise; but somehow, as Tess stood there
in her prettily tucked-up milking gown, her hair
carelessly heaped upon her head till there should be
leisure to arrange it when skimming and milking were
done, he broke his resolve, and brought his lips to her
cheek for one moment. She passed downstairs very
quickly, never looking back at him or saying another
word. The other maids were already down, and the
subject was not pursued. Except Marian, they all
looked wistfully and suspiciously at the pair, in the
sad yellow rays which the morning candles emitted in
contrast with the first cold signals of the dawn
without.
When skimming was done--which, as the milk diminished
with the approach of autumn, was a lessening process
day by day--Retty and the rest went out. The lovers
followed them.
"Our tremulous lives are so different from theirs, are
they not?" he musingly observed to her, as he regarded
the three figures tripping before him through the
frigid pallor of opening day.
"Not so very different, I think," she said.
"Why do you think that?"
"There are very few women's lives that are
not--tremulous," Tess replied, pausing over the new
word as if it impressed her. "There's more in those
three than you think."
"What is in them?"
"Almost either of 'em," she began, "would make--perhaps
would make--a properer wife than I. And perhaps they
love you as well as I--almost."
"O, Tessy!"
There were signs that it was an exquisite relief to her
to hear the impatient exclamation, though she had
resolved so intrepidly to let generosity make one bid
against herself. That was now done, and she had not the
power to attempt self-immolation a second time then.
They were joined by a milker from one of the cottages,
and no more was said on that which concerned them so
deeply. But Tess knew that this day would decide it.
In the afternoon several of the dairyman's household
and assistants went down to the meads as usual, a long
way from the dairy, where many of the cows were milked
without being driven home. The supply was getting less
as the animals advanced in calf, and the supernumerary
milkers of the lush green season had been dismissed.
The work progressed leisurely. Each pailful was poured
into tall cans that stood in a large spring-waggon
which had been brought upon the scene; and when they
were milked the cows trailed away. Dairyman Crick, who
was there with the rest, his wrapper gleaming
miraculously white against a leaden evening sky,
suddenly looked at his heavy watch.
"Why, 'tis later than I thought," he said. "Begad! We
shan't be soon enough with this milk at the station, if
we don't mind. There's no time today to take it home
and mix it with the bulk afore sending off. It must go
to station straight from here. Who'll drive it
across?"
Mr Clare volunteered to do so, though it was none of
his business, asking Tess to accompany him. The
evening, though sunless, had been warm and muggy for
the season, and Tess had come out with her milking-hood
only, naked-armed and jacketless; certainly not dressed
for a drive. She therefore replied by glancing over
her scant habiliments; but Clare gently urged her. She
assented by relinquishing her pail and stool to the
dairyman to take home; and mounted the spring-waggon
beside Clare.
XXX
In the diminishing daylight they went along the level
roadway through the meads, which stretched away into
gray miles, and were backed in the extreme edge of
distance by the swarthy and abrupt slopes of Egdon
Heath. On its summit stood clumps and stretches of
fir-trees, whose notched tips appeared like
battlemented towers crowning black-fronted castles of
enchantment.
They were so absorbed in the sense of being close to
each other that they did not begin talking for a long
while, the silence being broken only by the clucking of
the milk in the tall cans behind them. The lane they
followed was so solitary that the hazel nuts had
remained on the boughs till they slipped from their
shells, and the blackberries hung in heavy clusters.
Every now and then Angel would fling the lash of his
whip round one of these, pluck it off, and give it to
his companion.
The dull sky soon began to tell its meaning by sending
down herald-drops of rain, and the stagnant air of the
day changed into a fitful breeze which played about
their faces. The quick-silvery glaze on the rivers and
pools vanished; from broad mirrors of light they
changed to lustreless sheets of lead, with a surface
like a rasp. But that spectacle did not affect her
preoccupation. Her countenance, a natural carnation
slightly embrowned by the season, had deepened its
tinge with the beating of the rain-drops; and her hair,
which the pressure of the cows' flanks had, as usual,
caused to tumble down from its fastenings and stray
beyond the curtain of her calico bonnet, was made
clammy by the moisture, till it hardly was better than
seaweed.
"I ought not to have come, I suppose," she murmured,
looking at the sky.
"I am sorry for the rain," said he. "But how glad I am
to have you here!"
Remote Egdon disappeared by degree behind the liquid
gauze. The evening grew darker, and the roads being
crossed by gates it was not safe to drive faster than
at a walking pace. The air was rather chill.
"I am so afraid you will get cold, with nothing upon
your arms and shoulders," he said. "Creep close to me,
and perhaps the drizzle won't hurt you much. I should
be sorrier still if I did not think that the rain might
be helping me."
She imperceptibly crept closer, and he wrapped round
them both a large piece of sail-cloth, which was
sometimes used to keep the sun off the milk-cans.
Tess held it from slipping off him as well as herself,
Clare's hands being occupied.
"Now we are all right again. Ah--no we are not! It
runs down into my neck a little, and it must still more
into yours. That's better. Your arms are like wet
marble, Tess. Wipe them in the cloth. Now, if you
stay quiet, you will not get another drop. Well,
dear--about that question of mine--that long-standing
question?"
The only reply that he could hear for a little while
was the smack of the horse's hoofs on the moistening
road, and the cluck of the milk in the cans behind
them.
"Do you remember what you said?"
"I do," she replied.
"Before we get home, mind."
"I'll try."
He said no more then. As they drove on the fragment of
an old manor house of Caroline date rose against the
sky, and was in due course passed and left behind.
"That," he observed, to entertain her, "is an
interesting old place--one of the several seats which
belonged to an ancient Norman family formerly of great
influence in this county, the d'Urbervilles. I never
pass one of their residences without thinking of them.
There is something very sad in the extinction of a
family of renown, even if it was fierce, domineering,
feudal renown."
"Yes," said Tess.
They crept along towards a point in the expanse of
shade just at hand at which a feeble light was
beginning to assert its presence, a spot where, by day,
a fitful white streak of steam at intervals upon the
dark green background denoted intermittent moments of
contact between their secluded world and modern life.
Modern life stretched out its steam feeler to this
point three or four times a day, touched the native
existences, and quickly withdrew its feeler again, as
if what it touched had been uncongenial.
They reached the feeble light, which came from the
smoky lamp of a little railway station; a poor enough
terrestrial star, yet in one sense of more importance
to Talbothays Dairy and mankind than the celestial ones
to which it stood in such humiliating contrast. The
cans of new milk were unladen in the rain, Tess getting
a little shelter from a neighbouring holly tree.
Then there was the hissing of a train, which drew up
almost silently upon the wet rails, and the milk was
rapidly swung can by can into the truck. The light of
the engine flashed for a second upon Tess Durbeyfield's
figure, motionless under the great holly tree. No
object could have looked more foreign to the gleaming
cranks and wheels than this unsophisticated girl, with
the round bare arms, the rainy face and hair, the
suspended attitude of a friendly leopard at pause, the
print gown of no date or fashion, and the cotton bonnet
drooping on her brow.
She mounted again beside her lover, with a mute
obedience characteristic of impassioned natures at
times, and when they had wrapped themselves up over
head and ears in the sailcloth again, they plunged back
into the now thick night. Tess was so receptive that
the few minutes of contact with the whirl of material
progress lingered in her thought.
"Londoners will drink it at their breakfasts tomorrow,
won't they?" she asked. "Strange people that we have
never seen."
"Yes--I suppose they will. Though not as we send it.
When its strength has been lowered, so that it may not
get up into their heads."
"Noble men and noble women, ambassadors and centurions,
ladies and tradeswomen, and babies who have never seen
a cow."
"Well, yes; perhaps; particularly centurions."
"Who don't know anything of us, and where it comes
from; or think how we two drove miles across the moor
tonight in the rain that it might reach 'em in time?"
"We did not drive entirely on account of these precious
Londoners; we drove a little on our own--on account of
that anxious matter which you will, I am sure, set at
rest, dear Tess. Now, permit me to put it in this way.
You belong to me already, you know; your heart, I mean.
Does it not?"
"You know as well as I. O yes--yes!"
"Then, if your heart does, why not your hand?"
"My only reason was on account of you--on account of a
question. I have something to tell you----"
"But suppose it to be entirely for my happiness, and my
worldly convenience also?"
"O yes; if it is for your happiness and worldly
convenience. But my life before I came here--I
want----"
"Well, it is for my convenience as well as my
happiness. If I have a very large farm, either English
or colonial, you will be invaluable as a wife to me;
better than a woman out of the largest mansion in the
country. So please--please, dear Tessy, disabuse your
mind of the feeling that you will stand in my way."
"But my history. I want you to know it--you must let
me tell you--you will not like me so well!"
"Tell it if you wish to, dearest. This precious
history then. Yes, I was born at so and so, Anno
Domini----"
"I was born at Marlott," she said, catching at his
words as a help, lightly as they were spoken. "And I
grew up there. And I was in the Sixth Standard when I
left school, and they said I had great aptness, and
should make a good teacher, so it was settled that I
should be one. But there was trouble in my family;
father was not very industrious, and he drank a
little."
"Yes, yes. Poor child! Nothing new." He pressed her
more closely to his side.
"And then--there is something very unusual about
it--about me. I--I was----"
Tess's breath quickened.
"Yes, dearest. Never mind."
"I--I--am not a Durbeyfield, but a d'Urberville--a
descendant of the same family as those that owned the
old house we passed. And--we are all gone to nothing!"
"A d'Urberville!--Indeed! And is that all the trouble,
dear Tess?"
"Yes," she answered faintly.
"Well--why should I love you less after knowing this?"
"I was told by the dairyman that you hated old
families."
He laughed.
"Well, it is true, in one sense. I do hate the
aristocratic principle of blood before everything, and
do think that as reasoners the only pedigrees we ought
to respect are those spiritual ones of the wise and
virtuous, without regard to corporal paternity. But I
am extremely interested in this news--you can have no
idea how interested I am! Are you not interested
yourself in being one of that well-known line?"
"No. I have thought it sad--especially since coming
here, and knowing that many of the hills and fields I
see once belonged to my father's people. But other
hills and field belonged to Retty's people, and perhaps
others to Marian's, so that I don't value it
particularly."
"Yes--it is surprising how many of the present tillers
of the soil were once owners of it, and I sometimes
wonder that a certain school of politicians don't make
capital of the circumstance; but they don't seem to
know it.... I wonder that I did not see the resemblance
of your name of d'Urberville, and trace the manifest
corruption. And this was the carking secret!"
She had not told. At the last moment her courage had
failed her, she feared his blame for not telling him
sooner; and her instinct of self-preservation was
stronger than her candour.
"Of course," continued the unwitting Clare, "I should
have been glad to know you to be descended exclusively
from the long-suffering, dumb, unrecorded rank and file
of the English nation, and not from the self-seeking
few who made themselves powerful at the expense of the
rest. But I am corrupted away from that by my
affection for you, Tess (he laughed as he spoke), and
made selfish likewise. For your own sake I rejoice in
your descent. Society is hopelessly snobbish, and this
fact of your extraction may make an appreciable
difference to its acceptance of you as my wife, after I
have made you the well-read woman that I mean to make
you. My mother too, poor soul, will think so much
better of you on account of it. Tess, you must spell
your name correctly--d'Urberville--from this very day."
"I like the other way rather best."
"But you MUST, dearest! Good heavens, why dozens of
mushroom millionaires would jump at such a possession!
By the bye, there's one of that kidney who has taken
the name--where have I heard of him?--Up in the
neighbourhood of The Chase, I think. Why, he is the
very man who had that rumpus with my father I told you
of. What an odd coincidence!"
"Angel, I think I would rather not take the name!
It is unlucky, perhaps!"
She was agitated.
"Now then, Mistress Teresa d'Urberville, I have you.
Take my name, and so you will escape yours! The secret
is out, so why should you any longer refuse me?"
"If it is SURE to make you happy to have me as your
wife, and you feel that you do wish to marry me, VERY,
VERY much--"
"I do, dearest, of course!"
"I mean, that it is only your wanting me very much, and
being hardly able to keep alive without me, whatever my
offences, that would make me feel I ought to say I
will."
"You will--you do say it, I know! You will be mine for
ever and ever."
He clasped her close and kissed her.
"Yes!"
She had no sooner said it than she burst into a dry
hard sobbing, so violent that it seemed to rend her.
Tess was not a hysterical girl by any means, and he was
surprised.
"Why do you cry, dearest?"
"I can't tell--quite!--I am so glad to think--of being
yours, and making you happy!"
"But this does not seem very much like gladness, my
Tessy!"
"I mean--I cry because I have broken down in my vow!
I said I would die unmarried!"
"But, if you love me you would like me to be your
husband?"
"Yes, yes, yes! But O, I sometimes wish I had never
been born!"
"Now, my dear Tess, if I did not know that you are very
much excited, and very inexperienced, I should say that
remark was not very complimentary. How came you to
wish that if you care for me? Do you care for me? I
wish you would prove it in some way."
"How can I prove it more than I have done?" she cried,
in a distraction of tenderness. "Will this prove it
more?"
She clasped his neck, and for the first time Clare
learnt what an impassioned woman's kisses were like
upon the lips of one whom she loved with all her heart
and soul, as Tess loved him.
"There--now do you believe?" she asked, flushed, and
wiping her eyes.
"Yes. I never really doubted--never, never!"
So they drove on through the gloom, forming one bundle
inside the sail-cloth, the horse going as he would, and
the rain driving against them. She had consented. She
might as well have agreed at first. The "appetite for
joy" which pervades all creation, that tremendous force
which sways humanity to its purpose, as the tide sways
the helpless weed, was not to be controlled by vague
lucubrations over the social rubric.
"I must write to my mother," she said. "You don't mind
my doing that?"
"Of course not, dear child. You are a child to me,
Tess, not to know how very proper it is to write to
your mother at such a time, and how wrong it would be
in me to object. Where does she live?"
"At the same place--Marlott. On the further side of
Blackmoor Vale."
"Ah, then I HAVE seen you before this summer----"
"Yes; at that dance on the green; but you would not
dance with me. O, I hope that is of no ill-omen for us
now!"
XXXI
Tess wrote a most touching and urgent letter to her
mother the very next day, and by the end of the week a
response to her communication arrive in Joan
Durbeyfield's wandering last-century hand.
DEAR TESS,--J write these few lines Hoping they will
find you well, as they leave me at Present, thank God
for it. Dear Tess, we are all glad to Hear that you
are going really to be married soon. But with respect
to your question, Tess, J say between ourselves, quite
private but very strong, that on no account do you say
a word of your Bygone Trouble to him. J did not tell
everything to your Father, he being so Proud on account
of his Respectability, which, perhaps, your Intended is
the same. Many a woman--some of the Highest in the
Land--have had a Trouble in their time; and why should
you Trumpet yours when others don't Trumpet theirs? No
girl would be such a Fool, specially as it is so long
ago, and not your Fault at all. J shall answer the
same if you ask me fifty times. Besides, you must bear
in mind that, knowing it to be your Childish Nature to
tell all that's in your heart--so simple!--J made you
promise me never to let it out by Word or Deed, having
your Welfare in my Mind; and you most solemnly did
promise it going from this Door. J have not named
either that Question or your coming marriage to your
Father, as he would blab it everywhere, poor Simple
Man.
Dear Tess, keep up your Spirits, and we mean to send
you a Hogshead of Cyder for you Wedding, knowing there
is not much in your parts, and thin Sour Stuff what
there is. So no more at present, and with kind love to
your Young Man.---From your affectte. Mother.
J. DURBEYFIELD
"O mother, mother!" murmured Tess.
She was recognizing how light was the touch of events
the most oppressive upon Mrs Durbeyfield's elastic
spirit. Her mother did not see life as Tess saw it.
That haunting episode of bygone days was to her mother
but a passing accident. But perhaps her mother was
right as to the course to be followed, whatever she
might be in her reasons. Silence seemed, on the face of
it, best for her adored one's happiness: silence it
should be.
Thus steadied by a command from the only person in the
world who had any shadow of right to control her
action, Tess grew calmer. The responsibility was
shifted, and her heart was lighter than it had been for
weeks. The days of declining autumn which followed her
assent, beginning with the month of October, formed a
season through which she lived in spiritual altitudes
more nearly approaching ecstasy than any other period
of her life.
There was hardly a touch of earth in her love for
Clare. To her sublime trustfulness he was all that
goodness could be--knew all that a guide, philosopher,
and friend should know. She thought every line in the
contour of his person the perfection of masculine
beauty, his soul the soul of a saint, his intellect
that of a seer. The wisdom of her love for him, as
love, sustained her dignity; she seemed to be wearing a
crown. The compassion of his love for her, as she saw
it, made her lift up her heart to him in devotion. He
would sometimes catch her large, worshipful eyes, that
had no bottom to them looking at him from their depths,
as if she saw something immortal before her.
She dismissed the past--trod upon it and put it out, as
one treads on a coal that is smouldering and dangerous.
She had not known that men could be so disinterested,
chivalrous, protective, in their love for women as he.
Angel Clare was far from all that she thought him in
this respect; absurdly far, indeed; but he was, in
truth, more spiritual than animal; he had himself well
in hand, and was singularly free from grossness.
Though not cold-natured, he was rather bright than
hot--less Byronic than Shelleyan; could love
desperately, but with a love more especially inclined
to the imaginative and ethereal; it was a fastidious
emotion which could jealously guard the loved one
against his very self. This amazed and enraptured Tess,
whose slight experiences had been so infelicitous till
now; and in her reaction from indignation against the
male sex she swerved to excess of honour for Clare.
They unaffectedly sought each other's company; in her
honest faith she did not disguise her desire to be with
him. The sum of her instincts on this matter, if
clearly stated, would have been that the elusive
quality of her sex which attracts men in general might
be distasteful to so perfect a man after an avowal of
love, since it must in its very nature carry with it a
suspicion of art.
The country custom of unreserved comradeship out of
doors during betrothal was the only custom she knew,
and to her it had no strangeness; though it seemed
oddly anticipative to Clare till he saw how normal a
thing she, in common with all the other dairy-folk,
regarded it. Thus, during this October month of
wonderful afternoons they roved along the meads by
creeping paths which followed the brinks of trickling
tributary brooks, hopping across by little wooden
bridges to the other side, and back again. They were
never out of the sound of some purling weir, whose buzz
accompanied their own murmuring, while the beams of the
sun, almost as horizontal as the mead itself, formed a
pollen of radiance over the landscape. They saw tiny
blue fogs in the shadows of trees and hedges, all the
time that there was bright sunshine elsewhere. The sun
was so near the ground, and the sward so flat, that the
shadows of Clare and Tess would stretch a quarter of a
mile ahead of them, like two long fingers pointing afar
to where the green alluvial reaches abutted against the
sloping sides of the vale.
Men were at work here and there--for it was the season
for "taking up" the meadows, or digging the little
waterways clear for the winter irrigation, and mending
their banks where trodden down by the cows. The
shovelfuls of loam, black as jet, brought there by the
river when it was as wide as the whole valley, were an
essence of soils, pounded campaigns of the past,
steeped, refined, and subtilized to extraordinary
richness, out of which came all the fertility of the
mead, and of the cattle grazing there.
Clare hardily kept his arm round her waist in sight of
these watermen, with the air of a man who was
accustomed to public dalliance, though actually as shy
as she who, with lips parted and eyes askance on the
labourers, wore the look of a wary animal the while.
"You are not ashamed of owning me as yours before
them!" she said gladly.
"O no!"
"But if it should reach the ears of your friends at
Emminster that you are walking about like this with me,
a milkmaid----"
"The most bewitching milkmaid every seen."
"They might feel it a hurt to their dignity."
"My dear girl--a d'Urberville hurt the dignity of a
Clare!" It is a grand card to play--that of your
belonging to such a family, and I am reserving it for a
grand effect when we are married, and have the proofs
of your descent from Parson Tringham. Apart from that,
my future is to be totally foreign to my family--it
will not affect even the surface of their lives. We
shall leave this part of England--perhaps England
itself--and what does it matter how people regard us
here? You will like going, will you not?"
She could answer no more than a bare affirmative, so
great was the emotion aroused in her at the thought of
going through the world with him as his own familiar
friend. Her feelings almost filled her ears like a
babble of waves, and surged up to her eyes. She put
her hand in his, and thus they went on, to a place
where the reflected sun glared up from the river, under
a bridge, with a molten-metallic glow that dazzled
their eyes, though the sun itself was hidden by the
bridge. They stood still, whereupon little furred and
feathered heads popped up from the smooth surface of
the water; but, finding that the disturbing presences
had paused, and not passed by, they disappeared again.
Upon this river-brink they lingered till the fog began
to close round them--which was very early in the
evening at this time of the year--settling on the
lashes of her eyes, where it rested like crystals, and
on his brows and hair.
They walked later on Sundays, when it was quite dark.
Some of the dairy-people, who were also out of doors on
the first Sunday evening after their engagement, heard
her impulsive speeches, ecstasized to fragments, though
they were too far off to hear the words discoursed;
noted the spasmodic catch in her remarks, broken into
syllables by the leapings of her heart, as she walked
leaning on his arm; her contented pauses, the
occasional little laugh upon which her soul seemed to
ride--the laugh of a woman in company with the man she
loves and has won from all other women--unlike anything
else in nature. They marked the buoyancy of her tread,
like the skim of a bird which had not quite alighted.
Her affection for him was now the breath and life of
Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere,
irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows,
keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in
their attempts to touch her--doubt, fear, moodiness,
care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like
wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she
had long spells of power to keep them in hungry
subjection there.
A spiritual forgetfulness co-existed with an
intellectual remembrance. She walked in brightness,
but she knew that in the background those shapes of
darkness were always spread. They might be receding, or
they might be approaching, one or the other, a little
every day.
One evening Tess and Clare were obliged to sit indoors
keeping house, all the other occupants of the domicile
being away. As they talked she looked thoughtfully up
at him, and met his two appreciative eyes.
"I am not worthy of you--no, I am not!" she burst out,
jumping up from her low stool as though appalled at his
homage, and the fulness of her own joy thereat.
Clare, deeming the whole basis of her excitement to be
that which was only the smaller part of it, said----
"I won't have you speak like it, dear Tess!
Distinction does not consist in the facile use of a
contemptible set of conventions, but in being numbered
among those who are true, and honest, and just, and
pure, and lovely, and of good report--as you are, my
Tess."
She struggled with the sob in her throat. How often
had that string of excellences made her young heart
ache in church of late years, and how strange that he
should have cited them now.
"Why didn't you stay and love me when I--was sixteen;
living with my little sisters and brothers, and you
danced on the green? O, why didn't you, why didn't
you!" she said, impetuously clasping her hands.
Angel began to comfort and reassure her, thinking to
himself, truly enough, what a creature of moods she
was, and how careful he would have to be of her when
she depended for her happiness entirely on him.
"Ah--why didn't I stay!" he said. "That is just what I
feel. If I had only known! But you must not be so
bitter in your regret--why should you be?"
With the woman's instinct to hide she diverged
hastily---
"I should have had four years more of your heart than I
can ever have now. Then I should not have wasted my
time as I have done--I should have had so much longer
happiness!"
It was no mature woman with a long dark vista of
intrigue behind her who was tormented thus; but a girl
of simple life, not yet one-and twenty, who had been
caught during her days of immaturity like a bird in a
springe. To calm herself the more completely she rose
from her little stool and left the room, overturning
the stool with her skirts as she went.
He sat on by the cheerful firelight thrown from a
bundle of green ash-sticks laid across the dogs; the
sticks snapped pleasantly, and hissed out bubbles of
sap from their ends. When she came back she was herself
again.
"Do you not think you are just a wee bit capricious,
fitful, Tess?" he said, good-humouredly, as he spread a
cushion for her on the stool, and seated himself in the
settle beside her. "I wanted to ask you something, and
just then you ran away."
"Yes, perhaps I am capricious," she murmured. She
suddenly approached him, and put a hand upon each of
his arms. "No, Angel, I am not really so--by nature,
I mean!" The more particularly to assure him that she
was not, she placed herself close to him in the settle,
and allowed her head to find a resting-place against
Clare's shoulder. "What did you want to ask me--I am
sure I will answer it," she continued humbly.
"Well, you love me, and have agreed to marry me, and
hence there follows a thirdly, 'When shall the day
be?'"
"I like living like this."
"But I must think of starting in business on my own
hook with the new year, or a little later. And before
I get involved in the multifarious details of my new
position, I should like to have secured my partner."
"But," she timidly answered, "to talk quite
practically, wouldn't it be best not to marry till
after all that?--Though I can't bear the though o'
your going away and leaving me here!"
"Of course you cannot--and it is not best in this case.
I want you to help me in many ways in making my start.
When shall it be? Why not a fortnight from now?"
"No," she said, becoming grave: "I have so many things
to think of first."
"But----"
He drew her gently nearer to him.
The reality of marriage was startling when it loomed so
near. Before discussion of the question had proceeded
further there walked round the corner of the settle
into the full firelight of the apartment Mr Dairyman
Crick, Mrs Crick, and two of the milkmaids.
Tess sprang like an elastic ball from his side to her
feet while her face flushed and her eyes shone in the
firelight.
"I know how it would be if I sat so close to him!" she
cried, with vexation. "I said to myself, they are sure
to come and catch us! But I wasn't really sitting on
his knee, though it might ha' seemed as if I was
almost!"
"Well--if so be you hadn't told us, I am sure we
shouldn't ha' noticed that ye had been sitting anywhere
at all in this light," replied the dairyman. He
continued to his wife, with the stolid mien of a man
who understood nothing of the emotions relating to
matrimony--"Now, Christianer, that shows that folks
should never fancy other folks be supposing things when
they bain't. O no, I should never ha' thought a word
of where she was a sitting to, if she hadn't told me--
not I."
"We are going to be married soon," said Clare, with
improvised phlegm.
"Ah--and be ye! Well, I am truly glad to hear it, sir.
I've thought you mid do such a thing for some time.
She's too good for a dairymaid--I said so the very
first day I zid her--and a prize for any man; and
what's more, a wonderful woman for a gentleman-farmer's
wife; he won't be at the mercy of his baily wi' her at
his side."
Somehow Tess disappeared. She had been even more
struck with the look of the girls who followed Crick
than abashed by Crick's blunt praise.
After supper, when she reached her bedroom, they were
all present. A light was burning, and each damsel was
sitting up whitely in her bed, awaiting Tess, the whole
like a row of avenging ghosts.
But she saw in a few moments that there was no malice
in their mood. They could scarcely feel as a loss what
they had never expected to have. Their condition was
objective, contemplative.
"He's going to marry her!" murmured Retty, never taking
eyes off Tess. "How her face do show it!"
"You BE going to marry him?" asked Marian.
"Yes," said Tess.
"When?"
"Some day."
They thought that this was evasiveness only.
"YES--going to MARRY him--a gentleman!" repeated Izz
Huett.
And by a sort of fascination the three girls, one after
another, crept out of their beds, and came and stood
barefooted round Tess. Retty put her hands upon Tess's
shoulders, as if to realize her friend's corporeality
after such a miracle, and the other two laid their arms
round her waist, all looking into her face.
"How it do seem! Almost more than I can think of!"
said Izz Huett.
Marian kissed Tess. "Yes," she murmured as she
withdrew her lips.
"Was that because of love for her, or because other
lips have touched there by now?" continued Izz drily to
Marian.
"I wasn't thinking o' that," said Marian simply.
"I was on'y feeling all the strangeness o't--that she is
to be his wife, and nobody else. I don't say nay to
it, nor either of us, because we did not think of
it--only loved him. Still, nobody else is to marry'n
in the world--no fine lady, nobody in silks and satins;
but she who do live like we."
"Are you sure you don't dislike me for it?" said Tess
in a low voice.
They hung about her in their white nightgowns before
replying, as if they considered their answer might lie
in her look.
"I don't know--I don't know," murmured Retty Priddle.
"I want to hate 'ee; but I cannot!" "That's how I
feel," echoed Izz and Marian. "I can't hate her.
Somehow she hinders me!"
"He ought to marry one of you," murmured Tess.
"Why?"
"You are all better than I."
"We better than you?" said the girls in a low, slow
whisper. "No, no, dear Tess!"
"You are!" she contradicted impetuously. And suddenly
tearing away from their clinging arms she burst into a
hysterical fit of tears, bowing herself on the chest of
drawers and repeating incessantly, "O yes, yes, yes!"
Having once given way she could not stop her weeping.
"He ought to have had one of you!" she cried. "I think
I ought to make him even now! You would be better for
him than--I don't know what I'm saying! O! O!"
They went up to her and clasped her round, but still
her sobs tore her.
"Get some water," said Marian, "She's upset by us,
poor thing, poor thing!"
They gently led her back to the side of her bed, where
they kissed her warmly.
"You are best for'n," said Marian. "More ladylike, and
a better scholar than we, especially since he had
taught 'ee so much. But even you ought to be proud.
You BE proud, I'm sure!"
"Yes, I am," she said; "and I am ashamed at so breaking
down."
When they were all in bed, and the light was out,
Marian whispered across to her--
"You will think of us when you be his wife, Tess, and
of how we told 'ee that we loved him, and how we tried
not to hate you, and did not hate you, and could not
hate you, because you were his choice, and we never
hoped to be chose by him."
They were not aware that, at these words, salt,
stinging tears trickled down upon Tess's pillow anew,
and how she resolved, with a bursting heart, to tell
all her history to Angel Clare, despite her mother's
command--to let him for whom she lived and breathed
despise her if he would, and her mother regard her as a
fool, rather then preserve a silence which might be
deemed a treachery to him, and which somehow seemed a
wrong to these.
XXXII
This penitential mood kept her from naming the
wedding-day. The beginning of November found its date
still in abeyance, though he asked her at the most
tempting times. But Tess's desire seemed to be for a
perpetual betrothal in which everything should remain
as it was then.
The meads were changing now; but it was still warm
enough in early afternoons before milking to idle there
awhile, and the state of dairy-work at this time of
year allowed a spare hour for idling. Looking over the
damp sod in the direction of the sun, a glistening
ripple of gossamer webs was visible to their eyes under
the luminary, like the track of moonlight on the sea.
Gnats, knowing nothing of their brief glorification,
wandered across the shimmer of this pathway, irradiated
as if they bore fire within them, then passed out of
its line, and were quite extinct. In the presence of
these things he would remind her that the date was
still the question.
Or he would ask her at night, when he accompanied her
on some mission invented by Mrs Crick to give him the
opportunity. This was mostly a journey to the
farmhouse on the slopes above the vale, to inquire how
the advanced cows were getting on in the straw-barton
to which they were relegated. For it was a time of the
year that brought great changes to the world of kine.
Batches of the animals were sent away daily to this
lying-in hospital, where they lived on straw till their
calves were born, after which event, and as soon as the
calf could walk, mother and offspring were driven back
to the dairy. In the interval which elapsed before the
calves were sold there was, of course, little milking
to be done, but as soon as the calf had been taken away
the milkmaids would have to set to work as usual.
Returning from one of these dark walks they reached a
great gravel-cliff immediately over the levels, where
they stood still and listened. The water was now high
in the streams, squirting through the weirs, and
tinkling under culverts; the smallest gullies were all
full; there was no taking short cuts anywhere, and
foot-passengers were compelled to follow the permanent
ways. From the whole extent of the invisible vale came
a multitudinous intonation; it forced upon their fancy
that a great city lay below them, and that the murmur
was the vociferation of its populace.
"It seems like tens of thousands of them," said Tess;
"holding public-meetings in their market-places,
arguing, preaching, quarrelling, sobbing, groaning,
praying, and cursing."
Clare was not particularly heeding.
"Did Crick speak to you today, dear, about his not
wanting much assistance during the winter months?"
"No."
"The cows are going dry rapidly."
"Yes. Six of seven went to the straw-barton yesterday,
and three the day before, making nearly twenty in the
straw already. Ah--is it that the farmer don't want my
help for the calving? O, I am not wanted here any
more! And I have tried so hard to---"
"Crick didn't exactly say that he would no longer
require you. But, knowing what our relations were, he
said in the most good-natured and respectful manner
possible that he supposed on my leaving at Christmas I
should take you with me, and on my asking what he would
do without you he merely observed that, as a matter of
fact, it was a time of year when he could do with a
very little female help. I am afraid I was sinner
enough to feel rather glad that he was in this way
forcing your hand."
"I don't think you ought to have felt glad, Angel.
Because 'tis always mournful not to be wanted, even if
at the same time 'tis convenient."
"Well, it is convenient--you have admitted that."
He put his finger upon her cheek. "Ah!" he said.
"What?"
"I feel the red rising up at her having been caught!
But why should I trifle so! We will not trifle--life
is too serious."
"It is. Perhaps I saw that before you did."
She was seeing it then. To decline to marry him after
all--in obedience to her emotion of last night--and
leave the dairy, meant to go to some strange place, not
a dairy; for milkmaids were not in request now
calving-time was coming on; to go to some arable farm
where no divine being like Angel Clare was. She hated
the thought, and she hated more the thought of going
home.
"So that, seriously, dearest Tess," he continued,
"since you will probably have to leave at Christmas, it
is in every way desirable and convenient that I should
carry you off then as my property. Besides, if you
were not the most uncalculating girl in the world you
would know that we could not go on like this for ever."
"I wish we could. That it would always be summer and
autumn, and you always courting me, and always thinking
as much of me as you have done through the past
summertime!"
"I always shall."
"O, I know you will!" she cried, with a sudden fervour
of faith in him. "Angel, I will fix the day when I
will become yours for always!"
Thus at last it was arranged between them, during that
dark walk home, amid the myriads of liquid voices on
the right and left.
When they reached the dairy Mr and Mrs Crick were
promptly told--with injunctions of secrecy; for each of
the lovers was desirous that the marriage should be
kept as private as possible. The dairyman, though he
had thought of dismissing her soon, now made a great
concern about losing her. What should he do about his
skimming? Who would make the ornamental butter-pats
for the Anglebury and Sandbourne ladies? Mrs Crick
congratulated Tess on the shilly-shallying having at
last come to an end, and said that directly she set
eyes on Tess she divined that she was to be the chosen
one of somebody who was no common outdoor man; Tess had
looked so superior as she walked across the barton on
that afternoon of her arrival; that she was of a good
family she could have sworn. In point of fact Mrs
Crick did remember thinking that Tess was graceful and
good-looking as she approached; but the superiority
might have been a growth of the imagination aided by
subsequent knowledge.
Tess was now carried along upon the wings of the hours,
without the sense of a will. The word had been given;
the number of the day written down. Her naturally
bright intelligence had begun to admit the fatalistic
convictions common to field-folk and those who
associate more extensively with natural phenomena than
with their fellow-creatures; and she accordingly
drifted into that passive responsiveness to all things
her lover suggested, characteristic of the frame of
mind.
But she wrote anew to her mother, ostensibly to notify
the wedding-day; really to again implore her advice.
It was a gentleman who had chosen her, which perhaps
her mother had not sufficiently considered. A
post-nuptial explanation, which might be accepted with
a light heart by a rougher man, might not be received
with the same feeling by him. But this communication
brought no reply from Mrs Durbeyfield.
Despite Angel Clare's plausible representation to
himself and to Tess of the practical need for their
immediate marriage, there was in truth an element of
precipitancy in the step, as became apparent at a later
date. He loved her dearly, though perhaps rather
ideally and fancifully than with the impassioned
thoroughness of her feeling for him. He had
entertained no notion, when doomed as he had thought to
an unintellectual bucolic life, that such charms as he
beheld in this idyllic creature would be found behind
the scenes. Unsophistication was a thing to talk of;
but he had not known how it really struck one until he
came here. Yet he was very far from seeing his future
track clearly, and it might be a year or two before he
would be able to consider himself fairly started in
life. The secret lay in the tinge of recklessness
imparted to his career and character by the sense that
he had been made to miss his true destiny through the
prejudices of his family.
"Don't you think 'twould have been better for us to
wait till you were quite settled in your midland farm?"
she once asked timidly. (A midland farm was the idea
just then.)
"To tell the truth, my Tess, I don't like you to be
left anywhere away from my protection and sympathy."
The reason was a good one, so far as it went. His
influence over her had been so marked that she had
caught his manner and habits, his speech and phrases,
his likings and his aversions. And to leave her in
farmland would be to let her slip back again out of
accord with him. He wished to have her under his
charge for another reason. His parents had naturally
desired to see her once at least before he carried her
off to a distant settlement, English or colonial; and
as no opinion of theirs was to be allowed to change his
intention, he judged that a couple of months' life with
him in lodgings whilst seeking for an advantageous
opening would be of some social assistance to her at
what she might feel to be a trying ordeal--her
presentation to his mother at the Vicarage. Next, he
wished to see a little of the working of a flour-mill,
having an idea that he might combine the use of one
with corn-growing. The proprietor of a large old
water-mill at Wellbridge--once the mill of an
Abbey--had offered him the inspection of his
time-honoured mode of procedure, and a hand in the
operations for a few days, whenever he should choose to
come. Clare paid a visit to the place, some few miles
distant, one day at this time, to inquire particulars,
and returned to Talbothays in the evening. She found
him determined to spend a short time at the Wellbridge
flour-mills. And what had determined him? Less the
opportunity of an insight into grinding and bolting
than the casual fact that lodgings were to be obtained
in that very farmhouse which, before its mutilation,
had been the mansion of a branch of the d'Urberville
family. This was always how Clare settled practical
questions; by a sentiment which had nothing to do with
them. They decided to go immediately after the
wedding, and remain for a fortnight, instead of
journeying to towns and inns.
"Then we will start off to examine some farms on the
other side of London that I have heard of," he said,
"and by March or April we will pay a visit to my father
and mother."
Questions of procedure such as these arose and passed,
and the day, the incredible day, on which she was to
become his, loomed large in the near future. The
thirty-first of December, New Year's Eve, was the date.
His wife, she said to herself. Could it ever be?
Their two selves together, nothing to divide them,
every incident shared by them; why not? And yet why?
One Sunday morning Izz Huett returned from church,
and spoke privately to Tess.
"You was not called home this morning."
"What?"
"It should ha' been the first time of asking today,"
she answered, looking quietly at Tess. "You meant to
be married New Year's Eve, deary?"
The other returned a quick affirmative.
"And there must be three times of asking. And now
there be only two Sundays left between."
Tess felt her cheek paling; Izz was right; of course
there must be three. Perhaps he had forgotten! If so,
there must be a week's postponement, and that was
unlucky. How could she remind her lover? She who had
been so backward was suddenly fired with impatience and
alarm lest she should lose her dear prize.
A natural incident relieved her anxiety. Izz mentioned
the omission of the banns to Mrs Crick, and Mrs Crick
assumed a matron's privilege of speaking to Angel on
the point.
"Have ye forgot 'em, Mr Clare? The banns, I mean."
"No, I have not forgot 'em," says Clare.
As soon as he caught Tess alone he assured her:
"Don't let them tease you about the banns. A licence
will be quieter for us, and I have decided on a licence
without consulting you. So if you go to church on
Sunday morning you will not hear your own name, if you
wished to."
"I didn't wish to hear it, dearest," she said proudly.
But to know that things were in train was an immense
relief to Tess notwithstanding, who had well-nigh
feared that somebody would stand up and forbid the
banns on the ground of her history. How events were
favouring her!
"I don't quite feel easy," she said to herself. "All
this good fortune may be scourged out of me afterwards
by a lot of ill. That's how Heaven mostly does. I
wish I could have had common banns!"
But everything went smoothly. She wondered whether he
would like her to be married in her present best white
frock, or if she ought to buy a new one. The question
was set at rest by his forethought, disclosed by the
arrival of some large packages addressed to her.
Inside them she found a whole stock of clothing, from
bonnet to shoes, including a perfect morning costume,
such as would well suit the simple wedding they
planned. He entered the house shortly after the
arrival of the packages, and heard her upstairs undoing
them.
A minute later she came down with a flush on her face
and tears in her eyes.
"How thoughtful you've been!" she murmured, her cheek
upon his shoulder. "Even to the gloves and
handkerchief! My own love--how good, how kind!"
"No, no, Tess; just an order to a tradeswoman in
London--nothing more."
And to divert her from thinking too highly of him he
told her to go upstairs, and take her time, and see if
it all fitted; and, if not, to get the village
sempstress to make a few alterations.
She did return upstairs, and put on the gown. Alone,
she stood for a moment before the glass looking at the
effect of her silk attire; and then there came into her
head her mother's ballad of the mystic robe---
That never would become that wife
That had once done amiss,
which Mrs Durbeyfield had used to sing to her as a
child, so blithely and so archly, her foot on the
cradle, which she rocked to the tune. Suppose this
robe should betray her by changing colour, as her robe
had betrayed Queen Guenever. Since she had been at the
dairy she had not once thought of the lines till now.
XXXIII
Angel felt that he would like to spend a day with her
before the wedding, somewhere away from the dairy, as a
last jaunt in her company while there were yet mere
lover and mistress; a romantic day, in circumstances
that would never be repeated; with that other and
greater day beaming close ahead of them. During the
preceding week, therefore, he suggested making a few
purchases in the nearest town, and they started
together.
Clare's life at the dairy had been that of a recluse in
respect the world of his own class. For months he had
never gone near a town, and, requiring no vehicle, had
never kept one, hiring the dairyman's cob or gig if he
rode or drove. They went in the gig that day.
And then for the first time in their lives they shopped
as partners in one concern. It was Christmas Eve, with
its loads a holly and mistletoe, and the town was very
full of strangers who had come in from all parts of the
country on account of the day. Tess paid the penalty
of walking about with happiness superadded to beauty on
her countenance by being much stared at as she moved
amid them on his arm.
In the evening they returned to the inn at which they
had put up, and Tess waited in the entry while Angel
went to see the horse and gig brought to the door.
The general sitting-room was full of guests, who were
continually going in and out. As the door opened and
shut each time for the passage of these, the light
within the parlour fell full upon Tess's face. Two men
came out and passed by her among the rest. One of them
had stared her up and down in surprise, and she fancied
he was a Trantridge man, though that village lay so
many miles off that Trantridge folk were rarities here.
"A comely maid that," said the other.
"True, comely enough. But unless I make a great
mistake----" And negatived the remainder of the
definition forthwith.
Clare had just returned from the stable-yard, and,
confronting the man on the threshold, heard the words,
and saw the shrinking of Tess. The insult to her stung
him to the quick, and before he had considered anything
at all he struck the man on the chin with the full
force of his fist, sending him staggering backwards
into the passage.
The man recovered himself, and seemed inclined to come
on, and Clare, stepping outside the door, put himself
in a posture of defence. But his opponent began to
think better of the matter. He looked anew at Tess as
he passed her, and said to Clare---
"I beg pardon, sir; 'twas a complete mistake. I
thought she was another woman, forty miles from here."
Clare, feeling then that he had been too hasty, and
that he was, moreover, to blame for leaving her
standing in an inn-passage, did what he usually did in
such cases, gave the man five shillings to plaster the
blow; and thus they parted, bidding each other a
pacific goodnight. As soon as Clare had taken the
reins from the ostler, and the young couple had driven
off, the two men went in the other direction. "And was
it a mistake?" said the second one.
"Not a bit of it. But I didn't want to hurt the
gentleman's feelings--not I."
In the meantime the lovers were driving onward.
"Could we put off our wedding till a little later?"
Tess asked in a dry dull voice. "I mean if we wished?"
"No, my love. Calm yourself. Do you mean that the
fellow may have time to summon me for assault?" he
asked good-humouredly.
"No--I only meant--if it should have to be put off."
What she meant was not very clear, and he directed her
to dismiss such fancies from her mind, which she
obediently did as well as she could. But she was
grave, very grave, all the way home; till she thought,
"We shall go away, a very long distance, hundreds of
miles from these parts, and such as this can never
happen again, and no ghost of the past reach there."
They parted tenderly that night on the landing, and
Clare ascended to his attic. Tess sat up getting on
with some little requisites, lest the few remaining
days should not afford sufficient times. While she sat
she heard a noise in Angel's room overhead, a sound of
thumping and struggling. Everybody else in the house
was asleep, and in her anxiety lest Clare should be ill
she ran up and knocked at his door, and asked him what
was the matter.
"Oh, nothing, dear," he said from within. "I am so
sorry I disturbed you! But the reason is rather an
amusing one: I fell asleep and dreamt that I was
fighting that fellow again who insulted you and the
noise you heard was my pummelling away with my fists at
my portmanteau, which I pulled out today for packing.
I am occasionally liable to these freaks in my sleep.
Go to bed and think of it no more."
This was the last drachm required to turn the scale of
her indecision. Declare the past to him by word of
mouth she could not; but there was another way. She
sat down and wrote on the four pages of a note-sheet a
succinct narrative of those events of three or four
years ago, put it into an envelope, and directed it to
Clare. Then, lest the flesh should again be weak, she
crept upstairs without any shoes and slipped the note
under his door.
Her night was a broken one, as it well might be, and
she listened for the first faint noise overhead. It
came, as usual; he descended, as usual. She descended.
He met her at the bottom of the stairs and kissed her.
Surely it was as warmly as ever!
He looked a little disturbed and worn, she thought.
But he said not a word to her about her revelation,
even when they were alone. Could he have had it?
Unless he began the subject she felt that she could say
nothing. So the day passed, and it was evident that
whatever he thought he meant to keep to himself. Yet
he was frank and affectionate as before. Could it be
that her doubts were childish? that he forgave her;
that he loved her for what she was, just as she was,
and smiled at her disquiet as at a foolish nightmare?
Had he really received her note? She glanced into his
room, and could see nothing of it. It might be that he
forgave her. But even if he had not received it she
had a sudden enthusiastic trust that he surely would
forgive her.
Every morning and night he was the same, and thus New
Year's Eve broke--the wedding day.
The lovers did not rise at milking-time, having through
the whole of this last week of their sojourn at the
dairy been accorded something of the position of
guests, Tess being honoured with a room of her own.
When they arrived downstairs at breakfast-time they
were surprised to see what effects had been produced in
the large kitchen for their glory since they had last
beheld it. At some unnatural hour of the morning the
dairyman had caused the yawning chimney-corner to be
whitened, and the brick hearth reddened, and a blazing
yellow damask blower to be hung across the arch in
place of the old grimy blue cotton one with a black
sprig pattern which had formerly done duty there. This
renovated aspect of what was the focus indeed of the
room on a full winter morning, threw a smiling
demeanour over the whole apartment.
"I was determined to do summat in honour o't", said the
dairyman. "And as you wouldn't hear of my gieing a
rattling good randy wi' fiddles and bass-viols
complete, as we should ha' done in old times, this was
all I could think o' as a noiseless thing."
Tess's friends lived so far off that none could
conveniently have been present at the ceremony, even
had any been asked; but as a fact nobody was invited
from Marlott. As for Angel's family, he had written
and duly informed them of the time, and assured them
that he would be glad to see one at least of them there
for the day if he would like to come. His brothers had
not replied at all, seeming to be indignant with him;
while his father and mother had written a rather sad
letter, deploring his precipitancy in rushing into
marriage, but making the best of the matter by saying
that, though a dairywoman was the last daughter-in-law
they could have expected, their son had arrived at an
age which he might be supposed to be the best judge.
This coolness in his relations distressed Clare less
than it would have done had he been without the grand
card with which he meant to surprise them ere long. To
produce Tess, fresh from the dairy, as a d'Urberville
and a lady, he had felt to be temerarious and risky;
hence he had concealed her lineage till such time as,
familiarized with worldly ways by a few months' travel
and reading with him, he could take her on a visit to
his parents, and impart the knowledge while
triumphantly producing her as worthy of such an ancient
line. It was a pretty lover's dream, if no more.
Perhaps Tess's lineage had more value for himself than
for anybody in the world beside.
Her perception that Angel's bearing towards her still
remained in no whit altered by her own communication
rendered Tess guiltily doubtful if he could have
received it. She rose from breakfast before he had
finished, and hastened upstairs. It had occurred to
her to look once more into the queer gaunt room which
had been Clare's den, or rather eyrie, for so long, and
climbing the ladder she stood at the open door of the
apartment, regarding and pondering. She stooped to the
threshold of the doorway, where she had pushed in the
note two or three days earlier in such excitement. The
carpet reached close to the sill, and under the edge of
the carpet she discerned the faint white margin of the
envelope containing her letter to him, which he
obviously had never seen, owing to her having in her
haste thrust it beneath the carpet as well as beneath
the door.
With a feeling of faintness she withdrew the letter.
There it was--sealed up, just as it had left her hands.
The mountain had not yet been removed. She could not
let him read it now, the house being in full bustle of
preparation; and descending to her own room she
destroyed the letter there.
She was so pale when he saw her again that he felt
quite anxious. The incident of the misplaced letter
she had jumped at as if it prevented a confession; but
she knew in her conscience that it need not; there was
still time. Yet everything was in a stir; there was
coming and going; all had to dress, the dairyman and
Mrs Crick having been asked to accompany them as
witnesses; and reflection or deliberate talk was
well-nigh impossible. The only minute Tess could get
to be alone with Clare was when they met upon the
landing.
"I am so anxious to talk to you--I want to confess all
my faults and blunders!" she said with attempted
lightness.
"No, no--we can't have faults talked of--you must be
deemed perfect today at least, my Sweet!" he cried.
"We shall have plenty of time, hereafter, I hope, to
talk over our failings. I will confess mine at the
same time."
"But it would be better for me to do it now, I think,
so that you could not say----"
"Well, my quixotic one, you shall tell me
anything--say, as soon as we are settled in our
lodging; not now. I, too, will tell you my faults
then. But do not let us spoil the day with them; they
will be excellent matter for a dull time."
"Then you don't wish me to, dearest?"
"I do not, Tessy, really."
The hurry of dressing and starting left no time for
more than this. 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, counter-acted 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 CARREE 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 view 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
walk 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 the 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 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.
However, when she found herself alone in her room for a
few minutes--the last day this on which she was ever to
enter it--she knelt down and prayed. She tried to pray
to God, but it was her husband who really had her
supplication. Her idolatry of this man was such that
she herself almost feared it to be ill-omened. She was
conscious of the notion expressed by Friar Laurence:
"These violent delights have violent ends." It might
be too desperate for human conditions--too rank, to
wild, too deadly.
"O my love, why do I love you so!" she whispered there
alone; "for she you love is not my real self, but one
in my image; the one I might have been!"
Afternoon came, and with it the hour for departure.
They had decided to fulfil the plan of going for a few
days to the lodgings in the old farmhouse near
Wellbridge Mill, at which he meant to reside during his
investigation of flour processes. At two o'clock there
was nothing left to do but to start. All the servantry
of the dairy were standing in the red-brick entry to
see them go out, the dairyman and his wife following to
the door. Tess saw her three chamber-mates in a row
against the wall, pensively inclining their heads. She
had much questioned if they would appear at the parting
moment; but there they were, stoical and staunch to the
last. She knew why the delicate Retty looked to
fragile, and Izz so tragically sorrowful and Marian so
blank; and she forgot her own dogging shadow for a
moment in contemplating theirs.
She impulsively whispered to him----
"Will you kiss 'em all, once, poor things, for the
first and last time?"
Clare had not the least objection to such a farewell
formality--which was all that it was to him--and as he
passed them he kissed them in succession where they
stood, saying "Goodbye" to each as he did so. When
they reached the door Tess femininely glanced back to
discern the effect of that kiss of charity; there was
no triumph in her glance, as there might have been.
If there had it would have disappeared when she saw how
moved the girls all were. The kiss had obviously done
harm by awakening feelings they were trying to subdue.
Of all this Clare was unconscious. Passing on to the
wicket-gate he shook hands with the dairyman and his
wife, and expressed his last thanks to them for their
attentions; after which there was a moment of silence
before they had moved off. It was interrupted by the
crowing of a cock. The white one with the rose comb
had come and settled on the palings in front of the
house, within a few yards of them, and his notes
thrilled their ears through, dwindling away like echoes
down a valley of rocks.
"Oh?" said Mrs Crick. "An afternoon crow!"
Two men were standing by the yard gate, holding it
open.
"That's bad," one murmured to the other, not thinking
that the words could be heard by the group at the
door-wicket.
The cock crew again--straight towards Clare.
"Well!" said the dairyman.
"I don't like to hear him!" said Tess to her husband.
"Tell the man to drive on. Goodbye, goodbye!"
The cock crew again.
"Hoosh! Just you be off, sir, or I'll twist your
neck!" said the dairyman with some irritation, turning
to the bird and driving him away. And to his wife as
they went indoors: "Now, to think o' that just today!
I've not heard his crow of an afternoon all the year
afore."
"It only means a change in the weather," said she;
"not what you think: 'tis impossible!"
XXXIV
They drove by the level road along the valley to a
distance of a few miles, and, reaching Wellbridge,
turned away from the village to the left, and over the
great Elizabethan bridge which gives the place half its
name. Immediately behind it stood the house wherein
they had engaged lodgings, whose exterior features are
so well known to all travellers through the Froom
Valley; once portion of a fine manorial residence, and
the property and seat of a d'Urberville, but since its
partial demolition a farmhouse.
"Welcome to one of your ancestral mansions!" said Clare
as he handed her down. But he regretted the pleasantry;
it was too near a satire.
On entering they found that, though they had only
engaged a couple of rooms, the farmer had taken
advantage of their proposed presence during the coming
days to pay a New Year's visit to some friends, leaving
a woman from a neighbouring cottage to minister to
their few wants. The absoluteness of possession
pleased them, and they realized it as the first moment
of their experience under their own exclusive
roof-tree.
But he found that the mouldy old habitation somewhat
depressed his bride. When the carriage was gone they
ascended the stairs to wash their hands, the charwoman
showing the way. On the landing Tess stopped and
started.
"What's the matter?" said he.
"Those horrid women!" she answered with a smile.
"How they frightened me."
He looked up, and perceived two life-size portraits on
panels built into the masonry. As all visitors to the
mansion are aware, these paintings represent women of
middle age, of a date some two hundred years ago, whose
lineaments once seen can never be forgotten. The long
pointed features, narrow eye, and smirk of the one, so
suggestive of merciless treachery; the bill-hook nose,
large teeth, and bold eye of the other suggesting
arrogance to the point of ferocity, haunt the beholder
afterwards in his dreams.
"Whose portraits are those?" asked Clare of the
charwoman.
"I have been told by old folk that they were ladies of
the d'Urberville family, the ancient lords of this
manor," she said, "Owing to their being builded into
the wall they can't be moved away."
The unpleasantness of the matter was that, in addition
to their effect upon Tess, her fine features were
unquestionably traceable in these exaggerated forms.
He said nothing of this, however, and, regretting that
he had gone out of his way to choose the house for
their bridal time, went on into the adjoining room.
The place having been rather hastily prepared for them
they washed their hands in one basin. Clare touched
hers under the water.
"Which are my fingers and which are yours?" he said,
looking up. "They are very much mixed."
"They are all yours," said she, very prettily, and
endeavoured to be gayer than she was. He had not been
displeased with her thoughtfulness on such an occasion;
it was what every sensible woman would show: but Tess
knew that she had been thoughtful to excess, and
struggled against it.
The sun was so low on that short last afternoon of the
year that it shone in through a small opening and
formed a golden staff which stretched across to her
skirt, where it made a spot like a paint-mark set upon
her. They went into the ancient parlour to tea, and
here they shared their first common meal alone. Such
was their childishness, or rather his, that he found it
interesting to use the same bread-and-butter plate as
herself, and to brush crumbs from her lips with his
own. He wondered a little that she did not enter into
these frivolities with his own zest.
Looking at her silently for a long time; "She is a dear
dear Tess," he thought to himself, as one deciding on
the true construction of a difficult passage. "Do I
realize solemnly enough how utterly and irretrievably
this little womanly thing is the creature of my good or
bad faith and fortune? I think not. I think I could
not, unless I were a woman myself. What I am in
worldly estate, she is. What I become, she must
become. What I cannot be, she cannot be. And shall I
ever neglect her, or hurt her, or even forget to
consider her? God forbid such a crime!"
They sat on over the tea-table waiting for their
luggage, which the dairyman had promised to send before
it grew dark. But evening began to close in, and the
luggage did not arrive, and they had brought nothing
more than they stood in. With the departure of the sun
the calm mood of the winter day changed. Out of doors
there began noises as of silk smartly rubbed; the
restful dead leaves of the preceding autumn were
stirred to irritated resurrection, and whirled about
unwillingly, and tapped against the shutters. It soon
began to rain.
"That cock knew the weather was going to change," said
Clare.
The woman who had attended upon them had gone home for
the night, but she had placed candles upon the table,
and now they lit them. Each candle-flame drew towards
the fireplace.
"These old houses are so draughty," continued Angel,
looking at the flames, and at the grease guttering down
the sides. "I wonder where that luggage is. We
haven't even a brush and comb."
"I don't know," she answered, absent-minded.
"Tess, you are not a bit cheerful this evening--not at
all as you used to be. Those harridans on the panels
upstairs have unsettled you. I am sorry I brought you
here. I wonder if you really love me, after all?" He
knew that she did, and the words had no serious intent;
but she was surcharged with emotion, and winced like a
wounded animal. Though she tried not to shed tears she
could not help showing one or two.
"I did not mean it!" said he, sorry. "You are worried
at not having your things, I know. I cannot think why
old Jonathan has not come with them. Why, it is seven
o'clock? Ah, there he is!"
A knock had come to the door, and, there being nobody
else to answer it, Clare went out. He returned to the
room with a small package in his hand.
"It is not Jonathan, after all," he said.
"How vexing!" said Tess.
The packet had been brought by a special messenger, who
had arrived at Talbothays from Emminster Vicarage
immediately after the departure of the married couple,
and had followed them hither, being under injunction to
deliver it into nobody's hands but theirs. Clare
brought it to the light. It was less than a foot long,
sewed up in canvas, sealed in red wax with his father's
seal, and directed in his father's hand to "Mrs Angel
Clare."
"It is a little wedding-present for you, Tess," said
he, handing it to her. "How thoughtful they are!"
Tess looked a little flustered as she took it.
"I think I would rather have you open it, dearest,"
said she, turning over the parcel. "I don't like to
break those great seals; they look so serious. Please
open it for me!"
He undid the parcel. Inside was a case of morocco
leather, on the top of which lay a note and a key.
The note was for Clare, in the following words:
MY DEAR SON----
Possibly you have forgotten that on the death of your
godmother, Mrs Pitney, when you were a lad, she--vain
kind woman that she was--left to me a portion of the
contents of her jewel-case in trust for your wife, if
you should ever have one, as a mark of her affection
for you and whomsoever you should choose. This trust I
have fulfilled, and the diamonds have been locked up at
my banker's ever since. Though I feel it to be a
somewhat incongruous act in the circumstances, I am, as
you will see, bound to hand over the articles to the
woman to whom the use of them for her lifetime will now
rightly belong, and they are therefore promptly sent.
They become, I believe, heirlooms, strictly speaking,
according to the terms of your godmother's will. The
precise words of the clause that refers to this matter
are enclosed.
"I do remember," said Clare; "but I had quite
forgotten."
Unlocking the case, they found it to contain a
necklace, with pendant, bracelets, and ear-rings; and
also some other small ornaments.
Tess seemed afraid to touch them at first, but her eyes
sparkled for a moment as much as the stones when Clare
spread out the set.
"Are they mine?" she asked incredulously.
"They are, certainly," said he.
He looked into the fire. He remembered how, when he
was a lad of fifteen, his godmother, the Squire's
wife--the only rich person with whom he had ever come
in contact--had pinned her faith to his success; had
prophesied a wondrous career for him. There had seemed
nothing at all out of keeping with such a conjectured
career in the storing up of these showy ornaments for
his wife and the wives of her descendants. They
gleamed somewhat ironically now. "Yet why?" he asked
himself. It was but a question of vanity throughout;
and if that were admitted into one side of the equation
it should be admitted into the other. His wife was a
d'Urberville: whom could they become better than her?
Suddenly he said with enthusiasm---
"Tess, put them on--put them on!" And he turned from
the fire to help her.
But as if by magic she had already donned them--
necklace, ear-rings, bracelets, and all.
"But the gown isn't right, Tess," said Clare. "It
ought to be a low one for a set of brilliants like
that."
"Ought it?" said Tess.
"Yes," said he.
He suggested to her how to tuck in the upper edge of
her bodice, so as to make it roughly approximate to the
cut for evening wear; and when she had done this, and
the pendant to the necklace hung isolated amid the
whiteness of her throat, as it was designed to do, he
stepped back to survey her.
"My heavens," said Clare, "how beautiful you are!"
As everybody knows, fine feathers make fine birds; a
peasant girl but very moderately prepossessing to the
casual observer in her simple condition and attire,
will bloom as an amazing beauty if clothed as a woman
of fashion with the aids that Art can render; while the
beauty of the midnight crush would often cut but a
sorry figure if placed inside the field-woman's wrapper
upon a monotonous acreage of turnips on a dull day. He
had never till now estimated the artistic excellence of
Tess's limbs and features.
"If you were only to appear in a ball-room!" he said.
"But no--no, dearest; I think I love you best in the
wing-bonnet and cotton-frock--yes, better than in this,
well as you support these dignities."
Tess's sense of her striking appearance had given her a
flush of excitement, which was yet not happiness.
"I'll take them off," she said, "in case Jonathan
should see me. They are not fit for me, are they?
They must be sold, I suppose?"
"Let them stay a few minutes longer. Sell them?
Never. It would be a breach of faith."
Influenced by a second thought she readily obeyed.
She had something to tell, and there might be help in
these. She sat down with the jewels upon her; and they
again indulged in conjectures as to where Jonathan
could possibly be with their baggage. The ale they had
poured out for his consumption when he came had gone
flat with long standing.
Shortly after this they began supper, which was already
laid on a side-table. Ere they had finished there was
a jerk in the fire-smoke, the rising skein of which
bulged out into the room, as if some giant had laid his
hand on the chimney-top for a moment. It had been
caused by the opening of the outer door. A heavy step
was now heard in the passage, and Angel went out.
"I couldn' make nobody hear at all by knocking,"
apologized Jonathan Kail, for it was he at last; "and
as't was raining out I opened the door. I've brought
the things, sir."
"I am very glad to see them. But you are very late."
"Well, yes, sir."
There was something subdued in Jonathan Kail's tone
which had not been there in the day, and lines of
concern were ploughed upon his forehead in addition to
the lines of years. He continued----
"We've all been gallied at the dairy at what might ha'
been a most terrible affliction since you and your
Mis'ess--so to name her now--left us this a'ternoon.
Perhaps you ha'nt forgot the cock's afternoon crow?"
"Dear me;---what------"
"Well, some says it do mane one thing, and some
another; but what's happened is that poor little Retty
Priddle hev tried to drown herself."
"No! Really! Why, she bade us goodbye with the
rest----"
"Yes. Well, sir, when you and your Mis'ess--so to name
what she lawful is--when you two drove away, as I say,
Retty and Marian put on their bonnets and went out; and
as there is not much doing now, being New Year's Eve,
and folks mops and brooms from what's inside 'em,
nobody took much notice. They went on to Lew-Everard,
where they had summut to drink, and then on they vamped
to Dree-armed Cross, and there they seemed to have
parted, Retty striking across the water-meads as if for
home, and Marian going on to the next village, where
there's another public-house. Nothing more was zeed or
heard o' Retty till the waterman, on his way home,
noticed something by the Great Pool; 'twas her bonnet
and shawl packed up. In the water he found her. He
and another man brought her home, thinking a' was dead;
but she fetched round by degrees."
Angel, suddenly recollecting that Tess was overhearing
this gloomy tale, went to shut the door between the
passage and the ante-room to the inner parlour where
she was; but his wife, flinging a shawl round her, had
come to the outer room and was listening to the man's
narrative, her eyes resting absently on the luggage and
the drops of rain glistening upon it.
"And, more than this, there's Marian; she's been found
dead drunk by the withy-bed--a girl who hev never been
known to touch anything before except shilling ale;
though, to be sure, 'a was always a good trencher-
woman, as her face showed. It seems as if the maids
had all gone out o' their minds!"
"And Izz?" asked Tess.
"Izz is about house as usual; but 'a do say 'a can
guess how it happened; and she seems to be very low in
mind about it, poor maid, as well she mid be. And so
you see, sir, as all this happened just when we was
packing your few traps and your Mis'ess's night-rail
and dressing things into the cart, why, it belated me."
"Yes. Well, Jonathan, will you get the trunks
upstairs, and drink a cup of ale, and hasten back as
soon as you can, in case you should be wanted?"
Tess had gone back to the inner parlour, and sat down
by the fire, looking wistfully into it. She heard
Jonathan Kail's heavy footsteps up and down the stairs
till he had done placing the luggage, and heard him
express his thanks for the ale her husband took out to
him, and for the gratuity he received. Jonathan's
footsteps then died from the door, and his cart creaked
away.
Angel slid forward the massive oak bar which secured
the door, and coming in to where she sat over the
hearth, pressed her cheeks between his hands from
behind. He expected her to jump up gaily and unpack
the toilet-gear that she had been so anxious about, but
as she did not rise he sat down with her in the
firelight, the candles on the supper-table being too
thin and glimmering to interfere with its glow.
"I am so sorry you should have heard this sad story
about the girls," he said. "Still, don't let it
depress you. Retty was naturally morbid, you know."
"Without the least cause," said Tess. "While they who
have cause to be, hide it, and pretend they are not."
This incident had turned the scale for her. They were
simple and innocent girls on whom the unhappiness of
unrequited love had fallen; they had deserved better at
the hands of Fate. She had deserved worse--yet she was
the chosen one. It was wicked of her to take all
without paying. She would pay to the uttermost
farthing; she would tell, there and then. This final
determination she came to when she looked into the
fire, he holding her hand.
A steady glare from the now flameless embers painted
the sides and back of the fireplace with its colour,
and the well-polished andirons, and the old brass tongs
that would not meet. The underside of the mantel-shelf
was flushed with the high-coloured light, and the legs
of the table nearest the fire. Tess's face and neck
reflected the same warmth, which each gem turned into
an Aldebaran or a Sirius--a constellation of white,
red, and green flashes, that interchanged their hues
with her every pulsation.
"Do you remember what we said to each other this
morning about telling our faults?" he asked abruptly,
finding that she still remained immovable. "We spoke
lightly perhaps, and you may well have done so. But
for me it was no light promise. I want to make a
confession to you, Love."
This, from him, so unexpectedly apposite, had the
effect upon her of a Providential interposition.
"You have to confess something?" she said quickly,
and even with gladness and relief.
"You did not expect it? Ah--you thought too highly of
me. Now listen. Put your head there, because I want
you to forgive me, and not to be indignant with me for
not telling you before, as perhaps I ought to have
done."
How strange it was! He seemed to be her double.
She did not speak, and Clare went on----
"I did not mention it because I was afraid of
endangering my chance of you, darling, the great prize
of my life--my Fellowship I call you. My brother's
Fellowship was won at his college, mine at Talbothays
Dairy. Well, I would not risk it. I was going to tell
you a month ago--at the time you agreed to be mine, but
I could not; I thought it might frighten you away from
me. I put it off; then I thought I would tell you
yesterday, to give you a chance at least of escaping
me. But I did not. And I did not this morning, when
you proposed our confessing our faults on the
landing--the sinner that I was! But I must, now I see
you sitting there so solemnly. I wonder if you will
forgive me?"
"O yes! I am sure that----"
"Well, I hope so. But wait a minute. You don't know.
To begin at the beginning. Though I imagine my poor
father fears that I am one of the eternally lost for my
doctrines, I am of course, a believer in good morals,
Tess, as much as you. I used to wish to be a teacher
of men, and it was a great disappointment to me when I
found I could not enter the Church. I admired
spotlessness, even though I could lay no claim to it,
and hated impurity, as I hope I do now. Whatever one
may think of plenary inspiration, one must heartily
subscribe to these words of Paul: 'Be thou an example--
in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in
faith, in purity.' It is the only safeguard for us
poor human beings. 'INTEGER VITAE,' says a Roman poet,
who is strange company for St Paul----
The man of upright life, from frailties free,
Stands not in need of Moorish spear or bow
Well, a certain place is paved with good intentions,
and having felt all that so strongly, you will see what
a terrible remorse it bred in me when, in the midst of
my fine aims for other people, I myself fell."
He then told her of that time of his life to which
allusion has been made when, tossed about by doubts and
difficulties in London, like a cork on the waves, he
plunged into eight-and-forty hours' dissipation with a
stranger.
"Happily I awoke almost immediately to a sense of my
folly," he continued. "I would have no more to say to
her, and I came home. I have never repeated the
offence. But I felt I should like to treat you with
perfect frankness and honour, and I could not do so
without telling this. Do you forgive me?"
She pressed his hand tightly for an answer.
"Then we will dismiss it at once and for ever!--too
painful as it is for the occasion--and talk of
something lighter."
"O, Angel--I am almost glad--because now YOU can
forgive ME! I have not made my confession. I have a
confession, too--remember, I said so."
"Ah, to be sure! Now then for it, wicked little one."
"Perhaps, although you smile, it is as serious as
yours, or more so."
"It can hardly be more serious, dearest."
"It cannot--O no, it cannot!" She jumped up joyfully
at the hope. "No, it cannot be more serious,
certainly," she cried, "because 'tis just the same!
I will tell you now."
She sat down again.
Their hands were still joined. The ashes under the
grate were lit by the fire vertically, like a torrid
waste. Imagination might have beheld a Last Day
luridness in this red-coaled glow, which fell on his
face and hand, and on hers, peering into the loose hair
about her brow, and firing the delicate skin
underneath. A large shadow of her shape rose upon the
wall and ceiling. She bent forward, at which each
diamond on her neck gave a sinister wink like a toad's;
and pressing her forehead against his temple she
entered on her story of her acquaintance with Alec
d'Urberville and its results, murmuring the words
without flinching, and with her eyelids drooping down.
END OF PHASE THE FOURTH
Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays
XXXV
Her narrative ended; even its re-assertions and
secondary explanations were done. Tess's voice
throughout had hardly risen higher than its opening
tone; there had been no exculpatory phrase of any kind,
and she had not wept.
But the complexion even of external things seemed to
suffer transmutation as her announcement progressed.
The fire in the grate looked impish--demoniacally
funny, as if it did not care in the least about her
strait. The fender grinned idly, as if it too did not
care. The light from the water-bottle was merely
engaged in a chromatic problem. All material objects
around announced their irresponsibility with terrible
iteration. And yet nothing had changed since the
moments when he had been kissing her; or rather,
nothing in the substance of things. But the essence of
things had changed.
When she ceased the auricular impressions from their
previous endearments seemed to hustle away into the
corner of their brains, repeating themselves as echoes
from a time of supremely purblind foolishness.
Clare performed the irrelevant act of stirring the
fire; the intelligence had not even yet got to the
bottom of him. After stirring the embers he rose to his
feet; all the force of her disclosure had imparted
itself now. His face had withered. In the
strenuousness of his concentration he treadled fitfully
on the floor. He could not, by any contrivance, think
closely enough; that was the meaning of his vague
movement. When he spoke it was in the most inadequate,
commonplace voice of the many varied tones she had
heard from him.
"Tess!"
"Yes, dearest."
"Am I to believe this? From your manner I am to take
it as true. O you cannot be out of your mind! You
ought to be! Yet you are not. ... My wife, my
Tess--nothing in you warrants such a supposition as
that?"
"I am not out of my mind," she said.
"And yet----" He looked vacantly at her, to resume
with dazed senses: "Why didn't you tell me before?
Ah, yes, you would have told me, in a way--but I hindered
you, I remember!"
These and other of his words were nothing but the
perfunctory babble of the surface while the depths
remained paralyzed. He turned away, and bent over a
chair. Tess followed him to the middle of the room
where he was, and stood there staring at him with eyes
that did not weep. Presently she slid down upon her
knees beside his foot, and from this position she
crouched in a heap.
"In the name of our love, forgive me!" she whispered
with a dry mouth. "I have forgiven you for the same!"
And, as he did not answer, she said again----
"Forgive me as you are forgiven! I forgive YOU,
Angel."
"You--yes, you do."
"But you do not forgive me?"
"O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case! You
were one person; now you are another. My God--how can
forgiveness meet such a grotesque--prestidigitation as
that!"
He paused, contemplating this definition; then suddenly
broke into horrible laughter--as unnatural and ghastly
as a laugh in hell.
"Don't--don't! It kills me quite, that!" she shrieked.
"O have mercy upon me--have mercy!"
He did not answer; and, sickly white, she jumped up.
"Angel, Angel! what do you mean by that laugh?" she
cried out. "Do you know what this is to me?"
He shook his head.
"I have been hoping, longing, praying, to make you
happy! I have thought what joy it will be to do it,
what an unworthy wife I shall be if I do not! That's
what I have felt, Angel!"
"I know that."
"I thought, Angel, that you loved me--me, my very self!
If it is I you do love, O how can it be that you look
and speak so? It frightens me! Having begun to love
you, I love you for ever--in all changes, in all
disgraces, because you are yourself. I ask no more.
Then how can you, O my own husband, stop loving me?"
"I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you."
"But who?"
"Another woman in your shape."
She perceived in his words the realization of her own
apprehensive foreboding in former times. He looked
upon her as a species of imposter; a guilty woman in
the guise of an innocent one. Terror was upon her
white face as she saw it; her cheek was flaccid, and
her mouth had almost the aspect of a round little hole.
The horrible sense of his view of her so deadened her
that she staggered; and he stepped forward, thinking
she was going to fall.
"Sit down, sit down," he said gently. "You are ill;
and it is natural that you should be."
She did sit down, without knowing where she was, that
strained look still upon her face, and her eyes such as
to make his flesh creep.
"I don't belong to you any more, then; do I, Angel?"
she asked helplessly. "It is not me, but another woman
like me that he loved, he says."
The image raised caused her to take pity upon herself
as one who was ill-used. Her eyes filled as she
regarded her position further; she turned round and
burst into a flood of self-sympathetic tears.
Clare was relieved at this change, for the effect on
her of what had happened was beginning to be a trouble
to him only less than the woe of the disclosure itself.
He waited patiently, apathetically, till the violence
of her grief had worn itself out, and her rush of
weeping had lessened to a catching gasp at intervals.
"Angel," she said suddenly, in her natural tones, the
insane, dry voice of terror having left her now.
"Angel, am I too wicked for you and me to live
together?"
"I have not been able to think what we can do."
"I shan't ask you to let me live with you, Angel,
because I have no right to! I shall not write to
mother and sisters to say we be married, as I said I
would do; and I shan't finish the good-hussif' I cut
out and meant to make while we were in lodgings."
"Shan't you?"
"No, I shan't do anything, unless you order me to; and
if you go away from me I shall not follow 'ee; and if
you never speak to me any more I shall not ask why,
unless you tell me I may."
"And if I order you to do anything?"
"I will obey you like your wretched slave, even if it
is to lie down and die."
"You are very good. But it strikes me that there is a
want of harmony between your present mood of
self-sacrifice and your past mood of
self-preservation."
These were the first words of antagonism. To fling
elaborate sarcasms at Tess, however, was much like
flinging them at a dog or cat. The charms of their
subtlety passed by her unappreciated, and she only
received them as inimical sounds which meant that anger
ruled. She remained mute, not knowing that he was
smothering his affection for her. She hardly observed
that a tear descended slowly upon his cheek, a tear so
large that it magnified the pores of the skin over
which it rolled, like the object lens of a microscope.
Meanwhile reillumination as to the terrible and total
change that her confession had wrought in his life, in
his universe, returned to him, and he tried desperately
to advance among the new conditions in which he stood.
Some consequent action was necessary; yet what?
"Tess," he said, as gently as he could speak, "I cannot
stay--in this room--just now. I will walk out a little
way."
He quietly left the room, and the two glasses of wine
that he had poured out for their supper--one for her,
one for him--remained on the table untasted. This was
what their AGAPE had come to. At tea, two or three
hours earlier, they had, in the freakishness of
affection, drunk from one cup.
The closing of the door behind him, gently as it had
been pulled to, roused Tess from her stupor. He was
gone; she could not stay. Hastily flinging her cloak
around her she opened the door and followed, putting
out the candles as if she were never coming back. The
rain was over and the night was now clear.
She was soon close at his heels, for Clare walked
slowly and without purpose. His form beside her light
gray figure looked black, sinister, and forbidding, and
she felt as sarcasm the touch of the jewels of which
she had been momentarily so proud. Clare turned at
hearing her footsteps, but his recognition of her
presence seemed to make no difference to him, and he
went on over the five yawning arches of the great
bridge in front of the house.
The cow and horse tracks in the road were full of
water, and rain having been enough to charge them, but
not enough to wash them away. Across these minute
pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick transit as
she passed; she would not have known they were shining
overhead if she had not seen them there--the vastest
things of the universe imaged in objects so mean.
The place to which they had travelled today was in the
same valley as Talbothays, but some miles lower down
the river; and the surroundings being open she kept
easily in sight of him. Away from the house the road
wound through the meads, and along these she followed
Clare without any attempt to come up with him or to
attract him, but with dumb and vacant fidelity.
At last, however, her listless walk brought her up
alongside him, and still he said nothing. The cruelty
of fooled honesty is often great after enlightenment,
and it was mighty in Clare now. The outdoor air had
apparently taken away from him all tendency to act on
impulse; she knew that he saw her without
irradiation--in all her bareness; that Time was
chanting his satiric psalm at her then----
Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall
hate;
Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate
For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain;
And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown shall be
pain.
He was still intently thinking, and her companionship
had now insufficient power to break or divert the
strain of thought. What a weak thing her presence must
have become to him! She could not help addressing
Clare.
"What have I done--what HAVE I done! I have not told
of anything that interferes with or belies my love for
you. You don't think I planned it, do you? It is in
your own mind what you are angry at, Angel; it is not
in me. O, it is not in me, and I am not that deceitful
woman you think me!"
"H'm--well. Not deceitful, my wife; but not the same.
No, not the same. But do not make me reproach you. I
have sworn that I will not; and I will do everything to
avoid it."
But she went on pleading in her distraction; and
perhaps said things that would have been better left to
silence.
"Angel!--Angel! I was a child--a child when it
happened! I knew nothing of men."
"You were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit."
"Then will you not forgive me?"
"I do forgive you, but forgiveness is not all."
"And love me?"
To this question he did not answer.
"O Angel--my mother says that it sometimes happens
so!--she knows several cases where they were worse than
I, and the husband has not minded it much--has got over
it at least. And yet the woman had not loved him as I
do you!"
"Don't, Tess; don't argue. Different societies,
different manners. You almost make me say you are an
unapprehending peasant woman, who have never been
initiated into the proportions of social things. You
don't know what you say."
"I am only a peasant by position, not by nature!"
She spoke with an impulse to anger, but it went as it came.
"So much the worse for you. I think that parson who
unearthed your pedigree would have done better if he
had held his tongue. I cannot help associating your
decline as a family with this other fact--of your want
of firmness. Decrepit families imply decrepit wills,
decrepit conduct. Heaven, why did you give me a handle
for despising you more by informing me of your descent!
Here was I thinking you a new-sprung child of nature;
there were you, the belated seedling of an effete
aristocracy!"
"Lots of families are as bad as mine in that! Retty's
family were once large landowners, and so were Dairyman
Billett's. And the Debbyhouses, who now are carters,
were once the De Bayeux family. You find such as I
everywhere; 'tis a feature of our county, and I can't
help it."
"So much the worse for the county."
She took these reproaches in their bulk simply, not in
their particulars; he did not love her as he had loved
her hitherto, and to all else she was indifferent.
They wandered on again in silence. It was said
afterwards that a cottager of Wellbridge, who went out
late that night for a doctor, met two lovers in the
pastures, walking very slowly, without converse, one
behind the other, as in a funeral procession, and the
glimpse that he obtained of their faces seemed to
denote that they were anxious and sad. Returning later,
he passed them again in the same field, progressing
just as slowly, and as regardless of the hour and of
the cheerless night as before. It was only on account
of his preoccupation with his own affairs, and the
illness in his house, that he did not bear in mind the
curious incident, which, however, he recalled a long
while after.
During the interval of the cottager's going and coming,
she had said to her husband----
"I don't see how I can help being the cause of much
misery to you all your life. The river is down there.
I can put an end to myself in it. I am not afraid."
"I don't wish to add murder to my other follies," he
said.
"I will leave something to show that I did it
myself--on account of my shame. They will not blame
you then."
"Don't speak so absurdly--I wish not to hear it. It is
nonsense to have such thoughts in this kind of case,
which is rather one for satirical laughter than for
tragedy. You don't in the least understand the quality
of the mishap. It would be viewed in the light of a
joke by nine-tenths of the world if it were known.
Please oblige me by returning to the house, and going
to bed."
"I will," said she dutifully.
They had rambled round by a road which led to the
well-known ruins of the Cistercian abbey behind the
mill, the latter having, in centuries past, been
attached to the monastic establishment. The mill still
worked on, food being a perennial necessity; the abbey
had perished, creeds being transient. One continually
sees the ministration of the temporary outlasting the
ministration of the eternal. Their walk having been
circuitous they were still not far from the house, and
in obeying his direction she only had to reach the
large stone bridge across the main river, and follow
the road for a few yards. When she got back everything
remained as she had left it, the fire being still
burning. She did not stay downstairs for more than a
minute, but proceeded to her chamber, whither the
luggage had been taken. Here she sat down on the edge
of the bed, looking blankly around, and presently began
to undress. In removing the light towards the bedstead
its rays fell upon the tester of white dimity;
something was hanging beneath it, and she lifted the
candle to see what it was. A bough of mistletoe.
Angel had put it there; she knew that in an instant.
This was the explanation of that mysterious parcel
which it had been so difficult to pack and bring; whose
contents he would not explain to her, saying that time
would soon show her the purpose thereof. In his zest
and his gaiety he had hung it there. How foolish and
inopportune that mistletoe looked now.
Having nothing more to fear, having scarce anything to
hope, for that he would relent there seemed no promise
whatever, she lay down dully. When sorrow ceases to be
speculative sleep sees her opportunity. Among so many
happier moods which forbid repose this was a mood which
welcomed it, and in a few minutes the lonely Tess
forgot existence, surrounded by the aromatic stillness
of the chamber that had once, possibly, been the
bride-chamber of her own ancestry.
Later on that night Clare also retraced his steps to
the house. Entering softly to the sitting-room he
obtained a light, and with the manner of one who had
considered his course he spread his rugs upon the old
horse-hair sofa which stood there, and roughly shaped
it to a sleeping-couch. Before lying down he crept
shoeless upstairs, and listened at the door of her
apartment. Her measured breathing told that she was
sleeping profoundly.
"Thank God!" murmured Clare; and yet he was conscious
of a pang of bitterness at the thought--approximately
true, though not wholly so--that having shifted the
burden of her life to his shoulders she was now
reposing without care.
He turned away to descend; then, irresolute, faced
round to her door again. In the act he caught sight of
one of the d'Urberville dames, whose portrait was
immediately over the entrance to Tess's bedchamber. In
the candlelight the painting was more than unpleasant.
Sinister design lurked in the woman's features, a
concentrated purpose of revenge on the other sex--so it
seemed to him then. The Caroline bodice of the
portrait was low--precisely as Tess's had been when he
tucked it in to show the necklace; and again he
experienced the distressing sensation of a resemblance
between them.
The check was sufficient. He resumed his retreat and
descended.
His air remained calm and cold, his small compressed
mouth indexing his powers of self-control; his face
wearing still that terrible sterile expression which
had spread thereon since her disclosure. It was the
face of a man who was no longer passion's slave, yet
who found no advantage in his enfranchisement. He was
simply regarding the harrowing contingencies of human
experience, the unexpectedness of things. Nothing so
pure, so sweet, so virginal as Tess had seemed possible
all the long while that he had adored her, up to an
hour ago; but
The little less, and what worlds away!
He argued erroneously when he said to himself that her
heart was not indexed in the honest freshness of her
face; but Tess had no advocate to set him right. Could
it be possible, he continued, that eyes which as they
gazed never expressed any divergence from what the
tongue was telling, were yet ever seeing another world
behind her ostensible one, discordant and contrasting?
He reclined on his couch in the sitting-room, and
extinguished the light. The night came in, and took up
its place there, unconcerned and indifferent; the night
which had already swallowed up his happiness, and was
now digesting it listlessly; and was ready to swallow
up the happiness of a thousand other people with as
little disturbance or change of mien.
XXXVI
Clare arose in the light of a dawn that was ashy and
furtive, as though associated with crime. The
fireplace confronted him with its extinct embers; the
spread supper-table, whereon stood the two full
glasses of untasted wine, now flat and filmy; her
vacated seat and his own; the other articles of
furniture, with their eternal look of not being able to
help it, their intolerable inquiry what was to be done?
From above there was no sound; but in a few minutes
there came a knock at the door. He remembered that it
would be the neighbouring cottager's wife, who was to
minister to their wants while they remained here.
The presence of a third person in the house would be
extremely awkward just now, and, being already dressed,
he opened the window and informed her that they could
manage to shift for themselves that morning. She had a
milk-can in her hand, which he told her to leave at the
door. When the dame had gone away he searched in the
back quarters of the house for fuel, and speedily lit a
fire. There was plenty of eggs, butter, bread, and so
on in the larder, and Clare soon had breakfast laid,
his experiences at the dairy having rendered him facile
in domestic preparations. The smoke of the kindled
wood rose from the chimney without like a lotus-headed
column; local people who were passing by saw it, and
thought of the newly-married couple, and envied their
happiness.
Angel cast a final glance round, and then going to the
foot of the stairs, called in a conventional voice----
"Breakfast is ready!"
He opened the front door, and took a few steps in the
morning air. When, after a short space, he came back
she was already in the sitting-room mechanically
readjusting the breakfast things. As she was fully
attired, and the interval since his calling her had
been but two or three minutes, she must have been
dressed or nearly so before he went to summon her. Her
hair was twisted up in a large round mass at the back
of her head, and she had put on one of the new frocks--
a pale blue woollen garment with neck-frillings of
white. Her hands and face appeared to be cold, and she
had possibly been sitting dressed in the bedroom a long
time without any fire. The marked civility of Clare's
tone in calling her seemed to have inspired her, for
the moment, with a new glimmer of hope. But it soon
died when she looked at him.
The pair were, in truth, but the ashes of their former
fires. To the hot sorrow of the previous night had
succeeded heaviness; it seemed as if nothing could
kindle either of them to fervour of sensation any more.
He spoke gently to her, and she replied with a like
undemonstrativeness. At last she came up to him,
looking in his sharply-defined face as one who had no
consciousness that her own formed a visible object also.
"Angel!" she said, and paused, touching him with her
fingers lightly as a breeze, as though she could hardly
believe to be there in the flesh the man who was once
her lover. Her eyes were bright, her pale cheek still
showed its wonted roundness, though half-dried tears
had left glistening traces thereon; and the usually
ripe red mouth was almost as pale as her cheek.
Throbbingly alive as she was still, under the stress of
her mental grief the life beat so brokenly, that a
little further pull upon it would cause real illness,
dull her characteristic eyes, and make her mouth thin.
She looked absolutely pure. Nature, in her fantastic
trickery, had set such a seal of maidenhood upon Tess's
countenance that he gazed at her with a stupefied air.
"Tess! Say it is not true! No, it is not true!"
"It is true."
"Every word?"
"Every word."
He looked at her imploringly, as if he would willingly
have taken a lie from her lips, knowing it to be one,
and have made of it, by some sort of sophistry, a valid
denial. However, she only repeated----
"It is true."
"Is he living?" Angel then asked.
"The baby died."
"But the man?"
"He is alive."
A last despair passed over Clare's face.
"Is he in England?"
"Yes."
He took a few vague steps.
"My position--is this," he said abruptly. "I thought--
any man would have thought--that by giving up
all ambition to win a wife with social standing, with
fortune, with knowledge of the world, I should secure
rustic innocence as surely as I should secure pink
cheeks; but----However, I am no man to reproach you,
and I will not."
Tess felt his position so entirely that the remainder
had not been needed. Therein lay just the distress of
it; she saw that he had lost all round.
"Angel--I should not have let it go on to marriage with
you if I had not known that, after all, there was a
last way out of it for you; though I hoped you would
never----"
Her voice grew husky.
"A last way?"
"I mean, to get rid of me. You CAN get rid of me."
"How?"
"By divorcing me."
"Good heavens--how can you be so simple! How can I
divorce you?"
"Can't you--now I have told you? I thought my
confession would give you grounds for that."
"O Tess--you are too, too--childish--unformed--crude,
I suppose! I don't know what you are. You don't
understand the law--you don't understand!"
"What--you cannot?"
"Indeed I cannot."
A quick shame mixed with the misery upon his listener's
face.
"I thought--I thought," she whispered. "O, now I see
how wicked I seem to you! Believe me--believe me, on
my soul, I never thought but that you could! I hoped
you would not; yet I believed, without a doubt, that
you could cast me off if you were determined, and
didn't love me at--at--all!"
"You were mistaken," he said.
"O, then I ought to have done it, to have done it last
night! But I hadn't the courage. That's just like
me!"
"The courage to do what?"
As she did not answer he took her by the hand.
"What were you thinking of doing?" he inquired.
"Of putting an end to myself."
"When?"
She writhed under this inquisitorial manner of his.
"Last night," she answered.
"Where?"
"Under your mistletoe."
"My good----! How?" he asked sternly.
"I'll tell you, if you won't be angry with me!" she
said, shrinking. "It was with the cord of my box. But
I could not--do the last thing! I was afraid that it
might cause a scandal to your name."
The unexpected quality of this confession, wrung from
her, and not volunteered, shook him perceptibly. But
he still held her, and, letting his glance fall from
her face downwards, he said, "Now, listen to this.
You must not dare to think of such a horrible thing!
How could you! You will promise me as your husband to
attempt that no more."
"I am ready to promise. I saw how wicked it was."
"Wicked! The idea was unworthy of you beyond
description."
"But, Angel," she pleaded, enlarging her eyes in calm
unconcern upon him, "it was thought of entirely on your
account--to set you free without the scandal of the
divorce that I thought you would have to get. I should
never have dreamt of doing it on mine. However, to do
it with my own hand is too good for me, after all.
It is you, my ruined husband, who ought to strike the
blow. I think I should love you more, if that were
possible, if you could bring yourself to do it, since
there's no other way of escape for 'ee. I feel I am so
utterly worthless! So very greatly in the way!"
"Ssh!"
"Well, since you say no, I won't. I have no wish
opposed to yours."
He knew this to be true enough. Since the desperation
of the night her activities had dropped to zero, and
there was no further rashness to be feared.
Tess tried to busy herself again over the
breakfast-table with more or less success, and they sat
down both on the same side, so that their glances did
not meet. There was at first something awkward in
hearing each other eat and drink, but this could not be
escaped; moreover, the amount of eating done was small
on both sides. Breakfast over he rose, and telling her
the hour at which he might be expected to dinner, went
off to the miller's in a mechanical pursuance of the
plan of studying that business, which had been his only
practical reason for coming here.
When he was gone Tess stood at the window, and
presently saw his form crossing the great stone bridge
which conducted to the mill premises. He sank behind
it, crossed the railway beyond, and disappeared. Then,
without a sigh, she turned her attention to the room,
and began clearing the table and setting it in order.
The charwoman soon came. Her presence was at first a
strain upon Tess, but afterwards an alleviation. At
half-past twelve she left her assistant alone in the
kitchen, and, returning to the sitting-room, waited for
the reappearance of Angel's form behind the bridge.
About one he showed himself. Her face flushed,
although he was a quarter of a mile off. She ran to
the kitchen to get the dinner served by the time he
should enter. He went first to the room where they had
washed their hands together the day before, and as he
entered the sitting-room the dish-covers rose from the
dishes as if by his own motion.
"How punctual!" he said.
"Yes. I saw you coming over the bridge," said she.
The meal was passed in commonplace talk of what he had
been doing during the morning at the Abbey Mill, of the
methods of bolting and the old-fashioned machinery,
which he feared would not enlighten him greatly on
modern improved methods, some of it seeming to have
been in use ever since the days it ground for the monks
in the adjoining conventual buildings--now a heap of
ruins. He left the house again in the course of an
hour, coming home at dusk, and occupying himself
through the evening with his papers. She feared she
was in the way, and, when the old woman was gone,
retired to the kitchen, where she made herself busy as
well as she could for more than an hour.
Clare's shape appeared at the door. "You must not work
like this," he said. "You are not my servant; you are
my wife."
She raised her eyes, and brightened somewhat. "I may
think myself that--indeed?" she murmured, in piteous
raillery. "You mean in name! Well, I don't want to be
anything more."
"You MAY think so, Tess! You are. What do you mean?"
"I don't know," she said hastily, with tears in her
accents. "I thought I--because I am not respectable,
I mean. I told you I thought I was not respectable
enough long ago--and on that account I didn't want to
marry you, only--only you urged me!"
She broke into sobs, and turned her back to him. It
would almost have won round any man but Angel Clare.
Within the remote depths of his constitution, so gentle
and affectionate as he was in general, there lay hidden
a hard logical deposit, like a vein of metal in a soft
loam, which turned the edge of everything that
attempted to traverse it. It had blocked his acceptance
of the Church; it blocked his acceptance of Tess.
Moreover, his affection itself was less fire than
radiance, and, with regard to the other sex, when he
ceased to believe he ceased to follow: contrasting in
this with many impressionable natures, who remain
sensuously infatuated with what they intellectually
despise. He waited till her sobbing ceased.
"I wish half the women in England were as respectable
as you," he said, in an ebullition of bitterness
against womankind in general. "It isn't a question of
respectability, but one of principle!"
He spoke such things as these and more of a kindred
sort to her, being still swayed by the antipathetic
wave which warps direct souls with such persistence
when once their vision finds itself mocked by
appearances. There was, it is true, underneath, a back
current of sympathy through which a woman of the world
might have conquered him. But Tess did not think of
this; she took everything as her deserts, and hardly
opened her mouth. The firmness of her devotion to him
was indeed almost pitiful; quick-tempered as she
naturally was, nothing that he could say made her
unseemly; she sought not her own; was not provoked;
thought no evil of his treatment of her. She might
just now have been Apostolic Charity herself returned
to a self-seeking modern world.
This evening, night, and morning were passed precisely
as the preceding ones had been passed. On one, and
only one, occasion did she--the formerly free and
independent Tess--venture to make any advances. It
was on the third occasion of his starting after a meal
to go out to the flour-mill. As he was leaving the
table he said "Goodbye," and she replied in the same
words, at the same time inclining her mouth in the way
of his. He did not avail himself of the invitation,
saying, as he turned hastily aside----
"I shall be home punctually."
Tess shrank into herself as if she had been struck.
Often enough had he tried to reach those lips against
her consent--often had he said gaily that her mouth
and breath tasted of the butter and eggs and milk and
honey on which she mainly lived, that he drew
sustenance from them, and other follies of that sort.
But he did not care for them now. He observed her
sudden shrinking, and said gently--
"You know, I have to think of a course. It was
imperative that we should stay together a little while,
to avoid the scandal to you that would have resulted
from our immediate parting. But you must see it is
only for form's sake."
"Yes," said Tess absently.
He went out, and on his way to the mill stood still,
and wished for a moment that he had responded yet more
kindly, and kissed her once at least.
Thus they lived through this despairing day or two; in
the same house, truly; but more widely apart than
before they were lovers. It was evident to her that he
was, as he had said, living with paralyzed activities,
in his endeavour to think of a plan of procedure. She
was awe-strikin to discover such determination under
such apparent flexibility. His consistency was, indeed,
too cruel. She no longer expected forgiveness now.
More than once she thought of going away from him
during his absence at the mill; but she feared that
this, instead of benefiting him, might be the means of
hampering and humiliating him yet more if it should
become known.
Meanwhile Clare was meditating, verily. His thought
had been unsuspended; he was becoming ill with
thinking; eaten out with thinking, withered by
thinking; scourged out of all his former pulsating
flexuous domesticity. He walked about saying to
himself, "What's to be done--what's to be done?" and
by chance she overheard him. It caused her to break
the reserve about their future which had hitherto
prevailed.
"I suppose--you are not going to live with me--long,
are you, Angel?" she asked, the sunk corners of her
mouth betraying how purely mechanical were the means by
which she retained that expression of chastened calm
upon her face.
"I cannot" he said, "without despising myself, and what
is worse, perhaps, despising you. I mean, of course,
cannot live with you in the ordinary sense. At
present, whatever I feel, I do not despise you. And,
let me speak plainly, or you may not see all my
difficulties. How can we live together while that man
lives?--he being your husband in nature, and not I.
If he were dead it might be different.... Besides, that's
not all the difficulty; it lies in another
consideration--one bearing upon the future of other
people than ourselves. Think of years to come, and
children being born to us, and this past matter getting
known--for it must get known. There is not an
uttermost part of the earth but somebody comes from it
or goes to it from elsewhere. Well, think of wretches
of our flesh and blood growing up under a taunt which
they will gradually get to feel the full force of with
their expanding years. What an awakening for them!
What a prospect! Can you honestly say 'Remain' after
contemplating this contingency? Don't you think we had
better endure the ills we have than fly to others?"
Her eyelids, weighted with trouble, continued drooping
as before.
"I cannot say 'Remain,'" she answered, "I cannot; I had
not thought so far."
Tess's feminine hope--shall we confess it?--had been so
obstinately recuperative as to revive in her
surreptitious visions of a domiciliary intimacy
continued long enough to break down his coldness even
against his judgement. Though unsophisticated in the
usual sense, she was not incomplete; and it would have
denoted deficiency of womanhood if she had not
instinctively known what an argument lies in
propinquity. Nothing else would serve her, she knew,
if this failed. It was wrong to hope in what was of
the nature of strategy, she said to herself: yet that
sort of hope she could not extinguish. His last
representation had now been made, and it was, as she
said, a new view. She had truly never thought so far
as that, and his lucid picture of possible offspring
who would scorn her was one that brought deadly
convictions to an honest heart which was humanitarian
to its centre. Sheer experience had already taught her
that, in some circumstances, there was one thing better
than to lead a good life, and that was to be saved from
leading any life whatever. Like all who have been
previsioned by suffering, she could, in the words of
M. Sully-Prudhomme, hear a penal sentence in the fiat,
"You shall be born," particularly if addressed to
potential issue of hers.
Yet such is the vulpine slyness of Dame Nature, that,
till now, Tess had been hoodwinked by her love for
Clare into forgetting it might result in vitalizations
that would inflict upon others what she had bewailed as
misfortune to herself.
She therefore could not withstand his argument. But
with the self-combating proclivity of the
supersensitive, an answer thereto arose in Clare's own
mind, and he almost feared it. It was based on her
exceptional physical nature; and she might have used it
promisingly. She might have added besides: "On an
Australian upland or Texan plain, who is to know or
care about my misfortunes, or to reproach me or you?"
Yet, like the majority of women, she accepted the
momentary presentment as if it were the inevitable.
And she may have been right. The intuitive heart of
woman knoweth not only its own bitterness, but its
husband's, and even if these assumed reproaches were
not likely to be addressed to him or to his by
strangers, they might have reached his ears from his
own fastidious brain.
It was the third day of the estrangement. Some might
risk the odd paradox that with more animalism he would
have been the nobler man. We do not say it. Yet
Clare's love was doubtless ethereal to a fault,
imaginative to impracticability. With these natures,
corporal presence is something less appealing than
corporal absence; the latter creating an ideal presence
that conveniently drops the defects of the real. She
found that her personality did not plead her cause so
forcibly as she had anticipated. The figurative phrase
was true: she was another woman than the one who had
excited his desire.
"I have thought over what you say," she remarked to
him, moving her forefinger over the tablecloth, her
other hand, which bore the ring that mocked them both,
supporting her forehead. "It is quite true all of it;
it must be. You must go away from me."
"But what can you do?"'
"I can go home."
Clare had not thought of that.
"Are you sure?" he inquired.
"Quite sure. We ought to part, and we may as well get
it past and done. You once said that I was apt to win
men against their better judgement; and if I am
constantly before your eyes I may cause you to change
your plans in opposition to your reason and wish; and
afterwards your repentance and my sorrow will be
terrible."
"And you would like to go home?" he asked.
"I want to leave you, and go home."
"Then it shall be so."
Though she did not look up at him, she started. There
was a difference between the proposition and the
covenant which she had felt only too quickly.
"I feared it would come to this," she murmured, her
countenance meekly fixed. "I don't complain, Angel,
I--I think it best. What you said has quite convinced
me. Yes, though nobody else should reproach me if we
should stay together, yet somewhen, years hence, you
might get angry with me for any ordinary matter, and
knowing what you do of my bygones you yourself might be
tempted to say words, and they might be overheard,
perhaps by my own children. O, what only hurts me now
would torture and kill me then! I will go--tomorrow."
"And I shall not stay here. Though I didn't like to
initiate it, I have seen that it was advisable we
should part--at least for a while, till I can better
see the shape that things have taken, and can write to
you."
Tess stole a glance at her husband. He was pale, even
tremulous; but, as before, she was appalled by the
determination revealed in the depths of this gentle
being she had married--the will to subdue the grosser
to the subtler emotion, the substance to the
conception, the flesh to the spirit. Propensities,
tendencies, habits, were as dead leaves upon the
tyrannous wind of his imaginative ascendency.
He may have observed her look, for he explained--
"I think of people more kindly when I am away from
them"; adding cynically, "God knows; perhaps we will
shake down together some day, for weariness; thousands
have done it!"
That day he began to pack up, and she went upstairs and
began to pack also. Both knew that it was in their two
minds that they might part the next morning for ever,
despite the gloss of assuaging conjectures thrown over
their processing because they were of the sort to whom
any parting which has an air of finality is a torture.
He knew, and she knew, that, though the fascination
which each had exercised over the other--on her part
independently of accomplishments--would probably in
the first days of their separation be even more potent
than ever, time must attenuate that effect; the
practical arguments against accepting her as a
housemate might pronounce themselves more strongly in
the boreal light of a remoter view. Moreover, when two
people are once parted--have abandoned a common
domicile and a common environment--new growths
insensibly bud upward to fill each vacated place;
unforeseen accidents hinder intentions, and old plans
are forgotten.
XXXVII
Midnight came and passed silently, for there was
nothing to announce it in the Valley of the Froom.
Not long after one o'clock there was a slight creak in
the darkened farmhouse once the mansion of the
d'Urbervilles. Tess, who used the upper chamber, heard
it and awoke. It had come from the corner step of the
staircase, which, as usual, was loosely nailed. She
saw the door of her bedroom open, and the figure of her
husband crossed the stream of moonlight with a
curiously careful tread. He was in his shirt and
trousers only, and her first flush of joy died when she
perceived that his eyes were fixed in an unnatural
stare on vacancy. When he reached the middle of the
room he stood still and murmured in tones of
indescribable sadness--
"Dead! dead! dead!"
Under the influence of any strongly-disturbing force
Clare would occasionally walk in his sleep, and even
perform strange feats, such as he had done on the night
of their return from market just before their marriage,
when he re-enacted in his bedroom his combat with the
man who had insulted her. Tess saw that continued
mental distress had wrought him into that
somnambulistic state now.
Her loyal confidence in him lay so deep down in her
heart, that, awake or asleep, he inspired her with no
sort of personal fear. If he had entered with a pistol
in his hand he would scarcely have disturbed her trust
in his protectiveness.
Clare came close, and bent over her. "Dead, dead,
dead!" he murmured.
After fixedly regarding her for some moments with the
same gaze of unmeasurable woe he bent lower, enclosed
her in his arms, and rolled her in the sheet as in a
shroud. Then lifting her from the bed with as much
respect as one would show to a dead body, he carried
her across the room, murmuring----
"My poor, poor Tess--my dearest, darling Tess! So
sweet, so good, so true!"
The words of endearment, withheld so severely in his
waking hours, were inexpressibly sweet to her forlorn
and hungry heart. If it had been to save her weary
life she would not, by moving or struggling, have put
an end to the position she found herself in. Thus she
lay in absolute stillness, scarcely venturing to
breathe, and, wondering what he was going to do with
her, suffered herself to be borne out upon the landing.
"My wife--dead, dead!" he said.
He paused in his labours for a moment to lean with her
against the banister. Was he going to throw her down?
Self-solicitude was near extinction in her, and in the
knowledge that he had planned to depart on the morrow,
possibly for always, she lay in his arms in this
precarious position with a sense rather of luxury than
of terror. If they could only fall together, and both
be dashed to pieces, how fit, how desirable.
However, he did not let her fall, but took advantage of
the support of the handrail to imprint a kiss upon her
lips--lips in the daytime scorned. Then he clasped
her with a renewed firmness of hold, and descended the
staircase. The creak of the loose stair did not awaken
him, and they reached the ground-floor safely. Freeing
one of his hands from his grasp of her for a moment, he
slid back the door-bar and passed out, slightly
striking his stockinged toe against the edge of the
door. But this he seemed not to mind, and, having room
for extension in the open air, he lifted her against
his shoulder, so that he could carry her with ease, the
absence of clothes taking much from his burden. Thus
he bore her off the premises in the direction of the
river a few yards distant.
His ultimate intention, if he had any, she had not yet
divined; and she found herself conjecturing on the
matter as a third person might have done. So easefully
had she delivered her whole being up to him that it
pleased her to think he was regarding her as his
absolute possession, to dispose of as he should choose.
It was consoling, under the hovering terror of
tomorrow's separation, to feel that he really
recognized her now as his wife Tess, and did not cast
her off, even if in that recognition he went so far as
to arrogate to himself the right of harming her.
Ah! now she knew what he was dreaming of--that Sunday
morning when he had borne her along through the water
with the other dairymaids, who had loved him nearly as
much as she, if that were possible, which Tess could
hardly admit. Clare did not cross the bridge with her,
but proceeding several paces on the same side towards
the adjoining mill, at length stood still on the brink
of the river.
Its waters, in creeping down these miles of meadowland,
frequently divided, serpentining in purposeless curves,
looping themselves around little islands that had no
name, returning and re-embodying themselves as a broad
main stream further on. Opposite the spot to which he
had brought her was such a general confluence, and the
river was proportionately voluminous and deep. Across
it was a narrow foot-bridge; but now the autumn flood
had washed the handrail away, leaving the bare plank
only, which, lying a few inches above the speeding
current, formed a giddy pathway for even steady heads;
and Tess had noticed from the window of the house in
the daytime young men walking across upon it as a feat
in balancing. Her husband had possibly observed the
same performance; anyhow, he now mounted the plank,
and, sliding one foot forward, advanced along it.
Was he going to drown her? Probably he was. The spot
was lonely, the river deep and wide enough to make such
a purpose easy of accomplishment. He might drown her
if he would; it would be better than parting tomorrow
to lead severed lives.
The swift stream raced and gyrated under them, tossing,
distorting, and splitting the moon's reflected face.
Spots of froth travelled past, and intercepted weeds
waved behind the piles. If they could both fall
together into the current now, their arms would be so
tightly clasped together that they could not be saved;
they would go out of the world almost painlessly, and
there would be no more reproach to her, or to him for
marrying her. His last half-hour with her would have
been a loving one, while if they lived till he awoke
his daytime aversion would return, and this hour would
remain to be contemplated only as a transient dream.
The impulse stirred in her, yet she dared not indulge
it, to make a movement that would have precipitated
them both into the gulf. How she valued her own life
had been proved; but his--she had no right to tamper
with it. He reached the other side with her in safety.
Here they were within a plantation which formed the
Abbey grounds, and taking a new hold of her he went
onward a few steps till they reached the ruined choir
of the Abbey-church. Against the north wall was the
empty stone coffin of an abbot, in which every tourist
with a turn for grim humour was accustomed to stretch
himself. In this Clare carefully laid Tess. Having
kissed her lips a second time he breathed deeply, as if
a greatly desired end were attained. Clare then lay
down on the ground alongside, when he immediately fell
into the deep dead slumber of exhaustion, and remained
motionless as a log. The spurt of mental excitement
which had produced the effort was now over.
Tess sat up in the coffin. The night, though dry and
mild for the season, was more than sufficiently cold to
make it dangerous for him to remain here long, in his
half-clothed state. If he were left to himself he
would in all probability stay there till the morning,
and be chilled to certain death. She had heard of such
deaths after sleep-walking. But how could she dare to
awaken him, and let him know what he had been doing,
when it would mortify him to discover his folly in
respect of her? Tess, however, stepping out of her
stone confine, shook him slightly, but was unable to
arouse him without being violent. It was indispensable
to do something, for she was beginning to shiver, the
sheet being but a poor protection. Her excitement had
in a measure kept her warm during the few minutes'
adventure; but that beatific interval was over.
It suddenly occurred to her to try persuasion; and
accordingly she whispered in his ear, with as much
firmness and decision as she could summon----
"Let us walk on, darling," at the same time taking him
suggestively by the arm. To her relief, he
unresistingly acquiesced; her words had apparently
thrown him back into his dream, which thenceforward
seemed to enter on a new phase, wherein he fancied she
had risen as a spirit, and was leading him to Heaven.
Thus she conducted him by the arm to the stone bridge
in front of their residence, crossing which they stood
at the manor-house door. Tess's feet were quite bare,
and the stones hurt her, and chilled her to the bone;
but Clare was in his woollen stockings, and appeared to
feel no discomfort.
There was no further difficulty. She induced him to
lie down on his own sofa bed, and covered him up
warmly, lighting a temporary fire of wood, to dry any
dampness out of him. The noise of these attentions she
thought might awaken him, and secretly wished that they
might. But the exhaustion of his mind and body was
such that he remained undisturbed.
As soon as they met the next morning Tess divined that
Angel knew little or nothing of how far she had been
concerned in the night's excursion, though, as regarded
himself, he may have been aware that he had not lain
still. In truth, he had awakened that morning from a
sleep deep as annihilation; and during those first few
moments in which the brain, like a Samson shaking
himself, is trying its strength, he had some dim notion
of an unusual nocturnal proceeding. But the realities
of his situation soon displaced conjecture on the other
subject.
He waited in expectancy to discern some mental
pointing; he knew that if any intention of his,
concluded over-night, did not vanish in the light of
morning, it stood on a basis approximating to one of
pure reason, even if initiated by impulse of feeling;
that it was so far, therefore, to be trusted. He thus
beheld in the pale morning light the resolve to
separate from her; not as a hot and indignant instinct,
but denuded of the passionateness which had made it
scorch and burn; standing in its bones; nothing but a
skeleton, but none the less there. Clare no longer
hesitated.
At breakfast, and while they were packing the few
remaining articles, he showed his weariness from the
night's effort so unmistakeably that Tess was on the
point of revealing all that had happened; but the
reflection that it would anger him, grieve him,
stultify him, to know that he had instinctively
manifested a fondness for her of which his common-sense
did not approve; that his inclination had compromised
his dignity when reason slept, again deterred her. It
was too much like laughing at a man when sober for his
erratic deeds during intoxication.
It just crossed her mind, too, that he might have a
faint recollection of his tender vagary, and was
disinclined to allude to it from a conviction that she
would take amatory advantage of the opportunity it gave
her of appealing to him anew not to go.
He had ordered by letter a vehicle from the nearest
town, and soon after breakfast it arrived. She saw in
it the beginning of the end--the temporary end, at
least, for the revelation of his tenderness by the
incident of the night raised dreams of a possible
future with him. The luggage was put on the top, and
the man drove them off, the miller and the old
waiting-woman expressing some surprise at their
precipitate departure, which Clare attributed to his
discovery that the mill-work was not of the modern kind
which he wished to investigate, a statement that was
true so far as it went. Beyond this there was nothing
in the manner of their leaving to suggest a FIASCO, or
that they were not going together to visit friends.
Their route lay near the dairy from which they had
started with such solemn joy in each other a few days
back, and as Clare wished to wind up his business with
Mr Crick, Tess could hardly avoid paying Mrs Crick a
call at the same time, unless she would excite
suspicion of their unhappy state.
To make the call as unobtrusive as possible they left
the carriage by the wicket leading down from the high
road to the dairy-house, and descended the track on
foot, side by side. The withy-bed had been cut, and
they could see over the stumps the spot to which Clare
had followed her when he pressed her to be his wife; to
the left the enclosure in which she had been fascinated
by his harp; and far away behind the cowstalls the mead
which had been the scene of their first embrace. The
gold of the summer picture was now gray, the colours
mean, the rich soil mud, and the river cold.
Over the barton-gate the dairyman saw them, and came
forward, throwing into his face the kind of jocularity
deemed appropriate in Talbothays and its vicinity on
the re-appearance of the newly-married. Then Mrs
Crick emerged from the house, and several others of
their old acquaintance, though Marian and Retty did not
seem to be there.
Tess valiantly bore their sly attacks and friendly
humours, which affected her far otherwise than they
supposed. In the tacit agreement of husband and wife
to keep their estrangement a secret they behaved as
would have been ordinary. And then, although she would
rather there had been no word spoken on the subject,
Tess had to hear in detail the story of Marian and
Retty. The later had gone home to her father's and
Marian had left to look for employment elsewhere.
They feared she would come to no good.
To dissipate the sadness of this recital Tess went and
bade all her favourite cows goodbye, touching each of
them with her hand, and as she and Clare stood side by
side at leaving, as if united body and soul, there
would have been something peculiarly sorry in their
aspect to one who should have seen it truly; two limbs
of one life, as they outwardly were, his arm touching
hers, her skirts touching him, facing one way, as
against all the dairy facing the other, speaking in
their adieux as "we", and yet sundered like the poles.
Perhaps something unusually stiff and embarrassed in
their attitude, some awkwardness in acting up to their
profession of unity, different from the natural shyness
of young couples, may have been apparent, for when they
were gone Mrs Crick said to her husband----
"How onnatural the brightness of her eyes did seem, and
how they stood like waxen images and talked as if they
were in a dream! Didn't it strike 'ee that 'twas so?
Tess had always sommat strange in her, and she's not
now quite like the proud young bride of a well-be-doing
man."
They re-entered the vehicle, and were driven along the
roads towards Weatherbury and Stagfoot Lane, till they
reached the Lane inn, where Clare dismissed the fly and
man. They rested here a while, and entering the Vale
were next driven onward towards her home by a stranger
who did not know their relations. At a midway point,
when Nuttlebury had been passed, and where there were
cross-roads, Clare stopped the conveyance and said to
Tess that if she meant to return to her mother's house
it was here that he would leave her. As they could not
talk with freedom in the driver's presence he asked her
to accompany him for a few steps on foot along one of
the branch roads; she assented, and directing the man
to wait a few minutes they strolled away.
"Now, let us understand each other," he said gently.
"There is no anger between us, though there is that
which I cannot endure at present. I will try to bring
myself to endure it. I will let you know where I go to
as soon as I know myself. And if I can bring myself to
bear it--if it is desirable, possible--I will come to
you. But until I come to you it will be better that
you should not try to come to me."
The severity of the decree seemed deadly to Tess; she
saw his view of her clearly enough; he could regard her
in no other light than that of one who had practised
gross deceit upon him. Yet could a woman who had done
even what she had done deserve all this? But she could
contest the point with him no further. She simply
repeated after him his own words.
"Until you come to me I must not try to come to you?"
"Just so."
"May I write to you?"
"O yes--if you are ill, or want anything at all.
I hope that will not be the case; so that it may happen
that I write first to you."
"I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know
best what my punishment ought to be; only--only--don't
make it more than I can bear!"
That was all she said on the matter. If Tess had been
artful, had she made a scene, fainted, wept
hysterically, in that lonely lane, notwithstanding the
fury of fastidiousness with which he was possessed, he
would probably not have withstood her. But her mood of
long-suffering made his way easy for him, and she
herself was his best advocate. Pride, too, entered
into her submission--which perhaps was a symptom of
that reckless acquiescence in chance too apparent in
the whole d'Urberville family--and the many effective
chords which she could have stirred by an appeal were
left untouched.
The remainder of their discourse was on practical
matters only. He now handed her a packet containing a
fairly good sum of money, which he had obtained from
his bankers for the purpose. The brilliants, the
interest in which seemed to be Tess's for her life only
(if he understood the wording of the will), he advised
her to let him send to a bank for safety; and to this
she readily agreed.
These things arranged he walked with Tess back to the
carriage, and handed her in. The coachman was paid and
told where to drive her. Taking next his own bag and
umbrella--the sole articles he had brought with him
hitherwards--he bade her goodbye; and they parted there
and then.
The fly moved creepingly up a hill, and Clare watched
it go with an unpremeditated hope that Tess would look
out of the window for one moment. But that she never
thought of doing, would not have ventured to do, lying
in a half-dead faint inside. Thus he beheld her
recede, and in the anguish of his heart quoted a line
from a poet, with peculiar emendations of his own--
God's NOT in his heaven: all's WRONG with the world!
When Tess had passed over the crest of the hill he
turned to go his own way, and hardly knew that he loved
her still.
XXXVIII
As she drove on through Blackmoor Vale, and the
landscape of her youth began to open around her, Tess
aroused herself from her stupor. Her first thought was
how would she be able to face her parents?
She reached a turnpike-gate which stood upon the
highway to the village. It was thrown open by a
stranger, not by the old man who had kept it for many
years, and to whom she had been known; he had probably
left on New Year's Day, the date when such changes were
made. Having received no intelligence lately from her
home, she asked the turnpike-keeper for news.
"Oh--nothing, miss," he answered. "Marlott is Marlott
still. Folks have died and that. John Durbeyfield,
too, hev had a daughter married this week to a
gentleman-farmer; not from John's own house, you know;
they was married elsewhere; the gentleman being of that
high standing that John's own folk was not considered
well-be-doing enough to have any part in it, the
bridegroom seeming not to know how't have been
discovered that John is a old and ancient nobleman
himself by blood, with family skillentons in their own
vaults to this day, but done out of his property in the
time o' the Romans. However, Sir John, as we call 'n
now, kept up the wedding-day as well as he could, and
stood treat to everybody in the parish; and John's wife
sung songs at The Pure Drop till past eleven o'clock."
Hearing this, Tess felt so sick at heart that she could
not decide to go home publicly in the fly with her
luggage and belongings. She asked the turnpike-keeper
if she might deposit her things at his house for a
while, and, on his offering no objection, she dismissed
her carriage, and went on to the village alone by a
back lane.
At sight of her father's chimney she asked herself how
she could possibly enter the house? Inside that
cottage her relations were calmly supposing her far
away on a wedding-tour with a comparatively rich man,
who was to conduct her to bouncing prosperity; while
here she was, friendless, creeping up to the old door
quite by herself, with no better place to go to in the
world.
She did not reach the house unobserved. Just by the
garden-hedge she was met by a girl who knew her--one
of the two or three with whom she had been intimate at
school. After making a few inquiries as to how Tess
came there, her friend, unheeding her tragic look,
interrupted with--
"But where's thy gentleman, Tess?"
Tess hastily explained that he had been called away on
business, and, leaving her interlocutor, clambered over
the garden-hedge, and thus made her way to the house.
As she went up the garden-path she heard her mother
singing by the back door, coming in sight of which she
perceived Mrs Durbeyfield on the doorstep in the act of
wringing a sheet. Having performed this without
observing Tess, she went indoors, and her daughter
followed her.
The washing-tub stood in the same old place on the same
old quarter-hogshead, and her mother, having thrown the
sheet aside, was about to plunge her arms in anew.
"Why--Tess!--my chil'--I thought you was
married!--married really and truly this time--we sent
the cider----"
"Yes, mother; so I am."
"Going to be?"
"No--I am married."
"Married! Then where's thy husband?"
"Oh, he's gone away for a time."
"Gone away! When was you married, then? The day you
said?"
"Yes, Tuesday, mother."
"And now 'tis on'y Saturday, and he gone away?"
"Yes, he's gone."
"What's the meaning o' that? 'Nation seize such
husbands as you seem to get, say I!"
"Mother!" Tess went across to Joan Durbeyfield, laid
her face upon the matron's bosom, and burst into sobs.
"I don't know how to tell 'ee, mother! You said to me,
and wrote to me, that I was not to tell him. But I did
tell him--I couldn't help it--and he went away!"
"O you little fool--you little fool!" burst out Mrs
Durbeyfield, splashing Tess and herself in her
agitation. "My good God! that ever I should ha' lived
to say it, but I say it again, you little fool!"
Tess was convulsed with weeping, the tension of so many
days having relaxed at last.
"I know it--I know--I know!" she gasped through her
sobs. "But, O my mother, I could not help it! He was
so good--and I felt the wickedness of trying to blind
him as to what had happened! If--if--it were to be
done again--I should do the same. I could not--I dared
not--so sin--against him!"
"But you sinned enough to marry him first!"
"Yes, yes; that's where my misery do lie! But I
thought he could get rid o' me by law if he were
determined not to overlook it. And O, if you knew--if
you could only half know how I loved him--how anxious I
was to have him--and how wrung I was between caring so
much for him and my wish to be fair to him!"
Tess was so shaken that she could get no further, and
sank a helpless thing into a chair.
"Well, well; what's done can't be undone! I'm sure I
don't know why children o' my bringing forth should all
be bigger simpletons than other people's--not to know
better than to blab such a thing as that, when he
couldn't ha' found it out till too late!" Here Mrs
Durbeyfield began shedding tears on her own account as
a mother to be pitied. "What your father will say I
don't know," she continued; "for he's been talking
about the wedding up at Rolliver's and The Pure Drop
every day since, and about his family getting back to
their rightful position through you--poor silly
man!--and now you've made this mess of it! The
Lord-a-Lord!"
As if to bring matters to a focus, Tess's father was
heard approaching at that moment. He did not, however,
enter immediately, and Mrs Durbeyfield said that she
would break the bad news to him herself, Tess keeping
out of sight for the present. After her first burst of
disappointment Joan began to take the mishap as she had
taken Tess's original trouble, as she would have taken
a wet holiday or failure in the potato-crop; as a thing
which had come upon them irrespective of desert or
folly; a chance external impingement to be borne with;
not a lesson.
Tess retreated upstairs and beheld casually that the
beds had been shifted, and new arrangements made. Her
old bed had been adapted for two younger children.
There was no place here for her now.
The room below being unceiled she could hear most of
what went on there. Presently her father entered,
apparently carrying in a live hen. He was a
foot-haggler now, having been obliged to sell his
second horse, and he travelled with his basket on his
arm. The hen had been carried about this morning as it
was often carried, to show people that he was in his
work, though it had lain, with its legs tied, under the
table at Rolliver's for more than an hour.
"We've just had up a story about----" Durbeyfield
began, and thereupon related in detail to his wife a
discussion which had arisen at the inn about the
clergy, originated by the fact of his daughter having
married into a clerical family. "They was formerly
styled 'sir', like my own ancestry," he said, "though
nowadays their true style, strictly speaking, is
'clerk' only." As Tess had wished that no great
publicity should be given to the event, he had
mentioned no particulars. He hoped she would remove
that prohibition soon. He proposed that the couple
should take Tess's own name, d'Urberville, as
uncorrupted. It was better than her husbands's. He
asked if any letter had come from her that day.
Then Mrs Durbeyfield informed him that no letter had
come, but Tess unfortunately had come herself.
When at length the collapse was explained to him a
sullen mortification, not usual with Durbeyfield,
overpowered the influence of the cheering glass.
Yet the intrinsic quality of the event moved his touchy
sensitiveness less than its conjectured effect upon the
minds of others.
"To think, now, that this was to be the end o't!" said
Sir John. "And I with a family vault under that there
church of Kingsbere as big as Squire Jollard's
ale-cellar, and my folk lying there in sixes and
sevens, as genuine county bones and marrow as any
recorded in history. And now to be sure what they
fellers at Rolliver's and The Pure Drop will say to me!
How they'll squint and glane, and say, 'This is yer
mighty match is it; this is yer getting back to the
true level of yer forefathers in King Norman's time!'
I feel this is too much, Joan; I shall put an end to
myself, title and all--I can bear it no longer! ... But
she can make him keep her if he's married her?"
"Why, yes. But she won't think o' doing that."
"D'ye think he really have married her?--or is it like
the first----"
Poor Tess, who had heard as far as this, could not bear
to hear more. The perception that her word could be
doubted even here, in her own parental house, set her
mind against the spot as nothing else could have done.
How unexpected were the attacks of destiny! And if her
father doubted her a little, would not neighbours and
acquaintance doubt her much? O, she could not live
long at home!
A few days, accordingly, were all that she allowed
herself here, at the end of which time she received a
short note from Clare, informing her that he had gone
to the North of England to look at a farm. In her
craving for the lustre of her true position as his
wife, and to hide from her parents the vast extent of
the division between them, she made use of this letter
as her reason for again departing, leaving them under
the impression that she was setting out to join him.
Still further to screen her husband from any imputation
on unkindness to her, she took twenty-five of the fifty
pounds Clare had given her, and handed the sum over to
her mother, as if the wife of a man like Angel Clare
could well afford it, saying that it was a slight
return for the trouble and humiliation she had brought
upon them in years past. With this assertion of her
dignity she bade them farewell; and after that there
were lively doing in the Durbeyfield household for some
time on the strength of Tess's bounty, her mother
saying, and, indeed, believing, that the rupture which
had arisen between the young husband and wife had
adjusted itself under their strong feeling that they
could not live apart from each other.
XXXIX
It was three weeks after the marriage that Clare found
himself descending the hill which led to the well-known
parsonage of his father. With his downward course the
tower of the church rose into the evening sky in a
manner of inquiry as to why he had come; and no living
person in the twilighted town seemed to notice him,
still less to expect him. He was arriving like a
ghost, and the sound of his own footsteps was almost an
encumbrance to be got rid of.
The picture of life had changed for him. Before this
time he had known it but speculatively; now he thought
he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did
not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him
no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but
in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz
Museum, and with the leer of a study by Van Beers.
His conduct during these first weeks had been desultory
beyond description. After mechanically attempting to
pursue his agricultural plans as though nothing unusual
had happened, in the manner recommended by the great
and wise men of all ages, he concluded that very few of
those great and wise men had ever gone so far outside
themselves as to test the feasibility of their counsel.
"This is the chief thing: be not perturbed," said the
Pagan moralist. That was just Clare's own opinion.
But he was perturbed. "Let not your heart be troubled,
neither let it be afraid," said the Nazarene. Clare
chimed in cordially; but his heart was troubled all the
same. How he would have liked to confront those two
great thinkers, and earnestly appeal to them as
fellow-man to fellow-men, and ask them to tell him
their method!
His mood transmuted itself into a dogged indifference
till at length he fancied he was looking on his own
existence with the passive interest of an outsider.
He was embittered by the conviction that all this
desolation had been brought about by the accident of
her being a d'Urberville. When he found that Tess came
of that exhausted ancient line, and was not of the new
tribes from below, as he had fondly dreamed, why had he
not stoically abandoned her, in fidelity to his
principles? This was what he had got by apostasy, and
his punishment was deserved.
Then he became weary and anxious, and his anxiety
increased. He wondered if he had treated her unfairly.
He ate without knowing that he ate, and drank without
tasting. As the hours dropped past, as the motive of
each act in the long series of bygone days presented
itself to his view, he perceived how intimately the
notion of having Tess as a dear possession was mixed up
with all his schemes and words and ways.
In going hither and thither he observed in the
outskirts of a small town a red-and-blue placard
setting forth the great advantages of the Empire of
Brazil as a field for the emigrating agriculturist.
Land was offered there on exceptionally advantageous
terms. Brazil somewhat attracted him as a new idea.
Tess could eventually join him there, and perhaps in
that country of contrasting scenes and notions and
habits the conventions would not be so operative which
made life with her seem impracticable to him here.
In brief he was strongly inclined to try Brazil,
especially as the season for going thither was just at
hand.
With this view he was returning to Emminster to
disclose his plan to his parents, and to make the best
explanation he could make of arriving without Tess,
short of revealing what had actually separated them.
As he reached the door the new moon shone upon his
face, just as the old one had done in the small hours
of that morning when he had carried his wife in his
arms across the river to the graveyard of the monks;
but his face was thinner now.
Clare had given his parents no warning of his visit,
and his arrival stirred the atmosphere of the Vicarage
as the dive of the kingfisher stirs a quiet pool. His
father and mother were both in the drawing-room, but
neither of his brothers was now at home. Angel
entered, and closed the door quietly behind him.
"But--where's your wife, dear Angel?" cried his mother.
"How you surprise us!"
"She is at her mother's--temporarily. I have come home
rather in a hurry because I've decided to go to
Brazil."
"Brazil! Why they are all Roman Catholics there
surely!"
"Are they? I hadn't thought of that."
But even the novelty and painfulness of his going to a
Papistical land could no displace for long Mr and Mrs
Clare's natural interest in their son's marriage.
"We had your brief note three weeks ago announcing that
it had taken place," said Mrs Clare, "and your father
sent your godmother's gift to her, as you know. Of
course it was best that none of us should be present,
especially as you preferred to marry her from the
dairy, and not at her home, wherever that may be. It
would have embarrassed you, and given us no pleasure.
Your bothers felt that very strongly. Now it is done we
do not complain, particularly if she suits you for the
business you have chosen to follow instead of the
ministry of the Gospel. ... Yet I wish I could have
seen her first, Angel, or have known a little more
about her. We sent her no present of our own, not
knowing what would best give her pleasure, but you must
suppose it only delayed. Angel, there is no irritation
in my mind or your father's against you for this
marriage; but we have thought it much better to reserve
our liking for your wife till we could see her. And
now you have not brought her. It seems strange. What
had happened?"
He replied that it had been thought best by them that
she should to go her parents' home for the present,
whilst he came there.
"I don't mind telling you, dear mother," he said, "that
I always meant to keep her away from this house till I
should feel she could some with credit to you. But
this idea of Brazil is quite a recent one. If I do go
it will be unadvisable for me to take her on this my
first journey. She will remain at her mother's till I
come back."
"And I shall not see her before you start?"
He was afraid they would not. His original plan had
been, as he had said, to refrain from bringing her
there for some little while--not to wound their
prejudices--feelings--in any way; and for other reasons
he had adhered to it. He would have to visit home in
the course of a year, if he went out at once; and it
would be possible for them to see her before he started
a second time--with her.
A hastily prepared supper was brought in, and Clare
made further exposition of his plans. His mother's
disappointment at not seeing the bride still remained
with her. Clare's late enthusiasm for Tess had
infected her through her maternal sympathies, till she
had almost fancied that a good thing could come out of
Nazareth--a charming woman out of Talbothays Dairy.
She watched her son as he ate.
"Cannot you describe her? I am sure she is very
pretty, Angel."
"Of that there can be no question!" he said, with a
zest which covered its bitterness.
"And that she is pure and virtuous goes without
question?"
"Pure and virtuous, of course, she is."
"I can see her quite distinctly. You said the other
day that she was fine in figure; roundly built; had
deep red lips like Cupid's bow; dark eyelashes and
brows, an immense rope of hair like a ship's cable; and
large eyes violety-bluey-blackish."
"I did, mother."
"I quite see her. And living in such seclusion she
naturally had scarce ever seen any young man from the
world without till she saw you."
"Scarcely."
"You were her first love?"
"Of course."
"There are worse wives than these simple, rosy-mouthed,
robust girls of the farm. Certainly I could have
wished--well, since my son is to be an agriculturist,
it is perhaps but proper that his wife should have been
accustomed to an outdoor life."
His father was less inquisitive; but when the time came
for the chapter from the Bible which was always read
before evening prayers, the Vicar observed to Mrs
Clare----
"I think, since Angel has come, that it will be more
appropriate to read the thirty-first of Proverbs than
the chapter which we should have had in the usual
course of our reading?"
"Yes, certainly," said Mrs Clare. "The words of King
Lemuel" (she could cite chapter and verse as well as
her husband). "My dear son, your father has decided to
read us the chapter in Proverbs in praise of a virtuous
wife. We shall not need to be reminded to apply the
words to the absent one. May Heaven shield her in all
her ways!"
A lump rose in Clare's throat. The portable lectern
was taken out from the corner and set in the middle of
the fireplace, the two old servants came in, and
Angel's father began to read at the tenth verse of the
aforesaid chapter----
"'Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far
above rubies. She riseth while it is yet night, and
giveth meat to her household. She girdeth her loins
with strength and strengtheneth her arms. She
perceiveth that her merchandise is good; her candle
goeth not out by night. She looketh well to the ways
of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband
also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done
virtuously, but thou excellest them all.'"
When prayers were over, his mother said----
"I could not help thinking how very aptly that chapter
your dear father read applied, in some of its
particulars, to the woman you have chosen. The perfect
woman, you see, was a working woman; not an idler; not
a fine lady; but one who used her hands and her head
and her heart for the good of others. 'Her children
arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he
praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but
she excelleth them all.' Well, I wish I could have
seen her, Angel. Since she is pure and chaste she
would have been refined enough for me."
Clare could bear this no longer. His eyes were full of
tears, which seemed like drops of molten lead. He bade
a quick goodnight to these sincere and simple souls
whom he loved so well; who knew neither the world, the
flesh, nor the devil in their own hearts; only as
something vague and external to themselves. He went to
his own chamber.
His mother followed him, and tapped at his door.
Clare opened it to discover her standing without, with
anxious eyes.
"Angel," she asked, "is there something wrong that you
do away so soon? I am quite sure you are not
yourself."
"I am not, quite, mother," said he.
"About her? Now, my son, I know it that--I know it is
about her! Have you quarrelled in these three weeks?"
"We have not exactly quarrelled," he said. "But we
have had a difference----"
"Angel--is she a young woman whose history will bear
investigation?"
With a mother's instinct Mrs Clare had put her finger
on the kind of trouble that would cause such a disquiet
as seemed to agitate her son.
"She is spotless!" he replied; and felt that if it had
sent him to eternal hell there and then he would have
told that lie.
"Then never mind the rest. After all, there are few
purer things in nature then an unsullied country maid.
Any crudeness of manner which may offend your more
educated sense at first, will, I am sure, disappear
under the influence or your companionship and tuition."
Such terrible sarcasm of blind magnanimity brought home
to Clare the secondary perception that he had utterly
wrecked his career by this marriage, which had not been
among his early thoughts after the disclosure. True,
on his own account he cared very little about his
career; but he had wished to make it at least a
respectable one on account of his parents and brothers.
And now as he looked into the candle its flame dumbly
expressed to him that it was made to shine on sensible
people, and that it abhorred lighting the face of a
dupe and a failure.
When his agitation had cooled he would be at moments
incensed with his poor wife for causing a situation in
which he was obliged to practise deception on his
parents. He almost talked to her in his anger, as if
she had been in the room. And then her cooing voice,
plaintive in expostulation, disturbed the darkness, the
velvet touch of her lips passed over his brow, and he
could distinguish in the air the warmth of her breath.
This night the woman of his belittling deprecations was
thinking how great and good her husband was. But over
them both there hung a deeper shade than the shade
which Angel Clare perceived, namely, the shade of his
own limitations. With all his attempted independence of
judgement this advanced and well-meaning young man, a
sample product of the last five-and-twenty years, was
yet the slave to custom and conventionality when
surprised back into her early teachings. No prophet
had told him, and he was not prophet enough to tell
himself, that essentially this young wife of his was as
deserving of the praise of King Lemuel as any other
woman endowed with the same dislike of evil, her moral
value having to be reckoned not by achievement but by
tendency. Moreover, the figure near at hand suffers on
such occasion, because it shows up its sorriness
without shade; while vague figures afar off are
honoured, in that their distance makes artistic virtues
of their stains. In considering what Tess was not, he
overlooked what she was, and forgot that the defective
can be more than the entire.
XL
At breakfast Brazil was the topic, and all endeavoured
to take a hopeful view of Clare's proposed experiment
with that country's soil, notwithstanding the
discouraging reports of some farm-labourers who had
emigrated thither and returned home within the twelve
months. After breakfast Clare went into the little
town to wind up such trifling matters as he was
concerned with there, and to get from the local bank
all the money he possessed. On his way back he
encountered Miss Mercy Chant by the church, from whose
walls she seemed to be a sort of emanation. She was
carrying an armful of Bibles for her class, and such
was her view of life that events which produced
heartache in others wrought beatific smiles upon
her--an enviable result, although, in the opinion of
Angel, it was obtained by a curiously unnatural
sacrifice of humanity to mysticism.
She had learnt that he was about to leave England, and
observed what an excellent and promising scheme it
seemed to be.
"Yes; it is a likely scheme enough in a commercial
sense, no doubt," he replied. "But, my dear Mercy, it
snaps the continuity of existence. Perhaps a cloister
would be preferable."
"A cloister! O, Angel Clare!"
"Well?"
"Why, you wicked man, a cloister implies a monk, and a
monk Roman Catholicism."
"And Roman Catholicism sin, and sin damnation. Thou
are in a parlous state, Angel Clare."
"I glory in my Protestantism!" she said severely.
Then Clare, thrown by sheer misery into one of the
demoniacal moods in which a man does despite to his
true principles, called her close to him, and
fiendishly whispered in her ear the most heterodox
ideas he could think of. His momentary laughter at the
horror which appeared on her fair face ceased when it
merged in pain and anxiety for his welfare.
"Dear Mercy," he said, "you must forgive me. I think I
am going crazy!"
She thought that he was; and thus the interview ended,
and Clare re-entered the Vicarage. With the local
banker he deposited the jewels till happier days should
arise. He also paid into the bank thirty pounds--to be
sent to Tess in a few months, as she might require; and
wrote to her at her parents' home in Blackmoor Vale to
inform her of what he had done. This amount, with the
sum he had already placed in her hands--about fifty
pounds--he hoped would be amply sufficient for her
wants just at present, particularly as in an emergency
she had been directed to apply to his father.
He deemed it best not to put his parents into
communication with her by informing them of her
address; and, being unaware of what had really happened
to estrange the two, neither his father nor his mother
suggested that he should do so. During the day he left
the parsonage, for what he had to complete he wished to
get done quickly.
As the last duty before leaving this part of England it
was necessary for him to call at the Wellbridge
farmhouse, in which he had spent with Tess the first
three days of their marriage, the trifle of rent having
to be paid, the key given up of the rooms they had
occupied, and two or three small articles fetched away
that they had left behind. It was under this roof that
the deepest shadow ever thrown upon his life had
stretched its gloom over him. Yet when he had unlocked
the door of the sitting-room and looked into it, the
memory which returned first upon him was that of their
happy arrival on a similar afternoon, the first fresh
sense of sharing a habitation conjointly, the first
meal together, the chatting by the fire with joined
hands.
The farmer and his wife were in the field at the moment
of his visit, and Clare was in the rooms alone for some
time. Inwardly swollen with a renewal of sentiment that
he had not quite reckoned with, he went upstairs to her
chamber, which had never been his. The bed was smooth
as she had made it with her own hands on the morning of
leaving. The mistletoe hung under the tester just as
he had placed it. Having been there three or four
weeks it was turning colour, and the leaves and berries
were wrinkled. Angel took it down and crushed it into
the grate. Standing there he for the first time
doubted whether his course in this conjecture had been
a wise, much less a generous, one. But had he not been
cruelly blinded? In the incoherent multitude of his
emotions he knelt down at the bedside wet-eyed. "O
Tess! If you had only told me sooner, I would have
forgiven you!" he mourned.
Hearing a footstep below he rose and went to the top of
the stairs. At the bottom of the flight he saw a woman
standing, and on her turning up her face recognized the
pale, dark-eyed Izz Huett.
"Mr Clare," she said, "I've called to see you and Mrs
Clare, and to inquire if ye be well. I thought you
might be back here again."
This was a girl whose secret he had guessed, but who
had not yet guessed his; an honest girl who loved
him--one who would have made as good, or nearly as
good, a practical farmer's wife as Tess.
"I am here alone," he said; "we are not living here
now." Explaining why he had come, he asked, "Which way
are you going home, Izz?"
"I have no home at Talbothays Dairy now, sir," she
said.
"Why is that?"
Izz looked down.
"It was so dismal there that I left! I am staying out
this way." She pointed in a contrary direction, the
direction in which he was journeying.
"Well--are you going there now? I can take you if you
wish for a lift." Her olive complexion grew richer in
hue.
"Thank 'ee, Mr Clare," she said.
He soon found the farmer, and settled the account for
his rent and the few other items which had to be
considered by reason of the sudden abandonment of the
lodgings. On Clare's return to his horse and gig Izz
jumped up beside him.
"I am going to leave England, Izz," he said, as they
drove on. "Going to Brazil."
"And do Mrs Clare like the notion of such a journey?"
she asked.
"She is not going at present--say for a year or so.
I am going out to reconnoitre--to see what life there
is like."
They sped along eastward for some considerable
distance, Izz making no observation.
"How are the others?" he inquired. "How is Retty?"
"She was in a sort of nervous state when I zid her
last; and so thin and hollow-cheeked that 'a do seem in
a decline. Nobody will ever fall in love wi' her any
more," said Izz absently.
"And Marian?"
Izz lowered her voice.
"Marian drinks."
"Indeed!"
"Yes. The dairyman has got rid of her."
"And you!"
"I don't drink, and I bain't in a decline. But--I am
no great things at singing afore breakfast now!"
"How is that? Do you remember how neatly you used to
turn ''Twas down in Cupid's Gardens' and 'The Tailor's
Breeches' at morning milking?"
"Ah, yes! When you first came, sir, that was. Not
when you had been there a bit."
"Why was that falling-off?"
Her black eyes flashed up to his face for one moment by
way of answer.
"Izz!--how weak of you--for such as I!" he said, and
fell into reverie. "Then--suppose I had asked YOU to
marry me?"
"If you had I should have said 'Yes', and you would
have married a woman who loved 'ee!"
"Really!"
"Down to the ground!" she whispered vehemently. "O my
God! did you never guess it till now!" By-and-by they
reached a branch road to a village.
"I must get down. I live out there," said Izz abruptly,
never having spoken since her avowal.
Clare slowed the horse. He was incensed against his
fate, bitterly disposed towards social ordinances; for
they had cooped him up in a corner, out of which there
was no legitimate pathway. Why not be revenged on
society by shaping his future domesticities loosely,
instead of kissing the pedagogic rod of convention in
this ensnaring manner?
"I am going to Brazil alone, Izz," said he. "I have
separated from my wife for personal, not voyaging,
reason. I may never live with her again. I may not be
able to love you; but--will you go with me instead of
her?"
"You truly wish me to go?"
"I do. I have been badly used enough to wish for
relief. And you at least love me disinterestedly."
"Yes--I will go," said Izz, after a pause.
"You will? You know what it means, Izz?"
"It means that I shall live with you for the time you
are over there--that's good enough for me."
"Remember, you are not to trust me in morals now. But
I ought to remind you that it will be wrong-doing in
the eyes of civilization--Western civilization, that is
to say."
"I don't mind that; no woman do when it comes to agony-
point, and there's no other way!"
"Then don't get down, but sit where you are."
He drove past the cross-roads, one mile, two miles,
without showing any signs of affection.
"You love me very, very much, Izz?" he suddenly asked.
"I do--I have said I do! I loved you all the time we
was at the dairy together!"
"More than Tess?"
She shook her head.
"No," she murmured, "not more than she."
"How's that?"
"Because nobody could love 'ee more than Tess did! ...
She would have laid down her life for 'ee. I could do
no more."
Like the prophet on the top of Peor, Izz Huett would
fain have spoken perversely at such a moment, but the
fascination exercised over her rougher nature by Tess's
character compelled her to grace.
Clare was silent; his heart had risen at these
straightforward words from such an unexpected
unimpeachable quarter. In his throat was something as
if a sob had solidified there. His ear repeated, "SHE
WOULD HAVE LAID DOWN HER LIFE FOR 'EE. I COULD DO NO
MORE!"
"Forget our idle talk, Izz," he said, turning the
horse's head suddenly. "I don't know what I've been
saying! I will now drive you back to where your lane
branches off."
"So much for honesty towards 'ee! O--how can I bear
it--how can I--how can I!"
Izz Huett burst into wild tears, and beat her forehead
as she saw what she had done.
"Do you regret that poor little act of justice to an
absent one? O, Izz, don't spoil it by regret!"
She stilled herself by degrees.
"Very well, sir. Perhaps I didn't know what I was
saying, either, wh--when I agreed to go! I wish--what
cannot be!"
"Because I have a loving wife already."
"Yes, yes! You have!"
They reached the corner of the lane which they had
passed half an hour earlier, and she hopped down.
"Izz--please, please forget my momentary levity!" he
cried. "It was so ill-considered, so ill-advised!"
"Forget it? Never, never! O, it was no levity to me!"
He felt how richly he deserved the reproach that the
wounded cry conveyed, and, in a sorrow that was
inexpressible, leapt down and took her hand.
"Well, but, Izz, we'll part friends, anyhow? You don't
know what I've had to bear!"
She was a really generous girl, and allowed no further
bitterness to mar their adieux.
"I forgive 'ee, sir!" she said.
"Now, Izz," he said, while she stood beside him there,
forcing himself to the mentor's part he was far from
feeling; "I want you to tell Marian when you see her
that she is to be a good woman, and not to give way to
folly. Promise that, and tell Retty that there are more
worthy men than I in the world, that for my sake she is
to act wisely and well--remember the words--wisely and
well--for my sake. I send this message to them as a
dying man to the dying; for I shall never see them
again. And you, Izzy, you have saved me by your honest
words about my wife from an incredible impulse towards
folly and treachery. Women may be bad, but they are
not so bad as men in these things! On that one account
I can never forget you. Be always the good and sincere
girl you have hitherto been; and think of me as a
worthless lover, but a faithful friend. Promise."
She gave the promise.
"Heaven bless and keep you, sir. Goodbye!"
He drove on; but no sooner had Izz turned into the
lane, and Clare was out of sight, than she flung
herself down on the bank in a fit of racking anguish;
and it was with a strained unnatural face that she
entered her mother's cottage late that night. Nobody
ever was told how Izz spent the dark hours that
intervened between Angel Clare's parting from her and
her arrival home.
Clare, too, after bidding the girl farewell, was
wrought to aching thoughts and quivering lips. But his
sorrow was not for Izz. That evening he was within a
feather-weight's turn of abandoning his road to the
nearest station, and driving across that elevated
dorsal line of South Wessex which divided him from his
Tess's home. It was neither a contempt for her nature,
nor the probable state of her heart, which deterred
him.
No; it was a sense that, despite her love, as
corroborated by Izz's admission, the facts had not
changed. If he was right at first, he was right now.
And the momentum of the course on which he had embarked
tended to keep him going in it, unless diverted by a
stronger, more sustained force than had played upon him
this afternoon. He could soon come back to her. He
took the train that night for London, and five days
after shook hands in farewell of his brothers at the
port of embarkation.
XLI
From the foregoing events of the winter-time let us
press on to an October day, more than eight months
subsequent to the parting of Clare and Tess. We
discover the latter in changed conditions; instead of a
bride with boxes and trunks which others bore, we see
her a lonely woman with a basket and a bundle in her
own porterage, as at an earlier time when she was no
bride; instead of the ample means that were projected
by her husband for her comfort through this
probationary period, she can produce only a flattened
purse.
After again leaving Marlott, her home, she had got
through the spring and summer without any great stress
upon her physical powers, the time being mainly spent
in rendering light irregular service at dairy-work near
Port-Bredy to the west of the Blackmoor Valley, equally
remote from her native place and from Talbothays. She
preferred this to living on his allowance. Mentally
she remained in utter stagnation, a condition which the
mechanical occupation rather fostered than checked.
Her consciousness was at that other dairy, at that
other season, in the presence of the tender lover who
had confronted her there--he who, the moment she had
grasped him to keep for her own, had disappeared like a
shape in a vision.
The dairy-work lasted only till the milk began to
lessen, for she had not met with a second regular
engagement as at Talbothays, but had done duty as a
supernumerary only. However, as harvest was now
beginning, she had simply to remove from the pasture to
the stubble to find plenty of further occupation, and
this continued till harvest was done.
Of the five-and-twenty pounds which had remained to her
of Clare's allowance, after deducting the other half of
the fifty as a contribution to her parents for the
trouble and expense to which she had put them, she had
as yet spent but little. But there now followed an
unfortunate interval of wet weather, during which she
was obliged to fall back upon her sovereigns.
She could not bear to let them go. Angel had put them
into her hand, had obtained them bright and new from
his bank for her; his touch had consecrated them to
souvenirs of himself--they appeared to have had as yet
no other history than such as was created by his and
her own experiences--and to disperse them was like
giving away relics. But she had to do it, and one by
one they left her hands.
She had been compelled to send her mother her address
from time to time, but she concealed her circumstances.
When her money had almost gone a letter from her mother
reached her. Joan stated that they were in dreadful
difficulty; the autumn rains had gone through the
thatch of the house, which required entire renewal; but
this could not be done because the previous thatching
had never been paid for. New rafters and a new ceiling
upstairs also were required, which, with the previous
bill, would amount to a sum of twenty pounds. As her
husband was a man of means, and had doubtless returned
by this time, could she not send them the money?
Tess had thirty pounds coming to her almost immediately
from Angel's bankers, and, the case being so
deplorable, as soon as the sum was received she sent
the twenty as requested. Part of the remainder she was
obliged to expend in winter clothing, leaving only a
nominal sum for the whole inclement season at hand.
When the last pound had gone, a remark of Angel's that
whenever she required further resources she was to
apply to his father, remained to be considered.
But the more Tess thought of the step the more
reluctant was she to take it. The same delicacy,
pride, false shame, whatever it may be called, on
Clare's account, which had led her to hide from her own
parents the prolongation of the estrangement, hindered
her owning to his that she was in want after the fair
allowance he had left her. They probably despised her
already; how much more they would despise her in the
character of a mendicant! The consequence was that by
no effort could the parson's daughter-in-law bring
herself to let him know her state.
Her reluctance to communicate with her husband's
parents might, she thought, lessen with the lapse of
time; but with her own the reverse obtained. On her
leaving their house after the short visit subsequent to
her marriage they were under the impression that she
was ultimately going to join her husband; and from that
time to the present she had done nothing to disturb
their belief that she was awaiting his return in
comfort, hoping against hope that his journey to Brazil
would result in a short stay only, after which he would
come to fetch her, or that he would write for her to
join him; in any case that they would soon present a
united front to their families and the world. This
hope she still fostered. To let her parents know that
she was a deserted wife, dependent, now that she had
relieved their necessities, on her own hands for a
living, after the ECLAT of a marriage which was to
nullify the collapse of the first attempt, would be too
much indeed.
The set of brilliants returned to her mind. Where
Clare had deposited them she did not know, and it
mattered little, if it were true that she could only
use and not sell them. Even were they absolutely hers
it would be passing mean to enrich herself by a legal
title to them which was not essentially hers at all.
Meanwhile her husband's days had been by no means free
from trial. At this moment he was lying ill of fever
in the clay lands near Curitiba in Brazil, having been
drenched with thunder-storms and persecuted by other
hardships, in common with all the English farmers and
farm-labourers who, just at this time, were deluded
into going thither by the promises of the Brazilian
Government, and by the baseless assumption that those
frames which, ploughing and sowing on English uplands,
had resisted all the weathers to whose moods they had
been born, could resist equally well all the weathers
by which they were surprised on Brazilian plains.
To return. Thus it happened that when the last of
Tess's sovereigns had been spent she was unprovided
with others to take their place, while on account of
the season she found it increasingly difficult to get
employment. Not being aware of the rarity of
intelligence, energy, health, and willingness in any
sphere of life, she refrained from seeking an indoor
occupation; fearing towns, large houses, people of
means and social sophistication, and of manners other
than rural. From that direction of gentility Black
Care had come. Society might be better than she
supposed from her slight experience of it. But she had
no proof of this, and her instinct in the circumstances
was to avoid its purlieus.
The small dairies to the west, beyond Port-Bredy, in
which she had served as supernumerary milkmaid during
the spring and summer required no further aid. Room
would probably have been made for her at Talbothays,
if only out of sheer compassion; but comfortable as her
life had been there she could not go back. The
anti-climax would be too intolerable; and her return
might bring reproach upon her idolized husband. She
could not have borne their pity, and their whispered
remarks to one another upon her strange situation;
though she would almost have faced a knowledge of her
circumstances by every individual there, so long as her
story had remained isolated in the mind of each. It
was the interchange of ideas about her that made her
sensitiveness wince. Tess could not account for this
distinction; she simply knew that she felt it.
She was now on her way to an upland farm in the centre
of the county, to which she had been recommended by a
wandering letter which had reached her from Marian.
Marian had somehow heard that Tess was separated from
her husband--probably through Izz Huett--and the
good-natured and now tippling girl, deeming Tess in
trouble, had hastened to notify to her former friend
that she herself had gone to this upland spot after
leaving the dairy, and would like to see her there,
where there was room for other hands, if it was really
true that she worked again as of old.
With the shortening of the days all hope of obtaining
her husband's forgiveness began to leave her; and there
was something of the habitude of the wild animal in the
unreflecting instinct with which she rambled on--
disconnecting herself by littles from her eventful past
at every step, obliterating her identity, giving no
thought to accidents or contingencies which might make
a quick discovery of her whereabouts by others of
importance to her own happiness, if not to theirs.
Among the difficulties of her lonely position not the
least was the attention she excited by her appearance,
a certain bearing of distinction, which she had caught
from Clare, being superadded to her natural
attractiveness. Whilst the clothes lasted which had
been prepared for her marriage, these casual glances of
interest caused her no inconvenience, but as soon as
she was compelled to don the wrapper of a fieldwoman,
rude words were addressed to her more than once; but
nothing occurred to cause her bodily fear till a
particular November afternoon.
She had preferred the country west of the River Brit to
the upland farm for which she was now bound, because,
for one thing, it was nearer to the home of her
husband's father; and to hover about that region
unrecognized, with the notion that she might decide to
call at the Vicarage some day, gave her pleasure. But
having once decided to try the higher and drier levels,
she pressed back eastward, marching afoot towards the
village of Chalk-Newton, where she meant to pass the
night.
The lane was long and unvaried, and, owing to the rapid
shortening of the days, dusk came upon her before she
was aware. She had reached the top of a hill down
which the lane stretched its serpentine length in
glimpses, when she heard footsteps behind her back,
and in a few moments she was overtaken by a man.
He stepped up alongside Tess and said--
"Goodnight, my pretty maid": to which she civilly
replied.
The light still remaining in the sky lit up her face,
though the landscape was nearly dark. The man turned
and stared hard at her.
"Why, surely, it is the young wench who was at
Trantridge awhile--young Squire d'Urberville's friend?
I was there at that time, though I don't live there
now."
She recognized in him the well-to-do boor whom Angel
had knocked down at the inn for addressing her
coarsely. A spasm of anguish shot through her, and she
returned him no answer.
"Be honest enough to own it, and that what I said in
the town was true, though your fancy-man was so up
about it--hey, my sly one? You ought to beg my pardon
for that blow of his, considering."
Still no answer came from Tess. There seemed only one
escape for her hunted soul. She suddenly took to her
heels with the speed of the wind, and, without looking
behind her, ran along the road till she came to a gate
which opened directly into a plantation. Into this she
plunged, and did not pause till she was deep enough in
its shade to be safe against any possibility of
discovery.
Under foot the leaves were dry, and the foliage of some
holly bushes which grew among the deciduous trees was
dense enough to keep off draughts. She scraped
together the dead leaves till she had formed them into
a large heap, making a sort of nest in the middle.
Into this Tess crept.
Such sleep as she got was naturally fitful; she fancied
she heard strange noises, but persuaded herself that
they were caused by the breeze. She thought of her
husband in some vague warm clime on the other side of
the globe, while she was here in the cold. Was there
another such a wretched being as she in the world?
Tess asked herself; and, thinking of her wasted life,
said, "All is vanity." She repeated the words
mechanically, till she reflected that this was a most
inadequate thought for modern days. Solomon had
thought as far as that more than two thousand years
ago; she herself, though not in the van of thinkers,
had got much further. If all were only vanity, who
would mind it? All was, alas, worse than
vanity--injustice, punishment, exaction, death. The
wife of Angel Clare put her hand in her brow, and felt
its curve, and the edges of her eye-sockets perceptible
under the soft skin, and thought as she did so that a
time would come when that bone would be bare. "I wish
it were now," she said.
In the midst of these whimsical fancies she heard a new
strange sound among the leaves. It might be the wind;
yet there was scarcely any wind. Sometimes it was a
palpitation, sometimes a flutter; sometimes it was a
sort of gasp or gurgle. Soon she was certain that the
noises came from wild creatures of some kind, the more
so when, originating in the boughs overhead, they were
followed by the fall of a heavy body upon the ground.
Had she been ensconced here under other and more
pleasant conditions she would have become alarmed; but,
outside humanity, she had at present no fear.
Day at length broke in the sky. When it had been day
aloft for some little while it became day in the wood.
Directly the assuring and prosaic light of the world's
active hours had grown strong she crept from under her
hillock of leaves, and looked around boldly. Then she
perceived what had been going on to disturb her. The
plantation wherein she had taken shelter ran down at
this spot into a peak, which ended it hitherward,
outside the hedge being arable ground. Under the trees
several pheasants lay about, their rich plumage dabbled
with blood; some were dead, some feebly twitching a
wing, some staring up at the sky, some pulsating
quickly, some contorted, some stretched out--all of
them writhing in agony, except the fortunate ones whose
tortures had ended during the night by the inability of
nature to bear more.
Tess guessed at once the meaning of this. The birds
had been driven down into this corner the day before by
some shooting-party; and while those that had dropped
dead under the shot, or had died before nightfall, had
been searched for and carried off, many badly wounded
birds had escaped and hidden themselves away, or risen
among the thick boughs, where they had maintained their
position till they grew weaker with loss of blood in
the night-time, when they had fallen one by one as she
had heard them.
She had occasionally caught glimpses of these men in
girlhood, looking over hedges, or peeping through
bushes, and pointing their guns, strangely accoutred,
a bloodthirsty light in their eyes. She had been told
that, rough and brutal as they seemed just then, they
were not like this all the year round, but were, in
fact, quite civil persons save during certain weeks of
autumn and winter, when, like the inhabitants of the
Malay Peninsula, they ran amuck, and made it their
purpose to destroy life--in this case harmless
feathered creatures, brought into being by artificial
means solely to gratify these propensities--at once so
unmannerly and so unchivalrous towards their weaker
fellows in Nature's teeming family.
With the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred
sufferers as much as for herself, Tess's first thought
was to put the still living birds out of their torture,
and to this end with her own hands she broke the necks
of as many as she could find, leaving them to lie where
she had found them till the game-keepers should
come--as they probably would come--to look for them a
second time.
"Poor darlings--to suppose myself the most miserable
being on earth in the sight o' such misery as yours!"
she exclaimed, her tears running down as she killed the
birds tenderly. "And not a twinge of bodily pain about
me! I be not mangled, and I be not bleeding, and I
have two hands to feed and clothe me." She was ashamed
of herself for her gloom of the night, based on nothing
more tangible than a sense of condemnation under an
arbitrary law of society which had no foundation in
Nature.
XLII
It was now broad day, and she started again, emerging
cautiously upon the highway. But there was no need for
caution; not a soul was at hand, and Tess went onward
with fortitude, her recollection of the birds' silent
endurance of their night of agony impressing upon her
the relativity of sorrows and the tolerable nature of
her own, if she could once rise high enough to despise
opinion. But that she could not do so long as it was
held by Clare.
She reached Chalk-Newton, and breakfasted at an inn,
where several young men were troublesomely
complimentary to her good looks. Somehow she felt
hopeful, for was it not possible that her husband also
might say these same things to her even yet? She was
bound to take care of herself on the chance of it, and
keep off these casual lovers. To this end Tess
resolved to run no further risks from her appearance.
As soon as she got out of the village she entered a
thicket and took from her basket one of the oldest
field-gowns, which she had never put on even at the
dairy--never since she had worked among the stubble at
Marlott. She also, by a felicitous thought, took a
handkerchief from her bundle and tied it round her face
under her bonnet, covering her chin and half her cheeks
and temples, as if she were suffering from toothache.
Then with her little scissors, by the aid of a pocket
looking-glass, she mercilessly nipped her eyebrows off,
and thus insured against aggressive admiration she went
on her uneven way.
"What a mommet of a maid!" said the next man who met
her to a companion.
Tears came into her eyes for very pity of herself as
she heard him.
"But I don't care!" she said. "O no--I don't care!
I'll always be ugly now, because Angel is not here, and
I have nobody to take care of me. My husband that was
is gone away, and never will love me any more; but I
love him just the same, and hate all other men, and
like to make 'em think scornfully of me!"
Thus Tess walks on; a figure which is part of the
landscape; a fieldwoman pure and simple, in winter
guise; a gray serge cape, a red woollen cravat, a stuff
skirt covered by a whitey-brown rough wrapper, and
buff-leather gloves. Every thread of that old attire
has become faded and thin under the stroke of
raindrops, the burn of sunbeams, and the stress of
winds. There is no sign of young passion in her
now----
The maiden's mouth is cold
. . . . . . . .
Fold over simple fold
Binding her head.
Inside this exterior, over which the eye might have
roved as over a thing scarcely percipient, almost
inorganic, there was the record of a pulsing life which
had learnt too well, for its years, of the dust and
ashes of things, of the cruelty of lust and the
fragility of love.
Next day the weather was bad, but she trudged on, the
honesty, directness, and impartiality of elemental
enmity disconcerting her but little. Her object being
a winter's occupation and a winter's home, there was no
time to lose. Her experience of short hirings had been
such that she was determined to accept no more.
Thus she went forward from farm to farm in the
direction of the place whence Marian had written to
her, which she determined to make use of as a last
shift only, its rumoured stringencies being the reverse
of tempting. First she inquired for the lighter kinds
of employment, and, as acceptance in any variety of
these grew hopeless, applied next for the less light,
till, beginning with the dairy and poultry tendance
that she liked best, she ended with the heavy and
course pursuits which she liked least--work on arable
land: work of such roughness, indeed, as she would
never have deliberately voluteered for.
Towards the second evening she reached the irregular
chalk table-land or plateau, bosomed with semi-globular
tumuli--as if Cybele the Many-breasted were supinely
extended there--which stretched between the valley of
her birth and the valley of her love.
Here the air was dry and cold, and the long cart-roads
were blown white and dusty within a few hours after
rain. There were few trees, or none, those that would
have grown in the hedges being mercilessly plashed down
with the quickset by the tenant-farmers, the natural
enemies of tree, bush, and brake. In the middle
distance ahead of her she could see the summits of
Bulbarrow and of Nettlecombe Tout, and they seemed
friendly. They had a low and unassuming aspect from
this upland, though as approached on the other side
from Blackmoor in her childhood they were as lofty
bastions against the sky. Southerly, at many miles'
distance, and over the hills and ridges coastward, she
could discern a surface like polished steel: it was the
English Channel at a point far out towards France.
Before her, in a slight depression, were the remains of
a village. She had, in fact, reached Flintcomb-Ash,
the place of Marian's sojourn. There seemed to be no
help for it; hither she was doomed to come. The
stubborn soil around her showed plainly enough that the
kind of labour in demand here was of the roughest kind;
but it was time to rest from searching, and she
resolved to stay, particularly as it began to rain.
At the entrance to the village was a cottage whose gable
jutted into the road, and before applying for a lodging
she stood under its shelter, and watched the evening
close in.
"Who would think I was Mrs Angel Clare!" she said.
The wall felt warm to her back and shoulders, and she
found that immediately within the gable was the cottage
fireplace, the heat of which came through the bricks.
She warmed her hands upon them, and also put her
cheek--red and moist with the drizzle--against their
comforting surface. The wall seemed to be the only
friend she had. She had so little wish to leave it
that she could have stayed there all night.
Tess could hear the occupants of the cottage--gathered
together after their day's labour--talking to each
other within, and the rattle of their supper-plates was
also audible. But in the village-street she had seen
no soul as yet. The solitude was at last broken by the
approach of one feminine figure, who, though the
evening was cold, wore the print gown and the
tilt-bonnet of summer time. Tess instinctively thought
it might be Marian, and when she came near enough to be
distinguishable in the gloom surely enough it was she.
Marian was even stouter and redder in the face than
formerly, and decidedly shabbier in attire. At any
previous period of her existence Tess would hardly have
cared to renew the acquaintance in such conditions; but
her loneliness was excessive, and she responded readily
to Marian's greeting.
Marian was quite respectful in her inquiries, but
seemed much moved by the fact that Tess should still
continue in no better condition than at first; though
she had dimly heard of the separation.
"Tess--Mrs Clare--the dear wife of dear he! And is it
really so bad as this, my child? Why is your cwomely
face tied up in such a way? Anybody been beating 'ee?
Not HE?"
"No, no, no! I merely did it not to be clipsed or
colled, Marian."
She pulled off in disgust a bandage which could suggest
such wild thoughts.
"And you've got no collar on" (Tess had been accustomed
to wear a little white collar at the dairy).
"I know it, Marian."
"You've lost it travelling."
"I've not lost it. The truth is, I don't care anything
about my looks; and so I didn't put it on."
"And you don't wear your wedding-ring?"
"Yes, I do; but not in public. I wear it round my neck
on a ribbon. I don't wish people to think who I am by
marriage, or that I am married at all; it would be so
awkward while I lead my present life."
Marian paused.
"But you BE a gentleman's wife; and it seems hardly
fair that you should live like this!"
"O yes it is, quite fair; though I am very unhappy."
"Well, well. HE married you--and you can be unhappy!"
"Wives are unhappy sometimes; from no fault of their
husbands--from their own."
"You've no faults, deary; that I'm sure of. And he's
none. So it must be something outside ye both."
"Marian, dear Marian, will you do me a good turn
without asking questions? My husband has gone abroad,
and somehow I have overrun my allowance, so that I have
to fall back upon my old work for a time. Do not call
me Mrs Clare, but Tess, as before. Do they want a hand
here?"
"O yes; they'll take one always, because few care to
come. "Tis a starve-acre place. Corn and swedes are
all they grow. Though I be here myself, I feel 'tis a
pity for such as you to come."
"But you used to be as good a dairywoman as I."
"Yes; but I've got out o' that since I took to drink.
Lord, that's the only comfort I've got now! If you
engage, you'll be set swede-hacking. That's what I be
doing; but you won't like it."
"O--anything! Will you speak for me?"
"You will do better by speaking for yourself."
"Very well. Now, Marian, remember--nothing about HIM,
if I get the place. I don't wish to bring his name
down to the dirt."
Marian, who was really a trustworthy girl though of
coarser grain than Tess, promised anything she asked.
"This is pay-night," she said, "and if you were to come
with me you would know at once. I be real sorry that
you are not happy; but 'tis because he's away, I know.
You couldn't be unhappy if he were here, even if he
gie'd ye no money--even if used you like a drudge."
"That's true; I could not!"
They walked on together, and soon reached the
farmhouse, which was almost sublime in its dreariness.
There was not a tree within sight; there was not, at
this season, a green pasture--nothing but fallow and
turnips everywhere; in large fields divided by hedges
plashed to unrelieved levels.
Tess waited outside the door of the farmhouse till the
group of workfolk had received their wages, and then
Marian introduced her. The farmer himself, it
appeared, was not at home, but his wife, who
represented him this evening, made no objection to
hiring Tess, on her agreeing to remain till Old
Lady-Day. Female field-labour was seldom offered now,
and its cheapness made it profitable for tasks which
women could perform as readily as men.
Having signed the agreement, there was nothing more for
Tess to do at present than to get a lodging, and she
found one in the house at whose gable-wall she had
warmed herself. It was a poor subsistence that she had
ensured, but it would afford a shelter for the winter
at any rate.
That night she wrote to inform her parents of her new
address, in case a letter should arrive at Marlott from
her husband. But she did not tell them of the
sorriness of her situation: it might have brought
reproach upon him.
XLIII
There was no exaggeration in Marian's definition of
Flintcomb-Ash farm as a starve-acre place. The single
fat thing on the soil was Marian herself; and she was
an importation. Of the three classes of village, the
village cared for by its lord, the village cared for by
itself, and the village uncared for either by itself or
by its lord (in other words, the village of a resident
squires's tenantry, the village of free or
copy-holders, and the absentee-owner's village, farmed
with the land) this place, Flintcomb-Ash, was the
third.
But Tess set to work. Patience, that blending of moral
courage with physical timidity, was now no longer a
minor feature in Mrs Angel Clare; and it sustained her.
The swede-field in which she and her companion were set
hacking was a stretch of a hundred odd acres, in one
patch, on the highest ground of the farm, rising above
stony lanchets or lynchets--the outcrop of siliceous
veins in the chalk formation, composed of myriads of
loose white flints in bulbous, cusped, and phallic
shapes. The upper half of each turnip had been eaten
off by the live-stock, and it was the business of the
two women to grub up the lower or earthy half of the
root with a hooked fork called a hacker, that it might
be eaten also. Every leaf of the vegetable having
already been consumed, the whole field was in colour a
desolate drab; it was a complexion without features, as
if a face, from chin to brow, should be only an expanse
of skin. The sky wore, in another colour, the same
likeness; a white vacuity of countenance with the
lineaments gone. So these two upper and nether visages
confronted each other all day long, the white face
looking down on the brown face, and the brown face
looking up at the white face, without anything standing
between them but the two girls crawling over the
surface of the former like flies.
Nobody came near them, and their movements showed a
mechanical regularity; their forms standing enshrouded
in Hessian "wroppers"--sleeved brown pinafores, tied
behind to the bottom, to keep their gowns from blowing
about--scant skirts revealing boots that reached high
up the ankles, and yellow sheepskin gloves with
gauntlets. The pensive character which the curtained
hood lent to their bent heads would have reminded the
observer of some early Italian conception of the two
Marys.
They worked on hour after hour, unconscious of the
forlorn aspect they bore in the landscape, not thinking
of the justice or injustice of their lot. Even in such
a position as theirs it was possible to exist in a
dream. In the afternoon the rain came on again, and
Marian said that they need not work any more. But if
they did not work they would not be paid; so they
worked on. It was so high a situation, this field,
that the rain had no occasion to fall, but raced along
horizontally upon the yelling wind, sticking into them
like glass splinters till they were wet through. Tess
had not known till now what was really meant by that.
There are degrees of dampness, and a very little is
called being wet through in common talk. But to stand
working slowly in a field, and feel the creep of
rain-water, first in legs and shoulders, then on hips
and head, then at back, front, and sides, and yet to
work on till the leaden light diminishes and marks that
the sun is down, demands a distinct modicum of
stoicism, even of valour.
Yet they did not feel the wetness so much as might be
supposed. They were both young, and they were talking
of the time when they lived and loved together at
Talbothays Dairy, that happy green tract of land where
summer had been liberal in her gifts; in substance to
all, emotionally to these. Tess would fain not have
conversed with Marian of the man who was legally, if
not actually, her husband; but the irresistible
fascination of the subject betrayed her into
reciprocating Marian's remarks. And thus, as has been
said, though the damp curtains of their bonnets flapped
smartly into their faces, and their wrappers clung
about them to wearisomeness, they lived all this
afternoon in memories of green, sunny, romantic
Talbothays.
"You can see a gleam of a hill within a few miles o'
Froom Valley from here when 'tis fine," said Marian.
"Ah! Can you?" said Tess, awake to the new value of
this locality.
So the two forces were at work here as everywhere, the
inherent will to enjoy, and the circumstantial will
against enjoyment. Marian's will had a method of
assisting itself by taking from her pocket as the
afternoon wore on a pint bottle corked with white rag,
from which she invited Tess to drink. Tess's
unassisted power of dreaming, however, being enough for
her sublimation at present, she declined except the
merest sip, and then Marian took a pull from the
spirits.
"I've got used to it," she said, "and can't leave it
off now. 'Tis my only comfort----You see I lost him:
you didn't; and you can do without it perhaps."
Tess thought her loss as great as Marian's, but upheld
by the dignity of being Angel's wife, in the letter at
least, she accepted Marian's differentiation.
Amid this scene Tess slaved in the morning frosts and
in the afternoon rains. When it was not swede-grubbing
it was swede-trimming, in which process they sliced off
the earth and the fibres with a bill-hook before
storing the roots for future use. At this occupation
they could shelter themselves by a thatched hurdle if
it rained; but if it was frosty even their thick
leather gloves could not prevent the frozen masses they
handled from biting their fingers. Still Tess hoped.
She had a conviction that sooner or later the
magnanimity which she persisted in reckoning as a chief
ingredient of Clare's character would lead him to
rejoin her.
Marian, primed to a humorous mood, would discover the
queer-shaped flints aforesaid, and shriek with
laughter, Tess remaining severely obtuse. They often
looked across the country to where the Var or Froom was
know to stretch, even though they might not be able to
see it; and, fixing their eyes on the cloaking gray
mist, imagined the old times they had spent out there.
"Ah," said Marian, "how I should like another or two of
our old set to come here! Then we could bring up
Talbothays every day here afield, and talk of he, and
of what nice times we had there, and o' the old things
we used to know, and make it all come back a'most, in
seeming!" Marian's eyes softened, and her voice grew
vague as the visions returned. "I'll write to Izz
Huett," she said. "She's biding at home doing nothing
now, I know, and I'll tell her we be here, and ask her
to come; and perhaps Retty is well enough now."
Tess had nothing to say against the proposal, and the
next she heard of this plan for importing old
Talbothays' joys was two or three days later, when
Marian informed her that Izz had replied to her
inquiry, and had promised to come if she could.
There had not been such a winter for years. It came on
in stealthy and measured glides, like the moves of a
chess-player. One morning the few lonely trees and
the thorns of the hedgerows appeared as if they had put
off a vegetable for an animal integument. Every twig
was covered with a white nap as of fur grown from the
rind during the night, giving it four times its usual
stoutness; the whole bush or tree forming a staring
sketch in white lines on the mournful gray of the sky
and horizon. Cobwebs revealed their presence on sheds
and walls where none had ever been observed till
brought out into visibility by the crystallizing
atmosphere, hanging like loops of white worsted from
salient points of the out-houses, posts, and gates.
After this season of congealed dampness came a spell of
dry frost, when strange birds from behind the North
Pole began to arrive silently on the upland of
Flintcomb-Ash; gaunt spectral creatures with tragical
eyes--eyes which had witnessed scenes of cataclysmal
horror in inaccessible polar regions of a magnitude
such as no human being had ever conceived, in curdling
temperatures that no man could endure; which had beheld
the crash of icebergs and the slide of snow-hills by
the shooting light of the Aurora; been half blinded by
the whirl of colossal storms and terraqueous
distortions; and retained the expression of feature
that such scenes had engendered. These nameless birds
came quite near to Tess and Marian, but of all they had
seen which humanity would never see, they brought no
account. The traveller's ambition to tell was not
theirs, and, with dumb impassivity, they dismissed
experiences which they did not value for the immediate
incidents of this homely upland--the trivial movements
of the two girls in disturbing the clods with their
hackers so as to uncover something or other that these
visitants relished as food.
Then one day a peculiar quality invaded the air of this
open country. There came a moisture which was not of
rain, and a cold which was not of frost. It chilled
the eyeballs of the twain, made their brows ache,
penetrated to their skeletons, affecting the surface of
the body less than its core. They knew that it meant
snow, and in the night the snow came. Tess, who
continued to live at the cottage with the warm gable
that cheered any lonely pedestrian who paused beside
it, awoke in the night, and heard above the thatch
noises which seemed to signify that the roof had turned
itself into a gymnasium of all the winds. When she lit
her lamp to get up in the morning she found that the
snow had blown through a chink in the casement, forming
a white cone of the finest powder against the inside,
and had also come down the chimney, so that it lay
sole-deep upon the floor, on which her shoes left
tracks when she moved about. Without, the storm drove
so fast as to create a snow-mist in the kitchen; but as
yet it was too dark out-of-doors to see anything.
Tess knew that it was impossible to go on with the
swedes; and by the time she had finished breakfast
beside the solitary little lamp, Marian arrived to tell
her that they were to join the rest of the women at
reed-drawing in the barn till the weather changed.
As soon, therefore, as the uniform cloak of darkness
without began to turn to a disordered medley of grays,
they blew out the lamp, wrapped themselves up in their
thickest pinners, tied their woollen cravats round
their necks and across their chests, and started for
the barn. The snow had followed the birds from the
polar basin as a white pillar of a cloud, and
individual flakes could not be seen. The blast smelt
of icebergs, arctic seas, whales, and white bears,
carrying the snow so that it licked the land but did
not deepen on it. They trudged onwards with slanted
bodies through the flossy fields, keeping as well as
they could in the shelter of hedges, which, however,
acted as strainers rather than screens. The air,
afflicted to pallor with the hoary multitudes that
infested it, twisted and spun them eccentrically,
suggesting an achromatic chaos of things. But both the
young women were fairly cheerful; such weather on a dry
upland is not in itself dispiriting.
"Ha-ha! the cunning northern birds knew this was
coming," said Marian. "Depend upon't, they keep just
in front o't all the way from the North Star. Your
husband, my dear, is, I make no doubt, having scorching
weather all this time. Lord, if he could only see his
pretty wife now! Not that this weather hurts your
beauty at all--in fact, it rather does it good."
"You mustn't talk about him to me, Marian," said Tess
severely.
"Well, but--surely you care for'n! Do you?"
Instead of answering, Tess, with tears in her eyes,
impulsively faced in the direction in which she
imagined South America to lie, and, putting up her
lips, blew out a passionate kiss upon the snowy wind.
"Well, well, I know you do. But 'pon my body, it is a
rum life for a married couple! There--I won't say
another word! Well, as for the weather, it won't hurt
us in the wheat-barn; but reed-drawing is fearful hard
work--worse than swede-hacking. I can stand it because
I'm stout; but you be slimmer than I. I can't think
why maister should have set 'ee at it."
They reached the wheat-barn and entered it. One end of
the long structure was full of corn; the middle was
where the reed-drawing was carried on, and there had
already been placed in the reed-press the evening
before as many sheaves of wheat as would be sufficient
for the women to draw from during the day.
"Why, here's Izz!" said Marian.
Izz it was, and she came forward. She had walked all
the way from her mother's home on the previous
afternoon, and, not deeming the distance so great, had
been belated, arriving, however, just before the snow
began, and sleeping at the alehouse. The farmer had
agreed with her mother at market to take her on if she
came today, and she had been afraid to disappoint him
by delay.
In addition to Tess, Marian, and Izz, there were two
women from a neighbouring village; two Amazonian
sisters, whom Tess with a start remembered as Dark Car
the Queen of Spades and her junior the Queen of
Diamonds--those who had tried to fight with her in the
midnight quarrel at Trantridge. They showed no
recognition of her, and possibly had none, for they had
been under the influence of liquor on that occasion,
and were only temporary sojourners there as here. They
did all kinds of men's work of preference, including
well-sinking, hedging, ditching, and excavating,
without any sense of fatigue. Noted reed-drawers were
they too, and looked round upon the other three with
some superciliousness.
Putting on their gloves all set to work in a row in
front of the press, an erection formed of two posts
connected by a cross-beam, under which the sheaves to
be drawn from were laid ears outward, the beam being
pegged down by pins in the uprights, and lowered as the
sheaves diminished.
The day hardened in colour, the light coming in at the
barndoors upwards from the snow instead of downwards
from the sky. The girls pulled handful after handful
from the press; but by reason of the presence of the
strange women, who were recounting scandals, Marian and
Izz could not at first talk of old times as they wished
to do. Presently they heard the muffled tread of a
horse, and the farmer rode up to the barndoor. When he
had dismounted he came close to Tess, and remained
looking musingly at the side of her face. She had not
turned at first, but his fixed attitude led her to look
round, when she perceived that her employer was the
native of Trantridge from whom she had taken flight on
the high-road because of his allusion to her history.
He waited till she had carried the drawn bundles to the
pile outside, when he said, "So you be the young woman
who took my civility in such ill part? Be drowned if I
didn't think you might be as soon as I heard of your
being hired! Well, you thought you had got the better
of me the first time at the inn with your fancy-man,
and the second time on the road, when you bolted; but
now I think I've got the better you." He concluded
with a hard laugh.
Tess, between the Amazons and the farmer like a bird
caught in a clap-net, returned no answer, continuing to
pull the straw. She could read character sufficiently
well to know by this time that she had nothing to fear
from her employer's gallantry; it was rather the
tyranny induced by his mortification at Clare's
treatment of him. Upon the whole she preferred that
sentiment in man and felt brave enough to endure it.
"You thought I was in love with 'ee I suppose? Some
women are such fools, to take every look as serious
earnest. But there's nothing like a winter afield for
taking that nonsense out o' young wenches' heads; and
you've signed and agreed till Lady-Day. Now, are you
going to beg my pardon?"
"I think you ought to beg mine."
"Very well--as you like. But we'll see which is master
here. Be they all the sheaves you've done today?"
"Yes, sir."
"'Tis a very poor show. Just see what they've done
over there" (pointing to the two stalwart women).
"The rest, too, have done better than you."
"They've all practised it before, and I have not. And
I thought it made no difference to you as it is task
work, and we are only paid for what we do."
"Oh, but it does. I want the barn cleared."
"I am going to work all the afternoon instead of
leaving at two as the others will do."
He looked sullenly at her and went away. Tess felt
that she could not have come to a much worse place; but
anything was better than gallantry. When two o'clock
arrived the professional reed-drawers tossed off the
last half-pint in their flagon, put down their hooks,
tied their last sheaves, and went away. Marian and Izz
would have done likewise, but on hearing that Tess
meant to stay, to make up by longer hours for her lack
of skill, they would not leave her. Looking out at the
snow, which still fell, Marian exclaimed, "Now, we've
got it all to ourselves." And so at last the
conversation turned to their old experiences at the
dairy; and, of course, the incidents of their affection
for Angel Clare.
"Izz and Marian," said Mrs Angel Clare, with a dignity
which was extremely touching, seeing how very little of
a wife she was: "I can't join in talk with you now, as
I used to do, about Mr Clare; you will see that I
cannot; because, although he is gone away from me for
the present, he is my husband."
Izz was by nature the sauciest and most caustic of all
the four girls who had loved Clare. "He was a very
splendid lover, no doubt," she said; "but I don't think
he is a too fond husband to go away from you so soon."
"He had to go--he was obliged to go, to see about the
land over there!" pleaded Tess.
"He might have tided 'ee over the winter."
"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.
Then Izz Huett broke down. She had walked more than a
dozen miles the previous evening, had gone to bed at
midnight, and had risen again at five o'clock. Marian
alone, thanks to her bottle of liquor and her stoutness
of build, stood the strain upon back and arms without
suffering. Tess urged Izz to leave off, agreeing, as
she felt better, to finish the day without her, and
make equal division of the number of sheaves.
Izz accepted the offer gratefully, and disappeared
through the great door into the snowy track to her
lodging. Marian, as was the case every afternoon at
this time on account of the bottle, began to feel in a
romantic vein.
"I should not have thought it of him--never!" she said
in a dreamy tone. "And I loved him so! I didn't mind
his having YOU. But this about Izz is too bad!"
Tess, in her start at the words, narrowly missed
cutting off a finger with the bill-hook.
"Is it about my husband?" she stammered.
"Well, yes. Izz said, 'Don't 'ee tell her'; but I am
sure I can't help it! It was what he wanted Izz to do.
He wanted her to go off to Brazil with him."
Tess's face faded as white as the scene without, and
its curves straightened. "And did Izz refuse to go?"
she asked.
"I don't know. Anyhow he changed his mind."
"Pooh--then he didn't mean it! 'Twas just a man's
jest!"
"Yes he did; for he drove her a good-ways towards the
station."
"He didn't take her!"
They pulled on in silence till Tess, without any
premonitory symptoms, burst out crying.
"There!" said Marian. "Now I wish I hadn't told 'ee!"
"No. It is a very good thing that you have done! I
have been living on in a thirtover, lackaday way, and
have not seen what it may lead to! I ought to have sent
him a letter oftener. He said I could not go to him,
but he didn't say I was not to write as often as I
liked. I won't dally like this any longer! I have
been very wrong and neglectful in leaving everything to
be done by him!"
The dim light in the barn grew dimmer, and they could
see to work no longer. When Tess had reached home that
evening, and had entered into the privacy of her little
white-washed chamber, she began impetuously writing a
letter to Clare. But falling into doubt she could not
finish it. Afterwards she took the ring from the
ribbon on which she wore it next her heart, and
retained it on her finger all night, as if to fortify
herself in the sensation that she was really the wife
of this elusive lover of hers, who could propose that
Izz should go with him abroad, so shortly after he had
left her. Knowing that, how could she write entreaties
to him, or show that she cared for him any more?
XLIV
By the disclosure in the barn her thoughts were led
anew in the direction which they had taken more than
once of late--to the distant Emminster Vicarage. It
was through her husband's parents that she had been
charged to send a letter to Clare if she desired; and
to write to them direct if in difficulty. But that
sense of her having morally no claim upon him had
always led Tess to suspend her impulse to send these
notes; and to the family at the Vicarage, therefore, as
to her own parents since her marriage, she was
virtually non-existent. This self-effacement in both
directions had been quite in consonance with her
independent character of desiring nothing by way of
favour or pity to which she was not entitled on a fair
consideration of her deserts. She had set herself to
stand or fall by her qualities, and to waive such
merely technical claims upon a strange family as had
been established for her by the flimsy fact of a member
of that family, in a season of impulse, writing his
name in a church-book beside hers.
But now that she was stung to a fever by Izz's tale
there was a limit to her powers of renunciation. Why
had her husband not written to her? He had distinctly
implied that he would at least let her know of the
locality to which he had journeyed; but he had not sent
a line to notify his address. Was he really
indifferent? But was he ill? Was it for her to make
some advance? Surely she might summon the courage of
solicitude, call at the Vicarage for intelligence, and
express her grief at his silence. If Angel's father
were the good man she had heard him represented to be,
he would be able to enter into her heart-starved
situation. Her social hardships she could conceal.
To leave the farm on a week-day was not in her power;
Sunday was the only possible opportunity.
Flintcomb-Ash being in the middle of the cretaceous
tableland over which no railway had climbed as yet, it
would be necessary to walk. And the distance being
fifteen miles each way she would have to allow herself
a long day for the undertaking by rising early.
A fortnight later, when the snow had gone, and had been
followed by a hard black frost, she took advantage of
the state of the roads to try the experiment. At four
o'clock that Sunday morning she came downstairs and
stepped out into the starlight. The weather was still
favourable, the ground ringing under her feet like an
anvil.
Marian and Izz were much interested in her excursion,
knowing that the journey concerned her husband. Their
lodgings were in a cottage a little further along the
lane, but they came and assisted Tess in her departure,
and argued that she should dress up in her very
prettiest guise to captivate the hearts of her
parents-in-law; though she, knowing of the austere and
Calvinistic tenets of old Mr Clare, was indifferent,
and even doubtful. A year had now elapsed since her
sad marriage, but she had preserved sufficient
draperies from the wreck of her then full wardrobe to
clothe her very charmingly as a simple country girl
with no pretensions to recent fashion; a soft gray
woollen gown, with white crape quilling against the
pink skin of her face and neck, and a black velvet
jacket and hat.
"'Tis a thousand pities your husband can't see 'ee
now--you do look a real beauty!" said Izz Huett,
regarding Tess as she stood on the threshold between
the steely starlight without the yellow candlelight
within. Izz spoke with a magnanimous abandonment of
herself to the situation; she could not be--no woman
with a heart bigger than a hazel-nut could
be--antagonistic to Tess in her presence, the influence
which she exercised over those of her own sex being of
a warmth and strength quite unusual, curiously
overpowering the less worthy feminine feelings of spite
and rivalry.
With a final tug and touch here, and a slight brush
there, they let her go; and she was absorbed into the
pearly air of the fore-dawn. They heard her footsteps
tap along the hard road as she stepped out to her full
pace. Even Izz hoped she would win, and, though
without any particular respect for her own virtue, felt
glad that she had been prevented wronging her friend
when momentarily tempted by Clare.
It was a year ago, all but a day, that Clare had
married Tess, and only a few days less than a year that
he had been absent from her. Still, to start on a
brisk walk, and on such an errand as hers, on a dry
clear wintry morning, through the rarefied air of these
chalky hogs'-backs, was not depressing; and there is no
doubt that her dream at starting was to win the heart
of her mother-in-law, tell her whole history to that
lady, enlist her on her side, and so gain back the
truant.
In time she reached the edge of the vast escarpment
below which stretched the loamy Vale of Blackmoor, now
lying misty and still in the dawn. Instead of the
colourless air of the uplands the atmosphere down there
was a deep blue. Instead of the great enclosures of a
hundred acres in which she was now accustomed to toil
there were little fields below her of less than
half-a-dozen acres, so numerous that they looked from
this height like the meshes of a net. Here the
landscape was whitey-brown; down there, as in Froom
Valley, it was always green. Yet is was in that vale
that her sorrow had taken shape, and she did not love
it as formerly. Beauty to her, as to all who have
felt, lay not in the thing, but in what the thing
symbolized.
Keeping the Vale on her right she steered steadily
westward; passing above the Hintocks, crossing at
right-angles the high-road from Sherton-Abbas to
Casterbridge, and skirting Dogbury Hill and High-Stoy,
with the dell between them called "The Devil's
Kitchen". Still following the elevated way she reached
Cross-in-Hand, where the stone pillar stands desolate
and silent, to mark the site of a miracle, or murder,
or both. Three miles further she cut across the
straight and deserted Roman road called Long-Ash Lane;
leaving which as soon as she reached it she dipped down
a hill by a transverse lane into the small town or
village of Evershead, being now about halfway over the
distance. She made a halt here, and breakfasted a
second time, heartily enough--not at the Sow-and-Acorn,
for she avoided inns, but at a cottage by the church.
The second half of her journey was through a more
gentle country, by way of Benvill Lane. But as the
mileage lessened between her and the spot of her
pilgrimage, so did Tess's confidence decrease, and her
enterprise loom out more formidably. She saw her
purpose in such staring lines, and the landscape so
faintly, that she was sometimes in danger of losing her
way. However, about noon she paused by a gate on the
edge of the basin in which Emminster and its Vicarage
lay.
The square tower, beneath which she knew that at that
moment the Vicar and his congregation were gathered,
had a severe look in her eyes. She wished that she had
somehow contrived to come on a week-day. Such a good
man might be prejudiced against a woman who had chosen
Sunday, never realizing the necessities of her case.
But it was incumbent upon her to go on now. She took
off the thick boots in which she had walked thus far,
put on her pretty thin ones of patent leather, and,
stuffing the former into the hedge by the gatepost
where she might readily find them again, descended the
hill; the freshness of colour she had derived from the
keen air thinning away in spite of her as she drew near
the parsonage.
Tess hoped for some accident that might favour her, but
nothing favoured her. The scrubs on the Vicarage lawn
rustled uncomfortably in the frosty breeze; she could
not feel by any stretch of imagination, dressed to her
highest as she was, that the house was the residence of
near relations; and yet nothing essential, in nature or
emotion, divided her from them: in pains, pleasures,
thoughts, birth, death, and after-death, they were the
same.
She nerved herself by an effort, entered the
swing-gate, and rang the door-bell. The thing was
done; there could be no retreat. No; the thing was not
done. Nobody answered to her ringing. The effort had
be risen to and made again. She rang a second time,
and the agitation of the act, coupled with her
weariness after the fifteen miles' walk, led her
support herself while she waited by resting her hand on
her hip, and her elbow against the wall of the porch.
The wind was so nipping that the ivy-leaves had become
wizened and gray, each tapping incessantly upon its
neighbour with a disquieting stir of her nerves. A
piece of blood-stained paper, caught up from some
meat-buyer's dust-heap, beat up and down the road
without the gate; too flimsy to rest, too heavy to fly
away; and a few straws kept it company.
The second peal had been louder, and still nobody came.
Then she walked out of the porch, opened the gate, and
passed through. And though she looked dubiously at the
house-front as if inclined to return, it was with a
breath of relied that she closed the gate. A feeling
haunted her that she might have been recognized (though
how she could not tell), and orders been given not to
admit her.
Tess went as far as the corner. She had done all she
could do; but determined not to escape present
trepidation at the expense of future distress, she
walked back again quite past the house, looking up at
all the windows.
Ah--the explanation was that they were all at church,
every one. She remembered her husband saying that his
father always insisted upon the household, servants
included, going to morning-service, and, as a
consequence, eating cold food when they came home. It
was, therefore, only necessary to wait till the service
was over. She would not make herself conspicuous by
waiting on the spot, and she started to get past the
church into the lane. But as she reached the
churchyard-gate the people began pouring out, and Tess
found herself in the midst of them.
The Emminster congregation looked at her as only a
congregation of small country-townsfolk walking home at
its leisure can look at a woman out of the common whom
it perceives to be a stranger. She quickened her pace,
and ascended the the road by which she had come, to
find a retreat between its hedges till the Vicar's
family should have lunched, and it might be convenient
for them to receive her. She soon distanced the
churchgoers, except two youngish men, who, linked
arm-in-arm, were beating up behind her at a quick step.
As they drew nearer she could hear their voices engaged
in earnest discourse, and, with the natural quickness
of a woman in her situation, did not fail to recognize
in those noises the quality of her husband's tones.
The pedestrians were his two brothers. Forgetting all
her plans, Tess's one dread was lest they should
overtake her now, in her disorganized condition, before
she was prepared to confront them; for though she felt
that they could not identify her she instinctively
dreaded their scrutiny. The more briskly they walked
the more briskly walked she. They were plainly bent
upon taking a short quick stroll before going indoors
to lunch or dinner, to restore warmth to limbs chilled
with sitting through a long service.
Only one person had preceded Tess up the hill--a
ladylike young woman, somewhat interesting, though,
perhaps, a trifle GUINDEE and prudish. Tess had nearly
overtaken her when the speed of her brothers-in-law
brought them so nearly behind her back that she could
hear every word of their conversation. They said
nothing, however, which particularly interested her
till, observing the young lady still further in front,
one of them remarked, "There is Mercy Chant. Let us
overtake her."
Tess knew the name. It was the woman who had been
destined for Angel's life-companion by his and her
parents, and whom he probably would have married but
for her intrusive self. She would have know as much
without previous information if she had waited a
moment, for one of the brothers proceeded to say:
"Ah! poor Angel, poor Angel! I never see that nice girl
without more and more regretting his precipitancy in
throwing himself away upon a dairymaid, or whatever she
may be. It is a queer business, apparently. Whether
she has joined him yet or not I don't know; but she had
not done so some months ago when I heard from him."
"I can't say. He never tells me anything nowadays.
His ill-considered marriage seems to have completed
that estrangement from me which was begun by his
extraordinary opinions."
Tess beat up the long hill still faster; but she could
not outwalk them without exciting notice. At last they
outsped her altogether, and passed her by. The young
lady still further ahead heard their footsteps and
turned. Then there was a greeting and a shaking of
hands, and the three went on together.
They soon reached the summit of the hill, and,
evidently intending this point to be the limit of their
promenade, slackened pace and turned all three aside to
the gate whereat Tess had paused an hour before that
time to reconnoitre the town before descending into it.
During their discourse one of the clerical brothers
probed the hedge carefully with his umbrella, and
dragged something to light.
"Here's a pair of old boots," he said. "Thrown away,
I suppose, by some tramp or other."
"Some imposter who wished to come into the town
barefoot, perhaps, and so excite our sympathies," said
Miss Chant. "Yes, it must have been, for they are
excellent walking-boots--by no means worn out. What a
wicked thing to do! I'll carry them home for some poor
person."
Cuthbert Clare, who had been the one to find them,
picked them up for her with the crook of his stick; and
Tess's boots were appropriated.
She, who had heard this, walked past under the screen
of her woollen veil, till, presently looking back, she
perceived that the church party had left the gate with
her boots and retreated down the hill.
Thereupon our heroine resumed her walk. Tears,
blinding tears, were running down her face. She knew
that it was all sentiment, all baseless impressibility,
which had caused her to read the scene as her own
condemnation; nevertheless she could not get over it;
she could not contravene in her own defenceless person
all those untoward omens. It was impossible to think
of returning to the Vicarage. Angel's wife felt almost
as if she had been hounded up that hill like a scorned
thing by those--to her--superfine clerics. Innocently
as the slight had been inflicted, it was somewhat
unfortunate that she had encountered the sons and not
the father, who, despite his narrowness, was far less
starched and ironed than they, and had to the full the
gift of charity. As she again though of her dusty
boots she almost pitied those habiliments for the
quizzing to which they had been subjected, and felt how
hopeless life was for their owner.
"Ah!" she said, still sighing in pity of herself, "THEY
didn't know that I wore those over the roughest part of
the road to save these pretty ones HE bought for
me--no--they did not know it! And they didn't think
that HE chose the colour o' my pretty frock--no--how
could they? If they had known perhaps they would not
have cared, for they don't care much for him, poor
thing!"
Then she grieved for the beloved man whose conventional
standard of judgement had caused her all these latter
sorrows; and she went her way without knowing that the
greatest misfortune of her life was this feminine loss
of courage at the last and critical moment through her
estimating her father-in-law by his sons. Her present
condition was precisely one which would have enlisted
the sympathies of old Mr and Mrs Clare. Their hearts
went out of them at a bound towards extreme cases, when
the subtle mental troubles of the less desperate among
mankind failed to win their interest or regard. In
jumping at Publicans and Sinners they would forget that
a word might be said for the worries of Scribes and
Pharisees; and this defect or limitation might have
recommended their own daughter-in-law to them at this
moment as a fairly choice sort of lost person for their
love.
Thereupon she began to plod back along the road by
which she had come not altogether full of hope, but
full of a conviction that a crisis in her life was
approaching. No crisis, apparently, had supervened;
and there was nothing left for her to do but to
continue upon that starve-acre farm till she could
again summon courage to face the Vicarage. She did,
indeed, take sufficient interest in herself to throw up
her veil on this return journey, as if to let the world
see that she could at least exhibit a face such as
Mercy Chant could not show. But it was done with a
sorry shake of the head. "It is nothing--it is
nothing!" she said. "Nobody loves it; nobody sees it.
Who cares about the looks of a castaway like me!"
Her journey back was rather a meander than a march.
It had no sprightliness, no purpose; only a tendency.
Along the tedious length of Benvill Lane she began to
grow tired, and she leant upon gates and paused by
milestones.
She did not enter any house till, at the seventh or
eighth mile, she descended the steep long hill below
which lay the village or townlet of Evershead, where in
the morning she had breakfasted with such contrasting
expectations. The cottage by the church, in which she
again sat down, was almost the first at that end of the
village, and while the woman fetched her some milk from
the pantry, Tess, looking down the street, perceived
that the place seemed quite deserted.
"The people are gone to afternoon service, I suppose?"
she said.
"No, my dear," said the old woman. "'Tis too soon for
that; the bells hain't strook out yet. They be all
gone to hear the preaching in yonder barn. A ranter
preaches there between the services--an excellent,
fiery, Christian man, they say. But, Lord, I don't go
to hear'n! What comes in the regular way over the
pulpit is hot enough for I."
Tess soon went onward into the village, her footsteps
echoing against the houses as though it were a place of
the dead. Nearing the central part her echoes were
intruded on by other sounds; and seeing the barn not
far off the road, she guessed these to be the
utterances of the preacher.
His voice became so distinct in the still clear air
that she could soon catch his sentences, though she was
on the closed side of the barn. The sermon, as might
be expected, was of the extremest antinomian type; on
justification by faith, as expounded in the theology of
St Paul. This fixed idea of the rhapsodist was
delivered with animated enthusiasm, in a manner
entirely declamatory, for he had plainly no skill as a
dialectician. Although Tess had not heard the
beginning of the address, she learnt what the text had
been from its constant iteration----
"O FOOLISH GALATIANS, WHO HATH BEWITCHED YOU, THAT YE
SHOULD NOT OBEY THE TRUTH, BEFORE WHOSE EYES JESUS
CHRIST HATH BEEN EVIDENTLY SET FORTH, CRUCIFIED AMONG
YOU?"
Tess was all the more interested, as she stood
listening behind, in finding that the preacher's
doctrine was a vehement form of the view of Angel's
father, and her interest intensified when the speaker
began to detail his own spiritual experiences of how he
had come by those views. He had, he said, been the
greatest of sinners. He had scoffed; he had wantonly
associated with the reckless and the lewd. But a day
of awakening had come, and, in a human sense, it had
been brought about mainly by the influence of a certain
clergyman, whom he had at first grossly insulted; but
whose parting words had sunk into his heart, and had
remained there, till by the grace of Heaven they had
worked this change in him, and made him what they saw
him.
But more startling to Tess than the doctrine had been
the voice, which, impossible as it seemed, was
precisely that of Alec d'Urberville. Her face fixed in
painful suspense, she came round to the front of the
barn, and passed before it. The low winter sun beamed
directly upon the great double-doored entrance on this
side; one of the doors being open, so that the rays
stretched far in over the threshing-floor to the
preacher and his audience, all snugly sheltered from
the northern breeze. The listeners were entirely
villagers, among them being the man whom she had seen
carrying the red paint-pot on a former memorable
occasion. But her attention was given to the central
figure, who stood upon some sacks of corn, facing the
people and the door. The three o'clock sun shone full
upon him, and the strange enervating conviction that
her seducer confronted her, which had been gaining
ground in Tess ever since she had heard his words
distinctly, was at last established as a fact indeed.
END OF PHASE THE FIFTH
Phase the Sixth: The Convert
XLV
Till this moment she had never seen or heard from
d'Urberville since her departure from Trantridge.
The rencounter came at a heavy moment, one of all
moments calculated to permit its impact with the least
emotional shock. But such was unreasoning memory that,
though he stood there openly and palpably a converted
man, who was sorrowing for his past irregularities, a
fear overcame her, paralyzing her movement so that she
neither retreated nor advanced.
To think of what emanated from that countenance when
she saw it last, and to behold it now! ... There was
the same handsome unpleasantness of mien, but now he
wore neatly trimmed, old-fashioned whiskers, the sable
moustache having disappeared; and his dress was
half-clerical, a modification which had changed his
expression sufficiently to abstract the dandyism from
his features, and to hinder for a second her belief in
his identity.
To Tess's sense there was, just at first, a ghastly
BIZARRERIE, a grim incongruity, in the march of these
solemn words of Scripture out of such a mouth. This
too familiar intonation, less than four years earlier,
had brought to her ears expressions of such divergent
purpose that her heart became quite sick at the irony
of the contrast.
It was less a reform than a transfiguration. The
former curves of sensuousness were now modulated to
lines of devotional passion. The lip-shapes that had
meant seductiveness were now made to express
supplication; the glow on the cheek that yesterday
could be translated as riotousness was evangelized
today into the splendour of pious rhetoric; animalism
had become fanaticism; Paganism Paulinism; the bold
rolling eye that had flashed upon her form in the old
time with such mastery now beamed with the rude energy
of a theolatry that was almost ferocious. Those black
angularities which his face had used to put on when his
wishes were thwarted now did duty in picturing the
incorrigible backslider who would insist upon turning
again to his wallowing in the mire.
The lineaments, as such, seemed to complain. They had
been diverted from their hereditary connotation to
signify impressions for which Nature did not intend
them. Strange that their very elevation was a
misapplication, that to raise seemed to falsify.
Yet could it be so? She would admit the ungenerous
sentiment no longer. D'Urberville was not the first
wicked man who had turned away from his wickedness to
save his soul alive, and why should she deem it
unnatural in him? It was but the usage of thought
which had been jarred in her at hearing good new words
in bad old notes. The greater the sinner the greater
the saint; it was not necessary to dive far into
Christian history to discover that.
Such impressions as these moved her vaguely, and
without strict definiteness. As soon as the nerveless
pause of her surprise would allow her to stir, her
impulse was to pass on out of his sight. He had
obviously not discerned her yet in her position against
the sun.
But the moment that she moved again he recognized her.
The effect upon her old lover was electric, far
stronger than the effect of his presence upon her.
His fire, the tumultuous ring of his eloquence, seemed to
go out of him. His lip struggled and trembled under the
words that lay upon it; but deliver them it could not
as long as she faced him. His eyes, after their first
glance upon her face, hung confusedly in every other
direction but hers, but came back in a desperate leap
every few seconds. This paralysis lasted, however, but
a short time; for Tess's energies returned with the
atrophy of his, and she walked as fast as she was able
past the barn and onward.
As soon as she could reflect it appalled her, this
change in their relative platforms. He who had wrought
her undoing was now on the side of the Spirit, while
she remained unregenerate. And, as in the legend, it
had resulted that her Cyprian image had suddenly
appeared upon his alter, whereby the fire of the priest
had been well nigh extinguished.
She went on without turning her head. Her back seemed
to be endowed with a sensitiveness to ocular
beams--even her clothing--so alive was she to a fancied
gaze which might be resting upon her from the outside
of that barn. All the way along to this point her
heart had been heavy with an inactive sorrow; now there
was a change in the quality of its trouble. That
hunger for affection too long withheld was for the time
displaced by an almost physical sense of an implacable
past which still engirdled her. It intensified her
consciousness of error to a practical despair; the
break of continuity between her earlier and present
existence, which she had hoped for, had not, after all,
taken place. Bygones would never be complete bygones
till she was a bygone herself.
Thus absorbed she recrossed the northern part of
Long-Ash Lane at right angles, and presently saw before
her the road ascending whitely to the upland along
whose margin the remainder of her journey lay. Its dry
pale surface stretched severely onward, unbroken by a
single figure, vehicle, or mark, save some occasional
brown horse-droppings which dotted its cold aridity
here and there. While slowly breasting this ascent
Tess became conscious of footsteps behind her, and
turning she saw approaching that well-known form--so
strangely accoutred as the Methodist--the one personage
in all the world she wished not to encounter alone on
this side of the grave.
There was not much time, however, for thought or
elusion, and she yielded as calmly as she could to the
necessity of letting him overtake her. She saw that he
was excited, less by the speed of his walk than by the
feelings within him.
"Tess!" he said.
She slackened speed without looking round.
"Tess!" he repeated. "It is I--Alec d'Urberville."
She then looked back at him, and he came up.
"I see it is," she answered coldly.
"Well--is that all? Yet I deserve no more! Of
course," he added, with a slight laugh, "there is
something of the ridiculous to your eyes in seeing me
like this. But--I must put up with that. ... I heard
you had gone away, nobody knew where. Tess, you wonder
why I have followed you?"
"I do, rather; and I would that you had not, with all
my heart!"
"Yes--you may well say it," he returned grimly, as they
moved onward together, she with unwilling tread. "But
don't mistake me; I beg this because you may have been
led to do so in noticing--if you did notice it--how
your sudden appearance unnerved me down there. It was
but a momentary faltering; and considering what you
have been to me, it was natural enough. But will
helped me through it--though perhaps you think me a
humbug for saying it--and immediately afterwards I felt
that of all persons in the world whom it was my duty
and desire to save from the wrath to come--sneer if you
like--the woman whom I had so grievously wronged was
that person. I have come with that sole purpose in
view--nothing more."
There was the smallest vein of scorn in her words of
rejoinder: "Have you saved yourself? Charity begins at
home, they say."
"I have done nothing!" said he indifferently.
"Heaven, as I have been telling my hearers, has done all.
No amount of contempt that you can pour upon me, Tess,
will equal what I have poured upon myself--the old Adam
of my former years! Well, it is a strange story;
believe it or not; but I can tell you the means by
which my conversion was brought about, and I hope you
will be interested enough at least to listen. Have you
ever heard the name of the parson of Emminster--you
must have done do?--old Mr Clare; one of the most
earnest of his school; one of the few intense men left
in the Church; not so intense as the extreme wind of
Christian believers with which I have thrown in my lot,
but quite an exception among the Established clergy,
the younger of whom are gradually attenuating the true
doctrines by their sophistries, till they are but the
shadow of what they were. I only differ from him on the
question of Church and State--the interpretation of
the text, 'Come out from among them and be ye separate,
saith the Lord'--that's all. He is one who, I firmly
believe, has been the humble means of saving more souls
in this country than any other man you can name. You
have heard of him?"
"I have," she said.
"He came to Trantridge two or three years ago to preach
on behalf of some missionary society; and I, wretched
fellow that I was, insulted him when, in his
disinterestedness, he tried to reason with me and show
me the way. He did not resent my conduct, he simply
said that some day I should receive the first-fruits of
the Spirit--that those who came to scoff sometimes
remained to pray. There was a strange magic in his
words. They sank into my mind. But the loss of my
mother hit me most; and by degrees I was brought to see
daylight. Since then my one desire has been to hand on
the true view to others, and that is what I was trying
to do today; though it is only lately that I have
preached hereabout. The first months of my ministry
have been spent in the North of England among
strangers, where I preferred to make my earliest clumsy
attempts, so as to acquire courage before undergoing
that severest of all tests of one's sincerity,
addressing those who have known one, and have been
one's companions in the days of darkness. If you could
only know, Tess, the pleasure of having a good slap at
yourself, I am sure----"
"Don't go on with it!" she cried passionately, as she
turned away from him to a stile by the wayside, on
which she bent herself. "I can't believe in such
sudden things! I feel indignant with you for talking
to me like this, when you know--when you know what harm
you've done me! You, and those like you, take your
fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as
me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine
thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of
securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!
Out upon such--I don't believe in you--I hate it!"
"Tess," he insisted; "don't speak so! It came to me
like a jolly new idea! And you don't believe me? What
don't you believe?"
"Your conversion. Your scheme of religion."
"Why?"
She dropped her voice. "Because a better man than you
does not believe in such."
"What a woman's reason! Who is this better man?"
"I cannot tell you."
"Well," he declared, a resentment beneath his words
seeming ready to spring out at a moment's notice, "God
forbid that I should say I am a good man--and you know
I don't say any such thing. I am new to goodness,
truly; but newcomers see furthest sometimes."
"Yes," she replied sadly. "But I cannot believe in
your conversion to a new spirit. Such flashes as you
feel, Alec, I fear don't last!"
Thus speaking she turned from the stile over which she
had been leaning, and faced him; whereupon his eyes,
falling casually upon the familiar countenance and
form, remained contemplating her. The inferior man was
quiet in him now; but it was surely not extracted, nor
even entirely subdued.
"Don't look at me like that!" he said abruptly.
Tess, who had been quite unconscious of her action and
mien, instantly withdrew the large dark gaze of her
eyes, stammering with a flush, "I beg your pardon!"
And there was revived in her the wretched sentiment
which had often come to her before, that in inhabiting
the fleshly tabernacle with which Nature had endowed
her she was somehow doing wrong.
"No, no! Don't beg my pardon. But since you wear a
veil to hide your good looks, why don't you keep it
down?"
She pulled down the veil, saying hastily, "It was
mostly to keep off the wind."
"It may seem harsh of me to dictate like this," he went
on; "but it is better that I should not look too often
on you. It might be dangerous."
"Ssh!" said Tess.
"Well, women's faces have had too much power over me
already for me not to fear them! An evangelist has
nothing to do with such as they; and it reminds me of
the old times that I would forget!"
After this their conversation dwindled to a casual
remark now and then as they rambled onward, Tess
inwardly wondering how far he was going with her, and
not liking to send him back by positive mandate.
Frequently when they came to a gate or stile they found
painted thereon in red or blue letters some text of
Scripture, and she asked him if he knew who had been at
the pains to blazon these announcements. He told her
that the man was employed by himself and others who
were working with him in that district, to paint these
reminders that no means might be left untried which
might move the hearts of a wicked generation.
At length the road touched the spot called
"Cross-in-Hand." Of all spots on the bleached and
desolate upland this was the most forlorn. It was so
far removed from the charm which is sought in landscape
by artists and view-lovers as to reach a new kind of
beauty, a negative beauty of tragic tone. The place
took its name from a stone pillar which stood there, a
strange rude monolith, from a stratum unknown in any
local quarry, on which was roughly carved a human hand.
Differing accounts were given of its history and
purport. Some authorities stated that a devotional
cross had once formed the complete erection thereon, of
which the present relic was but the stump; others that
the stone as it stood was entire, and that it had been
fixed there to mark a boundary or place of meeting.
Anyhow, whatever the origin of the relic, there was and
is something sinister, or solemn, according to mood, in
the scene amid which it stands; something tending to
impress the most phlegmatic passer-by.
"I think I must leave you now," he remarked, as they
drew near to this spot. "I have to preach at
Abbot's-Cernel at six this evening, and my way lies
across to the right from here. And you upset me
somewhat too, Tessy--I cannot, will not, say why.
I must go away and get strength. ... How is it that you
speak so fluently now? Who has taught you such good
English?"
"I have learnt things in my troubles," she said
evasively.
"What troubles have you had?"
She told him of the first one--the only one that
related to him.
D'Urberville was struck mute. "I knew nothing of this
till now!" he next murmured. "Why didn't you write to
me when you felt your trouble coming on?"
She did not reply; and he broke the silence by adding:
"Well--you will see me again."
"No," she answered. "Do not again come near me!"
"I will think. But before we part come here."
He stepped up to the pillar. "This was once a Holy Cross.
Relics are not in my creed; but I fear you at moments--far
more than you need fear me at present; and to lessen my
fear, put your hand upon that stone hand, and swear
that you will never tempt me--by your charms or ways."
"Good God--how can you ask what is so unnecessary!
All that is furthest from my thought!"
"Yes--but swear it."
Tess, half frightened, gave way to his importunity;
placed her hand upon the stone and swore.
"I am sorry you are not a believer," he continued;
"that some unbeliever should have got hold of you and
unsettled your mind. But no more now. At home at
least I can pray for you; and I will; and who knows
what may not happen? I'm off. Goodbye!"
He turned to a hunting-gate in the hedge, and without
letting his eyes again rest upon her leapt over, and
struck out across the down in the direction of
Abbot's-Cernel. As he walked his pace showed
perturbation, and by-and-by, as if instigated by a
former thought, he drew from his pocket a small book,
between the leaves of which was folded a letter, worn
and soiled, as from much re-reading. D'Urberville
opened the letter. It was dated several months before
this time, and was signed by Parson Clare.
The letter began by expressing the writer's unfeigned
joy at d'Urberville's conversion, and thanked him for
his kindness in communicating with the parson on the
subject. It expressed Mr Clare's warm assurance of
forgiveness for d'Urberville's former conduct, and his
interest in the young man's plans for the future. He,
Mr Clare, would much have liked to see d'Urberville in
the Church to whose ministry he had devoted so many
years of his own life, and would have helped him to
enter a theological college to that end; but since his
correspondent had possibly not cared to do this on
account of the delay it would have entailed, he was not
the man to insist upon its paramount importance. Every
man must work as he could best work, and in the method
towards which he felt impelled by the Spirit.
D'Urberville read and re-read this letter, and seemed
to quiz himself cynically. He also read some passages
from memoranda as he walked till his face assumed a
calm, and apparently the image of Tess no longer
troubled his mind.
She meanwhile had kept along the edge of the hill by
which lay her nearest way home. Within the distance of
a mile she met a solitary shepherd.
"What is the meaning of that old stone I have passed?"
she asked of him. "Was it ever a Holy Cross?"
"Cross--no; 'twer not a cross! "Tis a thing of
ill-omen, Miss. It was put up in wuld times by the
relations of a malefactor who was tortured there by
nailing his hand to a post and afterwards hung. The
bones lie underneath. They say he sold his soul to the
devil, and that he walks at times."
She felt the PETIT MORT at this unexpectedly gruesome
information, and left the solitary man behind her. It
was dusk when she drew near to Flintcomb-Ash, and in
the lane at the entrance to the hamlet she approached a
girl and her lover without their observing her. They
were talking no secrets, and the clear unconcerned
voice of the young woman, in response to the warmer
accents of the man, spread into the chilly air as the
one soothing thing within the dusky horizon, full of a
stagnant obscurity upon which nothing else intruded.
For a moment the voices cheered the heart of Tess, till
she reasoned that this interview had its origin, on one
side or the other, in the same attraction which had
been the prelude to her own tribulation. When she came
close the girl turned serenely and recognized her, the
young man walking off in embarrassment. The woman was
Izz Huett, whose interest in Tess's excursion
immediately superseded her own proceedings. Tess did
not explain very clearly its results, and Izz, who was
a girl of tact, began to speak of her own little
affair, a phase of which Tess had just witnessed.
"He is Amby Seedling, the chap who used to sometimes
come and help at Talbothays," she explained
indifferently. "He actually inquired and found out
that I had come here, and has followed me. He says
he's been in love wi' me these two years. But I've
hardly answered him."
XLVI
Several days had passed since her futile journey, and
Tess was afield. The dry winter wind still blew, but a
screen of thatched hurdles erected in the eye of the
blast kept its force away from her. On the sheltered
side was a turnip-slicing machine, whose bright blue
hue of new paint seemed almost vocal in the otherwise
subdued scene. Opposite its front was a long mound or
"grave", in which the roots had been preserved since
early winter. Tess was standing at the uncovered end,
chopping off with a bill-hook the fibres and earth from
each root, and throwing it after the operation into the
slicer. A man was turning the handle of the machine,
and from its trough came the newly-cut swedes, the
fresh smell of whose yellow chips was accompanied by
the sounds of the snuffling wind, the smart swish of
the slicing-blades, and the choppings of the hook in
Tess's leather-gloved hand.
The wide acreage of blank agricultural brownness,
apparent where the swedes had been pulled, was
beginning to be striped in wales of darker brown,
gradually broadening to ribands. Along the edge of
each of these something crept upon ten legs, moving
without haste and without rest up and down the whole
length of the field; it was two horses and a man, the
plough going between them, turning up the cleared
ground for a spring sowing.
For hours nothing relieved the joyless monotony of
things. Then, far beyond the ploughing-teams, a black
speck was seen. It had come from the corner of a
fence, where there was a gap, and its tendency was up
the incline, towards the swede-cutters. From the
proportions of a mere point it advanced to the shape of
a ninepin, and was soon perceived to be a man in black,
arriving from the direction of Flintcomb-Ash. The man
at the slicer, having nothing else to do with his eyes,
continually observed the comer, but Tess, who was
occupied, did not perceived him till her companion
directed her attention to his approach.
It was not her hard taskmaster, Farmer Groby; it was
one in a semi-clerical costume, who now represented
what had once been the free-and-easy Alec d'Urberville.
Not being hot at his preaching there was less
enthusiasm about him now, and the presence of the
grinder seemed to embarrass him. A pale distress was
already on Tess's face, and she pulled her curtained
hood further over it.
D'Urberville came up and said quietly----
"I want to speak to you, Tess."
"You have refused my last request, not to come near
me!" said she.
"Yes, but I have a good reason."
"Well, tell it."
"It is more serious than you may think."
He glanced round to see if he were overheard. They
were at some distance from the man who turned the
slicer, and the movement of the machine, too,
sufficiently prevented Alec's words reaching other
ears. D'Urberville placed himself so as to screen Tess
from the labourer, turning his back to the latter.
"It is this," he continued, with capricious
compunction. "In thinking of your soul and mine when
we last met, I neglected to inquire as to your worldly
condition. You were well dressed, and I did not think
of it. But I see now that it is hard--harder than it
used to be when I--knew you--harder than you deserve.
Perhaps a good deal of it is owning to me!"
She did not answer, and he watched her inquiringly, as,
with bent head, her face completely screened by the
hood, she resumed her trimming of the swedes. By going
on with her work she felt better able to keep him
outside her emotions.
"Tess," he added, with a sigh of discontent,--"yours
was the very worst case I ever was concerned in! I had
no idea of what had resulted till you told me. Scamp
that I was to foul that innocent life! The whole blame
was mine--the whole unconventional business of our time
at Trantridge. You, too, the real blood of which I am
but the base imitation, what a blind young thing you
were as to possibilities! I say in all earnestness
that it is a shame for parents to bring up their girls
in such dangerous ignorance of the gins and nets that
the wicked may set for them, whether their motive be a
good one or the result of simple indifference."
Tess still did no more than listen, throwing down one
globular root and taking up another with automatic
regularity, the pensive contour of the mere fieldwoman
alone marking her.
"But it is not that I came to say," d'Urberville went
on. "My circumstances are these. I have lost my mother
since you were at Trantridge, and the place is my own.
But I intend to sell it, and devote myself to
missionary work in Africa. A devil of a poor hand I
shall make at the trade, no doubt. However, what I want
to ask you is, will you put it in my power to do my
duty--to make the only reparation I can make for the
trick played you: that is, will you be my wife, and go
with me? ... I have already obtained this precious
document. It was my old mother's dying wish."
He drew a piece of parchment from his pocket, with a
slight fumbling of embarrassment.
"What is it?" said she.
"A marriage licence."
"O no, sir--no!" she said quickly, starting back.
"You will not? Why is that?"
And as he asked the question a disappointment which was
not entirely the disappointment of thwarted duty
crossed d'Urberville's face. It was unmistakably a
symptom that something of his old passion for her had
been revived; duty and desire ran hand-in-hand.
"Surely," he began again, in more impetuous tones, and
then looked round at the labourer who turned the
slicer.
Tess, too, felt that the argument could not be ended
there. Informing the man that a gentleman had come to
see her, with whom she wished to walk a little way, she
moved off with d'Urberville across the zebra-striped
field. When they reached the first newly-ploughed
section he held out his hand to help her over it; but
she stepped forward on the summits of the earth-rolls
as if she did not see him.
"You will not marry me, Tess, and make me a
self-respecting man?" he repeated, as soon as they were
over the furrows.
"I cannot."
"But why?"
"You know I have no affection for you."
"But you would get to feel that in time, perhaps--as
soon as you really could forgive me?"
"Never!"
"Why so positive?"
"I love somebody else."
The words seemed to astonish him.
"You do?" he cried. "Somebody else? But has not a
sense of what is morally right and proper any weight
with you?"
"No, no, no--don't say that!"
"Anyhow, then, your love for this other man may be only
a passing feeling which you will overcome----"
"No--no."
"Yes, yes! Why not?"
"I cannot tell you."
"You must in honour!"
"Well then ... I have married him."
"Ah!" he exclaimed; and he stopped dead and gazed at
her.
"I did not wish to tell--I did not mean to!" she
pleaded. "It is a secret here, or at any rate but dimly
known. So will you, PLEASE will you, keep from
questioning me? You must remember that we are now
strangers."
"Strangers--are we? Strangers!"
For a moment a flash of his old irony marked his face;
but he determinedly chastened it down.
"Is that man your husband?" he asked mechanically,
denoting by a sign the labourer who turned the machine.
"That man!" she said proudly. "I should think not!"
"Who, then?"
"Do not ask what I do not wish to tell!" she begged,
and flashed her appeal to him from her upturned face
and lash-shadowed eyes.
D'Urberville was disturbed.
"But I only asked for your sake!" he retorted hotly.
"Angels of heaven!--God forgive me for such an
expression--I came here, I swear, as I thought for your
good. Tess--don't look at me so--I cannot stand your
looks! There never were such eyes, surely, before
Christianity or since! There--I won't lose my head;
I dare not. I own that the sight of you had waked up my
love for you, which, I believed, was extinguished with
all such feelings. But I thought that our marriage
might be a sanctification for us both. 'The
unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the
unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband', I said
to myself. But my plan is dashed from me; and I must
bear the disappointment!"
He moodily reflected with his eyes on the ground.
"Married. Married! ... Well, that being so," he added,
quite calmly, tearing the licence slowly into halves
and putting them in his pocket; "that being prevented,
I should like to do some good to you and your husband,
whoever he may be. There are many questions that I am
tempted to ask, but I will not do so, of course, in
opposition to your wishes. Though, if I could know your
husband, I might more easily benefit him and you.
Is he on this farm?"
"No," she murmured. "He is far away."
"Far away? From YOU? What sort of husband can he be?"
"O, do not speak against him! It was through you! He
found out----"
"Ah, is it so! ... That's sad, Tess!"
"Yes."
"But to stay away from you--to leave you to work like
this!"
"He does not leave me to work!" she cried, springing to
the defence of the absent one with all her fervour.
"He don't know it! It is by my own arrangement."
"Then, does he write?"
"I--I cannot tell you. There are things which are
private to ourselves."
"Of course that means that he does not. You are a
deserted wife, my fair Tess----"
In an impulse he turned suddenly to take her hand; the
buff-glove was on it, and he seized only the rough
leather fingers which did not express the life or shape
of those within.
"You must not--you must not!" she cried fearfully,
slipping her hand from the glove as from a pocket, and
leaving it in his grasp. "O, will you go away--for the
sake of me and my husband--go, in the name of your own
Christianity!"
"Yes, yes; I will," he said abruptly, and thrusting the
glove back to her he turned to leave. Facing round,
however, he said, "Tess, as God is my judge, I meant no
humbug in taking your hand!"
A pattering of hoofs on the soil of the field, which
they had not noticed in their preoccupation, ceased
close behind them; and a voice reached her ear:
"What the devil are you doing away from your work at
this time o' day?"
Farmer Groby had espied the two figures from the
distance, and had inquisitively ridden across, to learn
what was their business in his field.
"Don't speak like that to her!" said d'Urberville, his
face blackening with something that was not
Christianity.
"Indeed, Mister! And what mid Methodist pa'sons have
to do with she?"
"Who is the fellow?" asked d'Urberville, turning to
Tess.
She went close up to him.
"Go--I do beg you!" she said.
"What! And leave you to that tyrant? I can see in his
face what a churl he is."
"He won't hurt me. HE'S not in love with me. I can
leave at Lady-Day."
"Well, I have no right but to obey, I suppose.
But--well, goodbye!"
Her defender, whom she dreaded more than her assailant,
having reluctantly disappeared, the farmer continued
his reprimand, which Tess took with the greatest
coolness, that sort of attack being independent of sex.
To have as a master this man of stone, who would have
cuffed her if he had dared, was almost a relief after
her former experiences. She silently walked back
towards the summit of the field that was the scene of
her labour, so absorbed in the interview which had just
taken place that she was hardly aware that the nose of
Groby's horse almost touched her shoulders.
"If so be you make an agreement to work for me till
Lady-Day, I'll see that you carry it out," he growled.
"'Od rot the women--now 'tis one thing, and then 'tis
another. But I'll put up with it no longer!"
Knowing very well that he did not harass the other
women of the farm as he harassed her out of spite for
the flooring he had once received, she did for one
moment picture what might have been the result if she
had been free to accept the offer just made her of
being the monied Alec's wife. It would have lifted her
completely out of subjection, not only to her present
oppressive employer, but to a whole world who seemed to
despise her. "But no, no!" she said breathlessly; "I
could not have married him now! He is so unpleasant to
me."
That very night she began an appealing letter to Clare,
concealing from him her hardships, and assuring him of
her undying affection. Any one who had been in a
position to read between the lines would have seen that
at the back of her great love was some monstrous
fear--almost a desperation--as to some secret
contingencies which were not disclosed. But again she
did not finish her effusion; he had asked Izz to go
with him, and perhaps he did not care for her at all.
She put the letter in her box, and wondered if it would
ever reach Angel's hands.
After this her daily tasks were gone through heavily
enough, and brought on the day which was of great
import to agriculturists--the day of the Candlemas
Fair. It was at this fair that new engagements were
entered into for the twelve months following the
ensuing Lady-Day, and those of the farming population
who thought of changing their places duly attended at
the county-town where the fair was held. Nearly all
the labourers on Flintcomb-Ash farm intended flight,
and early in the morning there was a general exodus in
the direction of the town, which lay at a distance of
from ten to a dozen miles over hilly country. Though
Tess also meant to leave at the quarter-day she was one
of the few who did not go to the fair, having a
vaguely-shaped hope that something would happen to
render another outdoor engagement unnecessary.
It was a peaceful February day, of wonderful softness
for the time, and one would almost have thought that
winter was over. She had hardly finished her dinner
when d'Urberville's figure darkened the window of the
cottage wherein she was a lodger, which she had all to
herself today.
Tess jumped up, but her visitor had knocked at the
door, and she could hardly in reason run away.
D'Urberville's knock, his walk up to the door, had some
indescribable quality of difference from his air when
she last saw him. They seemed to be acts of which the
doer was ashamed. She thought that she would not open
the door; but, as there was no sense in that either,
she arose, and having lifted the latch stepped back
quickly. He came in, saw her, and flung himself down
into a chair before speaking.
"Tess--I couldn't help it!" he began desperately, as he
wiped his heated face, which had also a superimposed
flush of excitement. "I felt that I must call at least
to ask how you are. I assure you I had not been
thinking of you at all till I saw you that Sunday; now
I cannot get rid of your image, try how I may! It is
hard that a good woman should do harm to a bad man; yet
so it is. If you would only pray for me, Tess!"
The suppressed discontent of his manner was almost
pitiable, and yet Tess did not pity him.
"How can I pray for you," she said, "when I am
forbidden to believe that the great Power who moves the
world would alter His plans on my account?"
"You really think that?"
"Yes. I have been cured of the presumption of thinking
otherwise."
"Cured? By whom?"
"By my husband, if I must tell."
"Ah--your husband--your husband! How strange it seems!
I remember you hinted something of the sort the other
day. What do you really believe in these matters,
Tess?" he asked. "You seem to have no
religion--perhaps owing to me."
"But I have. Though I don't believe in anything
supernatural."
D'Urberville looked at her with misgiving.
"Then do you think that the line I take is all wrong?"
"A good deal of it."
"H'm--and yet I've felt so sure about it," he said
uneasily.
"I believe in the SPIRIT of the Sermon on the Mount,
and so did my dear husband....But I don't believe-----"
Here she gave her negations.
"The fact is," said d'Urberville drily, "whatever your
dear husband believed you accept, and whatever he
rejected you reject, without the least inquiry or
reasoning on your own part. That's just like you women.
Your mind is enslaved to his."
"Ah, because he knew everything!" said she, with a
triumphant simplicity of faith in Angel Clare that the
most perfect man could hardly have deserved, much less
her husband.
"Yes, but you should not take negative opinions
wholesale from another person like that. A pretty
fellow he must be to teach you such scepticism!"
"He never forced my judgement! He would never argue on
the subject with me! But I looked at it in this way;
what he believed, after inquiring deep into doctrines,
was much more likely to be right than what I might
believe, who hadn't looked into doctrines at all."
"What used he to say? He must have said something?"
She reflected; and with her acute memory for the letter
of Angel Clare's remarks, even when she did not
comprehend their spirit, she recalled a merciless
polemical syllogism that she had heard him use when, as
it occasionally happened, he indulged in a species of
thinking aloud with her at his side. In delivering it
she gave also Clare's accent and manner with
reverential faithfulness.
"Say that again," asked d'Urberville, who had listened
with the greatest attention.
She repeated the argument, and d'Urberville
thoughtfully murmured the words after her.
"Anything else?" he presently asked.
"He said at another time something like this"; and she
gave another, which might possibly have been paralleled
in many a work of the pedigree ranging from the
DICTIONNAIRE PHILOSOPHIQUE to Huxley's ESSAYS.
"Ah--ha! How do you remember them?"
"I wanted to believe what he believed, though he didn't
wish me to; and I managed to coax him to tell me a few
of his thoughts. I can't say I quite understand that
one; but I know it is right."
"H'm. Fancy your being able to teach me what you don't
know yourself!"
He fell into thought. "And so I threw in my spiritual
lot with his," she resumed. "I didn't wish it to be
different. What's good enough for him is good enough
for me."
"Does he know that you are as big an infidel as he?"
"No--I never told him--if I am an infidel."
"Well--you are better off today that I am, Tess, after
all! You don't believe that you ought to preach my
doctrine, and, therefore, do no despite to your
conscience in abstaining. I do believe I ought to
preach it, but like the devils I believe and tremble,
for I suddenly leave off preaching it, and give way to
my passion for you."
"How?"
"Why," he said aridly; "I have come all the way here to
see you today! But I started from home to go to
Casterbridge Fair, where I have undertaken to preach
the Word from a waggon at half-past two this afternoon,
and where all the brethren are expecting me this
minute. Here's the announcement."
He drew from his breast-pocket a poster whereon was
printed the day, hour, and place of meeting, at which
he, d'Urberville, would preach the Gospel as aforesaid.
"But how can you get there?" said Tess, looking at the
clock.
"I cannot get there! I have come here."
"What, you have really arranged to preach, and----"
"I have arranged to preach, and I shall not be
there--by reason of my burning desire to see a woman
whom I once despised!--No, by my word and truth, I
never despised you; if I had I should not love you now!
Why I did not despise you was on account of your being
unsmirched in spite of all; you withdrew yourself from
me so quickly and resolutely when you saw the
situation; you did not remain at my pleasure; so there
was one petticoat in the world for whom I had no
contempt, and you are she. But you may well despise me
now! I thought I worshipped on the mountains, but I
find I still serve in the groves! Ha! ha!"
"O Alec d'Urberville! what does this mean? What have I
done!"
"Done?" he said, with a soulless sneer in the word.
"Nothing intentionally. But you have been the
means--the innocent means--of my backsliding, as they
call it. I ask myself, am I, indeed, one of those
'servants of corruption' who, 'after they have escaped
the pollutions of the world, are again entangled
therein and overcome'--whose latter end is worse than
their beginning?" He laid his hand on her shoulder.
"Tess, my girl, I was on the way to, at least, social
salvation till I saw you again!" he said freakishly
shaking her, as if she were a child. "And why then
have you tempted me? I was firm as a man could be till
I saw those eyes and that mouth again--surely there
never was such a maddening mouth since Eve's!" His
voice sank, and a hot archness shot from his own black
eyes. "You temptress, Tess; you dear damned witch of
Babylon--I could not resist you as soon as I met you
again!"
"I couldn't help your seeing me again!" said Tess,
recoiling.
"I know it--I repeat that I do not blame you. But the
fact remains. When I saw you ill-used on the farm that
day I was nearly mad to think that I had no legal right
to protect you--that I could not have it; whilst he
who has it seemed to neglect you utterly!"
"Don't speak against him--he is absent!" she cried in
much excitement. "Treat him honourably--he has never
wronged you! O leave his wife before any scandal
spreads that may do harm to his honest name!"
"I will--I will," he said, like a man awakening from a
luring dream. "I have broken my engagement to preach
to those poor drunken boobies at the fair--it is the
first time I have played such a practical joke. A
month ago I should have been horrified at such a
possibility. I'll go away--to swear--and--ah, can I!
to keep away." Then, suddenly: "One clasp, Tessy--one!
Only for old friendship-----"
"I am without defence. Alec! A good man's honour is in
my keeping--think--be ashamed!"
"Pooh! Well, yes--yes!"
He clenched his lips, mortified with himself for his
weakness. His eyes were equally barren of worldly and
religious faith. The corpses of those old fitful
passions which had lain inanimate amid the lines of his
face ever since his reformation seemed to wake and come
together as in a resurrection. He went out
indeterminately.
Though d'Urberville had declared that this breach of
his engagement today was the simple backsliding of a
believer, Tess's words, as echoed from Angel Clare, had
made a deep impression upon him, and continued to do so
after he had left her. He moved on in silence, as if
his energies were benumbed by the hitherto undreamt-of
possibility that his position was untenable. Reason
had had nothing to do with his whimsical conversion,
which was perhaps the mere freak of a careless man in
search of a new sensation, and temporarily impressed by
his mother's death.
The drops of logic Tess had let fall into the sea of
his enthusiasm served to chill its effervescence to
stagnation. He said to himself, as he pondered again
and again over the crystallized phrases that she had
handed on to him, "That clever fellow little thought
that, by telling her those things, he might be paving
my way back to her!"
XLVII
It is the threshing of the last wheat-rick at
Flintcomb-Ash farm. The dawn of the March morning is
singularly inexpressive, and there is nothing to show
where the eastern horizon lies. Against the twilight
rises the trapezoidal top of the stack, which has stood
forlornly here through the washing and bleaching of the
wintry weather.
When Izz Huett and Tess arrived at the scene of
operations only a rustling denoted that others had
preceded them; to which, as the light increased, there
were presently added the silhouettes of two men on the
summit. They were busily "unhaling" the rick, that is,
stripping off the thatch before beginning to throw down
the sheaves; and while this was in progress Izz and
Tess, with the other women-workers, in their
whitey-brown pinners, stood waiting and shivering,
Farmer Groby having insisted upon their being on the
spot thus early to get the job over if possible by the
end of the day. Close under the eaves of the stack,
and as yet barely visible, was the red tyrant that the
women had come to serve--a timber-framed construction,
with straps and wheels appertaining--the
threshing-machine which, whilst it was going, kept up a
despotic demand upon the endurance of their muscles and
nerves. A little way off there was another indistinct
figure; this one black, with a sustained hiss that
spoke of strength very much in reserve. The long
chimney running up beside an ash-tree, and the warmth
which radiated from the spot, explained without the
necessity of much daylight that here was the engine
which was to act as the PRIMUM MOBILE of this little
world. By the engine stood a dark motionless being, a
sooty and grimy embodiment of tallness, in a sort of
trance, with a heap of coals by his side: it was the
engineman. The isolation of his manner and colour lent
him the appearance of a creature from Tophet, who had
strayed into the pellucid smokelessness of this region
of yellow grain and pale soil, with which he had
nothing in common, to amaze and to discompose its
aborigines.
What he looked he felt. He was in the agricultural
world, but not of it. He served fire and smoke; these
denizens of the fields served vegetation, weather,
frost, and sun. He travelled with his engine from farm
to farm, from county to county, for as yet the steam
threshing-machine was itinerant in this part of Wessex.
He spoke in a strange northern accent; his thoughts
being turned inwards upon himself, his eye on his iron
charge, hardly perceiving the scenes around him, and
caring for them not at all: holding only strictly
necessary intercourse with the natives, as if some
ancient doom compelled him to wander here against his
will in the service of his Plutonic master. The long
strap which ran from the driving-wheel of his engine to
the red thresher under the rick was the sole tie-line
between agriculture and him.
While they uncovered the sheaves he stood apathetic
beside his portable repository of force, round whose
hot blackness the morning air quivered. He had nothing
to do with preparatory labour. His fire was waiting
incandescent, his steam was at high pressure, in a few
seconds he could make the long strap move at an
invisible velocity. Beyond its extent the environment
might be corn, straw, or chaos; it was all the same to
him. If any of the autochthonous idlers asked him what
he called himself, he replied shortly, "an engineer."
The rick was unhaled by full daylight; the men then
took their places, the women mounted, and the work
began. Farmer Groby--or, as they called him, "he"--had
arrived ere this, and by his orders Tess was placed on
the platform of the machine, close to the man who fed
it, her business being to untie every sheaf of corn
handed on to her by Izz Huett, who stood next, but on
the rick; so that the feeder could seize it and spread
it over the revolving drum, which whisked out every
grain in one moment. They were soon in full progress,
after a preparatory hitch or two, which rejoiced the
hearts of those who hated machinery. The work sped on
till breakfast time, when the thresher was stopped for
half an hour; and on starting again after the meal the
whole supplementary strength of the farm was thrown
into the labour of constructing the straw-rick, which
began to grow beside the stack of corn. A hasty lunch
was eaten as they stood, without leaving their
positions, and then another couple of hours brought
them near to dinner-time; the inexorable wheel
continuing to spin, and the penetrating hum of the
thresher to thrill to the very marrow all who were near
the revolving wire-cage.
The old men on the rising straw-rick talked of the past
days when they had been accustomed to thresh with
flails on the oaken barn-door; when everything, even
to winnowing, was effected by hand-labour, which, to
their thinking, though slow, produced better results.
Those, too, on the corn-rick talked a little; but the
perspiring ones at the machine, including Tess, could
not lighten their duties by the exchange of many words.
It was the ceaselessness of the work which tried her so
severely, and began to make her wish that she had never
some to Flintcomb-Ash. The women on the
corn-rick--Marian, who was one of them, in
particular--could stop to drink ale or cold tea from
the flagon now and then, or to exchange a few gossiping
remarks while they wiped their faces or cleared the
fragments of straw and husk from their clothing; but
for Tess there was no respite; for, as the drum never
stopped, the man who fed it could not stop, and she,
who had to supply the man with untied sheaves, could
not stop either, unless Marian changed places with her,
which she sometimes did for half an hour in spite of
Groby's objections that she was too slow-handed for a
feeder.
For some probably economical reason it was usually a
woman who was chosen for this particular duty, and
Groby gave as his motive in selecting Tess that she was
one of those who best combined strength with quickness
in untying, and both with staying power, and this may
have been true. The hum of the thresher, which
prevented speech, increased to a raving whenever the
supply of corn fell short of the regular quantity. As
Tess and the man who fed could never turn their heads
she did not know that just before the dinner-hour a
person had come silently into the field by the gate,
and had been standing under a second rick watching the
scene, and Tess in particular. He was dressed in a
tweed suit of fashionable pattern, and he twirled a gay
walking-cane.
"Who is that?" said Izz Huett to Marian. She had at
first addressed the inquiry to Tess, but the latter
could not hear it.
"Somebody's fancy-man, I s'pose," said Marian
laconically.
"I'll lay a guinea he's after Tess."
"O no. 'Tis a ranter pa'son who's been sniffing after
her lately; not a dandy like this."
"Well--this is the same man."
"The same man as the preacher? But he's quite
different!"
"He hev left off his black coat and white neckercher,
and hev cut off his whiskers; but he's the same man for
all that."
"D'ye really think so? Then I'll tell her," said
Marian.
"Don't. She'll see him soon enough, good-now."
"Well. I don't think it at all right for him to join
his preaching to courting a married woman, even though
her husband mid be abroad, and she, in a sense, a
widow."
"Oh--he can do her no harm," said Izz drily. "Her mind
can no more be heaved from that one place where it do
bide than a stooded waggon from the hole he's in. Lord
love 'ee, neither court-paying, nor preaching, nor the
seven thunders themselves, can wean a woman when
'twould be better for her that she should be weaned."
Dinner-time came, and the whirling ceased; whereupon
Tess left her post, her knees trembling so wretchedly
with the shaking of the machine that she could scarcely
walk.
"You ought to het a quart o' drink into 'ee, as I've
done," said Marian. "You wouldn't look so white then.
Why, souls above us, your face is as if you'd been
hagrode!"
It occurred to the good-natured Marian that, as Tess
was so tired, her discovery of her visitor's presence
might have the bad effect of taking away her appetite;
and Marian was thinking of inducing Tess to descend by
a ladder on the further side of the stack when the
gentleman came forward and looked up.
Tess uttered a short little "Oh!" And a moment after
she said, quickly, "I shall eat my dinner here--right
on the rick."
Sometimes, when they were so far from their cottages,
they all did this; but as there was rather a keen wind
going today, Marian and the rest descended, and sat
under the straw-stack. The newcomer was, indeed, Alec
d'Urberville, the late Evangelist, despite his changed
attire and aspect. It was obvious at a glance that the
original WELTLUST had come back; that he had restored
himself, as nearly as a man could do who had grown
three or four years older, to the old jaunty, slapdash
guise under which Tess had first known her admirer, and
cousin so-called. Having decided to remain where she
was, Tess sat down among the bundles, out of sight of
the ground, and began her meal; till, by-and-by, she
heard footsteps on the ladder, and immediately after
Alec appeared upon the stack--now an oblong and level
platform of sheaves. He strode across them, and sat
down opposite of her without a word.
Tess continued to eat her modest dinner, a slice of
thick pancake which she had brought with her. The
other workfolk were by this time all gathered under the
rick, where the loose straw formed a comfortable
retreat.
"I am here again, as you see," said d'Urberville.
"Why do you trouble me so!" she cried, reproach
flashing from her very finger-ends.
"I trouble YOU? I think I may ask, why do you trouble
me?"
"Sure, I don't trouble you any-when!"
"You say you don't? But you do! You haunt me. Those
very eyes that you turned upon my with such a bitter
flash a moment ago, they come to me just as you showed
them then, in the night and in the day! Tess, ever
since you told me of that child of ours, it is just as
if my feelings, which have been flowing in a strong
puritanical stream, had suddenly found a way open in
the direction of you, and had all at once gushed
through. The religious channel is left dry forthwith;
and it is you who have done it!"
She gazed in silence.
"What--you have given up your preaching entirely?" she
asked. She had gathered from Angel sufficient of the
incredulity of modern thought to despise flash
enthusiasm; but, as a woman, she was somewhat appalled.
In affected severity d'Urberville continued--
"Entirely. I have broken every engagement since that
afternoon I was to address the drunkards at
Casterbridge Fair. The deuce only knows what I am
thought of by the brethren. Ah-ha! The brethren! No
doubt they pray for me--weep for me; for they are kind
people in their way. But what do I care? How could I
go on with the thing when I had lost my faith in
it?--it would have been hypocrisy of the basest kind!
Among them I should have stood like Hymenaeus and
Alexander, who were delivered over to Satan that they
might learn not to blaspheme. What a grand revenge you
have taken! I saw you innocent, and I deceived you.
Four years after, you find me a Christian enthusiast;
you then work upon me, perhaps to my complete
perdition! But Tess, my coz, as I used to call you,
this is only my way of talking, and you must not look
so horribly concerned. Of course you have done nothing
except retain your pretty face and shapely figure.
I saw it on the rick before you saw me--that tight
pinafore-thing sets it off, and that wing-bonnet--you
field-girls should never wear those bonnets if you wish
to keep out of danger." He regarded her silently for a
few moments, and with a short cynical laugh resumed:
"I believe that if the bachelor-apostle, whose deputy I
thought I was, had been tempted by such a pretty face,
he would have let go the plough for her sake as I do!"
Tess attempted to expostulate, but at this juncture all
her fluency failed her, and without heeding he added:
"Well, this paradise that you supply is perhaps as good
as any other, after all. But to speak seriously.
Tess." D'Urberville rose and came nearer, reclining
sideways amid the sheaves, and resting upon his elbow.
"Since I last saw you, I have been thinking of what you
said that HE said. I have come to the conclusion that
there does seem rather a want of common-sense in these
threadbare old propositions; how I could have been so
fired by poor Parson Clare's enthusiasm, and have gone
so madly to work, transcending even him, I cannot make
out! As for what you said last time, on the strength of
your wonderful husband's intelligence--whose name you
have never told me--about having what they call an
ethical system without any dogma, I don't see my way to
that at all."
"Why, you can have the religion of loving-kindness and
purity at least, if you can't have--what do you call
it--dogma."
"O no! I'm a different sort of fellow from that! If
there's nobody to say, 'Do this, and it will be a good
thing for you after you are dead; do that, and if will
be a bad thing for you,' I can't warm up. Hang it, I
am not going to feel responsible for my deeds and
passions if there's nobody to be responsible to; and if
I were you, my dear, I wouldn't either!"
She tried to argue, and tell him that he had mixed in
his dull brain two matters, theology and morals, which
in the primitive days of mankind had been quite
distinct. But owing to Angel Clare's reticence, to her
absolute want of training, and to her being a vessel of
emotions rather than reasons, she could not get on.
"Well, never mind," he resumed. "Here I am, my love,
as in the old times!"
"Not as then--never as then--'tis different!" she
entreated. "And there was never warmth with me!
O why didn't you keep your faith, if the loss of it has
brought you to speak to me like this!"
"Because you've knocked it out of me; so the evil be
upon your sweet head! Your husband little thought how
his teaching would recoil upon him! Ha-ha--I'm awfully
glad you have made an apostate of me all the same!
Tess, I am more taken with you than ever, and I pity
you too. For all your closeness, I see you are in a
bad way--neglected by one who ought to cherish you."
She could not get her morsels of food down her throat;
her lips were dry, and she was ready to choke. The
voices and laughs of the workfolk eating and drinking
under the rick came to her as if they were a quarter of
a mile off.
"It is cruelty to me!" she said. "How--how can you
treat me to this talk, if you care ever so little for
me?"
"True, true," he said, wincing a little. "I did not
come to reproach you for my deeds. I came Tess, to say
that I don't like you to be working like this, and I
have come on purpose for you. You say you have a
husband who is not I. Well, perhaps you have; but I've
never seen him, and you've not told me his name; and
altogether he seems rather a mythological personage.
However, even if you have one, I think I am nearer to
you than he is. I, at any rate, try to help you out of
trouble, but he does not, bless his invisible face!
The words of the stern prophet Hosea that I used to
read come back to me. Don't you know them, Tess?--'And
she shall follow after her lover, but she shall not
overtake him; and she shall seek him, but shall not
find him; then shall she say, I will go and return to
my first husband; for then was it better with me than
now!' ... Tess, my trap is waiting just under the hill,
and--darling mine, not his!--you know the rest."
Her face had been rising to a dull crimson fire while
he spoke; but she did not answer.
"You have been the cause of my backsliding," he
continued, stretching his arm towards her waist; "you
should be willing to share it, and leave that mule you
call husband for ever."
One of her leather gloves, which she had taken off to
eat her skimmer-cake, lay in her lap, and without the
slightest warning she passionately swung the glove by
the gauntlet directly in his face. It was heavy and
thick as a warrior's, and it struck him flat on the
mouth. Fancy might have regarded the act as the
recrudescence of a trick in which her armed progenitors
were not unpractised. Alec fiercely started up from his
reclining position. A scarlet oozing appeared where
her blow had alighted, and in a moment the blood began
dropping from his mouth upon the straw. But he soon
controlled himself, calmly drew his handkerchief from
his pocket, and mopped his bleeding lips.
She too had sprung up, but she sank down again. "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.
XLVIII
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 corndust, 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 hardly 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 uphill, 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 light 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.
The sheaf-pitchers and feeders had now worked the rick
so low that people on the ground could talk to them.
To Tess's surprise Farmer Groby came up on the machine
to her, and said that if she desired to join her friend
he did not wish her to keep on any longer, and would
send somebody else to take her place. The "friend" was
d'Urberville, she knew, and also that this concession
had been granted in obedience to the request of that
friend, or enemy. She shook her head and toiled on.
The time for the rat-catching arrived at last, and the
hunt began. The creatures had crept downwards with the
subsidence of the rick till they were all together at
the bottom, and being now uncovered from their last
refuge they ran across the open ground in all
directions, a loud shriek from the by-this-time
half-tipsy Marian informing her companions that one of
the rats had invaded her person--a terror which the
rest of the women had guarded against by various
schemes of skirt-tucking and self-elevation. The rat
was at last dislodged, and, amid the barking of dogs,
masculine shouts, feminine screams, oaths, stampings,
and confusion as of Pandemonium, Tess untied her last
sheaf; the drum slowed, the whizzing ceased, and she
stepped from the machine to the ground.
Her lover, who had only looked on at the rat-catching,
was promptly at her side.
"What--after all--my insulting slap, too!" said she in
an underbreath. She was so utterly exhausted that she
had not strength to speak louder.
"I should indeed be foolish to feel offended at
anything you say or do," he answered, in the seductive
voice of the Trantridge time. "How the little limbs
tremble! You are as weak as a bled calf, you know you
are; and yet you need have done nothing since I
arrived. How could you be so obstinate? However, I
have told the farmer that he has no right to employ
women at steam-threshing. It is not proper work for
them; and on all the better class of farms it has been
given up, as he knows very well. I will walk with you
as far as your home."
"O yes," she answered with a jaded gait. "Walk wi' me
if you will! I do bear in mind that you came to marry
me before you knew o' my state. Perhaps--perhaps you
are a little better and kinder than I have been
thinking you were. Whatever is meant by kindness I am
grateful for; whatever is meant in any other way I am
angered at. I cannot sense your meaning sometimes."
"If I cannot legitimize our former relations at least I
can assist you. And I will do it with much more regard
for your feelings than I formerly showed. My religious
mania, or whatever it was, is over. But I retain a
little good nature; I hope I do. Now, Tess, by all
that's tender and strong between man and woman, trust
me! I have enough and more than enough to put you out
of anxiety, both for yourself and your parents and
sisters. I can make them all comfortable if you will
only show confidence in me."
"Have you seen 'em lately?" she quickly inquired.
"Yes. They didn't know where you were. It was only by
chance that I found you here."
The cold moon looked aslant upon Tess's fagged face
between the twigs of the garden-hedge as she paused
outside the cottage which was her temporary home,
d'Urberville pausing beside her.
"Don't mention my little brothers and sisters--don't
make me break down quite!" she said. "If you want to
help them--God knows they need it--do it without
telling me. But no, no!" she cried. "I will take
nothing from you, either for them or for me!"
He did not accompany her further, since, as she lived
with the household, all was public indoors. No sooner
had she herself entered, laved herself in a
washing-tub, and shared supper with the family than she
fell into thought, and withdrawing to the table under
the wall, by the light of her own little lamp wrote in
a passionate mood--
MY OWN HUSBAND,--Let me call you so--I must--even if it
makes you angry to think of such an unworthy wife as I.
I must cry to you in my trouble--I have no one else! I
am so exposed to temptation, Angel. I fear to say who
it is, and I do not like to write about it at all. But
I cling to you in a way you cannot think! Can you not
come to me now, at once, before anything terrible
happens? O, I know you cannot, because you are so far
away! I think I must die if you do not come soon, or
tell me to come to you. The punishment you have
measured out to me is deserved--I do know that--well
deserved--and you are right and just to be angry with
me. But, Angel, please, please, not to be just--only a
little kind to me, even if I do not deserve it, and
come to me! If you would come, I could die in your
arms! I would be well content to do that if so be you
had forgiven me!
Angel, I live entirely for you. I love you too much to
blame you for going away, and I know it was necessary
you should find a farm. Do not think I shall say a
word of sting or bitterness. Only come back to me. I
am desolate without you, my darling, O, so desolate! I
do not mind having to work: but if you will send me one
little line, and say, "I AM COMING SOON," I will bide
on, Angel--O, so cheerfully!
It has been so much my religion ever since we were
married to be faithful to you in every thought and
look, that even when a man speaks a compliment to me
before I am aware, it seems wronging you. Have you
never felt one little bit of what you used to feel when
we were at the dairy? If you have, how can you keep
away from me? I am the same women, Angel, as you fell
in love with; yes, the very same!--not the one you
disliked but never saw. What was the past to me as soon
as I met you? It was a dead thing altogether. I
became another woman, filled full of new life from you.
How could I be the early one? Why do you not see this?
Dear, if you would only be a little more conceited, and
believe in yourself so far as to see that you were
strong enough to work this change in me, you would
perhaps be in a mind to come to me, your poor wife.
How silly I was in my happiness when I thought I could
trust you always to love me! I ought to have known
that such as that was not for poor me. But I am sick
at heart, not only for old times, but for the present.
Think--think how it do hurt my heart not to see you
ever--ever! Ah, if I could only make your dear heart
ache one little minute of each day as mine does every
day and all day long, it might lead you to show pity to
your poor lonely one.
People still say that I am rather pretty, Angel
(handsome is the word they use, since I wish to be
truthful). Perhaps I am what they say. But I do not
value my good looks; I only like to have them because
they belong to you, my dear, and that there may be at
least one thing about me worth your having. So much
have I felt this, that when I met with annoyance on
account of the same I tied up my face in a bandage as
long as people would believe in it. O Angel, I tell
you all this not from vanity--you will certainly know I
do not--but only that you may come to me!
If you really cannot come to me will you let me come to
you? I am, as I say, worried, pressed to do what I
will not do. It cannot be that I shall yield one inch,
yet I am in terror as to what an accident might lead
to, and I so defenceless on account of my first error.
I cannot say more about this--it makes me too
miserable. But if I break down by falling into some
fearful snare, my last state will be worse than my
first. O God, I cannot think of it! Let me come at
once, or at once come to me!
I would be content, ay, glad, to live with you as your
servant, if I may not as your wife; so that I could
only be near you, and get glimpses of you, and think of
you as mine.
The daylight has nothing to show me, since you are not
here, and I don't like to see the rooks and starlings
in the field, because I grieve and grieve to miss you
who used to see them with me. I long for only one
thing in heaven or earth or under the earth, to meet
you, my own dear! Come to me--come to me, and save me
from what threatens me!--Your faithful heartbroken
TESS
XLIX
The appeal duly found its way to the breakfast-table of
the quiet Vicarage to the westward, in that valley
where the air is so soft and the soil so rich that the
effort of growth requires but superficial aid by
comparison with the tillage at Flintcomb-Ash, and where
to Tess the human world seemed so different (though it
was much the same). It was purely for security that
she had been requested by Angel to send her
communications through his father, whom he kept pretty
well informed of his changing addresses in the country
he had gone to exploit for himself with a heavy heart.
"Now," said old Mr Clare to his wife, when he had read
the envelope, "if Angel proposes leaving Rio for a
visit home at the end of next month, as he told us that
he hoped to do, I think this may hasten his plans; for
I believe it to be from his wife." He breathed deeply
at the thought of her; and the letter was redirected to
be promptly sent on to Angel.
"Dear fellow, I hope he will get home safely," murmured
Mrs Clare. "To my dying day I shall feel that he had
been ill-used. You should have sent him to Cambridge in
spite of his want of faith, and given him the same
chance as the other boys had. He would have grown out
of it under proper influence, and perhaps would have
taken Orders after all. Church or no Church, it would
have been fairer to him."
This was the only wail with which Mrs Clare ever
disturbed her husband's peace in respect to their sons.
And she did not vent this often; for she was as
considerate as she was devout, and knew that his mind
too was troubled by doubts as to his justice in this
matter. Only too often had she heard him lying awake
at night, stifling sighs for Angel with prayers. But
the uncompromising Evangelical did not even now hold
that he would have been justified in giving his son, an
unbeliever, the same academic advantages that he had
given to the two others, when it was possible, if not
probable, that those very advantages might have been
used to decry the doctrines which he had made it his
life's mission and desire to propagate, and the mission
of his ordained sons likewise. To put with one hand a
pedestal under the feet of the two faithful ones, and
with the other to exalt the unfaithful by the same
artificial means, he deemed to be alike inconsistent
with his convictions, his position, and his hopes.
Nevertheless, he loved his misnamed Angel, and in
secret mourned over this treatment of him as Abraham
might have mourned over the doomed Isaac while they
went up the hill together. His silent self-generated
regrets were far bitterer than the reproaches which his
wife rendered audible.
They blamed themselves for this unlucky marriage. If
Angel had never been destined for a farmer he would
never have been thrown with agricultural girls. They
did not distinctly know what had separated him and his
wife, nor the date on which the separation had taken
place. At first they had supposed it must be something
of the nature of a serious aversion. But in his later
letters he occasionally alluded to the intention of
coming home to fetch her; from which expressions they
hoped the division might not owe its origin to anything
so hopelessly permanent as that. He had told them that
she was with her relatives, and in their doubts they
had decided not to intrude into a situation which they
knew no way of bettering.
The eyes for which Tess's letter was intended were
gazing at this time on a limitless expanse of country
from the back of a mule which was bearing him from the
interior of the South-American Continent towards the
coast. His experiences of this strange land had been
sad. The severe illness from which he had suffered
shortly after his arrival had never wholly left him,
and he had by degrees almost decided to relinquish his
hope of farming here, though, as long as the bare
possibility existed of his remaining, he kept this
change of view a secret from his parents.
The crowds of agricultural labourers who had come out
to the country in his wake, dazzled by representations
of easy independence, had suffered, died, and wasted
away. He would see mothers from English farms trudging
along with their infants in their arms, when the child
would be stricken with fever and would die; the mother
would pause to dig a hole in the loose earth with her
bare hands, would bury the babe therein with the same
natural grave-tools, shed one tear, and again trudge
on.
Angel's original intention had not been emigration to
Brazil but a northern or eastern farm in his own
country. He had come to this place in a fit of
desperation, the Brazil movement among the English
agriculturists having by chance coincided with his
desire to escape from his past existence.
During this time of absence he had mentally aged a
dozen years. What arrested him now as of value in life
was less its beauty than its pathos. Having long
discredited the old systems of mysticism, he now began
to discredit the old appraisements of morality. He
thought they wanted readjusting. Who was the moral
man? Still more pertinently, who was the moral woman?
The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in
its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its
true history lay, not among things done, but among
things willed.
How, then, about Tess?
Viewing her in these lights, a regret for his hasty
judgement began to oppress him. Did he reject her
eternally, or did he not? He could no longer say that
he would always reject her, and not to say that was in
spirit to accept her now.
This growing fondness for her memory coincided in point
of time with her residence at Flintcomb-Ash, but it was
before she had felt herself at liberty to trouble him
with a word about her circumstances or her feelings.
He was greatly perplexed; and in his perplexity as to
her motives in withholding intelligence he did not
inquire. Thus her silence of docility was
misinterpreted. How much it really said if he had
understood!--that she adhered with literal exactness
to orders which he had given and forgotten; that
despite her natural fearlessness she asserted no
rights, admitted his judgement to be in every respect
the true one, and bent her head dumbly thereto.
In the before-mentioned journey by mules through the
interior of the country, another man rode beside him.
Angel's companion was also an Englishman, bent on the
same errand, though he came from another part of the
island. They were both in a state of mental
depression, and they spoke of home affairs. Confidence
begat confidence. With that curious tendency evinced
by men, more especially when in distant lands, to
entrust to strangers details of their lives which they
would on no account mention to friends, Angel admitted
to this man as they rode along the sorrowful facts of
his marriage. The stranger had sojourned in many more
lands and among many more peoples than Angel; to his
cosmopolitan mind such deviations from the social norm,
so immense to domesticity, were no more than are the
irregularities of vale and mountain-chain to the whole
terrestrial curve. He viewed the matter in quite a
different light from Angel; thought that what Tess had
been was of no importance beside what she would be, and
plainly told Clare that he was wrong in coming away
from her.
The next day they were drenched in a thunder-storm.
Angel's companion was struck down with fever, and died
by the week's end. Clare waited a few hours to bury
him, and then went on his way.
The cursory remarks of the large-minded stranger, of
whom he knew absolutely nothing beyond a commonplace
name, were sublimed by his death, and influenced Clare
more than all the reasoned ethics of the philosophers.
His own parochialism made him ashamed by its contrast.
His inconsistencies rushed upon him in a flood. He had
persistently elevated Hellenic Paganism at the expense
of Christianity; yet in that civilization an illegal
surrender was not certain disesteem. Surely then he
might have regarded that abhorrence of the un-intact
state, which he had inherited with the creed of
mysticism, as at least open to correction when the
result was due to treachery. A remorse struck into
him. The words of Izz Huett, never quite stilled in
his memory, came back to him. He had asked Izz if she
loved him, and she had replied in the affirmative. Did
she love him more than Tess did? No, she had replied;
Tess would lay down her life for him, and she herself
could do no more.
He thought of Tess as she had appeared on the day of
the wedding. How her eyes had lingered upon him; how
she had hung upon his words as if they were a god's!
And during the terrible evening over the hearth, when
her simple soul uncovered itself to his, how pitiful
her face had looked by the rays of the fire, in her
inability to realize that his love and protection could
possibly be withdrawn.
Thus from being her critic he grew to be her advocate.
Cynical things he had uttered to himself about her; but
no man can be always a cynic and live; and he withdrew
them. The mistake of expressing them had arisen from
his allowing himself to be influenced by general
principles to the disregard of the particular instance.
But the reasoning is somewhat musty; lovers and
husbands have gone over the ground before today.
Clare had been harsh towards her; there is no doubt of it.
Men are too often harsh with women they love or have
loved; women with men. And yet these harshnesses are
tenderness itself when compared with the universal
harshness out of which they grow; the harshness of the
position towards the temperament, of the means towards
the aims, of today towards yesterday, of hereafter
towards today.
The historic interest of her family--that masterful
line of d'Urbervilles--whom he had despised as a spent
force, touched his sentiments now. Why had he not
known the difference between the political value and
the imaginative value of these things? In the latter
aspect her d'Urberville descent was a fact of great
dimensions; worthless to economics, it was a most
useful ingredient to the dreamer, to the moralizer on
declines and falls. It was a fact that would soon be
forgotten--that bit of distinction in poor Tess's blood
and name, and oblivion would fall upon her hereditary
link with the marble monuments and leaded skeletons at
Kingsbere. So does Time ruthlessly destroy his own
romances. In recalling her face again and again, he
thought now that he could see therein a flash of the
dignity which must have graced her grand-dames; and the
vision sent that AURA through his veins which he had
formerly felt, and which left behind it a sense of
sickness.
Despite her not inviolate past, what still abode in
such a woman as Tess outvalued the freshness of her
fellows. Was not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim
better than the vintage of Abi-ezer?
So spoke love renascent, preparing the way for Tess's
devoted outpouring, which was then just being forwarded
to him by his father; though owing to his distance
inland it was to be a long time in reaching him.
Meanwhile the writer's expectation that Angel would
come in response to the entreaty was alternately great
and small. What lessened it was that the facts of her
life which had led to the parting had not
changed--could never change; and that, if her presence
had not attenuated them, her absence could not.
Nevertheless she addressed her mind to the tender
question of what she could do to please him best if he
should arrive. Sighs were expended on the wish that
she had taken more notice of the tunes he played on his
harp, that she had inquired more curiously of him which
were his favourite ballads among those the country-
girls sang. She indirectly inquired of Amby Seedling,
who had followed Izz from Talbothays, and by chance
Amby remembered that, amongst the snatches of melody in
which they had indulged at the dairyman's, to induce
the cows to let down their milk, Clare had seemed to
like "Cupid's Gardens", "I have parks, I have hounds",
and "The break o' the day"; and had seemed not to care
for "The Tailor's Breeches" and "Such a beauty I did
grow", excellent ditties as they were.
To perfect the ballads was now her whimsical desire.
She practised them privately at odd moments, especially
"The break o' the day":
Arise, arise, arise!
And pick your love a posy,
All o' the sweetest flowers
That in the garden grow.
The turtle doves and sma' birds
In every bough a-building,
So early in the May-time
At the break o' the day!
It would have melted the heart of a stone to hear her
singing these ditties, whenever she worked apart from
the rest of the girls in this cold dry time; the tears
running down her cheeks all the while at the thought
that perhaps he would not, after all, come to hear her,
and the simple silly words of the songs resounding in
painful mockery of the aching heart of the singer.
Tess was so wrapt up in this fanciful dream that she
seemed not to know how the season was advancing; that
the days had lengthened, that Lady-Day was at hand, and
would soon be followed by Old Lady-Day, the end of her
term here.
But before the quarter-day had quite come something
happened which made Tess think of far different
matters. She was at her lodging as usual one evening,
sitting in the downstairs room with the rest of the
family, when somebody knocked at the door and inquired
for Tess. Through the doorway she saw against the
declining light a figure with the height of a woman and
the breadth of a child, a tall, thin, girlish creature
whom she did not recognize in the twilight till the
girl said "Tess!"
"What--is it 'Liza-Lu?" asked Tess, in startled
accents. Her sister, whom a little over a year ago she
had left at home as a child, had sprung up by a sudden
shoot to a form of this presentation, of which as yet
Lu seemed herself scarce able to understand the
meaning. Her thin legs, visible below her once long
frock now short by her growing, and her uncomfortable
hands and arms, revealed her youth and inexperience.
"Yes, I have been traipsing about all day, Tess," said
Lu, with unemotional gravity, "a-trying to find 'ee;
and I'm very tired."
"What is the matter at home?"
"Mother is took very bad, and the doctor says she's
dying, and as father is not very well neither, and says
'tis wrong for a man of such a high family as his to
slave and drave at common labouring work, we don't know
what to do."
Tess stood in reverie a long time before she thought of
asking 'Liza-Lu to come in and sit down. When she had
done so, and 'Liza-Lu was having some tea, she came to
a decision. It was imperative that she should go home.
Her agreement did not end till Old Lady-Day, the sixth
of April, but as the interval thereto was not a long
one she resolved to run the risk of starting at once.
To go that night would be a gain of twelve-hours; but
her sister was too tired to undertake such a distance
till the morrow. Tess ran down to where Marian and Izz
lived, informed them of what had happened, and begged
them to make the best of her case to the farmer.
Returning, she got Lu a supper, and after that, having
tucked the younger into her own bed, packed up as many
of her belongings as would go into a withy basket, and
started, directing Lu to follow her next morning.
L
She plunged into the chilly equinoctial darkness as the
clock struck ten, for her fifteen miles' walk under the
steely stars. In lone districts night is a protection
rather than a danger to a noiseless pedestrian, and
knowing this Tess pursued the nearest course along
by-lanes that she would almost have feared in the
day-time; but marauders were wanting now, and spectral
fears were driven out of her mind by thoughts of her
mother. Thus she proceeded mile after mile, ascending
and descending till she came to Bulbarrow, and about
midnight looked from that height into the abyss of
chaotic shade which was all that revealed itself of the
vale on whose further side she was born. Having already
traversed about five miles on the upland she had now
some ten or eleven in the lowland before her journey
would be finished. The winding road downwards became
just visible to her under the wan starlight as she
followed it, and soon she paced a soil so contrasting
with that above it that the difference was perceptible
to the tread and to the smell. It was the heavy clay
land of Blackmoor Vale, and a part of the Vale to which
turnpike-roads had never penetrated. Superstitions
linger longest on these heavy soils. Having once been
forest, at this shadowy time it seemed to assert
something of its old character, the far and the near
being blended, and every tree and tall hedge making the
most of its presence. The harts that had been hunted
here, the witches that had been pricked and ducked, the
green-spangled fairies that "whickered" at you as you
passed;--the place teemed with beliefs in them still,
and they formed an impish multitude now.
At Nuttlebury she passed the village inn, whose sign
creaked in response to the greeting of her footsteps,
which not a human soul heard but herself. Under the
thatched roofs her mind's eye beheld relaxed tendons
and flaccid muscles, spread out in the darkness beneath
coverlets made of little purple patchwork squares, and
undergoing a bracing process at the hands of sleep for
renewed labour on the morrow, as soon as a hint of pink
nebulosity appeared on Hambledon Hill.
At three she turned the last corner of the maze of
lanes she had threaded, and entered Marlott, passing
the field in which as a club-girl, she had first seen
Angel Clare, when he had not danced with her; the sense
of disappointment remained with her yet. In the
direction of her mother's house she saw a light.
It came from the bedroom window, and a branch waved in
front of it and made it wink at her. As soon as she
could discern the outline of the house--newly thatched
with her money--it had all its old effect upon Tess's
imagination. Part of her body and life it ever seemed
to be; the slope of its dormers, the finish of its
gables, the broken courses of brick which topped the
chimney, all had something in common with her personal
character. A stupefaction had come into these
features, to her regard; it meant the illness of her
mother.
She opened the door so softly as to disturb nobody; the
lower room was vacant, but the neighbour who was
sitting up with her mother came to the top of the
stairs, and whispered that Mrs Durbeyfield was no
better, though she was sleeping just then. Tess
prepared herself a breakfast, and then took her place
as nurse in her mother's chamber.
In the morning, when she contemplated the children,
they had all a curiously elongated look; although she
had been away little more than a year their growth was
astounding; and the necessity of applying herself heart
and soul to their needs took her out of her own cares.
Her father's ill-health was the same indefinite kind,
and he sat in his chair as usual. But the day after
her arrival he was unusually bright. He had a rational
scheme for living, and Tess asked him what it was.
"I'm thinking of sending round to all the old
antiqueerians in this part of England," he said,
"asking them to subscribe to a fund to maintain me.
I'm sure they'd see it as a romantical, artistical, and
proper thing to do. They spend lots o' money in
keeping up old ruins, and finding the bones o' things,
and such like; and living remains must be more
interesting to 'em still, if they only knowed of me.
Would that somebody would go round and tell 'em what
there is living among 'em, and they thinking nothing of
him! If Pa'son Tringham, who discovered me, had lived,
he'd ha' done it, I'm sure."
Tess postponed her arguments on this high project till
she had grappled with pressing matters in hand, which
seemed little improved by her remittances. When indoor
necessities had been eased she turned her attention to
external things. It was now the season for planting
and sowing; many gardens and allotments of the
villagers had already received their spring tillage;
but the garden and the allotment of the Durbeyfields
were behindhand. She found, to her dismay, that this
was owing to their having eaten all the seed
potatoes,----that last lapse of the improvident.
At the earliest moment she obtained what others she could
procure, and in a few days her father was well enough
to see to the garden, under Tess's persuasive efforts:
while she herself undertook the allotment-plot which
they rented in a field a couple of hundred yards out of
the village.
She liked doing it after the confinement of the sick
chamber, where she was not now required by reason of
her mother's improvement. Violent motion relieved
thought. The plot of ground was in a high, dry, open
enclosure, where there were forty or fifty such pieces,
and where labour was at its briskest when the hired
labour of the day had ended. Digging began usually at
six o'clock, and extended indefinitely into the dusk or
moonlight. Just now heaps of dead weeds and refuse were
burning on many of the plots, the dry weather favouring
their combustion.
One fine day Tess and 'Liza-Lu worked on here with
their neighbours till the last rays of the sun smote
flat upon the white pegs that divided the plots. As
soon as twilight succeeded to sunset the flare of the
couch-grass and cabbage-stalk fires began to light up
the allotments fitfully, their outlines appearing and
disappearing under the dense smoke as wafted by the
wind. When a fire glowed, banks of smoke, blown level
along the ground, would themselves become illuminated
to an opaque lustre, screening the workpeople from one
another; and meaning of the "pillar of a cloud", which
was a wall by day and a light by night, could be
understood.
As evening thickened some of the gardening men and
women gave over for the night, but the greater number
remained to get their planting done, Tess being among
them, though she sent her sister home. It was on one
of the couch-burning plots that she laboured with her
fork, its four shining prongs resounding against the
stones and dry clods in little clicks. Sometimes she
was completely involved in the smoke of her fire; then
it would leave her figure free, irradiated by the
brassy glare from the heap. She was oddly dressed
tonight, and presented a somewhat staring aspect, her
attire being a gown bleached by many washings, with a
short black jacket over it, the effect of the whole
being that of a wedding and funeral guest in one. The
women further back wore white aprons, which, with their
pale faces, were all that could be seen of them in the
gloom, except when at moments they caught a flash from
the flames.
Westward, the wiry boughs of the bare thorn hedge which
formed the boundary of the field rose against the pale
opalescence of the lower sky. Above, Jupiter hung like
a full-blown jonquil, so bright as almost to throw a
shade. A few small nondescript stars were appearing
elsewhere. In the distance a dog barked, and wheels
occasionally rattled along the dry road.
Still the prongs continued to click assiduously, for it
was not late; and though the air was fresh and keen
there was a whisper of spring in it that cheered the
workers on. Something in the place, the hours, the
crackling fires, the fantastic mysteries of light and
shade, made others as well as Tess enjoy being there.
Nightfall, which in the frost of winter comes as a
fiend and in the warmth of summer as a lover, came as a
tranquillizer on this March day.
Nobody looked at his or her companions. The eyes of
all were on the soil as its turned surface was revealed
by the fires. Hence as Tess stirred the clods and sang
her foolish little songs with scarce now a hope that
Clare would ever hear them, she did not for a long time
notice the person who worked nearest to her--a man in a
long smockfrock who, she found, was forking the same
plot as herself, and whom she supposed her father had
sent there to advance the work. She became more
conscious of him when the direction of his digging
brought him closer. Sometimes the smoke divided them;
then it swerved, and the two were visible to each other
but divided from all the rest.
Tess did not speak to her fellow-worker, nor did he
speak to her. Nor did she think of him further than to
recollect that he had not been there when it was broad
daylight, and that she did not know him as any one of
the Marlott labourers, which was no wonder, her
absences having been so long and frequent of late
years. By-and-by he dug so close to her that the
fire-beams were reflected as distinctly from the steel
prongs of his fork as from her own. On going up to the
fire to throw a pitch of dead weeds upon it, she found
that he did the same on the other side. The fire flared
up, and she beheld the face of d'Urberville.
The unexpectedness of his presence, the grotesqueness
of his appearance in a gathered smockfrock, such as was
now worn only by the most old-fashioned of the
labourers, had a ghastly comicality that chilled her as
to its bearing. D'Urberville emitted a low long laugh.
"If I were inclined to joke I should say, How much this
seems like Paradise!" he remarked whimsically, looking
at her with an inclined head.
"What do you say?" she weakly asked.
"A jester might say this is just like Paradise. You
are Eve, and I am the old Other One come to tempt you
in the disguise of an inferior animal. I used to be
quite up in that scene of Milton's when I was
theological. Some of it goes----
"Empress, the way is ready, and not long,
Beyond a row of myrtles....
... If thou accept
My conduct, I can bring thee thither soon."
"Lead then," said Eve.
And so on. My dear Tess, I am only putting this to you
as a thing that you might have supposed or said quite
untruly, because you think so badly of me."
"I never said you were Satan, or thought it. I don't
think of you in that way at all. My thoughts of you
are quite cold, except when you affront me. What, did
you come digging here entirely because of me?"
"Entirely. To see you; nothing more. The smockfrock,
which I saw hanging for sale as I came along, was an
afterthought, that I mightn't be noticed. I come to
protest against your working like this."
"But I like doing it--it is for my father."
"Your engagement at the other place is ended?"
"Yes."
"Where are you going to next? To join your dear
husband?"
She could not bear the humiliating reminder.
"O--I don't know!" she said bitterly. "I have no
husband!"
"It is quite true--in the sense you mean. But you have
a friend, and I have determined that you shall be
comfortable in suite of yourself. When you get down to
your house you will see what I have sent there for
you."
"O, Alec, I wish you wouldn't give me anything at all!
I cannot take it from you! I don't like--it is not
right!"
"It IS right!" he cried lightly. "I am not going to
see a woman whom I feel so tenderly for as I do for
you, in trouble without trying to help her."
"But I am very well off! I am only in trouble
about--about--not about living at all!"
She turned, and desperately resumed her digging, tears
dripping upon the fork-handle and upon the clods.
"About the children--your brothers and sisters,"
he resumed. "I've been thinking of them."
Tess's heart quivered--he was touching her in a weak
place. He had divined her chief anxiety. Since
returning home her soul had gone out to those children
with an affection that was passionate.
"If your mother does not recover, somebody ought to do
something for them; since your father will not be able
to do much, I suppose?"
"He can with my assistance. He must!"
"And with mine."
"No, sir!" "How damned foolish this is!" burst out
d'Urberville. "Why, he thinks we are the same family;
and will be quite satisfied!"
"He don't. I've undeceived him."
"The more fool you!"
D'Urberville in anger retreated from her to the hedge,
where he pulled off the long smockfrock which had
disguised him; and rolling it up and pushing it into
the couch-fire, went away.
Tess could not get on with her digging after this; she
felt restless; she wondered if he had gone back to her
father's house; and taking the fork in her hand
proceeded homewards.
Some twenty yards from the house she was met by one of
her sisters.
"O, Tessy--what do you think! 'Liza-Lu is a-crying,
and there's a lot of folk in the house, and mother is a
good deal better, but they think father is dead!"
The child realized the grandeur of the news; but not as
yet its sadness; and stood looking at Tess with
round-eyed importance, till, beholding the effect
produced upon her, she said--
"What, Tess, shan't we talk to father never no more?"
"But father was only a little bit ill!" exclaimed Tess
distractedly.
'Liza-Lu came up.
"He dropped down just now, and the doctor who was there
for mother said there was no chance for him, because
his heart was growed in."
Yes; the Durbeyfield couple had changed places; the
dying one was out of danger, and the indisposed one was
dead. The news meant even more than it sounded. Her
father's life had a value apart from his personal
achievements, or perhaps it would not have had much.
It was the last of the three lives for whose duration
the house and premises were held under a lease; and it
had long been coveted by the tenant-farmer for his
regular labourers, who were stinted in cottage
accommodation. Moreover, "liviers" were disapproved of
in villages almost as much as little freeholders,
because of their independence of manner, and when a
lease determined it was never renewed.
Thus the Durbeyfields, once d'Urbervilles, saw
descending upon them the destiny which, no doubt, when
they were among the Olympians of the county, they had
caused to descend many a time, and severely enough,
upon the heads of such landless ones as they themselves
were not. So do flux and reflux--the rhythm of
change--alternate and persist in everything under the
sky.
LI
At length it was the eve of Old Lady-Day, and the
agricultural world was in a fever of mobility such as
only occurs at that particular date of the year. It is
a day of fulfilment; agreements for outdoor service
during the ensuing year, entered into at Candlemas, are
to be now carried out. The labourers--or "work-folk",
as they used to call themselves immemorially till the
other word was introduced from without--who wish to
remain no longer in old places are removing to the new
farms.
These annual migrations from farm to farm were on the
increase here. When Tess's mother was a child the
majority of the field-folk about Marlott had remained
all their lives on one farm, which had been the home
also of their fathers and grandfathers; but latterly
the desire for yearly removal had risen to a high
pitch. With the younger families it was a pleasant
excitement which might possibly be an advantage. The
Egypt of one family was the Land of Promise to the
family who saw it from a distance, till by residence
there it became it turn their Egypt also; and so they
changed and changed.
However, all the mutations so increasingly discernible
in village life did not originate entirely in the
agricultural unrest. A depopulation was also going on.
The village had formerly contained, side by side with
the argicultural labourers, an interesting and
better-informed class, ranking distinctly above the
former--the class to which Tess's father and mother had
belonged--and including the carpenter, the smith, the
shoemaker, the huckster, together with nondescript
workers other than farm-labourers; a set of people who
owed a certain stability of aim and conduct to the fact
of their being lifeholders like Tess's father, or
copyholders, or occasionally, small freeholders. But
as the long holdings fell in they were seldom again let
to similar tenants, and were mostly pulled down, if not
absolutely required by the farmer for his hands.
Cottagers who were not directly employed on the land
were looked upon with disfavour, and the banishment of
some starved the trade of others, who were thus obliged
to follow. These families, who had formed the backbone
of the village life in the past who were the
depositaries of the village traditions, had to seek
refuge in the large centres; the process, humorously
designated by statisticians as "the tendency of the
rural population towards the large towns", being really
the tendency of water to flow uphill when forced by
machinery.
The cottage accommodation at Marlott having been in
this manner considerably curtailed by demolitions,
every house which remained standing was required by the
agriculturist for his work-people. Ever since the
occurrence of the event which had cast such a shadow
over Tess's life, the Durbeyfield family (whose descent
was not credited) had been tacitly looked on as one
which would have to go when their lease ended, if only
in the interests of morality. It was, indeed, quite
true that the household had not been shining examples
either of temperance, soberness, or chastity. The
father, and even the mother, had got drunk at times,
the younger children seldom had gone to church, and the
eldest daughter had made queer unions. By some means
the village had to be kept pure. So on this, the first
Lady-Day on which the Durbeyfields were expellable, the
house, being roomy, was required for a carter with a
large family; and Widow Joan, her daughters Tess and
'Liza-Lu, the boy Abraham and the younger children, had
to go elsewhere.
On the evening preceding their removal it was getting
dark betimes by reason of a drizzling rain which
blurred the sky. As it was the last night they would
spend in the village which had been their home and
birthplace, Mrs Durbeyfield, 'Liza-Lu, and Abraham had
gone out to bid some friends goodbye, and Tess was
keeping house till they should return.
She was kneeling in the window-bench, her face close to
the casement, where an outer pane of rain-water was
sliding down the inner pane of glass. Her eyes rested
on the web of a spider, probably starved long ago,
which had been mistakenly placed in a corner where no
flies ever came, and shivered in the slight draught
through the casement. Tess was reflecting on the
position of the household, in which she perceived her
own evil influence. Had she not come home her mother
and the children might probably have been allowed to
stay on as weekly tenants. But she had been observed
almost immediately on her return by some people of
scrupulous character and great influence: they had seen
her idling in the churchyard, restoring as well as she
could with a little trowel a baby's obliterated grave.
By this means they had found that she was living here
again; her mother was scolded for "harbouring" her;
sharp retorts had ensued from Joan, who had
independently offered to leave at once; she had been
taken at her word; and here was the result.
"I ought never to have come home," said Tess to
herself, bitterly.
She was so intent upon these thoughts that she hardly
at first took note of a man in a white mackintosh whom
she saw riding down the street. Possibly it was owing
to her face being near to the pane that he saw her so
quickly, and directed his horse so close to the
cottage-front that his hoofs were almost upon the
narrow border for plants growing under the wall. It
was not till he touched the window with his riding-crop
that she observed him. The rain had nearly ceased, and
she opened the casement in obedience to his gesture.
"Didn't you see me?" asked d'Urberville.
"I was not attending," she said. "I heard you, I
believe, though I fancied it was a carriage and horses.
I was in a sort of dream."
"Ah! you heard the d'Urberville Coach, perhaps.
You know the legend, I suppose?"
"No. My--somebody was going to tell it me once, but
didn't."
"If you are a genuine d'Urberville I ought not to tell
you either, I suppose. As for me, I'm a sham one, so
it doesn't matter. It is rather dismal. It is that
this sound of a non-existent coach can only be heard
by one of d'Urberville blood, and it is held to be of
ill-omen to the one who hears it. It has to do with a
murder, committed by one of the family, centuries ago."
"Now you have begun it, finish it."
"Very well. One of the family is said to have abducted
some beautiful woman, who tried to escape from the
coach in which he was carrying her off, and in the
struggle he killed her--or she killed him--I forget
which. Such is one version of the tale.... I see that
your tubs and buckets are packed. Going away, aren't
you?"
"Yes, tomorrow--Old Lady Day."
"I heard you were, but could hardly believe it; it
seems so sudden. Why is it?"
"Father's was the last life on the property, and when
that dropped we had no further right to stay. Though
we might, perhaps, have stayed as weekly tenants--if it
had not been for me."
"What about you?"
"I am not a--proper woman."
D'Urberville's face flushed.
"What a blasted shame! Miserable snobs! May their
dirty souls be burnt to cinders!" he exclaimed in tones
of ironic resentment. "That's why you are going, is it?
Turned out?"
"We are not turned out exactly; but as they said we
should have to go soon, it was best to go now everybody
was moving because there are better chances."
"Where are you going to?"
"Kingsbere. We have taken rooms there. Mother is so
foolish about father's people that she will go there."
"But your mother's family are not fit for lodgings, and
in a little hole of a town like that. Now why not come
to my garden-house at Trantridge? There are hardly
any poultry now, since my mother's death; but there's
the house, as you know it, and the garden. It can be
whitewashed in a day, and your mother can live there
quite comfortably; and I will put the children to a
good school. Really I ought to do something for you!"
"But we have already taken the rooms at Kingsbere!" she
declared. "And we can wait there----"
"Wait--what for? For that nice husband, no doubt. Now
look here, Tess, I know what men are, and, bearing in
mind the GROUNDS of your separation, I am quite
positive he will never make it up with you. Now,
though I have been your enemy, I am your friend, even
if you won't believe it. Come to this cottage of mine.
We'll get up a regular colony of fowls, and your mother
can attend to them excellently; and the children can go
to school."
Tess breathed more and more quickly, and at length she
said--
"How do I know that you would do all this? Your views
may change--and then--we should be--my mother would
be--homeless again."
"O no----no. I would guarantee you against such as
that in writing, if necessary. Think it over.
Tess shook her head. But d'Urberville persisted; she
had seldom seen him so determined; he would not take a
negative.
"Please just tell your mother," he said, in emphatic
tones. "It is her business to judge--not yours. I
shall get the house swept out and whitened tomorrow
morning, and fires lit; and it will be dry by the
evening, so that you can come straight there. Now
mind, I shall expect you."
Tess again shook her head; her throat swelling with
complicated emotion. She could not look up at
d'Urberville.
"I owe you something for the past, you know," he
resumed. "And you cured me, too, of that craze; so I
am glad----"
"I would rather you had kept the craze, so that you had
kept the practice which went with it!"
"I am glad of this opportunity of repaying you a
little. Tomorrow I shall expect to hear your mother's
goods unloading.... Give me your hand on it now--dear,
beautiful Tess!"
With the last sentence he had dropped his voice to a
murmur, and put his hand in at the half-open casement.
With stormy eyes she pulled the stay-bar quickly, and,
in doing so, caught his arm between the casement and
the stone mullion.
"Damnation--you are very cruel!" he said, snatching out
his arm. "No, no!--I know you didn't do it on purpose.
Well I shall expect you, or your mother and children at
least."
"I shall not come--I have plenty of money!" she cried.
"Where?"
"At my father-in-law's, if I ask for it."
"IF you ask for it. But you won't, Tess; I know you;
you'll never ask for it--you'll starve first!"
With these words he rode off. Just at the corner of
the street he met the man with the paint-pot, who asked
him if he had deserted the brethren.
"You go to the devil!" said d'Urberville.
Tess remained where she was a long while, till a sudden
rebellious sense of injustice caused the region of her
eyes to swell with the rush of hot tears thither. Her
husband, Angel Clare himself, had, like others, dealt
out hard measure to her, surely he had! She had never
before admitted such a thought; but he had surely!
Never in her life--she could swear it from the bottom
of her soul--had she ever intended to do wrong; yet
these hard judgements had come. Whatever her sins,
they were not sins of intention, but of inadvertence,
and why should she have been punished so persistently?
She passionately seized the first piece of paper that
came to hand, and scribbled the following lines:
O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do
not deserve it. I have thought it all over carefully,
and I can never, never forgive you! You know that I
did not intend to wrong you--why have you so wronged
me? You are cruel, cruel indeed! I will try to forget
you. It is all injustice I have received at your
hands! T
She watched till the postman passed by, ran out to him
with her epistle, and then again took her listless
place inside the window-panes.
It was just as well to write like that as to write
tenderly. How could he give way to entreaty? The
facts had not changed: there was no new event to alter
his opinion.
It grew darker, the fire-light shining over the room.
The two biggest of the younger children had gone out
with their mother; the four smallest, their ages
ranging from three-and-a-half years to eleven, all in
black frocks, were gathered round the hearth babbling
their own little subjects. Tess at length joined them,
without lighting a candle.
"This is the last night that we shall sleep here,
dears, in the house where we were born," she said
quickly. "We ought to think of it, oughtn't we?"
They all became silent; with the impressibility of
their age they were ready to burst into tears at the
picture of finality she had conjured up, though all the
day hitherto they had been rejoicing in the idea of a
new place. Tess changed the subject.
"Sing to me, dears," she said.
"What shall we sing?"
"Anything you know; I don't mind."
There was a momentary pause; it was broken, first, by
one little tentative note; then a second voice
strengthened it, and a third and a fourth chimed in in
unison, with words they had learnt at the
Sunday-school----
Here we suffer grief and pain,
Here we meet to part again;
In Heaven we part no more.
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."
"Who was the gentleman?" asked the mother. "Your husband?"
"No. He'll never, never come," answered Tess in stony
hopelessness.
"Then who was it?"
"Oh, you needn't ask. You've seen him before, and so
have I."
"Ah! What did he say?" said Joan curiously.
"I will tell you when we are settled in our lodging at
Kingsbere tomorrow--every word."
It was not her husband, she had said. Yet a
consciousness that in a physical sense this man alone
was her husband seemed to weigh on her more and more.
LII
During the small hours of the next morning, while it
was still dark, dwellers near the highways were
conscious of a disturbance of their night's rest by
rumbling noises, intermittently continuing till
daylight--noises as certain to recur in this particular
first week of the month as the voice of the cuckoo in
the third week of the same. They were the
preliminaries of the general removal, the passing of
the empty waggons and teams to fetch the goods of the
migrating families; for it was always by the vehicle of
the farmer who required his services that the hired man
was conveyed to his destination. That this might be
accomplished within the day was the explanation of the
reverberation occurring so soon after midnight, the aim
of the carters being to reach the door of the outgoing
households by six o'clock, when the loading of their
movables at once began.
But to Tess and her mother's household no such anxious
farmer sent his team. They were only women; they were
not regular labourers; they were not particularly
required anywhere; hence they had to hire a waggon at
their own expense, and got nothing sent gratuitously.
It was a relief to Tess, when she looked out of the
window that morning, to find that though the weather
was windy and louring, it did not rain, and that the
waggon had come. A wet Lady-Day was a spectre which
removing families never forgot; damp furniture, damp
bedding, damp clothing accompanied it, and left a train
of ills.
Her mother, 'Liza-Lu, and Abraham were also awake, but
the younger children were let sleep on. The four
breakfasted by the thin light, and the "house-ridding"
was taken in hand.
It proceeded with some cheerfulness, a friendly
neighbour or two assisting. When the large articles of
furniture had been packed in position a circular nest
was made of the beds and bedding, in which Joan
Durbeyfield and the young children were to sit through
the journey. After loading there was a long delay
before the horses were brought, these having been
unharnessed during the ridding; but at length, about
two o'clock, the whole was under way, the cooking-pot
swinging from the axle of the waggon, Mrs Durbeyfield
and family at the top, the matron having in her lap, to
prevent injury to its works, the head of the clock,
which, at any exceptional lurch of the waggon, struck
one, or one-and-a-half, in hurt tones. Tess and the
next eldest girl walked alongside till they were out of
the village.
They had called on a few neighbours that morning and
the previous evening, and some came to see them off,
all wishing them well, though, in their secret hearts,
hardly expecting welfare possible to such a family,
harmless as the Durbeyfields were to all except
themselves. Soon the equipage began to ascend to
higher ground, and the wind grew keener with the change
of level and soil.
The day being the sixth of April, the Durbeyfield
waggon met many other waggons with families on the
summit of the load, which was built on a wellnigh
unvarying principle, as peculiar, probably, to the
rural labourer as the hexagon to the bee. The
groundwork of the arrangement was the family dresser,
which, with its shining handles, and finger-marks, and
domestic evidences thick upon it, stood importantly in
front, over the tails of the shaft-horses, in its erect
and natural position, like some Ark of the Covenant
that they were bound to carry reverently.
Some of the households were lively, some mournful; some
were stopping at the doors of wayside inns; where, in
due time, the Durbeyfield menagerie also drew up to
bait horses and refresh the travellers.
During the halt Tess's eyes fell upon a three-pint blue
mug, which was ascending and descending through the air
to and from the feminine section of a household,
sitting on the summit of a load that had also drawn up
at a little distance from the same inn. She followed
one of the mug's journeys upward, and perceived it to
be clasped by hands whose owner she well knew. Tess
went towards the waggon.
"Marian and Izz!" she cried to the girls, for it was
they, sitting with the moving family at whose house
they had lodged. "Are you house-ridding today, like
everybody else?"
They were, they said. It had been too rough a life for
them at Flintcomb-Ash, and they had come away, almost
without notice, leaving Groby to prosecute them if he
chose. They told Tess their destination, and Tess told
them hers.
Marian leant over the load, and lowered her voice.
"Do you know that the gentleman who follows 'ee--you'll
guess who I mean--came to ask for 'ee at Flintcomb
after you had gone? We didn't tell'n where you was,
knowing you wouldn't wish to see him."
"Ah--but I did see him!" Tess murmured. "He found me."
"And do he know where you be going?"
"I think so."
"Husband come back?"
"No."
She bade her acquaintance goodbye--for the respective
carters had now come out from the inn--and the two
waggons resumed their journey in opposite directions;
the vehicle whereon sat Marian, Izz, and the
ploughman's family with whom they had thrown in their
lot, being brightly painted, and drawn by three
powerful horses with shining brass ornaments on their
harness; while the waggon on which Mrs Durbeyfield and
her family rode was a creaking erection that would
scarcely bear the weight of the superincumbent load;
one which had known no paint since it was made, and
drawn by two horses only. The contrast well marked the
difference between being fetched by a thriving farmer
and conveying oneself whither no hirer waited one's
coming.
The distance was great--too great for a day's
journey--and it was with the utmost difficulty that the
horses performed it. Though they had started so early
it was quite late in the afternoon when they turned the
flank of an eminence which formed part of the upland
called Greenhill. While the horses stood to stale and
breathe themselves Tess looked around. Under the hill,
and just ahead of them, was the half-dead townlet of
their pilgrimage, Kingsbere, where lay those ancestors
of whom her father had spoken and sung to painfulness:
Kingsbere, the spot of all spots in the world which
could be considered the d'Urbervilles' home, since they
had resided there for full five hundred years. A man
could be seen advancing from the outskirts towards
them, and when he beheld the nature of their
waggon-load he quickened his steps.
"You be the woman they call Mrs Durbeyfield, I reckon?"
he said to Tess's mother, who had descended to walk the
remainder of the way.
She nodded. "Though widow of the late Sir John
d'Urberville, poor nobleman, if I cared for my rights;
and returning to the domain of his forefathers."
"Oh? Well, I know nothing about that; but if you be
Mrs Durbeyfield, I am sent to tell 'ee that the rooms
you wanted be let. We didn't know that you was coming
till we got your letter this morning--when 'twas too
late. But no doubt you can get other lodgings
somewhere."
The man had noticed the face of Tess, which had become
ash-pale at his intelligence. Her mother looked
hopelessly at fault. "What shall we do now, Tess?" she
said bitterly. "Here's a welcome to your ancestors'
lands! However, let's try further."
They moved on into the town, and tried with all their
might, Tess remaining with the waggon to take care of
the children whilst her mother and 'Liza-Lu made
inquiries. At the last return of Joan to the vehicle,
an hour later, when her search for accommodation had
still been fruitless, the driver of the waggon said the
goods must be unloaded, as the horses were half-dead,
and he was bound to return part of the way at least
that night.
"Very well--unload it here," said Joan recklessly.
"I'll get shelter somewhere."
The waggon had drawn up under the churchyard wall, in a
spot screened from view, and the driver, nothing loth,
soon hauled down the poor heap of household goods.
This done she paid him, reducing herself to almost her
last shilling thereby, and he moved off and left them,
only too glad to get out of further dealings with such
a family. It was a dry night, and he guessed that they
would come to no harm.
Tess gazed desperately at the pile of furniture. The
cold sunlight of this spring evening peered invidiously
upon the crocks and kettles, upon the bunches of dried
herbs shivering in the breeze, upon the brass handles
of the dresser, upon the wicker-cradle they had all
been rocked in, and upon the well-rubbed clock-case,
all of which gave out the reproachful gleam of indoor
articles abandoned to the vicissitudes of a roofless
exposure for which they were never made. Round about
were deparked hills and slopes--now cut up into little
paddocks--and the green foundations that showed where
the d'Urberville mansion once had stood; also an
outlying stretch of Egdon Heath that had always
belonged to the estate. Hard by, the aisle of the
church called the d'Urberville Aisle looked on
imperturbably.
"Isn't your family vault your own freehold?" said
Tess's mother, as she returned from a reconnoitre of
the church and graveyard. "Why, of course 'tis, and
that's where we will camp, girls, till the place of
your ancestors finds us a roof! Now, Tess and 'Liza
and Abraham, you help me. We'll make a nest for these
children, and then we'll have another look round."
Tess listlessly lent a hand, and in a quarter of an
hour the old four-post bedstead was dissociated from
the heap of goods, and erected under the south wall of
the church, the part of the building know as the
d'Urberville Aisle, beneath which the huge vaults lay.
Over the tester of the bedstead was a beautiful
traceried window, of many lights, its date being the
fifteenth century. It was called the d'Urberville
Window, and in the upper part could be discerned
heraldic emblems like those on Durbeyfield's old seal
and spoon.
Joan drew the curtains round the bed so as to make an
excellent tent of it, and put the smaller children
inside. "If it comes to the worst we can sleep there
too, for one night," she said. "But let us try further
on, and get something for the dears to eat! O, Tess,
what's the use of your playing at marrying gentlemen,
if it leaves us like this!"
Accompanied by 'Liza-Lu and the boy she again ascended
the little lane which secluded the church from the
townlet. As soon as they got into the street they
beheld a man on horseback gazing up and down. "Ah--
I'm looking for you!" he said, riding up to them.
"This is indeed a family gathering on the historic spot!"
It was Alec d'Urberville. "Where is Tess?" he asked.
Personally Joan had no liking for Alec. She cursorily
signified the direction of the church, and went on,
d'Urberville saying that he would see them again, in
case they should be still unsuccessful in their search
for shelter, of which he had just heard. When they had
gone d'Urberville rode to the inn, and shortly after
came out on foot.
In the interim Tess, left with the children inside the
bedstead, remained talking with them awhile, till,
seeing that no more could be done to make them
comfortable just then, she walked about the churchyard,
now beginning to be embrowned by the shades of
nightfall. The door of the church was unfastened, and
she entered it for the first time in her life.
Within the window under which the bedstead stood were
the tombs of the family, covering in their dates
several centuries. They were canopied, alter-shaped,
and plain; their carvings being defaced and broken;
their brasses torn from the matrices, the rivet-holes
remaining like martin-holes in a sandcliff. Of all the
reminders that she had ever received that her people
were socially extinct there was none so forcible as
this spoliation.
She drew near to a dark stone on which was inscribed:
OSTIUM SEPULCHRI ANTIQUAE FAMILIAE D'URBERVILLE
Tess did not read Church-Latin like a Cardinal, but she
knew that this was the door of her ancestral sepulchre,
and that the tall knights of whom her father had
chanted in his cups lay inside.
She musingly turned to withdraw, passing near an
altertomb, the oldest of them all, on which was a
recumbent figure. In the dusk she had not noticed it
before, and would hardly have noticed it now but for an
odd fancy that the effigy moved. As soon as she drew
close to it she discovered all in a moment that the
figure was a living person; and the shock to her sense
of not having been alone was so violent that she was
quite overcome, and sank down nigh to fainting, not,
however, till she had recognized Alec d'Urberville in
the form.
He leapt off the slab and supported her.
"I saw you come in," he said smiling, "and got up there
not to interrupt your meditations. A family gathering,
is it not, with these old fellows under us here?
Listen."
He stamped with his heel heavily on the floor;
whereupon there arose a hollow echo from below.
"That shook them a bit, I'll warrant!" he continued.
"And you thought I was the mere stone reproduction of
one of them. But no. The old order changeth. The
little finger of the sham d'Urberville can do more for
you than the whole dynasty of the real underneath....
Now command me. What shall I do?"
"Go away!" she murmured.
"I will--I'll look for your mother," said he blandly.
But in passing her he whispered: "Mind this; you'll be
civil yet!"
When he was gone she bent down upon the entrance to the
vaults, and said--
"Why am I on the wrong side of this door!"
In the meantime Marian and Izz Huett had journeyed
onward with the chattels of the ploughman in the
direction of their land of Canaan--the Egypt of some
other family who had left it only that morning. But
the girls did not for a long time think of where they
were going. Their talk was of Angel Clare and Tess,
and Tess's persistent lover, whose connection with her
previous history they had partly heard and partly
guessed ere this.
"'Tisn't as though she had never known him afore," said
Marian. "His having won her once makes all the
difference in the world. 'Twould be a thousand pities
if he were to tole her away again. Mr Clare can never
be anything to us, Izz; and why should we grudge him to
her, and not try to mend this quarrel? If he could
on'y know what straits she's put to, and what's
hovering round, he might come to take care of his own."
"Could we let him know?"
They thought of this all the way to their destination;
but the bustle of re-establishment in their new place
took up all their attention then. But when they were
settled, a month later, they heard of Clare's
approaching return, though they had learnt nothing more
of Tess. Upon that, agitated anew by their attachment
to him, yet honourably disposed to her, Marian uncorked
the penny ink-bottle they shared, and a few lines were
concocted between the two girls.
HONOUR'D SIR--Look to your Wife if you do love her as
much as she do love you. For she is sore put to by an
Enemy in the shape of a Friend. Sir, there is one near
her who ought to be Away. A woman should not be try'd
beyond her Strength, and continual dropping will wear
away a Stone--ay, more--a Diamond.
FROM TWO WELL-WISHERS
This was addressed to Angel Clare at the only place
they had ever heard him to be connected with, Emminster
Vicarage; after which they continued in a mood of
emotional exaltation at their own generosity, which
made them sing in hysterical snatches and weep at the
same time.
END OF PHASE THE SIXTH
Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment
LIII
It was evening at Emminster Vicarage. The two
customary candles were burning under their green shades
in the Vicar's study, but he had not been sitting
there. Occasionally he came in, stirred the small fire
which sufficed for the increasing mildness of the
spring, and went out again; sometimes pausing at the
front door, going on to the drawing-room, then
returning again to the front door.
It faced westward, and though gloom prevailed inside,
there was still light enough without to see with
distinctness. Mrs Clare, who had been sitting in the
drawing-room, followed him hither.
"Plenty of time yet," said the Vicar. "He doesn't
reach Chalk-Newton till six, even if the train should
be punctual, and ten miles of country-road, five of
them in Crimmercrock Lane, are not jogged over in a
hurry by our old horse."
"But he has done it in an hour with us, my dear."
"Years ago."
Thus they passed the minutes, each well knowing that
this was only waste of breath, the one essential being
simply to wait.
At length there was a slight noise in the lane, and the
old pony-chaise appeared indeed outside the railings.
They saw alight therefrom a form which they affected to
recognize, but would actually have passed by in the
street without identifying had he not got out of their
carriage at the particular moment when a particular
person was due.
Mrs Clare rushed through the dark passage to the door,
and her husband came more slowly after her.
The new arrival, who was just about to enter, saw their
anxious faces in the doorway and the gleam of the west
in their spectacles because they confronted the last
rays of day; but they could only see his shape against
the light.
"O, my boy, my boy--home again at last!" cried Mrs
Clare, who cared no more at that moment for the stains
of heterodoxy which has caused all this separation than
for the dust upon his clothes. What woman, indeed,
among the most faithful adherents of the truth,
believes the promises and threats of the Word in the
sense in which she believes in her own children, or
would not throw her theology to the wind if weighed
against their happiness? As soon as they reached the
room where the candles were lighted she looked at his
face.
"O, it is not Angel--not my son--the Angel who went
away!" she cried in all the irony of sorrow, as she
turned herself aside.
His father, too, was shocked to see him, so reduced was
that figure from its former contours by worry and the
bad season that Clare had experienced, in the climate
to which he had so rashly hurried in his first aversion
to the mockery of events at home. You could see the
skeleton behind the man, and almost the ghost behind
the skeleton. He matched Crivelli's dead CHRISTUS.
His sunken eye-pits were of morbid hue, and the light
in his eyes had waned. The angular hollows and lines
of his aged ancestors had succeeded to their reign in
his face twenty years before their time.
"I was ill over there, you know," he said. "I am all
right now."
As if, however, to falsify this assertion, his legs
seemed to give way, and he suddenly sat down to save
himself from falling. It was only a slight attack of
faintness, resulting from the tedious day's journey,
and the excitement of arrival.
"Has any letter come for me lately?" he asked.
"I received the last you sent on by the merest chance,
and after considerable delay through being inland;
or I might have come sooner."
"It was from your wife, we supposed?"
"It was."
Only one other had recently come. They had not sent it
on to him, knowing he would start for home so soon.
He hastily opened the letter produced, and was much
disturbed to read in Tess's handwriting the sentiments
expressed in her last hurried scrawl to him.
O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do
not deserve it. I have thought it all over carefully,
and I can never, never forgive you! You know that I
did not intend to wrong you--why have you so wronged
me? You are cruel, cruel indeed! I will try to forget
you. It is all injustice I have received at your
hands. -- T
"It is quite true!" said Angel, throwing down the
letter. "Perhaps she will never be reconciled to me!"
"Don't, Angel, be so anxious about a mere child of the
soil!" said his mother.
"Child of the soil! Well, we all are children of the
soil. I wish she were so in the sense you mean; but
let me now explain to you what I have never explained
before, that her father is a descendant in the male
line of one of the oldest Norman houses, like a good
many others who lead obscure agricultural lives in our
villages, and are dubbed 'sons of the soil.'"
He soon retired to bed; and the next morning, feeling
exceedingly unwell, he remained in his room pondering.
The circumstances amid which he had left Tess were such
that though, while on the south of the Equator and just
in receipt of her loving epistle, it had seemed the
easiest thing in the world to rush back into her arms
the moment he chose to forgive her, now that he had
arrived it was not so easy as it had seemed. She was
passionate, and her present letter, showing that her
estimate of him had changed under his delay--too justly
changed, he sadly owned,--made him ask himself if it
would be wise to confront her unannounced in the
presence of her parents. Supposing that her love had
indeed turned to dislike during the last weeks of
separation, a sudden meeting might lead to bitter
words.
Clare therefore thought it would be best to prepare
Tess and her family by sending a line to Marlott
announcing his return, and his hope that she was still
living with them there, as he had arranged for her to
do when he left England. He despatched the inquiry
that very day, and before the week was out there came a
short reply from Mrs Durbeyfield which did not remove
his embarrassment, for it bore no address, though to
his surprise it was not written from Marlott.
SIR
J write these few lines to say that my Daughter is away
from me at present, and J am not sure when she will
return, but J will let you know as Soon as she do.
J do not feel at liberty to tell you Where she is
temperly biding. J should say that me and my Family
have left Marlott for some Time.----
Yours, J. DURBEYFIELD
It was such a relief to Clare to learn that Tess was at
least apparently well that her mother's stiff reticence
as to her whereabouts did not long distress him. They
were all angry with him, evidently. He would wait till
Mrs Durbeyfield could inform him of Tess's return,
which her letter implied to be soon. He deserved no
more. His had been a love "which alters when it
alteration finds". He had undergone some strange
experiences in his absence; he had seen the virtual
Faustina in the literal Cornelia, a spiritual Lucretia
in a corporeal Phryne; he had thought of the woman
taken and set in the midst as one deserving to be
stoned, and of the wife of Uriah being made a queen;
and he had asked himself why he had not judged Tess
constructively rather than biographically, by the will
rather than by the deed?
A day or two passed while he waited at his father's
house for the promised second note from Joan
Durbeyfield, and indirectly to recover a little more
strength. The strength showed signs of coming back,
but there was no sign of Joan's letter. Then he hunted
up the old letter sent on to him in Brazil, which Tess
had written from Flintcomb-Ash, and re-read it. The
sentences touched him now as much as when he had first
perused them.
I must cry to you in my trouble--I have no one else....
I think I must die if you do not come soon, or tell me
to come to you.... Please, please, not to be just--only
a little kind to me! ... If you would come, I could die
in your arms! I would be well content to do that if so
be you had forgiven me! ... If you will send me one
little line and say, "I AM COMING SOON," I will bide
on, Angel--O so cheerfully! ... Think how it do hurt my
heart not to see you ever--ever! Ah, if I could only
make your dear heart ache one little minute of each day
as mine does every day and all day long. It might lead
you to show pity to your poor lonely one....I would be
content, ay, glad, to live with you as your servant, if
I may not as your wife; so that I could only be near
you, and get glimpses of you, and think of you as mine.
... I long for only one thing in heaven or earth or
under the earth, to meet you, my own dear! Come to
me--come to me, and save me from what threatens me.
Clare determined that he would no longer believe in her
more recent and severer regard of him; but would go and
find her immediately. He asked his father if she had
applied for any money during his absence. His father
returned a negative, and then for the first time it
occurred to Angel that her pride had stood in her way,
and that she had suffered privation. From his remarks
his parents now gathered the real reason of the
separation; and their Christianity was such that,
reprobates being their especial care, the tenderness
towards Tess which her blood, her simplicity, even her
poverty, had not engendered, was instantly excited by
her sin.
Whilst he was hastily packing together a few articles
for his journey he glanced over a poor plain missive
also lately come to hand--the one from Marian and Izz
Huett, beginning----
"HONOUR'D SIR----Look to your Wife if you do love her
as much as she do love you," and signed, "FROM TWO
WELL-WISHERS."
LIV
In a quarter of an hour Clare was leaving the house,
whence his mother watched his thin figure as it
disappeared into the street. He had declined to borrow
his father's old mare, well knowing of its necessity to
the household. He went to the inn, where he hired a
trap, and could hardly wait during the harnessing. In
a very few minutes after he was driving up the hill out
of the town which, three or four months earlier in the
year, Tess had descended with such hopes and ascended
with such shattered purposes.
Benvill Lane soon stretched before him, its hedges and
trees purple with buds; but he was looking at other
things, and only recalled himself to the scene
sufficiently to enable him to keep the way. In
something less than an hour-and-a-half he had skirted
the south of the King's Hintock estates and ascended to
the untoward solitude of Cross-in-Hand, the unholy
stone whereon Tess had been compelled by Alec
d'Urberville, in his whim of reformation, to swear the
strange oath that she would never wilfully tempt him
again. The pale and blasted nettle-stems of the
preceding year even now lingered nakedly in the banks,
young green nettles of the present spring growing from
their roots.
Thence he went along the verge of the upland
overhanging the other Hintocks, and, turning to the
right, plunged into the bracing calcareous region of
Flintcomb-Ash, the address from which she had written
to him in one of the letters, and which he supposed to
be the place of sojourn referred to by her mother.
Here, of course, he did not find her; and what added to
his depression was the discovery that no "Mrs Clare"
had ever been heard of by the cottagers or by the
farmer himself, though Tess was remembered well enough
by her Christian name. His name she had obviously
never used during their separation, and her dignified
sense of their total severance was shown not much less
by this abstention than by the hardships she had chosen
to undergo (of which he now learnt for the first time)
rather than apply to his father for more funds.
From this place they told him Tess Durbeyfield had
gone, without due notice, to the home of her parents on
the other side of Blackmoor, and it therefore became
necessary to find Mrs Durbeyfield. She had told him
she was not now at Marlott, but had been curiously
reticent as to her actual address, and the only course
was to go to Marlott and inquire for it. The farmer
who had been so churlish with Tess was quite
smooth-tongued to Clare, and lent him a horse and man
to drive him towards Marlott, the gig he had arrived in
being sent back to Emminster; for the limit of a day's
journey with that horse was reached.
Clare would not accept the loan of the farmer's vehicle
for a further distance than to the outskirts of the
Vale, and, sending it back with the man who had driven
him, he put up at an inn, and next day entered on foot
the region wherein was the spot of his dear Tess's
birth. It was as yet too early in the year for much
colour to appear in the gardens and foliage; the
so-called spring was but winter overlaid with a thin
coat of greenness, and it was of a parcel with his
expectations.
The house in which Tess had passed the years of her
childhood was now inhabited by another family who had
never known her. The new residents were in the garden,
taking as much interest in their own doings as if the
homestead had never passed its primal time in
conjunction with the histories of others, beside which
the histories of these were but as a tale told by an
idiot. They walked about the garden paths with
thoughts of their own concerns entirely uppermost,
bringing their actions at every moment in jarring
collision with the dim ghosts behind them, talking as
though the time when Tess lived there were not one whit
intenser in story than now. Even the spring birds sang
over their heads as if they thought there was nobody
missing in particular.
On inquiry of these precious innocents, to whom even
the name of their predecessors was a failing memory,
Clare learned that John Durbeyfield was dead; that his
widow and children had left Marlott, declaring that
they were going to live at Kingsbere, but instead of
doing so had gone on to another place they mentioned.
By this time Clare abhorred the house for ceasing to
contain Tess, and hastened away from its hated presence
without once looking back.
His way was by the field in which he had first beheld
her at the dance. It was as bad as the house--even
worse. He passed on through the churchyard, where,
amongst the new headstones, he saw one of a somewhat
superior design to the rest. The inscription ran thus:
In memory of John Durbeyfield, rightly d'Urberville, of
the once powerful family of that Name, and Direct
Descendant through an illustrious Line from Sir Pagan
d'Urberville, one of the Knights of the Conqueror. Died
March 10th, 18--
HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN.
Some man, apparently the sexton, had observed Clare
standing there, and drew nigh. "Ah, sir, now that's a
man who didn't want to lie here, but wished to be
carried to Kingsbere, where his ancestors be."
"And why didn't they respect his wish?"
"Oh--no money. Bless your soul, sir, why--there,
I wouldn't wish to say it everywhere, but--even this
headstone, for all the flourish wrote upon en, is not
paid for."
"Ah, who put it up?"
The man told the name of a mason in the village, and,
on leaving the churchyard, Clare called at the mason's
house. He found that the statement was true, and paid
the bill. This done he turned in the direction of the
migrants.
The distance was too long for a walk, but Clare felt
such a strong desire for isolation that at first he
would neither hire a conveyance nor go to a circuitous
line of railway by which he might eventually reach the
place. At Shaston, however, he found he must hire; but
the way was such that he did not enter Joan's place
till about seven o'clock in the evening, having
traversed a distance of over twenty miles since leaving
Marlott. The village being small he had little
difficulty in finding Mrs Durbeyfield's tenement, which
was a house in a walled garden, remote from the main
road, where she had stowed away her clumsy old
furniture as best she could. It was plain that for
some reason or other she had not wished him to visit
her, and he felt his call to be somewhat of an
intrusion. She came to the door herself, and the light
from the evening sky fell upon her face.
This was the first time that Clare had ever met her,
but he was too preoccupied to observe more than that
she was still a handsome woman, in the garb of a
respectable widow. He was obliged to explain that he
was Tess's husband, and his object in coming there, and
he did it awkwardly enough. "I want to see her at
once," he added. "You said you would write to me
again, but you have not done so."
"Because she've not come home," said Joan.
"Do you know if she is well?"
"I don't. But you ought to, sir," said she.
"I admit it. Where is she staying?"
From the beginning of the interview Joan had disclosed
her embarrassment by keeping her hand to the side of
her cheek.
"I--don't know exactly where she is staying," she
answered. "She was--but----"
"Where was she?"
"Well, she is not there now."
In her evasiveness she paused again, and the younger
children had by this time crept to the door, where,
pulling at his mother's skirts, the youngest
murmured----
"Is this the gentleman who is going to marry Tess?"
"He has married her," Joan whispered. "Go inside."
Clare saw her efforts for reticence, and asked----
"Do you think Tess would wish me to try and find her?
If not, of course----"
"I don't think she would."
"Are you sure?"
"I am sure she wouldn't."
He was turning away; and then he thought of Tess's
tender letter.
"I am sure she would!" he retorted passionately.
"I know her better than you do."
"That's very likely, sir; for I have never really known
her."
"Please tell me her address, Mrs Durbeyfield, in
kindness to a lonely wretched man!" Tess's mother again
restlessly swept her cheek with her vertical hand, and
seeing that he suffered, she at last said, is a low
voice----
"She is at Sandbourne."
"Ah--where there? Sandbourne has become a large place,
they say."
"I don't know more particularly than I have said--
Sandbourne. For myself, I was never there."
It was apparent that Joan spoke the truth in this, and
he pressed her no further.
"Are you in want of anything?" he said gently.
"No, sir," she replied. "We are fairly well provided
for."
Without entering the house Clare turned away. There
was a station three miles ahead, and paying off his
coachman, he walked thither. The last train to
Sandbourne left shortly after, and it bore Clare on its
wheels.
LV
At eleven o'clock that night, having secured a bed at
one of the hotels and telegraphed his address to his
father immediately on his arrival, he walked out into
the streets of Sandbourne. It was too late to call on
or inquire for any one, and he reluctantly postponed
his purpose till the morning. But he could not retire
to rest just yet.
This fashionable watering-place, with its eastern and
its western stations, its piers, its groves of pines,
its promenades, and its covered gardens, was, to Angel
Clare, like a fairy place suddenly created by the
stroke of a wand, and allowed to get a little dusty.
An outlying eastern tract of the enormous Egdon Waste
was close at hand, yet on the very verge of that tawny
piece of antiquity such a glittering novelty as this
pleasure city had chosen to spring up. Within the
space of a mile from its outskirts every irregularity
of the soil was prehistoric, every channel an
undisturbed British trackway; not a sod having been
turned there since the days of the Caesars. Yet the
exotic had grown here, suddenly as the prophet's gourd;
and had drawn hither Tess.
By the midnight lamps he went up and down the winding
way of this new world in an old one, and could discern
between the trees and against the stars the lofty
roofs, chimneys, gazebos, and towers of the numerous
fanciful residences of which the place was composed.
It was a city of detached mansions; a Mediterranean
lounging-place on the English Channel; and as seen now
by night it seemed even more imposing than it was.
The sea was near at hand, but not intrusive; it
murmured, and he thought it was the pines; the pines
murmured in precisely the same tones, and he thought
they were the sea.
Where could Tess possibly be, a cottage-girl, his young
wife, amidst all this wealth and fashion? The more he
pondered the more was he puzzled. Were there any cows
to milk here? There certainly were no fields to till.
She was most probably engaged to do something in one of
these large houses; and he sauntered along, looking at
the chamber-windows and their lights going out one by
one; and wondered which of them might be hers.
Conjecture was useless, and just after twelve o'clock
he entered and went to bed. Before putting out his
light he re-read Tess's impassioned letter. Sleep,
however, he could not--so near her, yet so far from
her--and he continually lifted the window-blind and
regarded the backs of the opposite houses, and wondered
behind which of the sashes she reposed at that moment.
He might almost as well have sat up all night. In the
morning he arose at seven, and shortly after went out,
taking the direction of the chief post-office. At the
door he met an intelligent postman coming out with
letters for the morning delivery.
"Do you know the address of a Mrs Clare?" asked Angel.
The postman shook his head.
Then, remembering that she would have been likely to
continue the use of her maiden name, Clare said----
"Of a Miss Durbeyfield?"
"Durbeyfield?"
This also was strange to the postman addressed.
"There's visitors coming and going every day, as you
know, sir," he said; "and without the name of the house
'tis impossible to find 'em."
One of his comrades hastening out at that moment, the
name was repeated to him.
"I know no name of Durbeyfield; but there is the name
of d'Urberville at The Herons," said the second.
"That's it!" cried Clare, pleased to think that she has
reverted to the real pronunciation. "What place is The
Herons?"
"A stylish lodging-house. 'Tis all lodging-houses
here, bless 'ee."
Clare received directions how to find the house, and
hastened thither, arriving with the milkman. The
Herons, though an ordinary villa, stood in its own
grounds, and was certainly the last place in which one
would have expected to find lodgings, so private was
its appearance. If poor Tess was a servant here, as he
feared, she would go to the back-door to that milkman,
and he was inclined to go thither also. However, in
his doubts he turned to the front, and rang.
The hour being early the landlady herself opened the
door. Clare inquired for Teresa d'Urberville or
Durbeyfield.
"Mrs d'Urberville?"
"Yes."
Tess, then, passed as a married woman, and he felt
glad, even though she had not adopted his name.
"Will you kindly tell her that a relative is anxious to
see her?"
"It is rather early. What name shall I give, sir?"
"Angel."
"Mr Angel?"
"No; Angel. It is my Christian name. She'll
understand."
"I'll see if she is awake."
He was shown into the front room--the dining-room--and
looked out through the spring curtains at the little
lawn, and the rhododendrons and other shrubs upon it.
Obviously her position was by no means so bad as he had
feared, and it crossed his mind that she must somehow
have claimed and sold the jewels to attain it. He did
not blame her for one moment. Soon his sharpened ear
detected footsteps upon the stairs, at which his heart
thumped so painfully that he could hardly stand firm.
"Dear me! what will she think of me, so altered as I
am!" he said to himself; and the door opened.
Tess appeared on the threshold--not at all as he had
expected to see her--bewilderingly otherwise, indeed.
Her great natural beauty was, if not heightened,
rendered more obvious by her attire. She was loosely
wrapped in a cashmere dressing-gown of gray-white,
embroidered in half-mourning tints, and she wore
slippers of the same hue. Her neck rose out of a frill
of down, and her well-remembered cable of dark-brown
hair was partially coiled up in a mass at the back of
her head and partly hanging on her shoulder--the
evident result of haste.
He had held out his arms, but they had fallen again to
his side; for she had not come forward, remaining still
in the opening of the doorway. Mere yellow skeleton
that he was now he felt the contrast between them, and
thought his appearance distasteful to her.
"Tess!" he said huskily, "can you forgive me for going
away? Can't you--come to me? How do you get to
be--like this?"
"It is too late," said she, her voice sounding hard
through the room, her eyes shining unnaturally.
"I did not think rightly of you--I did not see you as
you were!" he continued to plead. "I have learnt to
since, dearest Tessy mine!"
"Too late, too late!" she said, waving her hand in the
impatience of a person whose tortures cause every
instant to seem an hour. "Don't come close to me,
Angel! No--you must not. Keep away."
"But don't you love me, my dear wife, because I have
been so pulled down by illness? You are not so
fickle--I am come on purpose for you--my mother and
father will welcome you now!"
"Yes--O, yes, yes! But I say, I say it is too late."
She seemed to feel like a fugitive in a dream, who
tries to move away, but cannot. "Don't you know
all--don't you know it? Yet how do you come here if
you do not know?"
"I inquired here and there, and I found the way."
"I waited and waited for you," she went on, her tones
suddenly resuming their old fluty pathos. "But you did
not come! And I wrote to you, and you did not come!
He kept on saying you would never come any more, and
that I was a foolish woman. He was very kind to me,
and to mother, and to all of us after father's death.
He----"
"I don't understand."
"He has won me back to him."
Clare looked at her keenly, then, gathering her
meaning, flagged like one plague-stricken, and his
glance sank; it fell on her hands, which, once rosy,
were now white and more delicate.
She continued----
"He is upstairs. I hate him now, because he told me a
lie--that you would not come again; and you HAVE come!
These clothes are what he's put upon me: I didn't care
what he did wi' me! But--will you go away, Angel,
please, and never come any more?"
They stood fixed, their baffled hearts looking out of
their eyes with a joylessness pitiful to see. Both
seemed to implore something to shelter them from
reality.
"Ah--it is my fault!" said Clare.
But he could not get on. Speech was as inexpressive as
silence. But he had a vague consciousness of one
thing, though it was not clear to him till later; that
his original Tess had spiritually ceased to recognize
the body before him as hers--allowing it to drift, like
a corpse upon the current, in a direction dissociated
from its living will.
A few instants passed, and he found that Tess was gone.
His face grew colder and more shrunken as he stood
concentrated on the moment, and a minute or two after
he found himself in the street, walking along he did
not know whither.
LVI
Mrs Brooks, the lady who was the householder at The
Herons, and owner of all the handsome furniture, was
not a person of an unusually curious turn of mind.
She was too deeply materialized, poor woman, by her long
and enforced bondage to that arithmetical demon
Profit-and-Loss, to retain much curiousity for its own
sake, and apart from possible lodgers' pockets.
Nevertheless, the visit of Angel Clare to her
well-paying tenants, Mr and Mrs d'Urberville, as she
deemed them, was sufficiently exceptional in point of
time and manner to reinvigorate the feminine proclivity
which had been stifled down as useless save in its
bearings to the letting trade.
Tess had spoken to her husband from the doorway,
without entering the dining-room, and Mrs Brooks, who
stood within the partly-closed door of her own
sitting-room at the back of the passage, could hear
fragments of the conversation--if conversation it could
be called--between those two wretched souls. She heard
Tess re-ascend the stairs to the first floor, and the
departure of Clare, and the closing of the front door
behind him. Then the door of the room above was shut,
and Mrs Brooks knew that Tess had re-entered her
apartment. As the young lady was not fully dressed,
Mrs Brooks knew that she would not emerge again for
some time.
She accordingly ascended the stairs softly, and stood
at the door of the front room--a drawing-room,
connected with the room immediately behind it (which
was a bedroom) by folding-doors in the common manner.
This first floor, containing Mrs Brooks's best
apartments, had been taken by the week by the
d'Urbervilles. The back room was now in silence; but
from the drawing-room there came sounds.
All that she could at first distinguish of them was one
syllable, continually repeated in a low note of
moaning, as if it came from a soul bound to some
Ixionian wheel----
"O--O--O!"
Then a silence, then a heavy sigh, and again----
"O--O--O!"
The landlady looked through the keyhole. Only a small
space of the room inside was visible, but within that
space came a corner of the breakfast table, which was
already spread for the meal, and also a chair beside.
Over the seat of the chair Tess's face was bowed, her
posture being a kneeling one in front of it; her hands
were clasped over her head, the skirts of her
dressing-gown and the embroidery of her night-gown
flowed upon the floor behind her, and her stockingless
feet, from which the slippers had fallen, protruded
upon the carpet. It was from her lips that came the
murmur of unspeakable despair.
Then a man's voice from the adjoining bedroom----
"What's a matter?"
She did not answer, but went on, in a tone which was a
soliloquy rather than an exclamation, and a dirge
rather than a soliloquy. Mrs Brooks could only catch a
portion:
"And then my dear, dear husband came home to me ...
and I did not know it! ... And you had used your cruel
persuasion upon me ... you did not stop using
it--no--you did not stop! My little sisters and
brothers and my mother's needs--they were the things
you moved me by ... and you said my husband would never
come back--never; and you taunted me, and said what a
simpleton I was to expect him! ... And at last I
believed you and gave way! ... And then he came back!
Now he is gone. Gone a second time, and I have lost
him now for ever ... and he will not love me the
littlest bit ever any more--only hate me! ... O yes,
I have lost him now--again because of--you!" In writhing,
with her head on the chair, she turned her face towards
the door, and Mrs Brooks could see the pain upon it;
and that her lips were bleeding from the clench of her
teeth upon them, and that the long lashes of her closed
eyes stuck in wet tags to her cheeks. She continued:
"And he is dying--he looks as if he is dying! ... And
my sin will kill him and not kill me! ... O, you have
torn my life all to pieces ... made me be what I prayed
you in pity not to make me be again! ... My own true
husband will never, never--O God--I can't bear this!--
I cannot!"
There were more and sharper words from the man; then a
sudden rustle; she had sprung to her feet. Mrs Brooks,
thinking that the speaker was coming to rush out of the
door, hastily retreated down the stairs.
She need not have done so, however, for the door of the
sitting-room was not opened. But Mrs Brooks felt it
unsafe to watch on the landing again, and entered her
own parlour below.
She could hear nothing through the floor, although she
listened intently, and thereupon went to the kitchen to
finish her interrupted breakfast. Coming up presently
to the front room on the ground floor she took up some
sewing, waiting for her lodgers to ring that she might
take away the breakfast, which she meant to do herself,
to discover what was the matter if possible. Overhead,
as she sat, she could now hear the floorboards slightly
creak, as if some one were walking about, and presently
the movement was explained by the rustle of garments
against the banisters, the opening and the closing of
the front door, and the form of Tess passing to the
gate on her way into the street. She was fully dressed
now in the walking costume of a well-to-do young lady
in which she had arrived, with the sole addition that
over her hat and black feathers a veil was drawn.
Mrs Brooks had not been able to catch any word of
farewell, temporary or otherwise, between her tenants
at the door above. They might have quarrelled, or Mr
d'Urberville might still be asleep, for he was not an
early riser.
She went into the back room which was more especially
her own apartment, and continued her sewing there. The
lady lodger did not return, nor did the gentleman ring
his bell. Mrs Brooks pondered on the delay, and on what
probable relation the visitor who had called so early
bore to the couple upstairs. In reflecting she leant
back in her chair.
As she did so her eyes glanced casually over the
ceiling till they were arrested by a spot in the middle
of its white surface which she had never noticed there
before. It was about the size of a wafer when she
first observed it, but it speedily grew as large as the
palm of her hand, and then she could perceive that it
was red. The oblong white ceiling, with this scarlet
blot in the midst, had the appearance of a gigantic ace
of hearts.
Mrs Brooks had strange qualms of misgiving. She got
upon the table, and touched the spot in the ceiling
with her fingers. It was damp, and she fancied that it
was a blood stain.
Descending from the table, she left the parlour, and
went upstairs, intending to enter the room overhead,
which was the bedchamber at the back of the
drawing-room. But, nerveless woman as she had now
become, she could not bring herself to attempt the
handle. She listened. The dead silence within was
broken only by a regular beat.
Drip, drip, drip.
Mrs Brooks hastened downstairs, opened the front door,
and ran into the street. A man she knew, one of the
workmen employed at an adjoining villa, was passing by,
and she begged him to come in and go upstairs with her;
she feared something had happened to one of her
lodgers. The workman assented, and followed her to the
landing.
She opened the door of the drawing-room, and stood back
for him to pass in, entering herself behind him. The
room was empty; the breakfast--a substantial repast of
coffee, eggs, and a cold ham--lay spread upon the table
untouched, as when she had taken it up, excepting that
the carving-knife was missing. She asked the man to go
through the folding-doors into the adjoining room.
He opened the doors, entered a step or two, and came
back almost instantly with a rigid face. "My good God,
the gentleman in bed is dead! I think he has been hurt
with a knife--a lot of blood had run down upon the
floor!"
The alarm was soon given, and the house which had
lately been so quiet resounded with the tramp of many
footsteps, a surgeon among the rest. The wound was
small, but the point of the blade had touched the heart
of the victim, who lay on his back, pale, fixed, dead,
as if he had scarcely moved after the infliction of the
blow. In a quarter of an hour the news that a
gentleman who was a temporary visitor to the town had
been stabbed in his bed, spread through every street
and villa of the popular watering-place.
LVII
Meanwhile Angel Clare had walked automatically along
the way by which he had come, and, entering his hotel,
sat down over the breakfast, staring at nothingness.
He went on eating and drinking unconsciously till on a
sudden he demanded his bill; having paid which he took
his dressing-bag in his hand, the only luggage he had
brought with him, and went out.
At the moment of his departure a telegram was handed to
him--a few words from his mother, stating that they
were glad to know his address, and informing him that
his brother Cuthbert had proposed to and been accepted
by Mercy Chant.
Clare crumpled up the paper, and followed the route to
the station; reaching it, he found that there would be
no train leaving for an hour and more. He sat down to
wait, and having waited a quarter of an hour felt that
he could wait there no longer. Broken in heart and
numbed, he had nothing to hurry for; but he wished to
get out of a town which had been the scene of such an
experience, and turned to walk to the first station
onward, and let the train pick him up there.
The highway that he followed was open, and at a little
distance dipped into a valley, across which it could be
seen running from edge to edge. He had traversed the
greater part of this depression, and was climbing the
western acclivity, when, pausing for breath, he
unconsciously looked back. Why he did so he could not
say, but something seemed to impel him to the act. The
tape-like surface of the road diminished in his rear as
far as he could see, and as he gazed a moving spot
intruded on the white vacuity of its perspective.
It was a human figure running. Clare waited, with a
dim sense that somebody was trying to overtake him.
The form descending the incline was a woman's, yet so
entirely was his mind blinded to the idea of his wife's
following him that even when she came nearer he did not
recognize her under the totally changed attire in which
he now beheld her. It was not till she was quite close
that he could believe her to be Tess.
"I saw you--turn away from the station--just before I
got there--and I have been following you all this way!"
She was so pale, so breathless, so quivering in every
muscle, that he did not ask her a single question, but
seizing her hand, and pulling it within his arm, he led
her along. To avoid meeting any possible wayfarers he
left the high road, and took a footpath under some
fir-trees. When they were deep among the moaning
boughs he stopped and looked at her inquiringly.
"Angel," she said, as if waiting for this, "do you know
what I have been running after you for? To tell you
that I have killed him!" A pitiful white smile lit her
face as she spoke.
"What!" said he, thinking from the strangeness of her
manner that she was in some delirium.
"I have done it--I don't know how," she continued.
"Still, I owed it to you, and to myself, Angel. I
feared long ago, when I struck him on the mouth with my
glove, that I might do it some day for the trap he set
for me in my simple youth, and his wrong to you through
me. He has come between us and ruined us, and now he
can never do it any more. I never loved him at all,
Angel, as I loved you. You know it, don't you? You
believe it? You didn't come back to me, and I was
obliged to go back to him. Why did you go away--why
did you--when I loved you so? I can't think why you
did it. But I don't blame you; only, Angel, will you
forgive me my sin against you, now I have killed him?
I thought as I ran along that you would be sure to
forgive me now I have done that. It came to me as a
shining light that I should get you back that way. I
could not bear the loss of you any longer--you don't
know how entirely I was unable to bear your not loving
me! Say you do now, dear, dear husband; say you do,
now I have killed him!"
"I do love you, Tess--O, I do--it is all come back!"
he said, tightening his arms round her with fervid
pressure. "But how do you mean--you have killed him?"
"I mean that I have," she murmured in a reverie.
"What, bodily? Is he dead?"
"Yes. He heard me crying about you, and he bitterly
taunted me; and called you by a foul name; and then I
did it. My heart could not bear it. He had nagged me
about you before. And then I dressed myself and came
away to find you."
By degrees he was inclined to believe that she had
faintly attempted, at least, what she said she had
done; and his horror at her impulse was mixed with
amazement at the strength of her affection for himself,
and at the strangeness of its quality, which had
apparently extinguished her moral sense altogether.
Unable to realize the gravity of her conduct she seemed
at last content; and he looked at her as she lay upon
his shoulder, weeping with happiness, and wondered what
obscure strain in the d'Urberville blood had led to
this aberration--if it were an aberration. There
momentarily flashed through his mind that the family
tradition of the coach and murder might have arisen
because the d'Urbervilles had been known to do these
things. As well as his confused and excited ideas
could reason, he supposed that in the moment of mad
grief of which she spoke her mind had lost its balance,
and plunged her into this abyss.
It was very terrible if true; if a temporary
hallucination, sad. But, anyhow, here was this
deserted wife of his, this passionately-fond woman,
clinging to him without a suspicion that he would be
anything to her but a protector. He saw that for him
to be otherwise was not, in her mind, within the region
of the possible. Tenderness was absolutely dominant in
Clare at last. He kissed her endlessly with his white
lips, and held her hand, and said--
"I will not desert you! I will protect you by every
means in my power, dearest love, whatever you may have
done or not have done!"
They then walked on under the trees, Tess turning her
head every now and then to look at him. Worn and
unhandsome as he had become, it was plain that she did
not discern the least fault in his appearance. To her
he was, as of old, all that was perfection, personally
and mentally. He was still her Antinous, her Apollo
even; his sickly face was beautiful as the morning to
her affectionate regard on this day no less than when
she first beheld him; for was it not the face of the
one man on earth who had loved her purely, and who had
believed in her as pure!
With an instinct as to possibilities he did not now, as
he had intended, make for the first station beyond the
town, but plunged still farther under the firs, which
here abounded for miles. Each clasping the other round
the waist they promenaded over the dry bed of
fir-needles, thrown into a vague intoxicating
atmosphere at the consciousness of being together at
last, with no living soul between them; ignoring that
there was a corpse. Thus they proceeded for several
miles till Tess, arousing herself, looked about her,
and said, timidly----
"Are we going anywhere in particular?"
"I don't know, dearest. Why?"
"I don't know."
"Well, we might walk a few miles further, and when it
is evening find lodgings somewhere or other--in a
lonely cottage, perhaps. Can you walk well, Tessy?"
"O yes! I could walk for ever and ever with your arm
round me!"
Upon the whole it seemed a good thing to do. Thereupon
they quickened their pace, avoiding high roads, and
following obscure paths tending more or less northward.
But there was an unpractical vagueness in their
movements throughout the day; neither one of them
seemed to consider any question of effectual escape,
disguise, or long concealment. Their every idea was
temporary and unforefending, like the plans of two
children.
At mid-day they drew near to a roadside inn, and Tess
would have entered it with him to get something to eat,
but he persuaded her to remain among the trees and
bushes of this half-woodland, half-moorland part of the
country, till he should come back. Her clothes were of
recent fashion; even the ivory-handled parasol that she
carried was of a shape unknown in the retired spot to
which they had now wandered; and the cut of such
articles would have attracted attention in the settle
of a tavern. He soon returned, with food enough for
half-a-dozen people and two bottles of wine--enough to
last them for a day or more, should any emergency
arise.
They sat down upon some dead boughs and shared their
meal. Between one and two o'clock they packed up the
remainder and went on again.
"I feel strong enough to walk any distance," said she.
"I think we may as well steer in a general way towards
the interior of the country, where we can hide for a
time, and are less likely to be looked for than
anywhere near the coast," Clare remarked. "Later on,
when they have forgotten us, we can make for some
port."
She made no reply to this beyond that of grasping him
more tightly, and straight inland they went. Though
the season was an English May the weather was serenely
bright, and during the afternoon it was quite warm.
Through the latter miles of their walk their footpath
had taken them into the depths of the New Forest, and
towards evening, turning the corner of a lane, they
perceived behind a brook and bridge a large board on
which was painted in white letters, "This desirable
Mansion to be Let Furnished"; particulars following,
with directions to apply to some London agents. Passing
through the gate they could see the house, an old brick
building of regular design and large accommodation.
"I know it," said Clare. "It is Bramshurst Court. You
can see that it is shut up, and grass is growing on the
drive."
"Some of the windows are open," said Tess.
"Just to air the rooms, I suppose."
"All these rooms empty, and we without a roof to our
heads!"
"You are getting tired, my Tess!" he said. "We'll stop
soon." And kissing her sad mouth he again led her
onwards.
He was growing weary likewise, for they had wandered a
dozen or fifteen miles, and it became necessary to
consider what they should do for rest. They looked
from afar at isolated cottages and little inns, and
were inclined to approach one of the latter, when their
hearts failed them, and they sheered off. At length
their gait dragged, and they stood still.
"Could we sleep under the trees?" she asked.
He thought the season insufficiently advanced.
"I have been thinking of that empty mansion we passed,"
he said. "Let us go back towards it again."
They retraced their steps, but it was half an hour
before they stood without the entrance-gate as earlier.
He then requested her to stay where she was, whilst he
went to see who was within.
She sat down among the bushes within the gate, and
Clare crept towards the house. His absence lasted some
considerable time, and when he returned Tess was wildly
anxious, not for herself, but for him. He had found
out from a boy that there was only an old woman in
charge as caretaker, and she only came there on fine
days, from the hamlet near, to open and shut the
windows. She would come to shut them at sunset.
"Now, we can get in through one of the lower windows,
and rest there," said he.
Under his escort she went tardily forward to the main
front, whose shuttered windows, like sightless
eyeballs, excluded the possibility of watchers. The
door was reached a few steps further, and one of the
windows beside it was open. Clare clambered in, and
pulled Tess in after him.
Except the hall the rooms were all in darkness, and
they ascended the staircase. Up here also the shutters
were tightly closed, the ventilation being
perfunctorily done, for this day at least, by opening
the hall-window in front and an upper window behind.
Clare unlatched the door of a large chamber, felt his
way across it, and parted the shutters to the width of
two or three inches. A shaft of dazzling sunlight
glanced into the room, revealing heavy, old-fashioned
furniture, crimson damask hangings, and an enormous
four-post bedstead, along the head of which were carved
running figures, apparently Atalanta's race.
"Rest at last!" said he, setting down his bag and the
parcel of viands.
They remained in great quietness till the caretaker
should have come to shut the windows: as a precaution,
putting themselves in total darkness by barring the
shutters as before, lest the woman should open the door
of their chamber for any casual reason. Between six
and seven o'clock she came, but did not approach the
wing they were in. They heard her close the windows,
fasten them, lock the door, and go away. Then Clare
again stole a chink of light from the window, and they
shared another meal, till by-and-by they were enveloped
in the shades of night which they had no candle to
disperse.
LVIII
The night was strangely solemn and still. In the small
hours she whispered to him the whole story of how he
had walked in his sleep with her in his arms across the
Froom stream, at the imminent risk of both their lives,
and laid her down in the stone coffin at the ruined
abbey. He had never known of that till now.
"Why didn't you tell me next day?" he said. "It might
have prevented much misunderstanding and woe."
"Don't think of what's past!" said she. "I am not
going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who
knows what tomorrow has in store?"
But it apparently had no sorrow. The morning was wet
and foggy, and Clare, rightly informed that the
caretaker only opened the windows on fine days,
ventured to creep out of their chamber, and explore the
house, leaving Tess asleep. There was no food on the
premises, but there was water, and he took advantage of
the fog to emerge from the mansion, and fetch tea,
bread, and butter from a shop in a little place two
miles beyond, as also a small tin kettle and spirit-lamp,
that they might get fire without smoke. His re-entry
awoke her; and they breakfasted on what he had brought.
They were indisposed to stir abroad, and the day
passed, and the night following, and the next, and
next; till, almost without their being aware, five days
had slipped by in absolute seclusion, not a sight or
sound of a human being disturbing their peacefulness,
such as it was. The changes of the weather were their
only events, the birds of the New Forest their only
company. By tacit consent they hardly once spoke of
any incident of the past subsequent to their
wedding-day. The gloomy intervening time seemed to
sink into chaos, over which the present and prior times
closed as if it never had been. Whenever he suggested
that they should leave their shelter, and go forwards
towards Southampton or London, she showed a strange
unwillingness to move.
"Why should we put an end to all that's sweet and
lovely!" she deprecated. "What must come will come."
And, looking through the shutter-chink: "All is trouble
outside there; inside here content."
He peeped out also. It was quite true; within was
affection, union, error forgiven: outside was the
inexorable.
"And--and," she said, pressing her cheek against his,
"I fear that what you think of me now may not last.
I do not wish to outlive your present feeling for me.
I would rather not. I would rather be dead and buried
when the time comes for you to despise me, so that it
may never be known to me that you despised me."
"I cannot ever despise you."
"I also hope that. But considering what my life had
been I cannot see why any man should, sooner or later,
be able to help despising me.... How wickedly mad I
was! Yet formerly I never could bear to hurt a fly or
a worm, and the sight of a bird in a cage used often to
make me cry."
They remained yet another day. In the night the dull
sky cleared, and the result was that the old caretaker
at the cottage awoke early. The brilliant sunrise made
her unusually brisk; she decided to open the contiguous
mansion immediately, and to air it thoroughly on such a
day. Thus it occurred that, having arrived and opened
the lower rooms before six o'clock, she ascended to the
bedchambers, and was about to turn the handle of the
one wherein they lay. At that moment she fancied she
could hear the breathing of persons within. Her
slippers and her antiquity had rendered her progress a
noiseless one so far, and she made for instant retreat;
then, deeming that her hearing might have deceived her,
she turned anew to the door and softly tried the
handle. The lock was out of order, but a piece of
furniture had been moved forward on the inside, which
prevented her opening the door more than an inch or
two. A stream of morning light through the
shutter-chink fell upon the faces of the pair, wrapped
in profound slumber, Tess's lips being parted like a
half-opened flower near his cheek. The caretaker was so
struck with their innocent appearance, and with the
elegance of Tess's gown hanging across a chair, her
silk stockings beside it, the pretty parasol, and the
other habits in which she had arrived because she had
none else, that her first indignation at the effrontery
of tramps and vagabonds gave way to a momentary
sentimentality over this genteel elopement, as it
seemed. She closed the door, and withdrew as softly as
she had come, to go and consult with her neighbours on
the odd discovery.
Not more than a minute had elapsed after her withdrawal
when Tess woke, and then Clare. Both had a sense that
something had disturbed them, though they could not say
what; and the uneasy feeling which it engendered grew
stronger. As soon as he was dressed he narrowly
scanned the lawn through the two or three inches of
shutter-chink.
"I think we will leave at once," said he. "It is a
fine day. And I cannot help fancying somebody is about
the house. At any rate, the woman will be sure to come
today."
She passively assented, and putting the room in order
they took up the few articles that belonged to them,
and departed noiselessly. When they had got into the
Forest she turned to take a last look at the house.
"Ah, happy house--goodbye!" she said. "My life can
only be a question of a few weeks. Why should we not
have stayed there?"
"Don't say it, Tess! We shall soon get out of this
district altogether. We'll continue our course as
we've begun it, and keep straight north. Nobody will
think of looking for us there. We shall be looked for
at the Wessex ports if we are sought at all. When we
are in the north we will get to a port and away."
Having thus persuaded her the plan was pursued, and
they kept a bee-line northward. Their long repose at
the manor-house lent them walking power now; and
towards mid-day they found that they were approaching
the steepled city of Melchester, which lay directly in
their way. He decided to rest her in a clump of trees
during the afternoon, and push onward under cover of
darkness. At dusk Clare purchased food as usual, and
their night march began, the boundary between Upper and
Mid-Wessex being crossed about eight o'clock.
To walk across country without much regard to roads was
not new to Tess, and she showed her old agility in the
performance. The intercepting city, ancient
Melchester, they were obliged to pass through in order
to take advantage of the town bridge for crossing a
large river that obstructed them. It was about
midnight when they went along the deserted streets,
lighted fitfully by the few lamps, keeping off the
pavement that it might not echo their footsteps. The
graceful pile of cathedral architecture rose dimly on
their left hand, but it was lost upon them now. Once
out of the town they followed the turnpike-road, which
after a few miles plunged across an open plain.
Though the sky was dense with cloud a diffused light
from some fragment of a moon had hitherto helped them a
little. But the moon had now sunk, the clouds seemed to
settle almost on their heads, and the night grew as
dark as a cave. However, they found their way along,
keeping as much on the turf as possible that their
tread might not resound, which it was easy to do, there
being no hedge or fence of any kind. All around was
open loneliness and black solitude, over which a stiff
breeze blew.
They had proceeded thus gropingly two or three miles
further when on a sudden Clare became conscious of some
vast erection close in his front, rising sheer from the
grass. They had almost struck themselves against it.
"What monstrous place is this?" said Angel.
"It hums," said she. "Hearken!"
He listened. The wind, playing upon the edifice,
produced a booming tune, like the note of some gigantic
one-stringed harp. No other sound came from it, and
lifting his hand and advancing a step or two, Clare
felt the vertical surface of the structure. It seemed
to be of solid stone, without joint or moulding.
Carrying his fingers onward he found that what he had
come in contact with was a colossal rectangular pillar;
by stretching out his left hand he could feel a similar
one adjoining. At an indefinite height overhead
something made the black sky blacker, which had the
semblance of a vast architrave uniting the pillars
horizontally. They carefully entered beneath and
between; the surfaces echoed their soft rustle; but
they seemed to be still out of doors. The place was
roofless. Tess drew her breath fearfully, and Angel,
perplexed, said----
"What can it be?"
Feeling sideways they encountered another tower-like
pillar, square and uncompromising as the first; beyond
it another and another. The place was all doors and
pillars, some connected above by continuous
architraves.
"A very Temple of the Winds," he said.
The next pillar was isolated; others composed a
trilithon; others were prostrate, their flanks forming
a causeway wide enough for a carriage and it was soon
obvious that they made up a forest of monoliths grouped
upon the grassy expanse of the plain. The couple
advanced further into this pavilion of the night till
they stood in its midst.
"It is Stonehenge!" said Clare.
"The heathen temple, you mean?"
"Yes. Older than the centuries; older than the
d'Urbervilles! Well, what shall we do, darling?
We may find shelter further on."
But Tess, really tired by this time, flung herself upon
an oblong slab that lay close at hand, and was
sheltered from the wind by a pillar. Owing to the
action of the sun during the preceding day the stone
was warm and dry, in comforting contrast to the rough
and chill grass around, which had damped her skirts and
shoes.
"I don't want to go any further, Angel," she said,
stretching out her hand for his. "Can't we bide here?"
"I fear not. This spot is visible for miles by day,
although it does not seem so now."
"One of my mother's people was a shepherd hereabouts,
now I think of it. And you used to say at Talbothays
that I was a heathen. So now I am at home."
He knelt down beside her outstretched form, and put his
lips upon hers.
"Sleepy are you, dear? I think you are lying on an
altar."
"I like very much to be here," she murmured. "It is so
solemn and lonely--after my great happiness--with
nothing but the sky above my face. it seems as if
there were no folk in the world but we two; and I wish
there were not--except 'Liza-Lu."
Clare though she might as well rest here till it should
get a little lighter, and he flung his overcoat upon
her, and sat down by her side.
"Angel, if anything happens to me, will you watch over
'Liza-Lu for my sake?" she asked, when they had
listened a long time to the wind among the pillars.
"I will."
"She is so good and simple and pure. O, Angel--I wish
you would marry her if you lose me, as you will do
shortly. O, if you would!"
"If I lose you I lose all! And she is my
sister-in-law."
"That's nothing, dearest. People marry sister-laws
continually about Marlott; and 'Liza-Lu is so gentle
and sweet, and she is growing so beautiful. O, I could
share you with her willingly when we are spirits! If
you would train her and teach her, Angel, and bring her
up for your own self! ... She had all the best of me
without the bad of me; and if she were to become yours
it would almost seem as if death had not divided us....
Well, I have said it. I won't mention it again."
She ceased, and he fell into thought. In the far
north-east sky he could see between the pillars a level
streak of light. The uniform concavity of black cloud
was lifting bodily like the lid of a pot, letting in at
the earth's edge the coming day, against which the
towering monoliths and trilithons began to be blackly
defined.
"Did they sacrifice to God here?" asked she.
"No," said he.
"Who to?"
"I believe to the sun. That lofty stone set away by
itself is in the direction of the sun, which will
presently rise behind it."
"This reminds me, dear," she said. "You remember you
never would interfere with any belief of mine before we
were married? But I knew your mind all the same, and I
thought as you thought--not from any reasons of my own,
but because you thought so. Tell me now, Angel, do you
think we shall meet again after we are dead? I want to
know."
He kissed her to avoid a reply at such a time.
"O, Angel--I fear that means no!" said she, with a
suppressed sob. "And I wanted so to see you again--
so much, so much! What--not even you and I, Angel,
who love each other so well?"
Like a greater than himself, to the critical question
at the critical time he did not answer; and they were
again silent. In a minute or two her breathing became
more regular, her clasp of his hand relaxed, and she
fell asleep. The band of silver paleness along the
east horizon made even the distant parts of the Great
Plain appear dark and near; and the whole enormous
landscape bore that impress of reserve, taciturnity,
and hesitation which is usual just before day. The
eastward pillars and their architraves stood up blackly
against the light, and the great flame-shaped Sun-stone
beyond them; and the Stone of Sacrifice midway.
Presently the night wind died out, and the quivering
little pools in the cup-like hollows of the stones lay
still. At the same time something seemed to move on
the verge of the dip eastward--a mere dot. It was the
head of a man approaching them from the hollow beyond
the Sun-stone. Clare wished they had gone onward, but
in the circumstances decided to remain quiet. The
figure came straight towards the circle of pillars in
which they were.
He heard something behind him, the brush of feet.
Turning, he saw over the prostrate columns another
figure; then before he was aware, another was at hand
on the right, under a trilithon, and another on the
left. The dawn shone full on the front of the man
westward, and Clare could discern from this that he was
tall, and walked as if trained. They all closed in
with evident purpose. Her story then was true!
Springing to his feet, he looked around for a weapon,
loose stone, means of escape, anything. By this time
the nearest man was upon him.
"It is no use, sir," he said. "There are sixteen of us
on the Plain, and the whole country is reared."
"Let her finish her sleep!" he implored in a whisper of
the men as they gathered round.
When they saw where she lay, which they had not done
till then, they showed no objection, and stood watching
her, as still as the pillars around. He went to the
stone and bent over her, holding one poor little hand;
her breathing now was quick and small, like that of a
lesser creature than a woman. All waited in the
growing light, their faces and hands as if they were
silvered, the remainder of their figures dark, the
stones glistening green-gray, the Plain still a mass of
shade. Soon the light was strong, and a ray shone upon
her unconscious form, peering under her eyelids and
waking her.
"What is it, Angel?" she said, starting up. "Have they
come for me?"
"Yes, dearest," he said. "They have come."
"It is as it should be," she murmured. "Angel, I am
almost glad--yes, glad! This happiness could not have
lasted. It was too much. I have had enough; and now I
shall not live for you to despise me!"
She stood up, shook herself, and went forward, neither
of the men having moved.
"I am ready," she said quietly.
LIX
The city of Wintoncester, that fine old city, aforetime
capital of Wessex, lay amidst its convex and concave
downlands in all the brightness and warmth of a July
morning. The gabled brick, tile, and freestone houses
had almost dried off for the season their integument of
lichen, the streams in the meadows were low, and in the
sloping High Street, from the West Gateway to the
mediaeval cross, and from the mediaeval cross to the
bridge, that leisurely dusting and sweeping was in
progress which usually ushers in an old-fashioned
market-day.
From the western gate aforesaid the highway, as every
Wintoncestrian knows, ascends a long and regular
incline of the exact length of a measured mile, leaving
the houses gradually behind. Up this road from the
precincts of the city two persons were walking rapidly,
as if unconscious of the trying ascent--unconscious
through preoccupation and not through buoyancy. They
had emerged upon this road through a narrow barred
wicket in a high wall a little lower down. They seemed
anxious to get out of the sight of the houses and of
their kind, and this road appeared to offer the
quickest means of doing so. Though they were young
they walked with bowed heads, which gait of grief the
sun's rays smiled on pitilessly.
One of the pair was Angel Clare, the other a tall
budding creature--half girl, half woman--a
spiritualized image of Tess, slighter than she, but
with the same beautiful eyes--Clare's sister-in-law,
'Liza-Lu. Their pale faces seemed to have shrunk to
half their natural size. They moved on hand in hand,
and never spoke a word, the drooping of their heads
being that of Giotto's "Two Apostles".
When they had nearly reached the top of the great West
Hill the clocks in the town struck eight. Each gave a
start at the notes, and, walking onward yet a few
steps, they reached the first milestone, standing
whitely on the green margin of the grass, and backed by
the down, which here was open to the road. They
entered upon the turf, and, impelled by a force that
seemed to overrule their will, suddenly stood still,
turned, and waited in paralyzed suspense beside the
stone.
The prospect from this summit was almost unlimited.
In the valley beneath lay the city they had just left,
its more prominent buildings showing as in an isometric
drawing--among them the broad cathedral tower, with
its Norman windows and immense length of aisle and
nave, the spires of St Thomas's, the pinnacled tower of
the College, and, more to the right, the tower and
gables of the ancient hospice, where to this day the
pilgrim may receive his dole of bread and ale. Behind
the city swept the rotund upland of St Catherine's
Hill; further off, landscape beyond landscape, till the
horizon was lost in the radiance of the sun hanging
above it.
Against these far stretches of country rose, in front
of the other city edifices, a large red-brick building,
with level gray roofs, and rows of short barred windows
bespeaking captivity, the whole contrasting greatly by
its formalism with the quaint irregularities of the
Gothic erections. It was somewhat disguised from the
road in passing it by yews and evergreen oaks, but it
was visible enough up here. The wicket from which the
pair had lately emerged was in the wall of this
structure. From the middle of the building an ugly
flat-topped octagonal tower ascended against the east
horizon, and viewed from this spot, on its shady side
and against the light, it seemed the one blot on the
city's beauty. Yet it was with this blot, and not with
the beauty, that the two gazers were concerned.
Upon the cornice of the tower a tall staff was fixed.
Their eyes were riveted on it. A few minutes after the
hour had struck something moved slowly up the staff,
and extended itself upon the breeze. It was a black flag.
"Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals,
in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess.
And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in
their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent
themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and
remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the
flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had
strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on.
End of the Project Gutenberg edition of Tess of the d'Urbervilles