Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
CHAPTER XLII
It was now broad day, and she started again, emerging cautiously upon the
highway.
But there was no need for caution; not a soul was at hand, and Tess went onward with
fortitude, her recollection of the birds' silent endurance of their night of agony
impressing upon her the relativity of
sorrows and the tolerable nature of her own, if she could once rise high enough to
despise opinion. But that she could not do so long as it was
held by Clare.
She reached Chalk-Newton, and breakfasted at an inn, where several young men were
troublesomely complimentary to her good looks.
Somehow she felt hopeful, for was it not possible that her husband also might say
these same things to her even yet?
She was bound to take care of herself on the chance of it, and keep off these casual
lovers. To this end Tess resolved to run no further
risks from her appearance.
As soon as she got out of the village she entered a thicket and took from her basket
one of the oldest field-gowns, which she had never put on even at the dairy--never
since she had worked among the stubble at Marlott.
She also, by a felicitous thought, took a handkerchief from her bundle and tied it
round her face under her bonnet, covering her chin and half her cheeks and temples,
as if she were suffering from toothache.
Then with her little scissors, by the aid of a pocket looking-glass, she mercilessly
nipped her eyebrows off, and thus insured against aggressive admiration, she went on
her uneven way.
"What a mommet of a maid!" said the next man who met her to a companion.
Tears came into her eyes for very pity of herself as she heard him.
"But I don't care!" she said.
"O no--I don't care! I'll always be ugly now, because Angel is
not here, and I have nobody to take care of me.
My husband that was is gone away, and never will love me any more; but I love him just
the same, and hate all other men, and like to make 'em think scornfully of me!"
Thus Tess walks on; a figure which is part of the landscape; a fieldwoman pure and
simple, in winter guise; a gray serge cape, a red woollen cravat, a stuff skirt covered
by a ***-brown rough wrapper, and buff- leather gloves.
Every thread of that old attire has become faded and thin under the stroke of
raindrops, the burn of sunbeams, and the stress of winds.
There is no sign of young passion in her now--
The maiden's mouth is cold ... Fold over simple fold Binding her head.
Inside this exterior, over which the eye might have roved as over a thing scarcely
percipient, almost inorganic, there was the record of a pulsing life which had learnt
too well, for its years, of the dust and
ashes of things, of the cruelty of *** and the fragility of love.
Next day the weather was bad, but she trudged on, the honesty, directness, and
impartiality of elemental enmity disconcerting her but little.
Her object being a winter's occupation and a winter's home, there was no time to lose.
Her experience of short hirings had been such that she was determined to accept no
more.
Thus she went forward from farm to farm in the direction of the place whence Marian
had written to her, which she determined to make use of as a last shift only, its
rumoured stringencies being the reverse of tempting.
First she inquired for the lighter kinds of employment, and, as acceptance in any
variety of these grew hopeless, applied next for the less light, till, beginning
with the dairy and poultry tendance that
she liked best, she ended with the heavy and course pursuits which she liked least--
work on arable land: work of such roughness, indeed, as she would never have
deliberately voluteered for.
Towards the second evening she reached the irregular chalk table-land or plateau,
bosomed with semi-globular tumuli--as if Cybele the Many-breasted were supinely
extended there--which stretched between the
valley of her birth and the valley of her love.
Here the air was dry and cold, and the long cart-roads were blown white and dusty
within a few hours after rain.
There were few trees, or none, those that would have grown in the hedges being
mercilessly plashed down with the quickset by the tenant-farmers, the natural enemies
of tree, bush, and brake.
In the middle distance ahead of her she could see the summits of Bulbarrow and of
Nettlecombe Tout, and they seemed friendly.
They had a low and unassuming aspect from this upland, though as approached on the
other side from Blackmoor in her childhood they were as lofty bastions against the
sky.
Southerly, at many miles' distance, and over the hills and ridges coastward, she
could discern a surface like polished steel: it was the English Channel at a
point far out towards France.
Before her, in a slight depression, were the remains of a village.
She had, in fact, reached Flintcomb-Ash, the place of Marian's sojourn.
There seemed to be no help for it; hither she was doomed to come.
The stubborn soil around her showed plainly enough that the kind of labour in demand
here was of the roughest kind; but it was time to rest from searching, and she
resolved to stay, particularly as it began to rain.
At the entrance to the village was a cottage whose gable jutted into the road,
and before applying for a lodging she stood under its shelter, and watched the evening
close in.
"Who would think I was Mrs Angel Clare!" she said.
The wall felt warm to her back and shoulders, and she found that immediately
within the gable was the cottage fireplace, the heat of which came through the bricks.
She warmed her hands upon them, and also put her cheek--red and moist with the
drizzle--against their comforting surface. The wall seemed to be the only friend she
had.
She had so little wish to leave it that she could have stayed there all night.
Tess could hear the occupants of the cottage--gathered together after their
day's labour--talking to each other within, and the rattle of their supper-plates was
also audible.
But in the village-street she had seen no soul as yet.
The solitude was at last broken by the approach of one feminine figure, who,
though the evening was cold, wore the print gown and the tilt-bonnet of summer time.
Tess instinctively thought it might be Marian, and when she came near enough to be
distinguishable in the gloom, surely enough it was she.
Marian was even stouter and redder in the face than formerly, and decidedly shabbier
in attire.
At any previous period of her existence Tess would hardly have cared to renew the
acquaintance in such conditions; but her loneliness was excessive, and she responded
readily to Marian's greeting.
Marian was quite respectful in her inquiries, but seemed much moved by the
fact that Tess should still continue in no better condition than at first; though she
had dimly heard of the separation.
"Tess--Mrs Clare--the dear wife of dear he! And is it really so bad as this, my child?
Why is your cwomely face tied up in such a way?
Anybody been beating 'ee?
Not HE?" "No, no, no!
I merely did it not to be clipsed or colled, Marian."
She pulled off in disgust a bandage which could suggest such wild thoughts.
"And you've got no collar on" (Tess had been accustomed to wear a little white
collar at the dairy).
"I know it, Marian." "You've lost it travelling."
"I've not lost it. The truth is, I don't care anything about
my looks; and so I didn't put it on."
"And you don't wear your wedding-ring?" "Yes, I do; but not in public.
I wear it round my neck on a ribbon.
I don't wish people to think who I am by marriage, or that I am married at all; it
would be so awkward while I lead my present life."
Marian paused.
"But you BE a gentleman's wife; and it seems hardly fair that you should live like
this!" "O yes it is, quite fair; though I am very
unhappy."
"Well, well. HE married you--and you can be unhappy!"
"Wives are unhappy sometimes; from no fault of their husbands--from their own."
"You've no faults, deary; that I'm sure of.
And he's none. So it must be something outside ye both."
"Marian, dear Marian, will you do me a good turn without asking questions?
My husband has gone abroad, and somehow I have overrun my allowance, so that I have
to fall back upon my old work for a time. Do not call me Mrs Clare, but Tess, as
before.
Do they want a hand here?" "O yes; they'll take one always, because
few care to come. 'Tis a starve-acre place.
Corn and swedes are all they grow.
Though I be here myself, I feel 'tis a pity for such as you to come."
"But you used to be as good a dairywoman as I."
"Yes; but I've got out o' that since I took to drink.
Lord, that's the only comfort I've got now! If you engage, you'll be set swede-hacking.
That's what I be doing; but you won't like it."
"O--anything! Will you speak for me?"
"You will do better by speaking for yourself."
"Very well. Now, Marian, remember--nothing about HIM if
I get the place.
I don't wish to bring his name down to the dirt."
Marian, who was really a trustworthy girl though of coarser grain than Tess, promised
anything she asked.
"This is pay-night," she said, "and if you were to come with me you would know at
once. I be real sorry that you are not happy; but
'tis because he's away, I know.
You couldn't be unhappy if he were here, even if he gie'd ye no money--even if he
used you like a drudge." "That's true; I could not!"
They walked on together and soon reached the farmhouse, which was almost sublime in
its dreariness.
There was not a tree within sight; there was not, at this season, a green pasture--
nothing but fallow and turnips everywhere, in large fields divided by hedges plashed
to unrelieved levels.
Tess waited outside the door of the farmhouse till the group of workfolk had
received their wages, and then Marian introduced her.
The farmer himself, it appeared, was not at home, but his wife, who represented him
this evening, made no objection to hiring Tess, on her agreeing to remain till Old
Lady-Day.
Female field-labour was seldom offered now, and its cheapness made it profitable for
tasks which women could perform as readily as men.
Having signed the agreement, there was nothing more for Tess to do at present than
to get a lodging, and she found one in the house at whose gable-wall she had warmed
herself.
It was a poor subsistence that she had ensured, but it would afford a shelter for
the winter at any rate.
That night she wrote to inform her parents of her new address, in case a letter should
arrive at Marlott from her husband.
But she did not tell them of the sorriness of her situation: it might have brought
reproach upon him.