Preface to the Fifth and Later Editions
This novel being one wherein the great campaign of the heroine begins
after an event in her experience which has usually been treated as fatal
to her part of protagonist, or at least as the virtual ending of her enterprises
and hopes, it was quite contrary to avowed conventions that the public
should welcome the book, and agree with me in holding that there was something
more to be said in fiction than had been said about the shaded side of
a well-known catastrophe. But the responsive spirit in which Tess of
the d'Urbervilles has been received by the readers of England and America,
would seem to prove that the plan of laying down a story on the lines of
tacit opinion, instead of making it to square with the merely vocal formulae
of society, is not altogether a wrong one, even when exemplified in so
unequal and partial an achievement as the present. For this responsiveness
I cannot refrain from expressing my thanks; and my regret is that, in a
world where one so often hungers in vain for friendship, where even not
to be wilfully misunderstood is felt as a kindness, I shall never meet
in person these appreciative readers, male and female, and shake them by
the hand.
I include amongst them the reviewers - by far the majority - who have
so generously welcomed the tale. Their words show that they, like the others,
have only too largely repaired my defects of narration by their own imaginative
intuition.
Nevertheless, though the novel was intended to be neither didactic nor
aggressive, but in the scenic parts to be representative simply, and in
the contemplative to be oftener charged with impressions than with convictions,
there have been objectors both to the matter and to the rendering.
The more austere of these maintain a conscientious difference of opinion
concerning, among other things, subjects fit for art, and reveal an inability
to associate the idea of the sub-title adjective with any but the artificial
and derivative meaning which has resulted to it from the ordinances of
civilization. They ignore the meaning of the word in Nature, together with
all aesthetic claims upon it, not to mention the spiritual interpretation
afforded by the finest side of their own Christianity. Others dissent on
grounds which are intrinsically no more than an assertion that the novel
embodies the views of life prevalent at the end of the nineteenth century,
and not those of an earlier and simpler generation - an assertion which
I can only hope may be well founded. Let me repeat that a novel is ail
impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest; as one is
reminded by a passage which occurs in the letters of Schiller to Goethe
on judges of this class: `They are those who seek only their own ideas
in a representation, and prize that which should be as higher than what
is. The cause of the dispute, therefore, lies in the very first principles,
and it would be utterly impossible to come to an understanding with them.'
And again: `As soon as I observe that any one, when judging of poetical
representations, considers anything more important than the inner Necessity
and Truth, I have done with him.'
In the introductory words to the first edition I suggested the possible
advent of the genteel person who would not be able to endure something
or other in these pages. That person duly appeared among the aforesaid
objectors. In one case he felt upset that it was not possible for him to
read the book through three times, owing to my not having made that critical
effort which `alone can prove the salvation of such an one'. In another,
he objected to such vulgar articles as the Devil's pitchfork, a lodging-house
carving-knife, and a shame-bought parasol, appearing in a respectable story.
In another place he was a gentleman who turned Christian for half-an-hour
the better to express his grief that a disrespectful phrase about the Immortals
should have been used; though the same innate gentility compelled him to
excuse the author in words of pity that one cannot be too thankful for:
`He does but give us of his best.' I can assure this great critic that
to exclaim illogically against the gods, singular or plural, is not such
an original sin of mine as he seems to imagine. True, it may have some
local originality; though if Shakespeare were an authority on history,
which perhaps he is not, I could show that the sin was introduced into
Wessex as early as the Heptarchy itself. Says Glo'ster in Lear,
otherwise Ina, king of that country:
As files to wanton boys are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport.
The remaining two or three manipulators of Tess were of the predetermined
sort whom most writers and readers would gladly forget; professed literary
boxers, who put on their convictions for the occasion; modern `Hammers
of Heretics'; sworn Discouragers, ever on the watch to prevent the tentative
half-success from becoming the whole success later on; who pervert plain
meanings, and grow personal under the name of practising the great historical
method. However, they may have causes to advance, privileges to guard,
traditions to keep going; some of which a mere tale-teller, who writes
down how the things of the world strike him, without any ulterior intentions
whatever, has overlooked, and may by pure inadvertence have run foul of
when in the least aggressive mood. Perhaps some passing perception, the
outcome of a dream hour, would, if generally acted on, cause such an assailant
considerable inconvenience with respect to position, interests, family,
servant, ox, ass neighbour, or neighbour's wife. He therefore valiantly
hides his personality behind a publisher's shutters, and cries `Shame!'
So densely is the world thronged that any shifting of positions, even the
best warranted advance, galls somebody's kibe. Such shiftings often begin
in sentiment, and such sentiment sometimes begins in a novel.
July 1892
The foregoing remarks were written during the early career of this story,
when a spirited public and private criticism of its points was still fresh
to the feelings. The pages are allowed to stand for what they are worth,
as something once said; but probably they would not have been written now.
Even in the short time which has elapsed since the book was first published,
some of the critics who provoked the reply have `gone down into silence',
as if to remind one of the infinite unimportance of both their say and
mine.
January 1895
The present edition of this novel contains a few pages that have never
appeared in any previous edition. When the detached episodes were collected
as stated in the preface of 1891, these pages were overlooked, though they
were in the original manuscript. They occur in chapter 10.
Respecting the sub-title, to which allusion was made above, I may add
that it was appended at the last moment, after reading the final proofs,
as being the estimate left in a candid mind of the heroine's character
- an estimate that nobody would be likely to dispute. It was disputed more
than anything else in the book. Melius fuerat non scribere. But
there it stands.
The novel was first published complete, in three volumes, in November
1891.
March 1912 T. H.
PHASE THE FIRST THE MAIDEN
Chapter 1
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 zaid "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 derived 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 bc 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 judgment
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-grandfer 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 your family
consisted of numerous branches. In this county there was a seat of yours
at Kingsbere, and another at Sherton, and another at Milipond, 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
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 immediately,
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 dater 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.
Chapter 2
The village of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the beautiful
Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor aforesaid, an 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
arc 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) of 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 among
them. Some approached pure blanching; some were all 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,
un-accustomed 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. Thus 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 Lord-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 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 to-day.'
`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 had
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
to-day, 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 south-westerly from the town of Shaston on the north-east.
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, glanced 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, tool 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.
Chapter 3
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 exclamation 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 house-work to her single-handed
efforts for so long; indeed, Joan seldom up-braided 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. To-night,
however, she wis even in a blither mood than usual. There was a dreaminess,
a preoccupation, 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 to-day 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 to-morrow with that load of beehives, which
must be delivered, family or no. He'll have to start shortly after twelve
to-night, 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 to 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 metaphysical
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, called `'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 judgment 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 eves. 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.
Chapter 4
Rolliver's inn, the single alehouse at this end of the long and broken
village, could only boast of an off-license; licence, 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 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 washstand; another on the stool; and thus all were,
somehow, seated at their ease. The stage of mental comfort to which they
had arrived at his 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 bed-posts 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 Government.'
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 windowpane,
went on with his recitative.
`Hush! Don't `ee sing so loud, my good man,'said the landlady; in case
any member of the Government should be passing, and take away my license.'
`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 It would 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 reused 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 f lash f rom
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 yell be so good, my dears or I mid lose my license,
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 or 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 home goings; 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 almost as much as you
- though you was bigger folks than 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 your father `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 Caster-bridge 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 if 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 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 this journey; and mother wouldn't have
been always washing, and never getting finished.'
`And you would have been a rich lady read-ymade, 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 had 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 to 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-cart 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 retraced 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 striving 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 Modesty discharged their griefs in loud blares
which echoed from the walls; and when Prince was tumbled in they gathered
round the grave. The breadwinner 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.
Chapter 5
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 with 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,
`would 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 objection
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 northeastern
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 has seen dally
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 hanging 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 hay making 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 the family
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'Urberville family 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 than 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 hall 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 barber 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 the present
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 I 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 1, 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 tête-à-te 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 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 fullness of growth, which made her appear more
of a woman that 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 closer 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!'
Chapter 6
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 breast; 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 the 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 to 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'.'
`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 been 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, `The gentleman's been here!' saying,
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 won't!'
they walled 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.
Chapter 7
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 weekday 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 lee
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 clubwalking, the airy fullness 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 woman when
she was not much more than a child.
`I declare there's a holes in your stockings-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 that 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.
`Good-bye, father,' said Tess, with a lumpy throat.
`Good-bye, 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 dogcart,
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, stickup 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 turnout, 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.'
Chapter 8
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 has 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 out 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 hid 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 move 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.'
Sie 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's destination.
CHAPTER 9
The community of fowls to which Tess had been appointed as supervisor,
purveyor, nurse, surgeon, and friend, made its head quarters 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 copy holders 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 wings, and their claws. Her touch enabled her
to recognize them in a moment, and to discover if a single feather were
crippled or dragged. 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 maidservant
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, whistle 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 degenerated
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 than 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 eves 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 `whoaing and whoaing, 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 to-morrow
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 régime 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 lastingly 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.
Chapter 10
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 smock-frocked 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 fieldman'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 shy 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 hair-like 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 candies 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 débris 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 lints 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 - almost 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 for 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 suitably 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 to-day; 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 to-night
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 the 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
thought, 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 the 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, mid 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 toothers 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 known 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 should have refused such profferer
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 opalixed 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.
Chapter 11
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 rode,
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 than 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 absentmindedness, 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 failing.'
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 to-morrow, sir.'
`No, you will not leave me to-morrow! 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 to-night.'
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 to-day. 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 wish 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 were 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
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