Chapter 25
Clare, restless, went out into the dusk when evening drew on, she who had
won him having retired to her chamber.
The night was as sultry as the day. There was no coolness after dark
unless on the grass. Roads, garden-paths, the house-fronts, the barton-walls
were warm as hearths, and reflected the noontide temperature into the noctambulist's
face.
He sat on the east gate of the dairy-yard, and knew not what to think
of himself. Feeling had indeed smothered judgment that day.
Since the sudden embrace, three hours before, the twain had kept apart.
She seemed stilled, almost alarmed, at what had occurred, while the novelty,
unpremeditation, mastery of circumstance disquieted him - palpitating,
contemplative being that he was. He could hardly realize their true relations
to each other as yet, and what their mutual bearing should be before third
parties thenceforward.
Angel had come as pupil to this dairy in the idea that his temporary
existence here was to be the merest episode in his life, soon passed through
and early forgotten; he had come as to a place from which as from a screened
alcove he could calmly view the absorbing world without, and, apostrophizing
it with Walt Whitman--
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, How curious you
are to me!--
resolve upon a plan for plunging into that world anew. But, behold,
the absorbing scene had been imported hither. What had been the engrossing
world had dissolved into an uninteresting outer dumb-show; while here,
in this apparently dim and un-impassioned place, novelty had volcanically
started up, as it had never, for him, started up elsewhere.
Every window of the house being open Clare could hear across the yard
each trivial sound of the retiring household. That dairy-house, so humble,
so insignificant, so purely to him a place of constrained sojourn that
he had never hitherto deemed it of sufficient importance to be reconnoitred
as an object of any quality whatever in the landscape; what was it now?
The aged and lichened brick gables breathed forth `Stay!' The windows smiled,
the door coaxed and beckoned, the creeper blushed confederacy. A personality
within it was so far-reaching in her influence as to spread into and make
the bricks, mortar, and whole overhanging sky throb with a burning sensibility.
Whose was this mighty personality? A milkmaid's.
It was amazing, indeed, to find how great a matter the life of the obscure
dairy had become to him. And though new love was to be held partly responsible
for this it was not solely so. Many besides Angel have learnt that the
magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements, but as to
their subjective experiences. The impressionable peasant leads a larger,
fuller, more dramatic life than the pachydermatous king. Looking at it
thus he found that life was to be seen of the same magnitude here as elsewhere.
Despite his heterodoxy, faults, and weaknesses, Clare was a man with
a conscience. Tess was no insignificant creature to toy with and dismiss;
but a woman living her precious life - a life which, to herself who endured
or enjoyed it, possessed as great a dimension as the life of the mightiest
to himself. Upon her sensations the whole world depended to Tess; through
her existence all her fellow-creatures existed, to her. The universe itself
only came into being for Tess on the particular day in the particular year
in which she was born.
This consciousness upon which he had intruded was the single opportunity
of existence ever vouchsafed to Tess by an unsympathetic First Cause -
her all; her every and only chance. How then should he look upon her as
of less consequence than himself; as a pretty trifle to caress and grow
weary of; and not deal in the greatest seriousness with the affection which
he knew that he had awakened in her - so fervid and so impressionable as
she was under her reserve; in order that it might not agonize and wreck
her?
To encounter her daily in the accustomed manner would be to develop
what had begun. Living in such close relations, to meet meant to fall into
endearment; flesh and blood could not resist it; and, having arrived at
no conclusion as to the issue of such a tendency, he decided to hold aloof
for the present from occupations in which they would be mutually engaged.
As yet the harm done was small.
But it was not easy to carry out the resolution never to approach her.
He was driven towards her by every heave of his pulse.
He thought he would go and see his friends. It might be possible to
sound them upon this. In less than five months his term here would have
ended, and after a few additional months spent upon other farms he would
be fully equipped in agricultural knowledge, and in a position to start
on his own account. Would not a farmer want a wife, and should a farmer's
wife be a drawing-room wax-figure, or a woman who understood farming? Notwithstanding
the pleasing answer returned to him by the silence he resolved to go his
journey.
One morning when they sat down to breakfast at Talbothays Dairy some
maid observed that she had not seen anything of Mr Clare that day.
`O no,' said Dairyman Crick. `Mr Clare has gone hwome to Emminster to
spend a few days wi' his kinsfolk.'
For four impassioned ones around that table the sunshine of the morning
went out at a stroke, and the birds muffled their song. But neither girl
by word or gesture revealed her blankness.
`He's getting on towards the end of his time wi' me,' added the dairyman,
with a phlegm which unconsciously was brutal; `and so I suppose he is beginning
to see about his plans elsewhere.'
`How much longer is he to bide here?' asked Izz Huett, the only one
of the gloom-stricken bevy who could trust her voice with the question.
The others waited for the dairyman's answer as if their lives hung upon
it; Retty, with parted lips, gazing on the table-cloth, Marian with heat
added to her redness, Tess throbbing and looking out at the meads.
`Well, I can't mind the exact day without looking at my memorandum-book,'
replied Crick, with the same intolerable unconcern. `And even that may
be altered a bit. He'll bide to get a little practice in the calving out
at the straw-yard, for certain. He'll hang on till the end of the year
I should say.'
Four months or so of torturing ecstasy in his society - of `pleasure
girdled about with pain'. After that the blackness of unutterable night.
At this moment of the morning Angel Clare was riding along a narrow
lane ten miles distant from the breakfasters, in the direction of his father's
vicarage at Emminster, carrying, as well as he could, a little basket which
contained some black-puddings and a bottle of mead, sent by Mrs Crick,
with her kind respects, to his parents. The white lane stretched before
him, and his eyes were upon it; but they were staring into next year, and
not at the lane. He loved her; ought he to marry her? Dared he to marry
her? What would his mother and his brothers say? What would he himself
say a couple of years after the event? That would depend upon whether the
germs of staunch comradeship underlay the temporary emotion, or whether
it were a sensuous joy in her form only, with no substratum of everlastingness.
His father's hill-surrounded little town, the Tudor church-tower of
red stone, the clump of trees near the vicarage, came at last into view
beneath him, and he rode down towards the well-known gate. Casting a glance
in the direction of the church before entering his home, he beheld standing
by the vestry-door a group of girls, of ages between twelve and sixteen,
apparently awaiting the arrival of some other one, who in a moment became
visible; a figure somewhat older than the school-girls, wearing a broad-brimmed
hat and highly-starched cambric morning-gown, with a couple of books in
her hand.
Clare knew her well. He could not be sure that she observed him; he
hoped she did not, so as to render it unnecessary that he should go and
speak to her, blameless creature that she was. An overpowering reluctance
to greet her made him decide that she had not seen him. The young lady
was Miss Mercy Chant, the only daughter of his father's neighbour and friend,
whom it was his parents quiet hope that he might wed some day. She was
great at Antinomianism and Bible-classes, and was plainly going to hold
a class now. Clare's mind flew to the impassioned, summer steeped heathens
in the Var Vale, their rosy faces court-patched with cow-droppings; and
to one the most impassioned of them all.
It was on the impulse of the moment that he had resolved to trot over
to Emminster, and hence had not written to apprise his mother and father,
aiming, however, to arrive about the breakfast hour, before they should
have gone out to their parish duties. He was a little late, and they had
already sat down to the morning meal. The group at table jumped up to welcome
him as soon as be entered. They were his father and mother, his brother
the Reverend Felix - curate at a town in the adjoining county, home for
the inside of a fortnight - and his other brother, the Reverend Cuthbert,
the classical scholar, and Fellow and Dean of his College, down from Cambridge
for the long vacation. His mother appeared in a cap and silver spectacles,
and his father looked what in fact he was - an earnest, God-fearing man,
somewhat gaunt, in years about sixty-five, his pale face lined with thought
and purpose. Over their heads hung the picture of Angel's sister, the eldest
of the family, sixteen years his senior, who had married a missionary and
gone out to Africa.
Old Mr Clare was a clergyman of a type which, within the last twenty
years, has wellnigh dropped out of contemporary life. A spiritual descendant
in the direct line from Wycliff, Huss, Luther, Calvin; an Evangelical of
the Evangelicals, a Conversionist, a man of Apostolic simplicity in life
and thought, he had in his raw youth made up his mind once for all on the
deeper questions of existence, and admitted no further reasoning on them
thenceforward. He was regarded even by those of his own date and school
of thinking as extreme; while, on the other hand, those totally opposed
to him were unwillingly won to admiration for his thoroughness, and for
the remarkable power he showed in dismissing all question as to principles
in his energy for applying them. He loved Paul of Tarsus, liked St John,
hated St James as much as he dared, and regarded with mixed feelings Timothy,
Titus, and Philemon. The New Testament was less a Christiad than a Pauliad
to his intelligence - less an argument than an intoxication. His creed
of determinism was such that it almost amounted to a vice, and quite amounted,
on its negative side, to a renunciative philosophy which had cousinship
with that of Schopenhauer and Leopardi. He despised the Canons and Rubric,
swore by the Articles, and deemed himself consistent through the whole
category which in a way he might have been. One thing he certainly was
- sincere.
To the aesthetic, sensuous, pagan pleasure in natural life and lush
womanhood which his son Angel had lately been experiencing in Var Vale,
his temper would have been antipathetic in a high degree, had he either
by inquiry or imagination been able to apprehend it. Once upon a time Angel
had been so unlucky as to say to his father, in a moment of irritation,
that it might have resulted far better for mankind if Greece had been the
source of the religion of modern civilization, and not Palestine; and his
father's grief was of that blank description which could not realize that
there might lurk a thousandth part of a truth, much less a half truth or
a whole truth, in such a proposition. He had simply preached austerely
at Angel for some time after. But the kindness of his heart was such that
he never resented anything for long, and welcomed his son to-day with a
smile which was as candidly sweet as a child's.
Angel sat down, and the place felt like home; yet he did not so much
as formerly feel himself one of the family gathered there. Every time that
he returned hither he was conscious of this divergence, and since he had
last shared in the Vicarage life it had grown even more distinctly foreign
to his own than usual. Its transcendental aspirations - still unconsciously
based on the geocentric view of things, a zenithal paradise, a nadiral
hell - were as foreign to his own as if they had been the dreams of people
on another planet. Latterly he had seen only Life, felt only the great
passionate pulse of existence, unwarped, uncontorted, untrammelled by those
creeds which futilely attempt to check what wisdom would be content to
regulate.
On their part they saw a great difference in him, a growing divergence
from the Angel Clare of former times. It was chiefly a difference in his
manner that they noticed just now, particularly bis brothers. He was getting
to behave like a farmer; he flung his legs about; the muscles of his face
had grown more expressive; his eyes looked as much information as his tongue
spoke, and more. The manner of the scholar had nearly disappeared; still
more the manner of the drawing-room young man. A prig would have said that
he had lost culture, and a prude that he had become coarse. Such was the
contagion of domiciliary fellowship with the Talbothays nymphs and swains.
After breakfast he walked with his two brothers, non-evangelical, well-educated,
hall-marked young men, correct to their remotest fibre; such unimpeachable
models as are turned out yearly by the lathe of a systematic tuition. They
were both somewhat shortsighted, and when it was the custom to wear a single
eyeglass and string they wore a single eyeglass and string; when it was
the custom to wear a double glass they wore a double glass; when it was
the custom to wear spectacles they wore spectacles straightway, all without
reference to the particular variety of defect in their own vision. When
Wordsworth was enthroned they carried pocket copies; and when Shelley was
belittled they allowed him to grow dusty on their shelves. When Correggio's
Holy Families were admired, they admired Correggio's Holy Families; when
he was decried in favour of Velasquez, they sedulously followed suit without
any personal objection.
If these two noticed Angel's growing social ineptness, he noticed their
growing mental limitations. Felix seemed to him all Church; Cuthbert all
College. His Diocesan Synod and Visitations were the main-springs of the
world to the one; Cambridge to the other. Each brother candidly recognized
that there were a few unimportant scores of millions of outsiders in civilized
society, persons who were neither University men nor churchmen; but they
were to be tolerated rather than reckoned with and respected.
They were both dutiful and attentive sons, and were regular in their
visits to their parents. Felix, though an offshoot from a far more recent
point in the devolution of theology than his father, was less self-sacrificing
and disinterested. More tolerant than his father of a contradictory opinion,
in its aspect as a danger to its holder, he was less ready than his father
to pardon it as a slight to his own teaching. Cuthbert was, upon the whole,
the more liberal-minded, though, with greater subtlety, he had not so much
heart.
As they walked along the hillside Angel's former feeling revived in
him - that whatever their advantages by comparison with himself, neither
saw or set forth life as it really was lived. Perhaps, as with many men,
their opportunities of observation were not so good as their opportunities
of expression. Neither had an adequate conception of the complicated forces
at work outside the smooth and gentle current in which they and their associates
floated. Neither saw the difference between local truth and universal truth;
that what the inner world said in their clerical and academic hearing was
quite a different thing from what the outer world was thinking.
`I suppose it is farming or nothing for you now, my dear fellow,' Felix
was saying, among other things, to his youngest brother, as he looked through
his spectacles at the distant fields with sad austerity. `And, therefore,
we must make the best of it. But I do entreat you to endeavour to keep
as much as possible in touch with moral ideals. Farming, of course, means
roughing it externally; but high thinking may go with plain living, nevertheless.'
`Of course it may,' said Angel. `Was it not proved nineteen hundred
years ago - if I may trespass upon your domain a little? Why should you
think, Felix, that I am likely to drop my high thinking and my moral ideals?'
`Well, I fancied, from the tone of your letters and our conversation
- It may be fancy only - that you were somehow losing intellectual grasp.
Hasn't it struck you, Cuthbert?'
`Now, Felix,' said Angel drily, `we are very good friends, you know;
each of us treading our allotted circles; but if it comes to intellectual
grasp, I think you, as a contented dogmatist, had better leave mine alone,
and inquire what has become of yours.'
They returned down the hill to dinner, which was fixed at any time at
which their father's and mother's morning work in the parish usually concluded.
Convenience as regarded afternoon callers was the last thing to enter into
the consideration of unselfish Mr and Mrs Clare; though the three sons
were sufficiently in unison on this matter to wish that their parents would
conform a little to modern notions.
The walk had made them hungry, Angel in particular, who was now an outdoor
man, accustomed to the profuse dapes inemptae of the dairyman's
somewhat coarsely-laden table. But neither of the old people had arrived,
and it was not till the sons were almost tired of waiting that their parents
entered. The self-denying pair had been occupied in coaxing the appetites
of some of their sick parishioners, whom they, somewhat inconsistently,
tried to keep imprisoned in the flesh, their own appetites being quite
forgotten.
The family sat down to table, and a frugal meal of cold viands was deposited
before them. Angel looked round for Mrs Crick's black-puddings, which he
had directed to be nicely grilled, as they did them at the dairy, and of
which he wished his father and mother to appreciate the marvellous herbal
savours as highly as he did himself.
`Ah! you are looking for the black-puddings, my dear boy,' observed
Clare's mother. `But I am sure you will not mind doing without them, as
I am sure your father and I shall not, when you know the reason. I suggested
to him that we should take Mrs Crick's kind present to the children of
the man who can earn nothing just now because of his attacks of delirium
tremens; and lie agreed that it would be a great pleasure to them; so we
did.'
`Of course,' said Angel cheerfully, looking round for the mead.
`I found the mead so extremely alcoholic,' continued his mother, `that
it was quite unfit for use as a beverage, but as valuable as rum or brandy
in an emergency; so I have put it in my medicine-closet.'
`We never drink spirits at this table, on principle,' added his father.
`But what shall I tell the dairyman's wife?' said Angel.
`The truth, of course,' said his father.
`I rather wanted to say we enjoyed the mead and the blackpuddings very
much. She is a kind, jolly sort of body, and is sure to ask me directly
I return.'
`You cannot, if we did not,' Mr Clare answered lucidly.
`AH - no; though that mead was a drop of pretty tipple.'
`A what?' said Cuthbert and Felix both.
`Oh--'tis an expression they use down at Talbothays,' replied Angel,
blushing. He felt that his parents were right in their practice if wrong
in their want of sentiment, and said no more.
Chapter 26
It was not till the evening, after family prayers, that Angel found opportunity
of broaching to his father one or two subjects near his heart. He had strung
himself up to the purpose while kneeling behind his brothers on the carpet,
studying the little nails in the heels of their walking boots. When the
service was over they went out of the room with their mother, and Mr Clare
and himself were left alone.
The young man first discussed with the elder his plans for the attainment
of his position as a farmer on an extensive scale either in England or
in the Colonies. His father then told him that, as he had not been put
to the expense of sending Angel up to Cambridge, he had felt it his duty
to set by a sum of money every year towards the purchase or lease of land
for him some day, that he might not feel himself unduly slighted.
`As far as worldly wealth goes,' continued his father, `you will no
doubt stand far superior to your brothers in a few years.'
This considerateness on old Mr Clare's part led Angel onward to the
other and dearer subject. He observed to his father that he was then six-and-twenty,
and that when he should start in the farming business he would require
eyes in the back of his head to see to all matters - some one would be
necessary to superintend the domestic labours of his establishment whilst
he was afield. Would it not be well, therefore, for him to marry?
His father seemed to think this idea not unreasonable; and then Angel
put the question--
`What kind of wife do you think would be best for me as a thrifty hard-working
farmer?'
`A truly Christian woman, who will be a help and a comfort to you in
your goings-out and your comings-in. Beyond that, it really matters little.
Such a one can be found; indeed, my earnest minded friend and neighbour,
Dr Chant--'
`But ought she not primarily to be able to milk cows, churn good butter,
make immense cheeses; know how to sit hens and turkeys, and rear chickens,
to direct a field of labourers in an emergency, and estimate the value
of sheep and calves?'
`Yes; a farmer's wife; yes, certainly. It would be desirable.' Mr Clare,
the elder, had plainly never thought of these points before. `I was going
to add,' he said, `that for a pure and saintly woman you will not find
more to your true advantage, and certainly not more to your mother's mind
and my own, than your friend Mercy, whom you used to show a certain interest
in. It is true that my neighbour Chant's daughter has lately caught up
the fashion of the younger clergy round about us for decorating the Communion-table
- altar, as I was shocked to hear her call it one day - with flowers and
other stuff on festival occasions. But her father, who is quite as opposed
to such flummery as I, says that can be cured. It is a mere girlish outbreak
which, I am sure, will not be permanent.'
`Yes, yes; Mercy is good and devout, I know. But, father, don't you
think that a young woman equally pure and virtuous as Miss Chant, but one
who, in place of that lady's ecclesiastical accomplishments, understands
the duties of farm life as well as a farmer himself, would suit me infinitely
better?'
His father persisted in his conviction that a knowledge of a farmer's
wife's duties came second to a Pauline view of humanity; and the impulsive
Angel, wishing to honour his father's feelings and to advance the cause
of his heart at the same time, grew specious. He said that fate or Providence
had thrown in his way a woman who possessed every qualification to be the
helpmate of an agriculturist, and was decidedly of a serious turn of mind.
He would not say whether or not she had attached herself to the sound Low
Church School of his father; but she would probably be open to conviction
on that point; she was a regular church-goer of simple faith; honest-hearted,
receptive, intelligent, graceful to a degree, chaste as a vestal, and,
in personal appearance, exceptionally beautiful.
`Is she of a family such as you would care to marry into - a lady, in
short?' asked his startled mother, who had come softly into the study during
the conversation.
`She is not what in common parlance is called a lady,' said Angel, unflinchingly,
`for she is a cottager's daughter, as I am proud to say. But she is
a lady, nevertheless - in feeling and nature.'
`Mercy Chant is of a very good family.'
`Pooh! - what's the advantage of that, mother?' said Angel quickly.
`How is family to avail the wife of a man who has to rough it as I have,
and shall have to do?'
`Mercy is accomplished. And accomplishments have their charm,' returned
his mother, looking at him through her silver spectacles.
`As to external accomplishments, what will be the use of them in the
life I am going to lead? - while as to her reading, I can take that in
hand. She'll be apt pupil enough, as you would say if you knew her. She's
brim full of poetry - actualized poetry, if I may use the expression. She
lives# what paper-poets only write... And she is an unimpeachable
Christian, I am sure; perhaps of the very tribe, genus, and species you
desire to propagate.'
`O Angel, you are mocking!'
`Mother, I beg pardon. But as she really does attend Church almost every
Sunday morning, and is a good Christian girl, I am sure you will tolerate
any social shortcomings for the sake of that quality, and feel that I may
do worse than choose her.' Angel waxed quite earnest on that rather automatic
orthodoxy in his beloved Tess which (never dreaming that it might stand
him in such good stead) he had been prone to slight when observing it practised
by her and the other milkmaids, because of its obvious unreality amid beliefs
essentially naturalistic.
In their sad doubts as to whether their son had himself any right whatever
to the title he claimed for the unknown young woman, Mr and Mrs Clare began
to feel it as an advantage not to be overlooked that she at least was sound
in her views; especially as the conjunction of the pair must have arisen
by an act of Providence; for Angel never would have made orthodoxy a condition
of his choice. They said finally that it was better not to act in a hurry,
but that they would not object to see her.
Angel therefore refrained from declaring more particulars now. He felt
that, single-minded and self-sacrificing as his parents were, there yet
existed certain latent prejudices of theirs, as middle-class people, which
it would require some tact to overcome. For though legally at liberty to
do as he chose, and though their daughter-in-law's qualifications could
make no practical difference to their lives, in the probability of her
living far away from them, he wished for affection's sake not to wound
their sentiment in the most important decision of his life.
He observed his own inconsistencies in dwelling upon accidents in Tess's
life as if they were vital features. It was for herself that he loved Tess;
her soul, her heart, her substance - not for her skill in the dairy, her
aptness as his scholar, and certainly not for her simple formal faith-professions.
Her unsophisticated open-air existence required no varnish of conventionality
to make it palatable to him. He held that education had as yet but little
affected the beats of emotion and impulse on which domestic happiness depends.
It was probable that, in the lapse of ages, improved systems of moral and
intellectual training would appreciably, perhaps considerably, elevate
the involuntary and even the unconscious instincts of human nature; but
up to the present day culture, as far as he could see, might be said to
have affected only the mental epiderm of those lives which had been brought
under its influence. This belief was confirmed by his experience of women,
which, having latterly been extended from the cultivated middle-class into
the rural community, had taught him how much less was the intrinsic difference
between the good and wise woman of one social stratum and the good and
wise woman of another social stratum, than between the good and bad, the
wise and the foolish, of the same stratum or class.
It was the morning of his departure. His brothers had already left the
vicarage to proceed on a walking tour in the north, whence one was to return
to his college, and the other to his curacy. Angel might have accompanied
them, but preferred to rejoin his sweetheart at Talbothays. He would have
been an awkward member of the party; for, though the most appreciative
humanist, the most ideal religionist, even the best-versed Christologist
of the three, there was alienation in the standing consciousness that his
squareness would not fit the round hole that had been prepared for him.
To neither Felix nor Cuthbert had he ventured to mention Tess.
His mother made him sandwiches, and his father accompanied him, on his
own mare, a little way along the road. Having fairly well advanced his
own affairs Angel listened in a willing silence, as they jogged on together
through the shady lanes, to his father's account of his parish difficulties,
and the coldness of brother clergymen whom he loved, because of his strict
interpretations of the New Testament by the light of what they deemed a
pernicious Calvinistic doctrine.
`Pernicious!' said Mr Clare, with genial scorn; and he proceeded to
recount experiences which would show the absurdity of that idea. He told
of wondrous conversions of evil livers of which he had been the instrument,
not only amongst the poor, but amongst the rich and well-to-do; and he
also candidly admitted many failures.
As an instance of the latter, he mentioned the case of a young upstart
squire named d'Urberville, living some forty miles off, in the neighbourhood
of Trantridge.
`Not one of the ancient d'Urbervilles of Kingsbere and other places?'
asked his son. `That curiously historic worn-out family with its ghostly
legend of the coach-and-four?'
`O no. The original d'Urbervilles decayed and disappeared sixty or eighty
years ago - at least, I believe so. This seems to be a new family which
has taken the flame; for the credit of the former knightly line I hope
they are spurious, I'm sure. But it is odd to hear you express interest
in old families. I thought you set less store by them even than I.'
`You misapprehend me, father; you often do,' said Angel with a little
impatience. `Politically I am sceptical as to the virtue of their being
old. Some of the wise even among themselves "exclaim against their own
succession", as Hamlet puts it; but lyrically, dramatically, and even historically,
I am tenderly attached to them.'
This distinction, though by no means a subtle one, was yet too subtle
for Mr Clare the elder, and he went on with the story he had been about
to relate; which was that after the death of the senior so-called d'Urberville
the young man developed the most culpable passions, though he had a blind
mother, whose condition should have made him know better. A knowledge of
his career having come to the ears of Mr Clare, when he was in that part
of the country preaching missionary sermons, he boldly took occasion to
speak to the delinquent on his spiritual state. Though he was a stranger,
occupying another's pulpit, he had felt this to be his duty, and took for
his text the words from St Luke: `Thou fool, this night thy soul shall
be required of thee!' The young man much resented this directness of attack,
and in the war of words which followed when they met he did not scruple
publicly to insult Mr Clare, without respect for his gray hairs.
Angel flushed with distress.
`Dear father,' he said sadly, `I wish you would not expose yourself
to such gratuitous pain from scoundrels!'
`Pain?' said his father, his rugged face shining in the ardour of self-abnegation.
`The only pain to me was pain on his account, poor, foolish young man.
Do you suppose his incensed words could give me any pain, or even his blows)
Being reviled we bless; being persecuted we suffer it; being defamed we
entreat; we are made as the filth of the world, and as the off scouring
of all things unto this day." Those ancient and noble words to the Corinthians
are strictly true at this present hour.'
`Not blows, father? He did not proceed to blows?'
`No, he did not. Though I have borne blows from men in a mad state of
intoxication.'
`No!'
`A dozen times, my boy. What then? I have saved them from the guilt
of murdering their own flesh and blood thereby; and they have lived to
thank me, and praise God.'
`May this young man do the same!' said Angel fervently. `But I fear
otherwise, from what you say.'
`We'll hope, nevertheless,' said Mr Clare. `And I continue to pray for
him, though on this side of the grave we shall probably never meet again.
But, after all, one of those poor words of mine may spring up in his heart
as a good seed some day.'
Now, as always, Clare's father was sanguine as a child; and though the
younger could not accept his parent's narrow dogma he revered his practice,
and recognized the hero under the pietist. Perhaps he revered his father's
practice even more now than ever, seeing that, in the question of making
Tessy his wife, his father had not once thought of inquiring whether she
were well provided or penniless. The same unworldliness was what had necessitated
Angel's getting a living as a farmer, and would probably keep his brothers
in the position of poor parsons for the term of their activities; yet Angel
admired it none the less. Indeed, despite his own heterodoxy, Angel often
felt that be was nearer to his father on the human side than was either
of his brethren.
Chapter 27
An up-hill and down-dale ride of twenty-odd miles through a garish mid-day
atmosphere brought him in the afternoon to a detached knoll a mile or two
west of Talbothays, whence he again looked into that green trough of sappiness
and humidity, the valley of the Var or Froom. Immediately he began to descend
from the upland to the fat alluvial soil below, the atmosphere grew heavier;
the languid perfume of the summer fruits, the mists, the hay, the flowers,
formed therein a vast pool of odour which at this hour seemed to make the
animals, the very bees and butterflies, drowsy. Clare was now so familiar
with the spot that he knew the individual cows by their names when, a long
distance off, he saw them dotted about the meads. It was with a sense of
luxury that he recognized his power of viewing life here from its inner
side, in a way that had been quite foreign to him in his student-days;
and, much as he loved his parents, he could not help being aware that to
come here, as now, after an experience of home-life, affected him like
throwing off splints and bandages; even the one customary curb on the humours
of English rural societies being absent in this place, Talbothays having
no resident landlord.
Not a human being was out of doors at the dairy. The denizens were all
enjoying the usual afternoon nap of an hour or so which the exceedingly
early hours kept in summer-time rendered a necessity. At the door the wood-hooped
pails, sodden and bleached by infinite scrubbings, hung like hats on a
stand upon the forked and peeled limb of an oak fixed there for that purpose;
all of them ready and dry for the evening milking. Angel entered, and went
through the silent passages of the house to the back quarters, where he
listened for a moment. Sustained snores came from the cart-house, where
some of the men were lying down; the grunt and squeal of sweltering pigs
arose from the still further distance. The large-leaved rhubarb and cabbage
plants slept too, their broad limp surfaces hanging in the sun like half-closed
umbrellas.
He unbridled and fed his horse, and as he re-entered the house the clock
struck three. Three was the afternoon skimming-hour; and, with the stroke,
Clare heard the creaking of the floor-boards above, and then the touch
of a descending foot on the stairs. It was Tess's, who in another moment
came down before his eyes.
She had not heard him enter, and hardly realized his presence there.
She was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her mouth as if it had
been a snake's. She had stretched one arm so high as above her coiled-up
cable of hair that he could see its satin delicacy above the sunburn; her
face was flushed with sleep, and her eyelids hung heavy over their pupils.
The brimfulness of her nature breathed from her. It was a moment when a
woman's soul is more incarnate than at any other time; when the most spiritual
beauty bespeaks itself flesh; and sex takes the outside place in the presentation.
Then those eyes flashed brightly through their filmy heaviness, before
the remainder of her face was well awake. With an oddly compounded look
of gladness, shyness, and surprise, she exclaimed--
`O Mr Clare! How you frightened me - I--'
There had not at first been time for her to think of the changed relations
which his declaration had introduced; but the full sense of the matter
rose up in her face when she encountered Clare's tender look as he stepped
forward to the bottom stair.
`Dear, darling Tessy!' he whispered, putting his arm round her, and
his face to her flushed cheek. `Don't, for Heaven's sake, Mister me any
more. I have hastened back so soon because of you!'
Tess's excitable heart beat against bis by way of reply; and there they
stood upon the red-brick floor of the entry, the sun slanting in by the
window upon his back, as he held her tightly to his breast; upon her inclining
face, upon the blue veins of her temple, upon her naked arm, and her neck,
and into the depths of her hair. Having been lying down in her clothes
she was warm as a sunned cat. At first she would not look straight up at
him, but her eyes soon lifted, and his plumbed the deepness of the ever-varying
pupils, with their radiating fibrils of blue, and black, and gray, and
violet, while she regarded him as Eve at her second waking might have regarded
Adam.
`I've got to go a-skimming,' she pleaded, `and I have on'y old Deb to
help me to-day. Mrs Crick is gone to market with Mr Crick, and Retty is
not well, and the others are gone out somewhere, and won't be home till
milking.'
As they retreated to the milk-house Deborah Fyander appeared on the
stairs.
`I have come back, Deborah,' said Mr Clare, upwards.'So I can help Tess
with the skimming; and, as you are very tired, I am sure, you needn't come
down till milking-time.'
Possibly the Talbothays milk was not very thoroughly skimmed that afternoon.
Tess was in a dream wherein familiar objects appeared as having light and
shade and position, but no particular outline. Every time she held the
skimmer under the pump to cool it for the work her hand trembled, the ardour
of his affection being so palpable that she seemed to flinch under it like
a plant in too burning a sun.
Then he pressed her again to his side, and when she had done running
her forefinger round the leads to cut off the cream-edge, he cleaned it
in nature's way; for the unconstrained manners of Talbothays dairy came
convenient now.
`I may as well say it now as later, dearest,' he resumed gently. `I
wish to ask you something of a very practical nature, which I have been
thinking of ever since that day last week in the meads. I shall soon want
to marry, and, being a farmer, you see I shall require for my wife a woman
who knows all about the management of farms. Will you be that woman, Tessy?'
He put it in that way that she might not think he had yielded to an
impulse of which his head would disapprove.
She turned quite careworn. She had bowed to the inevitable result of
proximity, the necessity of loving him; but she had not calculated upon
this sudden corollary, which, indeed, Clare had put before her without
quite meaning himself to do it so soon. With pain that was like the bitterness
of dissolution she murmured the words of her indispensable and sworn answer
as an honourable woman.
`O Mr Clare - I cannot be your wife - I cannot be!'
The sound of her own decision seemed to break Tess's very heart, and
she bowed her face in her grief.
`But, Tess!' he said, amazed at her reply, and holding her still more
greedily close. `Do you say no? Surely you love me?'
`O yes, yes! And I would rather be yours than anybody's in the world,'
returned the sweet and honest voice of the distressed girl. `But I cannot
marry you!'
`Tess,' he said, holding her at arm's length, `you are engaged to marry
some one else!'
`No, no!'
`Then why do you refuse me?'
`I don't want to marry! I have not thought o'doing it. I cannot! I only
want to love you.'
`But why?'
Driven to subterfuge, she stammered--
`Your father is a parson, and your mother wouldn' like you to marry
such as me. She will want you to marry a lady.'
`Nonsense - I have spoken to them both. That was partly why I went home.'
`I feel I cannot - never, never!' she echoed.
`Is it too sudden to be asked thus, my Pretty?'
`Yes - I did not expect it.'
`If you will let it pass, please, Tessy, I will give you time,' he said.
`It was very abrupt to come home and speak to you all at once. I'll not
allude to it again for a while.'
She again took up the shining skimmer, held it beneath the pump, and
began anew. But she could not, as at other times, hit the exact under-surface
of the cream with the delicate dexterity required, try as she might: sometimes
she was cutting down into the milk, sometimes in the air. She could hardly
see, her eyes having filled with two blurring tears drawn forth by a grief
which, to this her best friend and dear advocate, she could never explain.
`I can't skim - I can't!' she said, turning away from him.
Not to agitate and hinder her longer the considerate Clare began talking
in a more general way:
`You quite misapprehend my parents. They are the most simple-mannered
people alive, and quite unambitious. They are two of the few remaining
Evangelical school. Tessy, are you an Evangelical?'
`I don't know.'
`You go to church very regularly, and our parson here is not very High,
they tell me.'
Tess's ideas on the views of the parish clergyman, whom she heard every
week, seemed to be rather more vague than Clare's, who had never heard
him at all.
`I wish I could fix my mind on what I hear there more firmly than I
do,' she remarked as a safe generality. `It is often a great sorrow to
me.'
She spoke so unaffectedly that Angel was sure in his heart that his
father could not object to her on religious grounds, even though she did
not know whether her principles were High, Low, or Broad. He himself knew
that, in reality, the confused beliefs which she held, apparently imbibed
in childhood, were, if any thing, Tractarian as to phraseology, and Pantheistic
as to essence. Confused or otherwise, to disturb them was his last desire:
Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
He had occasionally thought the counsel less honest than musical; but he
gladly conformed to it now.
He spoke further of the incidents of his visit, of his father's mode
of life, of his zeal for his principles; she grew serener, and the undulations
disappeared from her skimming; as she finished one lead after another he
followed her, and drew the plugs for letting down the milk.
`I fancied you looked a little downcast when you came in,' she ventured
to observe, anxious to keep away from the subject of herself.
`Yes - well, my father has been talking a good deal to me of his troubles
and difficulties, and the subject always tends to depress me. He is so
zealous that he gets many snubs and buffetings from people of a different
way of thinking from himself, and I don't like to hear of such humiliations
to a man of his age, the more particularly as I don't think earnestness
does any good when carried so far. He has been telling me of a very unpleasant
scene in which he took part quite recently. He went as the deputy of some
missionary society to preach in the neighbourhood of Trantridge, a place
forty miles from here, and made it his business to expostulate with a lax
young cynic he met with somewhere about there - son of some landowner up
that way - and who has a mother afflicted with blindness. My father addressed
himself to the gentleman point-blank, and there was quite a disturbance.
It was very foolish of my father, I must say, to intrude his conversation
upon a stranger when the probabilities were so obvious that it would be
useless. But whatever he thinks to be his duty, that he'll do, in season
or out of season; and, of course, he makes many enemies, not only among
the absolutely vicious, but among the easy-going, who hate being bothered.
He says he glories in what happened, and that good may be done indirectly;
but I wish he would not so wear himself out now he is getting old, and
would leave such pigs to their wallowing.'
Tess's look had grown hard and worn, and her ripe mouth tragical; but
she no longer showed any tremulousness. Clare's revived thoughts of his
father prevented his noticing her particularly; and so they went on down
the white row of liquid rectangles till they had finished and drained them
off, when the other maids returned, and took their pails, and Deb came
to scald out the leads for the new milk. As Tess withdrew to go afield
to the cows he said to her softly--
`And my question, Tessy?'
`O no - no!' replied she with grave hopelessness, as one who had heard
anew the turmoil of her own past in the allusion to Alec d'Urberville.
`It can't be!'
She went out towards the mead, joining the other milkmaids with a bound,
as if trying to make the open air drive away her sad constraint. All the
girls drew onward to the spot where the cows were grazing in the farther
mead, the bevy advancing with the bold grace of wild animals - the reckless
unchastened motion of women accustomed to unlimited space - in which they
abandoned themselves to the air as a swimmer to the wave. It seemed natural
enough to him now that Tess was again in sight to choose a mate from unconstrained
Nature, and not from the abodes of Art.
Chapter 28
Her refusal, though unexpected, did not permanently daunt Clare. His experience
of women was great enough for him to be aware that the negative often meant
nothing more than the preface to the affirmative; and it was little enough
for him not to know that in the manner of the present negative there lay
a great exception to the dallyings of coyness. That she had already permitted
him to make love to her he read as an additional assurance, not fully trowing
that in the fields and pastures to `sigh gratis' is by no means deemed
waste; love-making being here more often accepted inconsiderately and for
its own sweet sake than in the carking anxious homes of the ambitious,
where a girl's craving for an establishment paralyzes her healthy thought
of a passion as an end.
`Tess, why did you say "no" in such a positive way?' he asked her in
the course of a few days.
She started.
`Don't ask me. I told you why - partly. I am not good enough not worthy
enough.'
`How? Not fine lady enough?'
`Yes - something like that,' murmured she. `Your friends would scorn
me.'
`Indeed, you mistake them - my father and mother. As for my brothers,
I don't care--' He clasped his fingers behind her back to keep her from
slipping away. `Now - you did not mean it, sweet? - I am sure you did not!
You have made me so restless that I cannot read, or play, or do anything.
I am in no hurry, Tess, but I want to know - to hear from your own warm
lips - that you will some day be mine - any time you may choose; but some
day?' She could only shake her head and look away from him.
Clare regarded her attentively, conned the characters of her face as
if they had been hieroglyphics. The denial seemed real.
`Then I ought not to hold you in this way - ought I? I have no right
to you - no right to seek out where you are, or to walk with you! Honestly,
Tess, do you love any other man?'
`How can you ask?' she said, with continued self-suppression.
`I almost know that you do not. But then, why do you repulse me?'
`I don't repulse you. I like you to - tell me you love me; and you may
always tell me so as you go about with me - and never offend me.'
`But you will not accept me as a husband?'
`Ah - hat's different - it is for your good, indeed my dearest! O, believe
me, it is only for your sake! I don't like to give myself the great happiness
o' promising to be yours in that way - because - because I am sure
I ought not to do it.'
`But you will make me happy!'
`Ah - you think so, but you don't know!'
At such times as this, apprehending the grounds of her refusal to be
her modest sense of incompetence in matters social and polite, he was wonderfully
well-informed and versatile - which was certainly true, her natural quickness,
and her admiration for him, having led her to pick up his vocabulary, his
accent, and fragments of his knowledge, to a surprising extent. After these
tender contests and her victory she would go away by herself under the
remotest cow, if at milking-time, or into the sedge, or into her room,
if at a leisure interval, and mourn silently, not a minute after an apparently
phlegmatic negative.
The struggle was so fearful; her own heart was so strongly on the side
of his - two ardent hearts against one poor little conscience - that she
tried to fortify her resolution by every means in her power. She had come
to Talbothays with a made-up mind. On no account could she agree to a step
which might afterwards cause bitter rueing to her husband for his blindness
in wedding her. And she held that what her conscience had decided for her
when her mind was unbiased ought not to be overruled now.
`Why don't somebody tell him all about me?' she said. `It was only forty
miles off - why hasn't it reached here? Somebody must know!'
Yet nobody seemed to know; nobody told him.
For two or three days no more was said. She guessed from the sad countenances
of her chamber companions that they regarded her not only as the favourite,
but as the chosen; but they could see for themselves that she did not put
herself in his way.
Tess had never before known a time in which the thread of her life was
so distinctly twisted of two strands, positive pleasure and positive pain.
At the next cheese-making the pair were again left alone together. The
dairyman himself had been lending a hand; but Mr Crick, as well as his
wife, seemed latterly to have acquired a suspicion of mutual interest between
these two; though they walked so circumspectly that suspicion was but of
the faintest. Anyhow, the dairyman left them to themselves.
They were breaking up the masses of curd before putting them into the
vats. The operation resembled the act of crumbling bread on a large scale;
and amid the immaculate whiteness of the curds Tess Durbeyfield's hands
showed themselves of the pinkness of the rose. Angel, who was filling the
vats with his handfuls, suddenly ceased, and laid his hands flat upon hers.
Her sleeves were rolled far above the elbow, and bending lower he kissed
the inside vein of her soft arm.
Although the early September weather was sultry, her arm, from her dabbling
in the curds, was as cold and damp to his mouth as a new-gathered mushroom,
and tasted of the whey. But she was such a sheaf of susceptibilities that
her pulse was accelerated by the touch, her blood driven to her finger-ends,
and the cool arms flushed hot. Then, as though her heart had said, `Is
coyness longer necessary? Truth is truth between man and woman, as between
man and man, ` she lifted her eyes, and they beamed devotedly into his,
as her lip rose in a tender half-smile.
`Do you know why I did that, Tess?' he said.
`Because you love me very much!'
`Yes, and as a preliminary to a new entreaty.'
`Not again!'
She looked a sudden fear that her resistance might break down under
her own desire.
`O, Tessy!' he went on, `I cannot think why you are so tantalizing.
Why do you disappoint me so? You seem almost like a coquette, upon my life
you do - a coquette of the first urban water! They blow hot and blow cold,
just as you do; and it is the very last sort of thing to expect to find
in a retreat like Talbothays... . And yet, dearest, `he quickly added,
observing how the remark had cut her, `I know you to be the most honest,
spotless creature that ever lived. So how can I suppose you a flirt? Tess,
why don't you like the idea of being my wife, if you love me as you seem
to do?'
`I have never said I don't like the idea, and I never could say it;
because - it isn't true!'
The stress now getting beyond endurance her lip quivered, and she was
obliged to go away. Clare was so pained and perplexed that he ran after
and caught her in the passage.
`Tell me, tell me!' he said, passionately clasping her, in forgetfulness
of his curdy hands: `do tell me that you won't belong to anybody but me!'
`I will, I will tell you!' she exclaimed. `And I will give you a complete
answer, if you will let me go now. I will tell you my experiences - all
about myself - all!'
`Your experiences, dear; yes, certainly; any number.' He expressed assent
in loving satire, looking into her face. `My Tess has, no doubt, almost
as many experiences as that wild convolvulus out there on the garden hedge,
that opened itself this morning for the first time. Tell me anything, but
don't use that wretched expression any more about not being worthy of me.'
`I will try - not! And I'll give you my reasons to-morrow - next week.'
`Say on Sunday?'
`Yes, on Sunday.'
At last she got away, and did not stop in her retreat till she was in
the thicket of pollard willows at the lower side of the barton, where she
could be quite unseen. Here Tess flung herself down upon the rustling undergrowth
of spear-grass, as upon a bed, and remained crouching in palpitating misery
broken by momentary shoots of joy, which her fears about the ending could
not altogether suppress.
In reality, she was drifting into acquiescence. Every see-saw of her
breath, every wave of her blood, every pulse singing in her ears, was a
voice that joined with nature in revolt against her scrupulousness. Reckless,
inconsiderate acceptance of him; to close with him at the altar, revealing
nothing, and chancing discovery; to snatch ripe pleasure before the iron
teeth of pain could have time to shut upon her: that was what love counselled;
and in almost a terror of ecstasy Tess divined that, despite her many months
of lonely self-chastisement, wrestlings, communings, schemes to lead a
future of austere isolation, love's counsel would prevail.
The afternoon advanced, and still she remained among the willows. She
heard the rattle of taking down the palls from the forked stands; the `waow-waow!'
which accompanied the getting together of the cows. But she did not go
to the milking. They would see her agitation; and the dairyman, thinking
the cause to be love alone, would good-naturedly tease her; and that harassment
could not be borne.
Her lover must have guessed her overwrought state, and invented some
excuse for her non-appearance, for no inquiries were made or calls given.
At half-past six the sun settled down upon the levels, with the aspect
of a great forge in the heavens, and presently a monstrous pumpkin-like
moon arose on the other hand. The pollard willows, tortured out of their
natural shape by incessant choppings, became spiny-haired monsters as they
stood up against it. She went in, and upstairs without a light.
It was now Wednesday. Thursday came, and Angel looked thoughtfully at
her from a distance, but intruded in no way upon her. The indoor milkmaids,
Marian and the rest, seemed to guess that something definite was afoot,
for they did not force any remarks upon her in the bedchamber. Friday passed;
Saturday. To-morrow was the day.
`I shall give way - I shall say yes - I shall let myself marry him -
I cannot help it!' she jealously panted, with her hot face to the pillow
that night, on hearing one of the other girls sigh his name in her sleep.
`I can't bear to let anybody have him but me! Yet it is a wrong to him,
and may kill him when he knows! O my heart - O - O!'
Chapter 29
`Now, who mid ye think I've heard news o' this morning?' said Dairyman
Crick, as he sat down to breakfast next day, with a riddling gaze round
upon the munching men and maids. `Now, just who mid ye think?'
One guessed, and another guessed. Mrs Crick did not guess, because she
knew already.
`Well,' said the dairyman, `'tis that slack-twisted 'hore's-bird of
a feller, Jack Dollop. He's lately got married to a widow-woman.'
`Not Jack Dollop? A villain - to think o' that!' said a milker.
The name entered quickly into Tess Durbeyfield's consciousness, for
it was the name of the lover who had wronged his sweetheart, and had afterwards
been so roughly used by the young woman's mother in the butter-churn.
`And has he married the valiant matron's daughter, as he promised?'
asked Angel Clare absently, as he turned over the newspaper he was reading
at the little table to which he was always banished by Mrs Crick, in her
sense of his gentility.
`Not he, sir. Never meant to,' replied the dairyman. `As I say, 'tis
a widow-woman, and she had money, it seems - fifty poun' a year or so;
and that was all he was after. They were married in a great hurry; and
then she told him that by marrying she had lost her fifty poun' a year.
Just fancy the state o' my gentleman's mind at that news! Never such a
cat-and-dog life as they've been leading ever since! Serves him well beright.
But onluckily the poor woman gets the worst o't.'
`Well, the silly body should have told en sooner that the ghost of her
first man would trouble him,' said Mrs Crick.
`Ay; ay,' responded the dairyman indecisively. `Still, you can see exactly
how 'twas. She wanted a home, and didn't like to run the risk of losing
him. Don't ye think that was something like it, maidens?'
He glanced towards the row of girls.
`She ought to ha' told him just before they went to church, when he
could hardly have backed out,' exclaimed Marian.
`Yes, she ought,' agreed Izz.
`She must have seen what he was after, and should ha' refused him,'
cried Retty spasmodically.
`And what do you say, my dear?' asked the dairyman of Tess.
`I think she ought - to have told him the true state of things - or
else refused him - I don't know,' replied Tess, the bread-and-butter choking
her.
`Be cust if I'd have done either o't,' said Beck Knibbs, a married helper
from one of the cottages. `All's fair in love and war. I'd ha' married
en 'ust as she did, and if he'd said two words to me about not telling
him beforehand anything whatsomdever about my first chap that I hadn't
chose to tell, I'd ha' knocked him down wi' the rolling-pin - a scram little
feller like he! Any woman could do it.'
The laughter which followed this sally was supplemented only by a sorry
smile, for form's sake, from Tess. What was comedy to them was tragedy
to her; and she could hardly bear their mirth. She soon rose from table,
and, with an impression that Clare would follow her, went along a little
wriggling path, now stepping to one side of the irrigating channels, and
now to the other, till she stood by the main stream of the Var. Men had
been cutting the water-weeds higher up the river, and masses of them were
floating past her - moving islands of green crowfoot, whereon she might
almost have ridden; long locks of which weed had lodged against the piles
driven to keep the cows from crossing.
Yes, there was the pain of it. This question of a woman telling her
story - the heaviest of crosses to herself - seemed but amusement to others.
It was as if people should laugh at martyrdom.
`Tessy!' came from behind her, and Clare sprang across the gully, alighting
beside her feet. `My wife - soon!'
`No, no; I cannot. For your sake, O Mr Clare; for your sake, I say no!'
`Tess!'
`Still I say no!' she repeated.
Not expecting this he had put his arm lightly round her waist the moment
after speaking, beneath her hanging tall of hair. (The younger dairymaids,
including Tess, breakfasted with their hair loose on Sunday mornings before
building it up extra high for attending church, a style they could not
adopt when milking with their heads against the cows.) If she had said
`Yes' instead of `No' he would have kissed her; it had evidently been his
intention; but her determined negative deterred his scrupulous heart. Their
condition of domiciliary comradeship put her, as the woman, to such disadvantage
by its enforced intercourse, that he felt it unfair to her to exercise
any pressure of brandishment which he might have honestly employed had
she been better able to avoid him. He released her momentarily-imprisoned
waist, and withheld the kiss.
It all turned on that release. What had given her strength to refuse
him this time was solely the tale of the widow told by the dairyman; and
that would have been overcome in another moment. But Angel said no more;
his face was perplexed; he went away.
Day after day they met - somewhat less constantly than before; and thus
two or three weeks went by. The end of September drew near, and she could
see in his eye that he might ask her again.
His plan of procedure was different now - as though he had made up his
mind that her negatives were, after all, only coyness and youth startled
by the novelty of the proposal. The fitful evasiveness of her manner when
the subject was under discussion countenanced the idea. So he played a
more coaxing game; and while never going beyond words, or attempting the
renewal of caresses, he did his utmost orally.
In this way Clare persistently wooed her in undertones like that of
the purling milk - at the cow's side, at skimmings, at butter-makings,
at cheese-makings, among broody poultry, and among farrowing pigs - as
no milkmaid was ever wooed before by such a man.
Tess knew that she must break down. Neither a religious sense of a certain
moral validity in the previous union nor a conscientious wish for candour
could hold out against it much longer. She loved him so passionately, and
he was so godlike in her eyes; and being, though untrained, instinctively
refined, her nature cried for his tutelary guidance. And thus, though Tess
kept repeating to herself, `I can never be his wife,' the words were vain.
A proof of her weakness lay in the very utterance of what calm strength
would not have taken the trouble to formulate. Every sound of his voice
beginning on the old subject stirred her with a terrifying bliss, and she
coveted the recantation she feared.
His manner was - what man's is not? - so much that of one who would
love and cherish and defend her under any conditions, changes, charges,
or revelations, that her gloom lessened as she basked in it. The season
meanwhile was drawing onward to the equinox, and though it was still fine,
the days were much shorter. The dairy had again worked by morning candle-light
for a long time; and a fresh renewal of Clare's pleading occurred one morning
between three and four.
She had run up in her bedgown to his door to call him as usual; then
had gone back to dress and call the others; and in ten minutes was walking
to the head of the stairs with the candle in her hand. At the same moment
he came down his steps from above in his shirt-sleeves and put his arm
across the stairway.
`Now, Miss Flirt, before you go down,' he said peremptorily. `It is
a fortnight since I spoke, and this won't do any longer. You must
tell me what you mean, or I shall have to leave this house. My door was
ajar just now, and I saw you. For your own safety I must go. You don't
know. Well? Is it to be yes at last?'
`I am only just up, Mr Clare, and it is too early to take me to task!'
she pouted. `You need not call me Flirt. 'Tis cruel and untrue. Walt till
by and by. Please wait till by and by! I will really think seriously about
it between now and then. Let me go downstairs!'
She looked a little like what he said she was as, holding the candle
sideways, she tried to smile away the seriousness of her words.
`Call me Angel, then, and not Mr Clare.'
`Angel.'
`Angel dearest - why not?'
`'Twould mean that I agree, wouldn't it?'
`It would only mean that you love me, even if you cannot marry me; and
you were so good as to own that long ago.'
`Very well, then, "Angel dearest", if I must,' she murmured,
looking at her candle, a roguish curl coming upon her mouth, notwithstanding
her suspense.
Clare had resolved never to kiss her until he had obtained her promise;
but somehow, as Tess stood there in her prettily tucked-up milking gown,
her hair carelessly heaped upon her head till there should be leisure to
arrange it when skimming and milking were done, he broke his resolve, and
brought his lips to her cheek for one moment. She passed downstairs very
quickly, never looking back at him or saying another word. The other maids
were already down, and the subject was not pursued. Except Marian they
all looked wistfully and suspiciously at the pair, in the sad yellow rays
which the morning candles emitted in contrast with the first cold signals
of the dawn without.
When skimming was done - which, as the milk diminished with the approach
of autumn, was a lessening process day by day. Retty and the rest went
out. The lovers followed them.
`Our tremulous lives are so different from theirs, are they not?' he
musingly observed to her, as he regarded the three figures tripping before
him through the frigid pallor of opening day.
`Not so very different, I think,' she said.
`Why do you think that?'
`There are very few women's lives that are not tremulous,' Tess replied,
pausing over the new word as if it impressed her. `There's more in those
three than you think.'
`What is in them?'
`Almost either of 'em,' she began, `would make - perhaps would make
- a properer wife than I. And perhaps they love you as well as I - almost.'
`O, Tessy!'
There were signs that it was an exquisite relief to her to hear the
impatient exclamation, though she had resolved so intrepidly to let generosity
make one bid against herself. That was now done, and she had not the power
to attempt self-immolation a second time then. They were joined by a milker
from one of the cottages, and no more was said on that which concerned
them so deeply. But Tess knew that this day would decide it.
In the afternoon several of the dairyman's household and assistants
went down to the meads as usual, a long way from the dairy, where many
of the cows were milked without being driven home. The supply was getting
less as the animals advanced in calf, and the supernumerary milkers of
the lush green season had been dismissed.
The work progressed leisurely. Each pailful was poured into tall cans
that stood in a large spring-waggon which had been brought upon the scene;
and when they were milked the cows trailed away.
Dairyman Crick, who was there with the rest, his wrapper gleaming miraculously
white against a leaden evening sky, suddenly looked at his heavy watch.
`Why, 'tis later than I thought,' he said. `Begad! We shan't be soon
enough with this milk at the station, if we don't mind. There's no time
to-day to take it home and mix it with the bulk afore sending off. It must
go to station straight from here. Who'll drive it across?'
Mr Clare volunteered to do so, though it was none of his business, asking
Tess to accompany him. The evening, though sunless, had been warm and muggy
for the season, and Tess had come out with her milkinghood only, naked-armed
and jacketless; certainly not dressed for a drive. She therefore replied
by glancing over her scant habiliments; but Clare gently urged her. She
assented by relinquishing her pall and stool to the dairyman to take home;
and mounted the spring-waggon beside Clare.
Chapter 30
In the diminishing daylight they went along the level roadway through the
meads, which stretched away into gray miles, and were backed in the extreme
edge of distance by the swarthy and abrupt slopes of Egdon Heath. On its
summit stood clumps and stretches of fir-trees, whose notched tips appeared
like battlemented towers crowning black-fronted castles of enchantment.
They were so absorbed in the sense of being close to each other that
they did not begin talking for a long while, the silence being broken only
by the clucking of the milk in the tall cans behind them. The lane they
followed was so solitary that the hazel nuts had remained on the boughs
till they slipped from their shells, and the blackberries hung in heavy
clusters. Every now and then Angel would fling the lash of his whip round
one of these, pluck it off, and give it to his companion.
The dull sky soon began to tell its meaning by sending down herald-drops
of rain, and the stagnant air of the day changed into a fitful breeze which
played about their faces. The quicksilvery glaze on the rivers and pools
vanished; from broad mirrors of light they changed to lustreless sheets
of lead, with a surface like a rasp. But that spectacle did not affect
her preoccupation. Her countenance, a natural carnation slightly embrowned
by the season, had deepened its tinge with the beating of the rain-drops;
and her hair, which the pressure of the cows' flanks had, as usual, caused
to tumble down from its fastenings and stray beyond the curtain of her
calico bonnet, was made clammy by the moisture, till it hardly was better
than seaweed.
`I ought not to have come, I suppose,' she murmured, looking at the
sky.
`I am sorry for the rain,' said he. `But how glad I am to have you here!'
Remote Egdon disappeared by degrees behind the liquid gauze. The evening
grew darker, and the roads being crossed by gates it was not safe to drive
faster than at a walking pace. The air was rather chill.
`I am so afraid you will get, cold, with nothing upon your arms and
shoulders,' he said. `Creep close to me, and perhaps the drizzle won't
hurt you much. I should be sorrier still if I did not think that the rain
might be helping me.'
She imperceptibly crept closer, and he wrapped round them both a large
piece of sail-cloth, which was sometimes used to keep the sun off the milk-cans.
Tess held it from slipping off him as well as herself, Clare's hands being
occupied.
`Now we are all right again. Ah - no we are not! It runs down into my
neck a little, and it must still more into yours. That's better. Your arms
are like wet marble, Tess. Wipe them in the cloth. Now, if you stay quiet,
you will not get another drop. Well, dear - about that question of mine
- that long-standing question?'
The only reply that he could hear for a little while was the smack of
the horse's hoofs on the moistening road, and the cluck of the milk in
the cans behind them.
`Do you remember what you said?'
`I do,' she replied.
`Before we get home, mind.'
`I'll try.'
He said no more then. As they drove on the fragment of an old manor
house of Caroline date rose against the sky, and was in due course passed
and left behind.
`That,' he observed, to entertain her, is an interesting old place -
one of the several seats which belonged to an ancient Norman family formerly
of great influence in this county, the d'Urbervilles. I never pass one
of their residences without thinking of them. There is something very sad
in the extinction of a family of renown, even if it was fierce, domineering,
feudal renown.'
`Yes,' said Tess.
They crept along towards a point in the expanse of shade just at hand
at which a feeble light was beginning to assert its presence, a spot where,
by day, a fitful white streak of steam at intervals upon the dark green
background denoted intermittent moments of contact between their secluded
world and modern life. Modern life stretched out its steam feeler to this
point three or four times a day, touched the native existences, and quickly
withdrew its feeler again, as if what it touched had been uncongenial.
They reached the feeble light, which came from the smoky lamp of a little
railway station; a poor enough terrestrial star, yet in one sense of more
importance to Talbothays Dairy and mankind than the celestial ones to which
it stood in such humiliating contrast. The cans of new milk were unladen
in the rain, Tess getting a little shelter from a neighbouring holly tree.
Then there was the hissing of a train, which drew up almost silently
upon the wet rails, and the milk was rapidly swung can by can into the
truck. The light of the engine flashed for a second upon Tess Durbeyfield's
figure, motionless under the great holly tree. No object could have looked
more foreign to the gleaming cranks and wheels than this unsophisticated
girl, with the round bare arms, the rainy face and hair, the suspended
attitude of a friendly leopard at pause, the print gown of no date or fashion,
and the cotton bonnet drooping on her brow.
She mounted again beside her lover, with a mute obedience characteristic
of impassioned natures at times, and when they had wrapped themselves up
over head and ears in the sail-cloth again, they plunged back into the
now thick night. Tess was so receptive that the few minutes of contact
with the whirl of material progress lingered in her thought.
`Londoners will drink it at their breakfasts to-morrow, won't they?'
she asked. `Strange people that we have never seen.'
`Yes - I suppose they will. Though not as we send it. When its strength
has been lowered, so that it may not get up into their heads.'
`Noble men and noble women, ambassadors and centurions, ladies and tradeswomen,
and babies who have never seen a cow.'
`Well, yes; perhaps; particularly centurions.'
`Who don't know anything of us, and where it comes from; or think how
we two drove miles across the moor to-night in the rain that it might reach
'em in time?'
`We did not drive entirely on account of these precious Londoners; we
drove a little on our own - on account of that anxious matter which you
will, I am sure, set at rest, dear Tess. Now,-permit me to put it in this
way. You belong to me already, you know; your heart, I mean. Does it not?'
`You know as well as I. O yes - yes!'
`Then, if your heart does, why not your hand?'
`My only reason was on account of you - on account of a question. I
have something to tell you--'
`But suppose it to be entirely for my happiness, and my worldly convenience
also?'
`O yes; if it is for your happiness and worldly convenience. But my
life before I came here - I want------'
`Well, it is for my convenience as well as my happiness. If I have a
very large farm, either English or colonial, you will be invaluable as
a wife to me; better than a woman out of the largest mansion in the country.
So please - please, dear Tessy, disabuse your mind of the feeling that
you will stand in my way.'
`But my history. I want you to know it - you must let me tell you -
you will not like me so well!'
`Tell it if you wish to, dearest. This precious history then. Yes, I
was born at so and so, Anno Domini--'
`I was born at Marlott,'she said, catching at his words as a help, lightly
as they were spoken. `And I grew up there. And I was in the Sixth Standard
when I left school, and they said I had great aptness, and should make
a good teacher, so it was settled that I should be one. But there was trouble
in my family; father was not very industrious, and he drank a little.'
`Yes, yes. Poor child! Nothing new.' He pressed her more closely to
his side.
`And then - there is something very unusual about it - about me. I -
I was--'
Tess's breath quickened.
`Yes, dearest. Never mind.'
`I - I - am not a Durbeyfield, but a d'Urberville - a descendant of
the same family as those that owned the old house we passed. And - we are
all gone to nothing!'
`A d'Urberville! - Indeed! And is that all the trouble, dear Tess?'
`Yes,' she answered faintly.
`Well - why should I love you less after knowing this?'
`I was told by the dairyman that you hated old families.'
He laughed.
`Well, it is true, in one sense. I do hate the aristocratic principle
of blood before everything, and do think that as reasoners the only pedigrees
we ought to respect are those spiritual ones of the wise and virtuous,
without regard to corporeal paternity. But I am extremely interested in
this news - you can have no idea how interested I am! Are not you interested
yourself in being one of that well-known line?'
`No. I have thought it sad - especially since coming here, and knowing
that many of the hills and fields I see once belonged to my father's people.
But other hills and fields belonged to Retty's people, and perhaps others
to Marian's, so that I don't value it particularly.'
`Yes - it is surprising how many of the present tillers of the soil
were once owners of it, and I sometimes wonder that a certain school of
politicians don't make capital of the circumstance; but they don't seem
to know it... . I wonder that I did not see the resemblance of your name
to d'Urberville, and trace the manifest corruption. And this was the carking
secret!'
She had not told. At the last moment her courage had failed her, she
feared his blame for not telling him sooner; and her instinct of self-preservation
was stronger than her candour.
`Of course,' continued the unwitting Clare, `I should have been glad
to know you to be descended exclusively from the long-suffering, dumb,
unrecorded rank and file of the English nation, and not from the self-seeking
few who made themselves powerful at the expense of the rest. But I am corrupted
away from that by my affection for you, Tess [he laughed as he spoke],
and made selfish likewise. For your own sake I rejoice in your descent.
Society is hopelessly snobbish, and this fact of your extraction may make
an appreciable difference to its acceptance of you as my wife, after I
have made you the well-read woman that I mean to make you. My mother too,
poor soul, will think so much better of you on account of it. Tess, you
must spell your name correctly - d'Urberville - from this very day.'
`I like the other way rather best.'
`But you must, dearest! Good heavens, why dozens of mushroom
millionaires would jump at such a possession! By the bye, there's one of
that kidney who has taken the name - where have I heard of him? - Up in
the neighbourhood of The Chase, I think. Why, he is the very man who had
that rumpus with my father I told you of. What an odd coincidence!'
`Angel, I think I would rather not take the name! It is unlucky, perhaps!'
She was agitated.
`Now then, Mistress Teresa d'Urberville, I have you. Take my name, and
so you will escape yours! The secret is out, so why should you any longer
refuse me?'
`If it is sure to make you happy to have me as your wife, and
you feel that you do wish to marry me, very, very much------'
`I do, dearest, of course!'
`I mean, that it is only your wanting me very much, and being hardly
able to keep alive without me, whatever my offences, that would make me
feel I ought to say I will.'
`You will - you do say it, I know! You will be mine for ever and ever.'
He clasped her close and kissed her.
`Yes!'
She had no sooner said it than she burst into a dry hard sobbing, so
violent that it seemed to rend her. Tess was not a hysterical girl by any
means, and he was surprised.
`Why do you cry, dearest?'
`I can't tell - quite! - I am so glad to think - of being yours, and
making you happy!'
`But this does not seem very much like gladness, my Tessy!'
`I mean - I cry because I have broken down in my vow! I said I would
die unmarried!'
`But, if you love me you would like me to be your husband?'
`Yes, yes, yes! But O, I sometimes wish I had never been born!'
`Now, my dear Tess, if I did not know that you are very much excited,
and very inexperienced, I should say that remark was not very complimentary.
How came you to wish that if you care for me? Do you care for me? I wish
you would prove it in some way.'
`How can I prove it more than I have done?' she cried, in a distraction
of tenderness. `Will this prove it more?'
She clasped his neck, and for the first time Clare learnt what an impassioned
woman's kisses were like upon the lips of one whom she loved with all her
heart and soul, as Tess loved him.
`There - now do you believe?' she asked, flushed, and wiping her eyes.
`Yes. I never really doubted - never, never!'
So they drove on through the gloom, forming one bundle inside the sail-cloth,
the horse going as he would, and the rain driving against them. She had
consented. She might as well have agreed at first. The `appetite for joy'
which pervades all creation, that tremendous force which sways humanity
to its purpose, as the tide sways the helpless weed, was not to be controlled
by vague lucubrations over the social rubric.
`I must write to my mother,' she said. `You don't mind my doing that?'
`Of course not, dear child. You are a child to me, Tess, not to know
how very proper it is to write to your mother at such a time, and how wrong
it would be in me to object. Where does she live?'
`At the same place - Marlott. On the further side of Blackmoor Vale.'
`Ah, then I have seen you before this summer--'
`Yes; at that dance on the green; but you would not dance with me. O,
I hope that is of no ill-omen for us now!'
Chapter 31
Tess wrote a most touching and urgent letter to her mother the very next
day, and by the end of the week a response to her communication arrived
in Joan Durbeyfield's wandering last-century hand.
DEAR TESS, - I write these few lines Hoping they will find
you well, as they leave me at Present, thank God for it. Dear Tess, we
are all glad to Hear that you are going really to be married soon. But
with respect to your question, Tess, I say between ourselves, quite private
but very strong, that on no account do you say a word of your Bygone Trouble
to him. I did not tell everything to your Father, he being so Proud on
account of his Respectability, which, perhaps, your Intended is the same.
Many a woman - some of the Highest in the Land - have had a Trouble in
their time; and why should you Trumpet yours when others don't Trumpet
theirs? No girl would be such a Fool, specially as it is so long ago, and
not your Fault at all. I shall answer the same if you ask me fifty times.
Besides, you must bear in mind that, knowing it to be your Childish Nature
to tell all that's in your heart - so simple! - I made you promise me never
to let it out by Word or Deed, having your Welfare in my Mind; and you
most solemnly did promise it going from this Door. I have not named either
that Question or your coming marriage to your Father, as he would blab
it everywhere, poor Simple Man.
Dear Tess, keep up your Spirits, and we mean to send you a Hogshead
of Cyder for your Wedding, knowing there is not much in your parts, and
thin Sour Stuff what there is. So no more at present, and with kind love
to your Young Man. - From your affectte. Mother,
J. DURBEYFIELD.
`O mother, mother!' murmured Tess.
She was recognizing how light was the touch of events the most oppressive
upon Mrs Durbeyfield's elastic spirit. Her mother did not see life as Tess
saw it. That haunting episode of bygone days was to her mother but a passing
accident. But perhaps her mother was right as to the course to be followed,
whatever she might be in her reasons. Silence seemed, on the face of it,
best for her adored one's happiness: silence it should be.
Thus steadied by a command from the only person in the world who had
any shadow of right to control her action, Tess grew calmer. The responsibility
was shifted, and her heart was lighter than it had been for weeks. The
days of declining autumn which followed her assent, beginning with the
month of October, formed a season through which she lived in spiritual
altitudes more nearly approaching ecstasy than any other period of her
life.
There was hardly a touch of earth in her love for Clare. To her sublime
trustfulness he was all that goodness could be - knew all that a guide,
philosopher, and friend should know. She thought every line in the contour
of his person the perfection of masculine beauty, his soul the soul of
a saint, his intellect that of a seer. The wisdom of her love for him,
as love, sustained her dignity; she seemed to be wearing a crown. The compassion
of his love for her, as she saw it, made her lift up her heart to him in
devotion. He would sometimes catch her large, worshipful eyes, that had
no bottom to them, looking at him from their depths, as if she saw something
immortal before her.
She dismissed the past - trod upon it and put it out, as one treads
on a coal that is smouldering and dangerous.
She had not known that men could be so disinterested, chivalrous, protective,
in their love for women as he. Angel Clare was far from all that she thought
him in this respect; absurdly far, indeed; but he was, in truth, more spiritual
than animal; he had himself well in hand, and was singularly free from
grossness. Though not cold-natured, he was rather bright than hot - less
Byronic than Shelleyan; could love desperately, but with a love more especially
inclined to the imaginative and ethereal; it was a fastidious emotion which
could jealously guard the loved one against his very self. This amazed
and enraptured Tess, whose slight experiences had been so infelicitous
till now; and in her reaction from indignation against the male sex she
swerved to excess of honour for Clare.
They unaffectedly sought each other's company; in her honest faith she
did not disguise her desire to be with him. The sum of her instincts on
this matter, if clearly stated, would have been that the elusive quality
in her sex which attracts men in general might be distasteful to so perfect
a man after an avowal of love, since it must in its very nature carry with
it a suspicion of art.
The country custom of unreserved comradeship out of doors during betrothal
was the only custom she knew, and to her it had no strangeness; though
it seemed oddly anticipative to Clare till he saw how normal a thing she,
in common with all the other dairy-folk, regarded it. Thus, during this
October month of wonderful afternoons they roved along the meads by creeping
paths which followed the brinks of trickling tributary brooks, hopping
across by little wooden bridges to the other side, and back again. They
were never out of the sound of some purling weir, whose buzz accompanied
their own murmuring, while the beams of the sun, almost as horizontal as
the mead itself, formed a pollen of radiance over the landscape. They saw
tiny blue fogs in the shadows of trees and hedges, all the time that there
was bright sunshine elsewhere. The sun was so near the ground, and the
sward so flat, that the shadows of Clare and Tess would stretch a quarter
of a mile ahead of them, like two long fingers pointing afar to where the
green alluvial reaches abutted against the sloping sides of the vale.
Men were at work here and there - for it was the season for `taking
up' the meadows, or digging the little waterways clear for the winter irrigation,
and mending their banks where trodden down by the cows. The shovelfuls
of loam, black as `et, brought there by the river when it was as wide as
the whole valley, were an essence of soils, pounded champaigns of the past,
steeped, refined, and subtilized to extraordinary richness, out of which
came all the fertility of the mead, and of the cattle grazing there.
Clare hardily kept his arm round her waist in sight of these watermen,
with the air of a man who was accustomed to public dalliance, though actually
as shy as she who, with lips parted and eyes askance on the labourers,
wore the look of a wary animal the while.
`You are not ashamed of owning me as yours before them!' she said gladly.
`O no!'
`But if it should reach the ears of your friends at Emminster that you
are walking about like this with me, a milkmaid--'
`The most bewitching milkmaid ever seen.'
`They might feel it a hurt to their dignity.'
`My dear girl - a d'Urberville hurt the dignity of a Clare! It is a
grand card to play - that of your belonging to such a family, and I am
reserving it for a grand effect when we are married, and have the proofs
of your descent from Parson Tringham. Apart from that, my future is to
be totally foreign to my family - it will not affect even the surface of
their lives. We shall leave this part of England - perhaps England itself
- and what does it matter how people regard us here. You will like going,
will you not?'
She could answer no more than a bare affirmative, so great was the emotion
aroused in her at the thought of going through the world with him as his
own familiar friend. Her feelings almost filled her ears like a babble
of waves, and surged up to her eyes. She put her hand in his, and thus
they went on, to a place where the reflected sun glared up from the river,
under a bridge, with a molten-metallic glow that dazzled their eyes, though
the sun itself was hidden by the bridge. They stood still, whereupon little
furred and feathered heads popped up from the smooth surface of the water;
but, finding that the disturbing presences had paused, and not passed by,
they disappeared again. Upon this river-brink they lingered till the fog
began to close round them - which was very early in the evening at this
time of the year - settling on the lashes of her eyes, where it rested
like crystals, and on his brows and hair.
They walked later on Sundays, when it was quite dark. Some of the dairy-people,
who were also out of doors on the first Sunday evening after their engagement,
heard her impulsive speeches, ecstasized to fragments, though they were
too far off to hear the words discoursed; noted the spasmodic catch in
her remarks, broken into syllables by the leapings of her heart, as she
walked leaning on his arm; her contented pauses, the occasional little
laugh upon which her soul seemed to ride - the laugh of a woman in company
with the man she loves and has won from all other women - unlike anything
else in nature. They marked the buoyancy of her tread, like the skim of
a bird which has not quite alighted.
Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it
enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her
past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their
attempts to touch her - doubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that
they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but
she had long spells of power to keep them in hungry subjection there.
A spiritual forgetfulness coexisted with an intellectual remembrance.
She walked in brightness, but she knew that in the background those shapes
of darkness were always spread. They might be receding, or they might be
approaching, one or the other, a little every day.
One evening Tess and Clare were obliged to sit indoors keeping house,
all the other occupants of the domicile being away. As they talked she
looked thoughtfully up at him, and met his two appreciative eyes.
`I am not worthy of you - no, I am not!' she burst out, jumping up from
her low stool as though appalled at his homage, and the fulness of her
own joy thereat.
Clare, deeming the whole basis of her excitement to be that which was
only the smaller part of it, said--
`I won't have you speak like it, dear Tess! Distinction does not consist
in the facile use of a contemptible set of conventions, but in being numbered
among those who are true, and honest, and just, and pure, and lovely, and
of good report - as you are, my Tess.'
She struggled with the sob in her throat. How often had that string
of excellences made her young heart ache in church of late years, and how
strange that he should have cited them now.
`Why didn't you stay and love me when I - was sixteen; living with my
little sisters and brothers, and you danced on the green? O, why didn't
you, why didn't you!' she said, impetuously clasping her hands.
Angel began to comfort and reassure her, thinking to himself, truly
enough, what a creature of moods she was, and how careful he would have
to be of her when she depended for her happiness entirely on him.
`Ah - why didn't I stay!'he said. `That is just what I feel. If I had
only known! But you must not be so bitter in your regret - why should you
be?'
With the woman's instinct to hide she diverted hastily--
`I should have had four years more of your heart than I can ever have
now. Then I should not have wasted my time as I have done - I should have
had so much longer happiness!'
It was no mature woman with a long dark vista of intrigue behind her
who was tormented thus; but a girl of simple life, not yet one-and-twenty,
who had been caught during her days of immaturity like a bird in a springe.
To calm herself the more completely she rose from her little stool and
left the room, overturning the stool with her skirts as she went.
He sat on by the cheerful firelight thrown from a bundle of green ash-sticks
laid across the dogs; the sticks snapped pleasantly, and hissed out bubbles
of sap from their ends. When she came back she was herself again.
`Do you not think you are just a wee bit capricious, fitful, Tess?'
he said, good humouredly, as he spread a cushion for her on the stool,
and seated himself in the settle beside her. `I wanted to ask you something,
and just then you ran away.'
`Yes, perhaps I am capricious,' she murmured. She suddenly approached
him, and put a hand upon each of his arms. `No, Angel, I am not really
so - by Nature, I mean!' The more particularly to assure him that she was
not, she placed herself close to him in the settle, and allowed her head
to find a resting-place against Clare's shoulder. `What did you want to
ask me - I am sure I will answer it,' she continued humbly.
`Well, you love me, and have agreed to marry me, and hence there follows
a thirdly, "When shall the day be?"
`I like living like this.'
`But I must think of starting in business on my own hook with the new
year, or a little later. And before I get involved in the multifarious
details of my new position, I should like to have secured my partner.'
`But,' she timidly answered, `to talk quite practically, wouldn't it
be best not to marry till after all that? - Though I can't bear the thought
o' your going away and leaving me here!'
`Of course you cannot - and it is not best in this case. I want you
to help me in many ways in making my start. When shall it be? Why not a
fortnight from now?'
`No,' she said, becoming grave; `I have so many things to think of first.'
`But--'
He drew her gently nearer to him.
The reality of marriage was startling when it loomed so near. Before
discussion of the question had proceeded further there walked round the
corner of the settle into the full firelight of the apartment Mr Dairyman
Crick, Mrs Crick, and two of the milkmaids.
Tess sprang like an elastic ball from his side to her feet, while her
face flushed and her eyes shone in the firelight.
`I knew how it would be if I sat so close to him!' she cried, with vexation.
`I said to myself, they are sure to come and catch us! But I wasn't really
sitting on his knee, though it might ha' seemed as if I was almost!'
`Well - if so be you hadn't told us, I am sure we shouldn't ha' noticed
that ye had been sitting anywhere at all in this light,' replied the dairyman.
He continued to his wife, with the stolid mien of a man who understood
nothing of the emotions relating to matrimony--'Now, Christianer, that
shows that folks should never fancy other folks be supposing things when
they bain't. O no, I should never ha' thought a word of where she was a
sitting to, if she hadn't told me - not I.'
`We are going to be married soon,' said Clare, with improvised phlegm.
`Ah - and be ye! Well, I am truly glad to hear it, sir. I've thought
you mid do; such a thing for some time. She's too good for a dairymaid
- I said so the very first day I zid her - and a prize for any man; and
what's more, a wonderful woman for a gentleman-farmer's wife; he won't
be at the mercy of his baily wi' her at his side.'
Somehow Tess disappeared. She had been even more struck with the look
of the girls who followed Crick than abashed by Crick's blunt praise.
After supper, when she reached her bedroom, they were all present. A
light was burning, and each damsel was sitting up whitely in her bed, awaiting
Tess, the whole like a row of avenging ghosts.
But she saw in a few moments that there was no malice in their mood.
They could scarcely feel as a loss what they had never expected to have.
Their condition was objective, contemplative.
He's going to marry her!' murmured Retty, never taking eyes off Tess.
`How her face do show it!'
`You be going to marry him?' asked Marian.
`Yes,' said Tess.
`When?'
`Some day.'
They thought that this was evasiveness only.
`Yes - going to marry him - a gentleman!' repeated Izz
Huett.
And by a sort of fascination the three girls, one after another, crept
out of their beds, and came and stood barefooted round Tess. Retty put
her hands upon Tess's shoulders, as if to realize her friend's corporeality
after such a miracle, and the other two laid their arms round her waist,
all looking into her face.
`How it do seem! Almost more than I can think of!' said Izz Huett.
Marian kissed Tess. `Yes,' she murmured as she withdrew her lips.
`Was that because of love for her, or because other lips have touched
there by now?' continued Izz drily to Marian.
`I wasn't thinking o' that,' said Marian simply. `I was only feeling
all the strangeness o't - that she is to be his wife, and nobody else.
I don't say nay to it, nor either of us, because we did not think of it
- only loved him. Still, nobody else is to marry'n in the world - no fine
lady, nobody in silks and satins; but she who do live like we.'
`Are you sure you don't dislike me for it?' said Tess in a low voice.
They hung about her in their white nightgowns before replying, as if
they considered their answer might lie in her look.
`I don't know - I don't know,' murmured Retty Priddle. `I want to hate
'ee; but I cannot!'
`That's how I feel,' echoed Izz and Marian. `I can't hate her. Somehow
she hinders me!'
`He ought to marry one of you,' murmured Tess.
`Why?'
`You are all better than I.'
`We better than you?' said the girls in a low, slow whisper. `No, no,
dear Tess!'
`You are!' she contradicted impetuously. And suddenly tearing away from
their clinging arms she burst into a hysterical fit of tears, bowing herself
on the chest of drawers and repeating incessantly, `O yes, yes, yes!'
Having once given way she could not stop her weeping.
`He ought to have had one of you!' she cried. `I think I ought to make
him even now! You would be better for him than - I don't know what I'm
saying! O! O!'
They went up to her and clasped her round, but still her sobs tore her.
`Get some water,' said Marian. `She's upset by us, poor thing, poor
thing!'
They gently led her back to the side of her bed, where they kissed her
warmly.
`You are best for 'n,' said Marian. `More ladylike, and a better scholar
than we, especially since he has taught 'ee so much. But even you ought
to be proud. You be proud, I'm sure!'
`Yes, I am,' she said; `and I am ashamed at so breaking down!'
When they were all in bed, and the light was out, Marian whispered across
to her--
`You will think of us when you be his wife, Tess, and of how we told
'ee that we loved him, and how we tried not to hate you, and did not hate
you, and could not hate you, because you were his choice, and we never
hoped to be chose by him.' They were not aware that, at these words, salt,
stinging tears trickled down upon Tess's pillows anew, and how she resolved,
with a bursting heart, to tell all her history to Angel Clare, despite
her mother's command - to let him for whom she lived and breathed despise
her if he would, and her mother regard her as a fool, rather than preserve
a silence which might be deemed a treachery to him, and which somehow seemed
a wrong to these.
Chapter 32
This penitential mood kept her from naming the wedding-day. The beginning
of November found its date still in abeyance, though he asked her at the
most tempting times. But Tess's desire seemed to be for a perpetual betrothal
in which everything should remain as it was then.
The meads were changing now; but it was still warm enough in early afternoons
before milking to idle there awhile, and the state of dairy-work at this
time of year allowed a spare hour for idling. Looking over the damp sod
in the direction of the sun, a glistening ripple of gossamer webs was visible
to their eyes under the luminary, like the track of moonlight on the sea.
Gnats, knowing nothing of their brief glorification, wandered across the
shimmer of this pathway, irradiated as if they bore fire within them, then
passed out of its line, and were quite extinct. In the presence of these
things he would remind her that the date was still the question.
Or he would ask her at night, when he accompanied her on some mission
invented by Mrs Crick to give him the opportunity. This was mostly a journey
to the farmhouse on the slopes above the vale, to inquire how the advanced
cows were getting on in the straw-barton to which they were relegated.
For it was a time of the year that brought great changes to the world of
kine. Batches of the animals were sent away daily to this lying-in hospital,
where they lived on straw till their calves were born, after which event,
and as soon as the calf could walk, mother and offspring were driven back
to the dairy. In the interval which elapsed before the calves were sold
there was, of course, little milking to be done, but as soon as the calf
had been taken away the milkmaids would have to set to work as usual.
Returning from one of these dark walks they reached a great gravel-cliff
immediately over the levels, where they stood still and listened. The water
was now high in the streams, squirting through the weirs, and tinkling
under culverts; the smallest gullies were all full; there was no taking
short cuts anywhere, and foot-passengers were compelled to follow the permanent
ways. From the whole extent of the invisible vale came a multitudinous
intonation; it forced upon their fancy that a great city lay below them,
and that the murmur was the vociferation of its populace.
`It seems like tens of thousands of them,' said Tess; `holding public-meetings
in their market-places, arguing, preaching, quarrelling, sobbing, groaning,
praying, and cursing.'
Clare was not particularly heeding.
`Did Crick speak to you to-day, dear, about his not wanting much assistance
during the winter months?'
`No.'
`The cows are going dry rapidly.'
`Yes. Six or seven went to the straw-barton yesterday, and three the
day before, making nearly twenty in the straw already. Ah - is it that
the farmer don't want my help for the calving? O, I am not wanted here
any more! And I have tried so hard to--'
`Crick didn't exactly say that he would no longer require you. But,
knowing what our relations were, he said in the most good-natured and respectful
manner possible that he supposed on my leaving at Christmas I should take
you with me, and on my asking what he would do without you he merely observed
that, as a matter of fact, it was a time of year when he could do with
a very little female help. I am afraid I was sinner enough to feel rather
glad that he was in this way forcing your hand.'
`I don't think you ought to have felt glad, Angel. Because 'tis always
mournful not to be wanted, even if at the same time 'tis convenient.'
`Well, it is convenient - you have admitted that.' He put his finger
upon her cheek. `Ah!' he said.
`What?'
`I feel the red rising up at her having been caught! But why should
I trifle so! We will not trifle - life is too serious.'
`It is. Perhaps I saw that before you did.'
She was seeing it then. To decline to marry him after all - in obedience
to her emotion of last night - and leave the dairy, meant to go to some
strange place, not a dairy; for milkmaids were not in request now calving-time
was coming on; to go to some arable farm where no divine being like Angel
Clare was. She hated the thought, and she hated more the thought of going
home.
`So that, seriously, dearest Tess,' he continued, `since you will probably
have to leave at Christmas, it is in every way desirable and convenient
that I should carry you off then as my property. Besides, if you were not
the most uncalculating girl in the world you would know that we could not
go on like this for ever.'
`I wish we could. That it would always be summer and autumn, and you
always courting me, and always thinking as much of me as you have done
through the past summer-time!'
`I always shall.'
`O, I know you will!' she cried, with a sudden fervour of faith in him.
`Angel, I will fix the day when I will become yours for always!'
Thus at last it was arranged between them, during that dark walk home,
amid the myriads of liquid voices on the right and left.
When they reached the dairy Mr and Mrs Crick were promptly told - with
injunctions to secrecy; for each of the lovers was desirous that the marriage
should be kept as private as possible. The dairyman, though he had thought
of dismissing her soon, now made a great concern about losing her. What
should he do about his skimming? Who would make the ornamental butterpats
for the Anglebury and Sandbourne ladies? Mrs Crick congratulated Tess on
the shilly-shallying having at last come to an end, and said that directly
she set eyes on Tess she divined that she was to be the chosen one of somebody
who was no common outdoor man; Tess had looked so superior as she walked
across the barton on that afternoon of her arrival; that she was of a good
family she could have sworn. In point of fact Mrs Crick did remember thinking
that Tess was graceful and good-looking as she approached; but the superiority
might have been a growth of the imagination aided by subsequent knowledge.
Tess was now carried along upon the wings of the hours, without the
sense of a will. The word had been given; the number of the day written
down. Her naturally bright intelligence had begun to admit the fatalistic
convictions common to field-folk and those who associate more extensively
with natural phenomena than with their fellow-creatures; and she accordingly
drifted into that passive responsiveness to all things her lover suggested,
characteristic of the frame of mind.
But she wrote anew to her mother, ostensibly to notify the wedding-day;
really to again implore her advice. It was a gentleman who had chosen her,
which perhaps her mother had not sufficiently considered. A post-nuptial
explanation, which might be accepted with a light heart by a rougher man,
might not be received with the same feeling by him. But this communication
brought no reply from Mrs Durbeyfield.
Despite Angel Clare's plausible representations to himself and to Tess
of the practical need for their immediate marriage, there was in truth
an element of precipitancy in the step, as became apparent at a later date.
He loved her dearly, though perhaps rather ideally and fancifully than
with the impassioned thoroughness of her feeling for him. He had entertained
no notion, when doomed as he had thought to an unintellectual bucolic life,
that such charms as he beheld in this idyllic creature would be found behind
the scenes. Unsophistication was a thing to talk of; but he had not known
how it really struck one until he came here. Yet he was very far from seeing
his future track clearly, and it might be a year or two before he would
be able to consider himself fairly started in life. The secret lay in the
tinge of recklessness imparted to his career and character by the sense
that he had been made to miss his true destiny through the prejudices of
his family.
`Don't you think 'twould have been better for us to wait till you were
quite settled in your midland farm?' she once asked timidly. (A midland
farm was the idea just then.)
`To tell the truth, my Tess, I don't like you to be left anywhere away
from my protection and sympathy.'
The reason was a good one, so far as it went. His influence over her
had been so marked that she had caught his manner and habits, his speech
and phrases, his likings and his aversions. And to leave her in farmland
would be to let her slip back again out of accord with him. He wished to
have her under his charge for another reason. His parents had naturally
desired to see her once at least before he carried her off to a distant
settlement, English or colonial; and as no opinion of theirs was to be
allowed to change his intention, he judged that a couple of months' life
with him in lodgings whilst seeking for an advantageous opening would be
of some social assistance to her at what she might feel to be a trying
ordeal - her presentation to his mother at the Vicarage.
Next, he wished to see a little of the working of a flour-mill, having
an idea that he might combine the use of one with corn-growing. The proprietor
of a large old water-mill at Wellbridge - once the mill of an Abbey - had
offered him the inspection of his time-honoured mode of procedure, and
a hand in the operations for a few days, whenever he should choose to come.
Clare paid a visit to the place, some few miles distant, one day at this
time, to inquire particulars, and returned to Talbothays in the evening.
She found him determined to spend a short time at the Wellbridge flour-mills.
And what had determined him? Less the opportunity of an insight into grinding
and bolting than the casual fact that lodgings were to be obtained in that
very farmhouse which, before its mutilation, had been the mansion of a
branch of the d'Urberville family. This was always how Clare settled practical
questions; by a sentiment which had nothing to do with them. They decided
to go immediately after the wedding, and remain for a fortnight, instead
of journeying to towns and inns.
`Then we will start off to examine some farms on the other side of London
that I have heard of,' he said, `and by March or April we will pay a visit
to my father and mother.'
Questions of procedure such as these arose and passed, and the day,
the incredible day, on which she was to become his, loomed large in the
near future. The thirty-first of December, New Year's Eve, was the date.
His wife, she said to herself. Could it ever be? Their two selves together,
nothing to divide them, every incident shared by them; why not? And yet
why?
One Sunday morning Izz Huett returned from church, and spoke privately
to Tess.
`You was not called home this morning.'
`What?'
`It should ha' been the first time of asking to-day,' she answered,
looking quietly at Tess. `You meant to be married New Year's Eve, deary?'
The other returned a quick affirmative.
`And there must be three times of asking. And now there be only two
Sundays left between.'
Tess felt her cheek paling; Izz was right; of course there must be three.
Perhaps he had forgotten! If so, there must be a week's postponement, and
that was unlucky. How could she remind her lover? She who had been so backward
was suddenly fired with impatience and alarm lest she should lose her dear
prize.
A natural incident relieved her anxiety. Izz mentioned the omission
of the banns to Mrs Crick, and Mrs Crick assumed a matron's privilege of
speaking to Angel on the point.
`Have ye forgot 'em, Mr Clare? The banns, I mean.'
`No, I have not forgot 'em,' says Clare.
As soon as he caught Tess alone he assured her:
`Don't let them tease you about the banns. A licence will be quieter
for us, and I have decided on a licence without consulting you. So if you
go to church on Sunday morning you will not hear your own name, if you
wished to.'
`I didn't wish to hear it, dearest,' she said proudly.
But to know that things were in train was an immense relief to Tess
notwithstanding, who had well-nigh feared that somebody would stand up
and forbid the banns on the ground of her history. How events were favouring
her!
`I don't quite feel easy,' she said to herself. `All this good fortune
may be scourged out of me afterwards by a lot of ill. That's how Heaven
mostly does. I wish I could have had common banns!'
But everything went smoothly. She wondered whether he would like her
to be married in her present best white frock, or if she ought to buy a
new one. The question was set at rest by his forethought, disclosed by
the arrival of some large packages addressed to her. Inside them she found
a whole stock of clothing, from bonnet to shoes, including a perfect morning
costume, such as would well suit the simple wedding they planned. He entered
the house shortly after the arrival of the packages, and heard her upstairs
undoing them.
A minute later she came down with a flush on her face and tears in her
eyes.
`How thoughtful you've been!' she murmured, her cheek upon his shoulder.
`Even to the gloves and handkerchief! My own love - how good, how kind!'
`No, no, Tess; just an order to a tradeswoman in London - nothing more.'
And to divert her from thinking too highly of him he told her to go
upstairs, and take her time, and see if it all fitted; and, if not, to
get the village sempstress to make a few alterations.
She did return upstairs, and put on the gown. Alone, she stood for a
moment before the glass looking at the effect of her silk attire; and then
there came into her head her mother's ballad of the mystic robe--
That never would become that wife That had once done amiss,
which Mrs Durbeyfield had used to sing to her as a child, so blithely and
so archly, her foot on the cradle, which she rocked to the tune. Suppose
this robe should betray her by changing colour, as her robe had betrayed
Queen Guénever. Since she had been at the dairy she had not once
thought of the lines till now.
Chapter 33
Angel felt that he would like to spend a day with her before the wedding,
somewhere away from the dairy, as a last jaunt in her company while they
were yet mere lover and mistress; a romantic day, in circumstances that
would never be repeated; with that other and greater day beaming close
ahead of them. During the preceding week, therefore, he suggested making
a few purchases in the nearest town, and they started together.
Clare's life at the dairy had been that of a recluse in respect to the
world of his own class. For months he had never gone near a town, and,
requiring no vehicle, had never kept one, hiring the dairyman's cob or
gig if he rode or drove. They went in the gig that day.
And then for the first time in their lives they shopped as partners
in one concern. It was Christmas Eve, with its loads of holly and mistletoe,
and the town was very full of strangers who had come in from all parts
of the country on account of the day. Tess paid the penalty of walking
about with happiness superadded to beauty on her countenance by being much
stared at as she moved amid them on his arm.
In the evening they returned to the inn at which they had put up, and
Tess waited in the entry while Angel went to see the horse and gig brought
to the door. The general sitting-room was full of guests, who were continually
going in and out. As the door opened and shut each time for the passage
of these, the light within the parlour fell full upon Tess's face. Two
men came out and passed by her among the rest. One of them had stared her
up and down in surprise, and she fancied be was a Trantridge man, though
that village lay so many miles off that Trantridge folk were rarities here.
`A comely maid that,' said the other.
`True, comely enough. But unless I make a great mistake------' And he
negatived the remainder of the definition forthwith.
Clare had just returned from the stable-yard, and, confronting the man
on the threshold, heard the words, and saw the shrinking of Tess. The insult
to her stung him to the quick, and before he had considered anything at
all he struck the man on the chin with the full force of his fist, sending
him staggering backwards into the passage.
The man recovered himself, and seemed inclined to come on, and Clare,
stepping outside the door, put himself in a posture of defence. But his
opponent began to think better of the matter. He looked anew at Tess as
he passed her, and said to Clare--
`I beg pardon, sir; 'twas a complete mistake. I thought she was another
woman, forty miles from here.'
Clare, feeling then that he had been too hasty, and that he was, moreover,
to blame for leaving her standing in an inn-passage, did what he usually
did in such cases, gave the man five shillings to plaster the blow; and
thus they parted, bidding each other a pacific good-night. As soon as Clare
had taken the reins from the ostler, and the young couple had driven off,
the two men went in the other direction.
`And was it a mistake?' said the second one.
`Not a bit of it. But I didn't want to hurt the gentleman's feelings
- not I.'
In the meantime the lovers were driving onward.
`Could we put off our wedding till a little later?' Tess asked in a
dry dull voice. `I mean if we wished?'
`No, my love. Calm yourself. Do you mean that the fellow may have time
to summon me for assault?' he asked good-humouredly.
`No - I only meant - if it should have to be put off.'
What she meant was not very clear, and he directed her to dismiss such
fancies from her mind, which she obediently did as well as she could. But
she was grave, very grave, all the way home; till she thought, `We shall
go away, a very long distance, hundreds of miles from these parts, and
such as this can never happen again, and no ghost of the past reach there.'
They parted tenderly that night on the landing, and Clare ascended to
his attic. Tess sat up getting on with some little requisites, lest the
few remaining days should not afford sufficient time. While she sat she
heard a noise in Angel's room overhead, a sound of thumping and struggling.
Everybody else in the house was asleep, and in her anxiety lest Clare should
be ill she ran up and knocked at his door, and asked him what was the matter.
`Oh, nothing, dear,' he said from within. `I am so sorry disturbed you!
But the reason is rather an amusing one: I fell asleep and dreamt that
I was fighting that fellow again who insulted you and the noise you heard
was my pummelling away with my fists at my portmanteau, which I pulled
out to-day for packing. I am occasionally liable to these freaks in my
sleep. Go to bed and think of it no more.'
This was the last drachm required to turn the scale of her indecision.
Declare the past to him by word of mouth she could not; but there was another
way. She sat down and wrote on the four pages of a note-sheet a succinct
narrative of those events of three or four years ago, put it into an envelope,
and directed it to Clare. Then, lest the flesh should again be weak, she
crept upstairs without any shoes and slipped the note under his door.
Her night was a broken one, as it well might be, and she listened for
the first faint noise overhead. It came, as usual; he descended, as usual.
She descended. He met her at the bottom of the stairs and kissed her. Surely
it was as warmly as ever!
He looked a little disturbed and worn, she thought. But he said not
a word to her about her revelation, even when they were alone. Could he
have had it? Unless he began the subject she felt that she could say nothing.
So the day passed, and it was evident that whatever he thought he meant
to keep to himself. Yet he was frank and affectionate as before. Could
it be that her doubts were childish? that he forgave her; that he loved
her for what she was, just as she was, and smiled at her disquiet as at
a foolish nightmare? Had he really received her note? She glanced into
his room, and could see nothing of it. It might be that he forgave her.
But even if he had not received it she had a sudden enthusiastic trust
that he surely would forgive her.
Every morning and night he was the same, and thus New Year's Eve broke
- the wedding-day.
The lovers did not rise at milking-time, having through the whole of
this last week of their sojourn at the dairy been accorded something of
the position of guests, Tess being honoured with a room of her own. When
they arrived downstairs at breakfast-time they were surprised to see what
effects had been produced in the large kitchen for their glory since they
had last beheld it. At some unnatural hour of the morning the dairyman
had caused the yawning chimney-corner to be whitened, and the brick hearth
reddened, and a blazing yellow damask blower to be hung across the arch
in place of the old grimy blue cotton one with a black sprig pattern which
had formerly done duty here. This renovated aspect of what was the focus
indeed of the room on a dull winter morning, threw a smiling demeanour
over the whole apartment.
`I was determined to do summat in honour o't,' said the dairyman. `And
as you wouldn't hear of my gieing a rattling good randy wi' fiddles and
bass-viols complete, as we should ha' done in old times, this was all I
could think o' as a noiseless thing.' Tess's friends lived so far off that
none could conveniently have been present at the ceremony, even had any
been asked; but as a fact nobody was invited from Marlott. As for Angel's
family, he had written and duly informed them of the time, and assured
them that he would be glad to see one at least of them there for the day
if he would like to come. His brothers had not replied at all, seeming
to be indignant with him; while his father and mother had written a rather
sad letter, deploring his precipitancy in rushing into marriage, but making
the best of the matter by saying that, though a dairywoman was the last
daughter-in-law they could have expected, their son had arrived at an age
at which he might be supposed to be the best judge.
This coolness in his relations distressed Clare less than it would have
done had he been without the grand card with which he meant to surprise
them ere long. To produce Tess, fresh from the dairy, as a d'Urberville
and a lady, he had felt to be temerarious and risky; hence he had concealed
her lineage till such time as, familiarized with worldly ways by a few
months' travel and reading with him, he could take her on a visit to his
parents, and impart the knowledge while triumphantly producing her as worthy
of such an ancient line. It was a pretty lover's dream, if no more. Perhaps
Tess's lineage had more value for himself than for anybody in the world
besides.
Her perception that Angel's bearing towards her still remained in no
whit altered by her own communication rendered Tess guiltily doubtful if
he could have received it. She rose from breakfast before he had finished,
and hastened upstairs. It had occurred to her to look once more into the
queer gaunt room which had been Clare's den, or rather eyrie, for so long,
and climbing the ladder she stood at the open door of the apartment, regarding
and pondering. She stooped to the threshold of the doorway, where she had
pushed in the note two or three days earlier in such excitement. The carpet
reached close to the sill, and under the edge of the carpet she discerned
the faint white margin of the envelope containing her letter to him, which
he obviously had never seen, owing to her having in her haste thrust it
beneath the carpet as well as beneath the door.
With a feeling of faintness she withdrew the letter. There it was -
sealed up, just as it had left her hands. The mountain had not yet been
removed. She could not let him read it now, the house being in full bustle
of preparation; and descending to her own room she destroyed the letter
there.
She was so pale when he saw her again that he felt quite anxious. The
incident of the misplaced letter she had jumped at as if it prevented a
confession; but she knew in her conscience that it need not; there was
still time. Yet everything was in a stir; there was coming and going; all
had to dress, the dairyman and Mrs Crick having been asked to accompany
them as witnesses; and reflection or deliberate talk was well-nigh impossible.
The only minute Tess could get to be alone with Clare was when they met
upon the landing.
`I am so anxious to talk to you - I want to confess all my faults and
blunders!' she said with attempted lightness.
`No, no - we can't have faults talked of - you must be deemed perfect
to-day at least, my Sweet!' he cried. `We shall have plenty of time, hereafter,
I hope, to talk over our failings. I will confess mine at the same time.'
`But it would be better for me to do it now, I think, so that you could
not say--'
`Well, my quixotic one, you shall tell me anything - say, as soon as
we are settled in our lodging; not now. 1, too, will tell you my faults
then. But do not let us spoil the day with them; they will be excellent
matter for a dull time.'
`Then you don't wish me to, dearest?'
`I do not, Tessy, really.'
The hurry of dressing and starting left no time for more than this.
Those words of his seemed to reassure her on further reflection. She was
whirled onward through the next couple of critical hours by the mastering
tide of her devotion to him, which closed up further meditation. Her one
desire, so long resisted, to make herself his, to call him her lord, her
own - then, if necessary, to die - had at last lifted her up from her plodding
reflective pathway. In dressing, she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured
idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness.
The church was a long way off, and they were obliged to drive, particularly
as it was winter. A close carriage was ordered from a roadside inn, a vehicle
which had been kept there ever since the old days of post-chaise travelling.
It had stout wheel-spokes, and heavy felloes, a great curved bed, immense
straps and springs, and a pole like a battering-ram. The postilion was
a venerable `boy' of sixty - a martyr to rheumatic gout, the result of
excessive exposure in youth, counteracted by strong liquors - who had stood
at inn-doors doing nothing for the whole five-and-twenty years that had
elapsed since he had no longer been required to ride professionally, as
if expecting the old times to come back again. He had a permanent running
wound on the outside of his right leg, originated by the constant bruisings
of aristocratic carriage-poles during the many years that he had been in
regular employ at the King's Arms, Casterbridge.
Inside this cumbrous and creaking structure, and behind this decayed
conductor, the partie carrée took their seats - the bride
and bridegroom and Mr and Mrs Crick. Angel would have liked one at least
of his brothers to be present as groomsman, but their silence after his
gentle hint to that effect by letter had signified that they did not care
to come. They disapproved of the marriage, and could not be expected to
countenance it. Perhaps it was as well that they could not be present.
They were not worldly young fellows, but fraternizing with dairy-folk would
have struck unpleasantly upon their biassed niceness, apart from their
views of the match.
Upheld by the momentum of the time Tess knew nothing of this; did not
see anything; did not know the road they were taking to the church. She
knew that Angel was close to her; all the rest was a luminous mist. She
was a sort of celestial person, who owed her being to poetry - one of those
classical divinities Clare was accustomed to talk to her about when they
took their walks together.
The marriage being by licence there were only a dozen or so of people
in the church; had there been a thousand they would have produced no more
effect upon her. They were at stellar distances from her present world.
In the ecstatic solemnity with which she swore her faith to him the ordinary
sensibilities of sex seemed a flippancy. At a pause in the service, while
they were kneeling together, she unconsciously inclined herself towards
him, so that her shoulder touched his arm; she had been frightened by a
passing thought, and the movement had been automatic, to assure herself
that he was really there, and to fortify her belief that his fidelity would
be proof against all things.
Clare knew that she loved him - every curve of her form showed that
- but he did not know at that time the full depth of her devotion, its
single-mindedness, its meekness; what long-suffering it guaranteed, what
honesty, what endurance, what good faith.
As they came out of church the ringers swung the bells off their rests,
and a modest peal of three notes broke forth - that limited amount of expression
having been deemed sufficient by the church builders for the joys of such
a small parish. Passing by the tower with her husband on the path to the
gate she could feel the vibrant air humming round them from the louvred
belfry in a circle of sound, and it matched the highly-charged mental atmosphere
in which she was living.
This condition of mind, wherein she felt glorified by an irradiation
not her own, like the angel whom St John saw in the sun, lasted till the
sound of the church bells had died away, and the emotions of the wedding-service
had calmed down. Her eyes could dwell upon details more clearly now, and
Mr and Mrs Crick having directed their own gig to be sent for them, to
leave the carriage to the young couple, she observed the build and character
of that conveyance for the first time. Sitting in silence she regarded
it long.
`I fancy you seem oppressed, Tessy,' said Clare.
`Yes,' she answered, putting her hand to her brow. `I tremble at many
things. It is all so serious, Angel. Among other things I seem to have
seen this carriage before, to be very well acquainted with it. It is very
odd - I must have seen it in a dream.'
`Oh - you have heard the legend of the d'Urberville Coach - that well-known
superstition of this county about your family when they were very popular
here; and this lumbering old thing reminds you of it.'
`I have never heard of it to my knowledge,' said she. `What is the legend
- may I know it?'
`Well - I would rather not tell it in detail just now. A certain d'Urberville
of the sixteenth or seventeenth century committed a dreadful crime in his
family coach; and since that time members of the family see or hear the
old coach whenever - But I'll tell you another day - it is rather gloomy.
Evidently some dim knowledge of it has been brought back to your mind by
the sight of this venerable caravan.'
`I don't remember hearing it before,' she murmured. `Is it when we are
going to die, Angel, that members of my family see it, or is it when we
have committed a crime?'
`Now, Tess!'
He silenced her by a kiss.
By the time they reached home she was contrite and spiritless. She was
Mrs Angel Clare, indeed, but had she any moral right to the name? Was she
not more truly Mrs Alexander d'Urberville? Could intensity of love justify
what might be considered in upright souls as culpable reticence? She knew
not what was expected of women in such cases; and she had no counsellor.
However, when she found herself alone in her room for a few minutes
- the last day this on which she was ever to enter it - she knelt down
and prayed. She tried to pray to God, but it was her husband who really
had her supplication. Her idolatry of this man was such that she herself
almost feared it to be ill-omened. She was conscious of the notion expressed
by Friar Laurence: `These violent delights have violent ends.' It might
be too desperate for human conditions - too rank, too wild, too deadly.
`O my love, my love, why do I love you so!' she whispered there alone;
`for she you love is not my real self, but one in my image; the one I might
have been!'
Afternoon came, and with it the hour for departure. They had decided
to fulfil the plan of going for a few days to the lodgings in the old farmhouse
near Wellbridge Mill, at which he meant to reside during his investigation
of flour processes. At two o'clock there was nothing left to do but to
start. All the servantry of the dairy were standing in the red-brick entry
to see them go out, the dairyman and his wife following to the door. Tess
saw her three chamber-mates in a row against the wall, pensively inclining
their heads. She had much questioned if they would appear at the parting
moment; but there they were, stoical and staunch to the last. She knew
why the delicate Retty looked so fragile, and Izz so tragically sorrowful,
and Marian so blank; and she forgot her own dogging shadow for a moment
in contemplating theirs.
She impulsively whispered to him--
`Will you kiss 'em all, once, poor things, for the first and last time?'
Clare had not the least objection to such a farewell formality - which
was all that it was to him - and as he passed them he kissed them in succession
where they stood, saying `Good-bye' to each as he did so. When they reached
the door Tess femininely glanced back to discern the effect of that kiss
of charity; there was no triumph in her glance, as there might have been.
If there had it would have disappeared when she saw how moved the girls
all were. The kiss had obviously done harm by awakening feelings they were
trying to subdue.
Of all this Clare was unconscious. Passing on to the wicket-gate he
shook hands with the dairyman and his wife, and expressed his last thanks
to them for their attentions; after which there was a moment of silence
before they had moved off. It was interrupted by the crowing of a cock.
The white one with the rose comb had come and settled on the palings in
front of the house, within a few yards of them, and his notes thrilled
their ears through, dwindling away like echoes down a valley of rocks.
`Oh?' said Mrs Crick. `An afternoon crow!'
Two men were standing by the yard gate, holding it open.
`That's bad,' one murmured to the other, not thinking that the words
could be heard by the group at the door-wicket.
The cock crew again - straight towards Clare.
`Well!' said the dairyman.
`I don't like to hear him!' said Tess to her husband. `Tell the man
to drive on. Good-bye, good-bye!'
The cock crew again.
`Hoosh! just you be off, sir, or I'll twist your neck!' said the dairyman
with some irritation, turning to the bird and driving him away. And to
his wife as they went indoors: `Now, to think o' that just to-day! I've
not heard his crow of an afternoon all the year afore.'
`It only means a change in the weather,' said she; `not what you think:
'tis impossible!'
Chapter 34
They drove by the level road along the valley to a distance of a few miles,
and, reaching Wellbridge, turned away from the village to the left, and
over the great Elizabethan bridge which gives the place half its name.
Immediately behind it stood the house wherein they had engaged lodgings,
whose exterior features are so well known to all travellers through the
Froom Valley; once portion of a fine manorial residence, and the property
and seat of a d'Urberville, but since its partial demolition a farm-house.
`Welcome to one of your ancestral mansions!' said Clare as he handed
her down. But he regretted the pleasantry; it was too near a satire.
On entering they found that, though they had only engaged a couple of
rooms, the farmer had taken advantage of their proposed presence during
the coming days to pay a New Year's visit to some friends, leaving a woman
from a neighbouring cottage to minister to their few wants. The absoluteness
of possession pleased them, and they realized it as the first moment of
their experience under their own exclusive roof-tree.
But he found that the mouldy old habitation somewhat depressed his bride.
When the carriage was gone they ascended the stairs to wash their hands,
the charwoman showing the way. On the landing Tess stopped and started.
`What's the matter?' said he.
`Those horrid women!' she answered, with a smile. `How they frightened
me.'
He looked up, and perceived two life-size portraits on panels built
into the masonry. As all visitors to the mansion are aware, these paintings
represent women of middle age, of a date some two hundred years ago, whose
lineaments once seen can never be forgotten. The long pointed features,
narrow eye, and smirk of the one, so suggestive of merciless treachery;
the bill-hook nose, large teeth, and bold eye of the other, suggesting
arrogance to the point of ferocity, haunt the beholder afterwards in his
dreams.
`Whose portraits are those?' asked Clare of the charwoman.
`I have been told by old folk that they were ladies of the d'Urberville
family, the ancient lords of this manor,' she said. `Owing to their being
builded into the wall they can't be moved away.'
The unpleasantness of the matter was that, in addition to their effect
upon Tess, her fine features were unquestionably traceable in these exaggerated
forms. He said nothing of this, however, and, regretting that he had gone
out of his way to choose the house for their bridal time, went on into
the adjoining room. The place having been rather hastily prepared for them
they washed their hands in one basin. Clare touched hers under the water.
`Which are my fingers and which are yours?' he said, looking up. `They
are very much mixed.'
`They are all yours,' said she, very prettily, and endeavoured to be
gayer than she was. He had not been displeased with her thoughtfulness
on such an occasion; it was what every sensible woman would show: but Tess
knew that she had been thoughtful to excess, and struggled against it.
The sun was so low on that short last afternoon of the year that it
shone in through a small opening and formed a golden staff which stretched
across to her skirt, where it made a spot like a paint-mark set upon her.
They went into the ancient parlour to tea, and here they shared their first
common meal alone. Such was their childishness, or rather his, that he
found it interesting to use the same bread-and-butter plate as herself,
and to brush crumbs from her lips with his own. He wondered a little that
she did not enter into these frivolities with his own zest.
Looking at her silently for a long time; `She is a dear dear Tess,'
he thought to himself, as one deciding on the true construction of a difficult
passage. `Do I realize solemnly enough how utterly and irretrievably this
little womanly thing is the creature of my good or bad faith and fortune?
I think not. I think I could not, unless I were a woman myself. What I
am in worldly estate, she is. What I become, she must become. What I cannot
be, she cannot be. And shall I ever neglect her, or hurt her, or even forget
to consider her? God forbid such a crime!'
They sat on over the tea-table waiting for their luggage, which the
dairyman had promised to send before it grew dark. But evening began to
close in, and the luggage did not arrive, and they had brought nothing
more than they stood in. With the departure of the sun the calm mood of
the winter day changed. Out of doors there began noises as of silk smartly
rubbed; the restful dead leaves of the preceding autumn were stirred to
irritated resurrection, and whirled about unwillingly, and tapped against
the shutters. It soon began to rain.
`That cock knew the weather was going to change,' said Clare.
The woman who had attended upon them had gone home for the night, but
she had placed candles upon the table, and now they lit them. Each candle-flame
drew towards the fireplace.
`These old houses are so draughty,' continued Angel, looking at the
flames, and at the grease guttering down the sides. `I wonder where that
luggage is. We haven't even a brush and comb.'
`I don't know,' she answered, absent-minded.
`Tess, you are not a bit cheerful this evening - not at all as you used
to be. Those harridans on the panels upstairs have unsettled you. I am
sorry I brought you here. I wonder if you really love me, after all?'
He knew that she did, and the words had no serious intent; but she was
surcharged with emotion, and winced like a wounded animal. Though she tried
not to shed tears she could not help showing one or two.
`I did not mean it!' said he, sorry. `You are worried at not having
your things, I know. I cannot think why old Jonathan has not come with
them. Why, it is seven o'clock? Ah, there he is!'
A knock had come to the door, and, there being nobody else to answer
it Clare went out. He returned to the room with a small package in his
hand.
`It is not Jonathan, after all,' he said.
`How vexing!' said Tess.
The packet had been brought by a special messenger, who had arrived
at Talbothays from Emminster Vicarage immediately after the departure of
the married couple, and had followed them hither, being under injunction
to deliver it into nobody's hands but theirs. Clare brought it to the light.
It was less than a foot long, sewed up in canvas, sealed in red wax with
his father's seal, and directed in his father's hand to `Mrs Angel Clare'.
`It is a little wedding-present for you, Tess,' said he, handing it
to her. `How thoughtful they are!'
Tess looked a little flustered as she took it.
`I think I would rather have you open it, dearest,' said she, turning
over the parcel. `I don't like to break those great seals; they look so
serious. Please open it for me!'
He undid the parcel. Inside was a case of morocco leather, on the top
of which lay a note and a key.
The note was for Clare, in the following words:
My DEAR SON, - Possibly you have forgotten that on the death
of your godmother, Mrs Pitney, when you were a lad, she - vain kind woman
that she was - left to me a portion of the contents of her jewel-case in
trust for your wife, if you should ever have one, as a mark of her affection
for you and whomsoever you should choose. This trust I have fulfilled,
and the diamonds have been locked up at my banker's ever since. Though
I feel it to be a somewhat incongruous act in the circumstances, I am,
as you will see, bound to hand over the articles to the woman to whom the
use of them for her lifetime will now rightly belong, and they are therefore
promptly sent. They become, I believe, heirlooms, strictly speaking, according
to the terms of your godmother's will. The precise words of the clause
that refers to this matter are enclosed.
`I do remember,' said Clare; `but I had quite forgotten.'
Unlocking the case, they found it to contain a necklace, with pendant,
bracelets, and ear-rings; and also some other small ornaments.
Tess seemed afraid to touch them at first, but her eyes sparkled for
a moment as much as the stones when Clare spread out the set.
`Are they mine?' she asked incredulously.
`They are, certainly,' said he.
He looked into the fire. He remembered how, when he was a lad of fifteen,
his godmother, the Squire's wife - the only rich person with whom he had
ever come in contact - had pinned her faith to his success; had prophesied
a wondrous career for him. There had seemed nothing at all out of keeping
with such a conjectured career in the storing up of these showy ornaments
for his wife and the wives of her descendants. They gleamed somewhat ironically
now. `Yet why?' he asked himself. It was but a question of vanity throughout;
and if that were admitted into one side of the equation it should be admitted
into the other. His wife was a d'Urberville: whom could they become better
than her?
Suddenly he said with enthusiasm--
`Tess, put them on - put them on!' And he turned from the fire to help
her.
But as if by magic she had already donned them - necklace, ear-rings,
bracelets, and all.
`But the gown isn't right, Tess,' said Clare. `It ought to be a low
one for a set of brilliants like that.'
`Ought it?' said Tess.
`Yes,' said he.
He suggested to her how to tuck in the upper edge of her bodice, so
as to make it roughly approximate to the cut for evening wear; and when
she had done this, and the pendant to the necklace hung isolated amid the
whiteness of her throat, as it was designed to do, he stepped back to survey
her.
`My heavens,' said Clare, `how beautiful you are!'
As everybody knows, fine feathers make fine birds; a peasant girl but
very moderately prepossessing to the casual observer in her simple condition
and attire, will bloom as an amazing beauty if clothed as a woman of fashion
with the aids that Art can render; while the beauty of the midnight crush
would often cut but a sorry figure if placed inside the field-woman's wrapper
upon a monotonous acreage of turnips on a dull day. He had never till now
estimated the artistic excellence of Tess's limbs and features.
`If you were only to appear in a ball-room!' he said. `But no no, dearest;
I think I love you best in the wing-bonnet and cotton-frock - yes, better
than in this, well as you support these dignities.'
Tess's sense of her striking appearance had given her a flush of excitement,
which was yet not happiness.
`I'll take them off,' she said, `in case Jonathan should see me. They
are not fit for me, are they? They must be sold, I suppose?'
`Let them stay a few minutes longer. Sell them? Never. It would be a
breach of faith.'
Influenced by a second thought she readily obeyed. She had something
to tell, and there might be help in these. She sat down with the jewels
upon her; and they again indulged in conjectures as to where Jonathan could
possibly be with their baggage. The ale they had poured out for his consumption
when he came had gone flat with long standing.
Shortly after this they began supper, which was already laid on a side-table.
Ere they had finished there was a jerk in the fire-smoke, the rising skein
of which bulged out into the room, as if some giant had laid his hand on
the chimney-top for a moment. It had been caused by the opening of the
outer door. A heavy step was now heard in the passage, and Angel went out.
`I couldn' make nobody hear at all by knocking,' apologized Jonathan
Kail, for it was he at last; `and as't was raining out I opened the door.
I've brought the things, sir.'
`I am very glad to see them. But you are very late.'
`Well, yes, sir.'
There was something subdued in Jonathan Kail's tone which had not been
there in the day, and lines of concern were ploughed upon his forehead
in addition to the lines of years. He continued--
`We've all been gallied at the dairy at what might ha' been a most terrible
affliction since you and your Mis'ess - so to name her now - left us this
afternoon. Perhaps you ha'nt forgot the cock's afternoon crow?'
`Dear me; - what--'
`Well, some says it do mane one thing, and some another; but what's
happened is that poor little Retty Priddle hev tried to drown herself.'
`No! Really! Why, she bade us good-bye with the rest--'
`Yes. Well, sir, when you and your Mis'ess - so to name what she lawful
is - when you two drove away, as I say, Retty and Marian put on their bonnets
and went out; and as there is not much doing now, being New Year's Eve,
and folks mops and brooms from what's inside 'em, nobody took much notice.
They went on to Lew-Everard, where they had summut to drink, and then on
they vamped to Dree-armed Cross, and there they seemed to have parted,
Retty striking across the water-meads as if for home, and Marian going
on to the next village, where there's another public-house. Nothing more
was zeed or heard o' Retty till the waterman, on his way home, noticed
something by the Great Pool; 'twas her bonnet and shawl packed up. In the
water he found her. He and another man brought her home, thinking's was
dead; but she fetched round by degrees.'
Angel, suddenly recollecting that Tess was overhearing this gloomy tale,
went to shut the door between the passage and the ante-room to the inner
parlour where she was; but his wife, flinging a shawl round her, had come
to the outer room and was listening to the man's narrative, her eyes resting
absently on the luggage and the drops of rain glistening upon it.
`And, more than this, there's Marian; she's been found dead drunk by
the withy-bed - a girl who hev never been known to touch anything before
except shilling ale; though, to be sure, 'a was always a good trencher-woman,
as her face showed. It seems as if the maids had all gone out o' their
minds!'
`And Izz?' asked Tess.
`Izz is about house as usual; but 'a do say 'a can guess how it happened;
and she seems to be very low in mind about it, poor maid, as well she mid
be. And so you see, sir, as all this happened just when we was packing
your few traps and your Mis'ess's night-rail and dressing things into the
cart, why, it belated me.'
`Yes. Well, Jonathan, will you get the trunks upstairs, and drink a
cup of ale, and hasten back as soon as you can, in case you should be wanted?'
Tess had gone back to the inner parlour, and sat down by the fire, looking
wistfully into it. She heard Jonathan Kail's heavy footsteps up and down
the stairs till he had done placing the luggage, and heard him express
his thanks for the ale her husband took out to him, and for the gratuity
he received. Jonathan's footsteps then died from the door, and his cart
creaked away.
Angel slid forward the massive oak bar which secured the door, and coming
in to where she sat over the hearth, pressed her cheeks between his hands
from behind. He expected her to jump up gaily and unpack the toilet-gear
that she had been so anxious about, but as she did not rise he sat down
with her in the firelight, the candles on the supper-table being too thin
and glimmering to interfere with its glow.
`I am so sorry you should have heard this sad story about the girls,'
he said. `Still, don't let it depress you. Retty was naturally morbid,
you know.'
`Without the least cause,' said Tess. `While they who have cause to
be, hide it, and pretend they are not.'
This incident had turned the scale for her. They were simple and innocent
girls on whom the unhappiness of unrequited love had fallen; they had deserved
better at the hands of Fate. She had deserved worse - yet she was the chosen
one. It was wicked of her to take all without paying. She would pay to
the uttermost farthing; she would tell, there and then. This final determination
she came to when she looked into the fire, he holding her hand.
A steady glare from the now flameless embers painted the sides and back
of the fireplace with its colour, and the well-polished andirons, and the
old brass tongs that would not meet. The underside of the mantel-shelf
was flushed with the high-coloured light, and the legs of the table nearest
the fire. Tess's face and neck reflected the same warmth, which each gem
turned into an Aldebaran or a Sirius - a constellation of white, red, and
green flashes, that interchanged their hues with her every pulsation.
`Do you remember what we said to each other this morning about telling
our faults?' he asked abruptly, finding that she still remained immovable.
`We spoke lightly perhaps, and you may well have done so. But for me it
was no light promise. I want to make a confession to you, Love.'
This, from him, so unexpectedly apposite, had the effect upon her of
a Providential interposition.
`You have to confess something?' she said quickly, and even with gladness
and relief.
`You did not expect it? Ah - you thought too highly of me. Now listen.
Put your head there, because I want you to forgive me, and not to be indignant
with me for not telling you before, as perhaps I ought to have done.'
How strange it was! He seemed to be her double. She did not speak, and
Clare went on--
`I did not mention it because I was afraid of endangering my chance
of you, darling, the great prize of my life - my Fellowship I call you.
My brother's Fellowship was won at his college, mine at Talbothays Dairy.
Well, I would not risk it. I was going to tell you a month ago - at the
time you agreed to be mine, but I could not; I thought it might frighten
you away from me. I put it off; then I thought I would tell you yesterday,
to give you a chance at least of escaping me. But I did not. And I did
not this morning, when you proposed our confessing our faults on the landing
- the sinner that I was! But I must, now I see you sitting there so solemnly.
I wonder if you will forgive me?'
`O yes! I am sure that--'
`Well, I hope so. But wait a minute. You don't know. To begin at the
beginning. Though I imagine my poor father fears that I am one of the eternally
lost for my doctrines, I am of course, a believer in good morals, Tess,
as much as you. I used to wish to be a teacher of men, and it was a great
disappointment to me when I found I could not enter the Church. I admired
spotlessness, even though I could lay no claim to it, and hated impurity,
as I hope I do now. Whatever one may think of plenary inspiration, one
must heartily subscribe to these words of Paul: "Be thou an example - in
word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity." It
is the only safeguard for us poor human beings. "Integer vitae", says a
Roman poet, who is strange company for St Paul--
The man of upright life, from frailties free,
Stands not in need of Moorish spear or bow.
Well, a certain place is paved with good intentions, and having felt all
that so strongly, you will see what a terrible remorse it bred in me when,
in the midst of my fine aims for other people, I myself fell.'
He then told her of that time of his life to which allusion has been
made when, tossed about by doubts and difficulties in London, like a cork
on the waves, he plunged into eight-and-forty hours' dissipation with a
stranger.
`Happily I awoke almost immediately to a sense of my folly,' he continued.
`I would have no more to say to her, and I came home. I have never repeated
the offence. But I felt I should like to treat you with perfect frankness
and honour, and I could not do so without telling this. Do you forgive
me?'
She pressed his hand tightly for an answer.
`Then we will dismiss it at once and for ever! - too painful as it is
for the occasion - and talk of something lighter.'
`O, Angel - I am almost glad - because now you can forgive me! I have
not made my confession. I have a confession, too - remember, I said so.'
`Ah, to be sure! Now then for it, wicked little one.'
`Perhaps, although you smile, it is as serious as yours, or more so.'
`It can hardly be more serious, dearest.'
`It cannot - O no, it cannot!' She jumped up joyfully at the hope. `No,
it cannot be more serious, certainly,' she cried, `because 'tis just the
same! I will tell you now.'
She sat down again.
Their hands were still joined. The ashes under the grate were lit by
the fire vertically, like a torrid waste. Imagination might have beheld
a Last Day luridness in this red-coaled glow, which fell on his face and
hand, and on hers, peering into the loose hair about her brow, and firing
the delicate skin underneath. A large shadow of her shape rose upon the
wall and ceiling. She bent forward, at which each diamond on her neck gave
a sinister wink like a toad's; and pressing her forehead against his temple
she entered on her story of her acquaintance with Alec d'Urberville and
its results, murmuring the words without flinching, and with her eyelids
drooping down.
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