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Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Phase the First: The Maiden I
On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from
Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor.
The pair of legs that carried him were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined
him somewhat to the left of a straight line. He occasionally gave a smart nod, as if in
confirmation of some opinion, though he was not thinking of anything in particular.
An empty egg-basket was slung upon his arm, the nap of his hat was ruffled, a patch being
quite worn away at its brim where his thumb came in taking it off. Presently he was met
by an elderly parson astride on a gray mare, who, as he rode, hummed a wandering tune.
"Good night t'ee," said the man with the basket. "Good night, Sir John," said the parson.
The pedestrian, after another pace or two, halted, and turned round.
"Now, sir, begging your pardon; we met last market-day on this road about this time, and
I said 'Good night,' and you made reply '_Good night, Sir John_,' as now."
"I did," said the parson. "And once before that—near a month ago."
"I may have." "Then what might your meaning be in calling
me 'Sir John' these different times, when I be plain Jack Durbeyfield, the haggler?"
The parson rode a step or two nearer. "It was only my whim," he said; and, after
a moment's hesitation: "It was on account of a discovery I made some little time ago,
whilst I was hunting up pedigrees for the new county history.
I am Parson Tringham, the antiquary, of Stagfoot Lane.
Don't you really know, Durbeyfield, that you are the lineal representative of the ancient
and knightly family of the d'Urbervilles, who derive their descent from Sir Pagan d'Urberville,
that renowned knight who came from Normandy with William the Conqueror, as appears by
Battle Abbey Roll?" "Never heard it before, sir!"
"Well it's true. Throw up your chin a moment, so that I may
catch the profile of your face better. Yes, that's the d'Urberville nose and chin—a
little debased. Your ancestor was one of the twelve knights
who assisted the Lord of Estremavilla in Normandy in his conquest of Glamorganshire.
Branches of your family held manors over all this part of England; their names appear in
the Pipe Rolls in the time of King Stephen. In the reign of King John one of them was
rich enough to give a manor to the Knights Hospitallers; and in Edward the Second's time
your forefather Brian was summoned to Westminster to attend the great Council there.
You declined a little in Oliver Cromwell's time, but to no serious extent, and in Charles
the Second's reign you were made Knights of the Royal Oak for your loyalty.
Aye, there have been generations of Sir Johns among you, and if knighthood were hereditary,
like a baronetcy, as it practically was in old times, when men were knighted from father
to son, you would be Sir John now." "Ye don't say so!"
"In short," concluded the parson, decisively smacking his leg with his switch, "there's
hardly such another family in England." "Daze my eyes, and isn't there?" said Durbeyfield.
"And here have I been knocking about, year after year, from pillar to post, as if I was
no more than the commonest feller in the parish... And how long hev this news about me been knowed,
Pa'son Tringham?" The clergyman explained that, as far as he
was aware, it had quite died out of knowledge, and could hardly be said to be known at all.
His own investigations had begun on a day in the preceding spring when, having been
engaged in tracing the vicissitudes of the d'Urberville family, he had observed Durbeyfield's
name on his waggon, and had thereupon been led to make inquiries about his father and
grandfather till he had no doubt on the subject. "At first I resolved not to disturb you with
such a useless piece of information," said he.
"However, our impulses are too strong for our judgement sometimes.
I thought you might perhaps know something of it all the while."
"Well, I have heard once or twice, 'tis true, that my family had seen better days afore
they came to Blackmoor. But I took no notice o't, thinking it to mean
that we had once kept two horses where we now keep only one.
I've got a wold silver spoon, and a wold graven seal at home, too; but, Lord, what's a spoon
and seal? ... And to think that I and these noble d'Urbervilles
were one flesh all the time. 'Twas said that my gr't-granfer had secrets, and didn't care
to talk of where he came from... And where do we raise our smoke, now, parson,
if I may make so bold; I mean, where do we d'Urbervilles live?"
"You don't live anywhere. You are extinct—as a county family."
"That's bad." "Yes—what the mendacious family chronicles
call extinct in the male line—that is, gone down—gone under."
"Then where do we lie?" "At Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill: rows and rows
of you in your vaults, with your effigies under Purbeck-marble canopies."
"And where be our family mansions and estates?" "You haven't any."
"Oh? No lands neither?"
"None; though you once had 'em in abundance, as I said, for you family consisted of numerous
branches. In this county there was a seat of yours at
Kingsbere, and another at Sherton, and another in Millpond, and another at Lullstead, and
another at Wellbridge." "And shall we ever come into our own again?"
"Ah—that I can't tell!" "And what had I better do about it, sir?"
asked Durbeyfield, after a pause. "Oh—nothing, nothing; except chasten yourself
with the thought of 'how are the mighty fallen.' It is a fact of some interest to the local
historian and genealogist, nothing more. There are several families among the cottagers
of this county of almost equal lustre. Good night."
"But you'll turn back and have a quart of beer wi' me on the strength o't, Pa'son Tringham?
There's a very pretty brew in tap at The Pure Drop—though, to be sure, not so good as
at Rolliver's." "No, thank you—not this evening, Durbeyfield.
You've had enough already." Concluding thus, the parson rode on his way,
with doubts as to his discretion in retailing this curious bit of lore.
When he was gone, Durbeyfield walked a few steps in a profound reverie, and then sat
down upon the grassy bank by the roadside, depositing his basket before him.
In a few minutes a youth appeared in the distance, walking in the same direction as that which
had been pursued by Durbeyfield. The latter, on seeing him, held up his hand,
and the lad quickened his pace and came near. "Boy, take up that basket!
I want 'ee to go on an errand for me." The lath-like stripling frowned.
"Who be you, then, John Durbeyfield, to order me about and call me 'boy'?
You know my name as well as I know yours!" "Do you, do you?
That's the secret—that's the secret! Now obey my orders, and take the message I'm going
to charge 'ee wi'... Well, Fred, I don't mind telling you that
the secret is that I'm one of a noble race—it has been just found out by me this present
afternoon, P.M." And as he made the announcement, Durbeyfield,
declining from his sitting position, luxuriously stretched himself out upon the bank among
the daisies. The lad stood before Durbeyfield, and contemplated
his length from crown to toe. "Sir John d'Urberville—that's who I am,"
continued the prostrate man. "That is if knights were baronets—which
they be. 'Tis recorded in history all about me.
Dost know of such a place, lad, as Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill?" "Ees.
I've been there to Greenhill Fair." "Well, under the church of that city there
lie—" "'Tisn't a city, the place I mean; leastwise
'twaddn' when I was there—'twas a little one-eyed, blinking sort o' place."
"Never you mind the place, boy, that's not the question before us. Under the church of
that there parish lie my ancestors—hundreds of 'em—in coats of mail and jewels, in gr't
lead coffins weighing tons and tons. There's not a man in the county o' South-Wessex
that's got grander and nobler skillentons in his family than I."
"Oh?" "Now take up that basket, and goo on to Marlott,
and when you've come to The Pure Drop Inn, tell 'em to send a horse and carriage to me
immed'ately, to carry me hwome. And in the bottom o' the carriage they be
to put a noggin o' rum in a small bottle, and chalk it up to my account.
And when you've done that goo on to my house with the basket, and tell my wife to put away
that washing, because she needn't finish it, and wait till I come hwome, as I've news to
tell her." As the lad stood in a dubious attitude, Durbeyfield
put his hand in his pocket, and produced a shilling, one of the chronically few that
he possessed. "Here's for your labour, lad."
This made a difference in the young man's estimate of the position.
"Yes, Sir John. Thank 'ee.
Anything else I can do for 'ee, Sir John?" "Tell 'em at hwome that I should like for
supper,—well, lamb's fry if they can get it; and if they can't, black-pot; and if they
can't get that, well chitterlings will do." "Yes, Sir John."
The boy took up the basket, and as he set out the notes of a brass band were heard from
the direction of the village. "What's that?" said Durbeyfield.
"Not on account o' I?" "'Tis the women's club-walking, Sir John.
Why, your da'ter is one o' the members." "To be sure—I'd quite forgot it in my thoughts
of greater things! Well, vamp on to Marlott, will ye, and order that carriage, and maybe
I'll drive round and inspect the club." The lad departed, and Durbeyfield lay waiting
on the grass and daisies in the evening sun. Not a soul passed that way for a long while,
and the faint notes of the band were the only human sounds audible within the rim of blue
hills.
II The village of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern
undulations of the beautiful Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor, aforesaid, an engirdled and
secluded region, for the most part untrodden as yet by tourist or landscape-painter, though
within a four hours' journey from London. It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made
by viewing it from the summits of the hills that surround it—except perhaps during the
droughts of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad
weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous, and miry ways.
This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are never brown and the
springs never dry, is bounded on the south by the bold chalk ridge that embraces the
prominences of Hambledon Hill, Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, and
Bubb Down. The traveller from the coast, who, after plodding
northward for a score of miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the
verge of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted to behold, extended like a map
beneath him, a country differing absolutely from that which he has passed through.
Behind him the hills are open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed
character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere
colourless. Here, in the valley, the world seems to be
constructed upon a smaller and more delicate scale; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced
that from this height their hedgerows appear a network of dark green threads overspreading
the paler green of the grass. The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and
is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of
that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine.
Arable lands are few and limited; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a broad
rich mass of grass and trees, mantling minor hills and dales within the major.
Such is the Vale of Blackmoor. The district is of historic, no less than
of topographical interest. The Vale was known in former times as the Forest of White Hart,
from a curious legend of King Henry III's reign, in which the killing by a certain Thomas
de la Lynd of a beautiful white hart which the king had run down and spared, was made
the occasion of a heavy fine. In those days, and till comparatively recent times, the country
was densely wooded. Even now, traces of its earlier condition
are to be found in the old oak copses and irregular belts of timber that yet survive
upon its slopes, and the hollow-trunked trees that shade so many of its pastures.
The forests have departed, but some old customs of their shades remain.
Many, however, linger only in a metamorphosed or disguised form.
The May-Day dance, for instance, was to be discerned on the afternoon under notice, in
the guise of the club revel, or "club-walking," as it was there called.
It was an interesting event to the younger inhabitants of Marlott, though its real interest
was not observed by the participators in the ceremony.
Its singularity lay less in the retention of a custom of walking in procession and dancing
on each anniversary than in the members being solely women.
In men's clubs such celebrations were, though expiring, less uncommon; but either the natural
shyness of the softer sex, or a sarcastic attitude on the part of male relatives, had
denuded such women's clubs as remained (if any other did) or this their glory and consummation.
The club of Marlott alone lived to uphold the local Cerealia.
It had walked for hundreds of years, if not as benefit-club, as votive sisterhood of some
sort; and it walked still. The banded ones were all dressed in white
gowns—a gay survival from Old Style days, when cheerfulness and May-time were synonyms—days
before the habit of taking long views had reduced emotions to a monotonous average.
Their first exhibition of themselves was in a processional march of two and two round
the parish. Ideal and real clashed slightly as the sun
lit up their figures against the green hedges and creeper-laced house-fronts; for, though
the whole troop wore white garments, no two whites were alike among them.
Some approached pure blanching; some had a bluish pallor; some worn by the older characters
(which had possibly lain by folded for many a year) inclined to a cadaverous tint, and
to a Georgian style. In addition to the distinction of a white
frock, every woman and girl carried in her right hand a peeled willow wand, and in her
left a bunch of white flowers. The peeling of the former, and the selection
of the latter, had been an operation of personal care.
There were a few middle-aged and even elderly women in the train, their silver-wiry hair
and wrinkled faces, scourged by time and trouble, having almost a grotesque, certainly a pathetic,
appearance in such a jaunty situation. In a true view, perhaps, there was more to
be gathered and told of each anxious and experienced one, to whom the years were drawing nigh when
she should say, "I have no pleasure in them," than of her juvenile comrades.
But let the elder be passed over here for those under whose bodices the life throbbed
quick and warm. The young girls formed, indeed, the majority
of the band, and their heads of luxuriant hair reflected in the sunshine every tone
of gold, and black, and brown. Some had beautiful eyes, others a beautiful
nose, others a beautiful mouth and figure: few, if any, had all.
A difficulty of arranging their lips in this crude exposure to public scrutiny, an inability
to balance their heads, and to dissociate self-consciousness from their features, was
apparent in them, and showed that they were genuine country girls, unaccustomed to many
eyes. And as each and all of them were warmed without
by the sun, so each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some
affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which, though perhaps starving
to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will. They were all cheerful, and many of them merry.
They came round by The Pure Drop Inn, and were turning out of the high road to pass
through a wicket-gate into the meadows, when one of the women said—
"The Load-a-Lord! Why, Tess Durbeyfield, if there isn't thy
father riding hwome in a carriage!" A young member of the band turned her head
at the exclamation. She was a fine and handsome girl—not handsomer than some others, possibly—but
her mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes added eloquence to colour and shape.
She wore a red ribbon in her hair, and was the only one of the white company who could
boast of such a pronounced adornment. As she looked round Durbeyfield was seen moving
along the road in a chaise belonging to The Pure Drop, driven by a frizzle-headed brawny
damsel with her gown-sleeves rolled above her elbows.
This was the cheerful servant of that establishment, who, in her part of factotum, turned groom
and ostler at times. Durbeyfield, leaning back, and with his eyes closed luxuriously,
was waving his hand above his head, and singing in a slow recitative—
"I've-got-a-gr't-family-vault-at-Kingsbere—and knighted-forefathers-in-lead-coffins-there!"
The clubbists tittered, except the girl called Tess—in whom a slow heat seemed to rise
at the sense that her father was making himself foolish in their eyes.
"He's tired, that's all," she said hastily, "and he has got a lift home, because our own
horse has to rest to-day." "Bless thy simplicity, Tess," said her companions.
"He's got his market-nitch. Haw-haw!"
"Look here; I won't walk another inch with you, if you say any jokes about him!" Tess
cried, and the colour upon her cheeks spread over her face and neck.
In a moment her eyes grew moist, and her glance drooped to the ground.
Perceiving that they had really pained her they said no more, and order again prevailed.
Tess's pride would not allow her to turn her head again, to learn what her father's meaning
was, if he had any; and thus she moved on with the whole body to the enclosure where
there was to be dancing on the green. By the time the spot was reached she has recovered
her equanimity, and tapped her neighbour with her wand and talked as usual.
Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by
experience. The dialect was on her tongue to some extent,
despite the village school: the characteristic intonation of that dialect for this district
being the voicing approximately rendered by the syllable UR, probably as rich an utterance
as any to be found in human speech. The pouted-up deep red mouth to which this
syllable was native had hardly as yet settled into its definite shape, and her lower lip
had a way of thrusting the middle of her top one upward, when they closed together after
a word. Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect
still. As she walked along to-day, for all her bouncing
handsome womanliness, you could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her
ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth
now and then. Yet few knew, and still fewer considered this.
A small minority, mainly strangers, would look long at her in casually passing by, and
grow momentarily fascinated by her freshness, and wonder if they would ever see her again:
but to almost everybody she was a fine and picturesque country girl, and no more.
Nothing was seen or heard further of Durbeyfield in his triumphal chariot under the conduct
of the ostleress, and the club having entered the allotted space, dancing began.
As there were no men in the company, the girls danced at first with each other, but when
the hour for the close of labour drew on, the masculine inhabitants of the village,
together with other idlers and pedestrians, gathered round the spot, and appeared inclined
to negotiate for a partner. Among these on-lookers were three young men
of a superior class, carrying small knapsacks strapped to their shoulders, and stout sticks
in their hands. Their general likeness to each other, and
their consecutive ages, would almost have suggested that they might be, what in fact
they were, brothers. The eldest wore the white tie, high waistcoat,
and thin-brimmed hat of the regulation curate; the second was the normal undergraduate; the
appearance of the third and youngest would hardly have been sufficient to characterize
him; there was an uncribbed, uncabined aspect in his eyes and attire, implying that he had
hardly as yet found the entrance to his professional groove.
That he was a desultory tentative student of something and everything might only have
been predicted of him. These three brethren told casual acquaintance
that they were spending their Whitsun holidays in a walking tour through the Vale of Blackmoor,
their course being south-westerly from the town of Shaston on the north-east.
They leant over the gate by the highway, and inquired as to the meaning of the dance and
the white-frocked maids. The two elder of the brothers were plainly
not intending to linger more than a moment, but the spectacle of a bevy of girls dancing
without male partners seemed to amuse the third, and make him in no hurry to move on.
He unstrapped his knapsack, put it, with his stick, on the hedge-bank, and opened the gate.
"What are you going to do, Angel?" asked the eldest.
"I am inclined to go and have a fling with them.
Why not all of us—just for a minute or two—it will not detain us long?"
"No—no; nonsense!" said the first. "Dancing in public with a troop of country
hoydens—suppose we should be seen! Come along, or it will be dark before we get
to Stourcastle, and there's no place we can sleep at nearer than that; besides, we must
get through another chapter of _A Counterblast to Agnosticism_ before we turn in, now I have
taken the trouble to bring the book." "All right—I'll overtake you and Cuthbert
in five minutes; don't stop; I give my word that I will, Felix."
The two elder reluctantly left him and walked on, taking their brother's knapsack to relieve
him in following, and the youngest entered the field.
"This is a thousand pities," he said gallantly, to two or three of the girls nearest him,
as soon as there was a pause in the dance. "Where are your partners, my dears?"
"They've not left off work yet," answered one of the boldest. "They'll be here by and
by. Till then, will you be one, sir?"
"Certainly. But what's one among so many!"
"Better than none. 'Tis melancholy work facing and footing it
to one of your own sort, and no clipsing and colling at all.
Now, pick and choose." "'Ssh—don't be so for'ard!" said a shyer
girl. The young man, thus invited, glanced them
over, and attempted some discrimination; but, as the group were all so new to him, he could
not very well exercise it. He took almost the first that came to hand,
which was not the speaker, as she had expected; nor did it happen to be Tess Durbeyfield.
Pedigree, ancestral skeletons, monumental record, the d'Urberville lineaments, did not
help Tess in her life's battle as yet, even to the extent of attracting to her a dancing-partner
over the heads of the commonest peasantry. So much for Norman blood unaided by Victorian
lucre. The name of the eclipsing girl, whatever it
was, has not been handed down; but she was envied by all as the first who enjoyed the
luxury of a masculine partner that evening. Yet such was the force of example that the
village young men, who had not hastened to enter the gate while no intruder was in the
way, now dropped in quickly, and soon the couples became leavened with rustic youth
to a marked extent, till at length the plainest woman in the club was no longer compelled
to foot it on the masculine side of the figure. The church clock struck, when suddenly the
student said that he must leave—he had been forgetting himself—he had to join his companions.
As he fell out of the dance his eyes lighted on Tess Durbeyfield, whose own large orbs
wore, to tell the truth, the faintest aspect of reproach that he had not chosen her.
He, too, was sorry then that, owing to her backwardness, he had not observed her; and
with that in his mind he left the pasture. On account of his long delay he started in
a flying-run down the lane westward, and had soon passed the hollow and mounted the next
rise. He had not yet overtaken his brothers, but he paused to get breath, and looked back.
He could see the white figures of the girls in the green enclosure whirling about as they
had whirled when he was among them. They seemed to have quite forgotten him already.
All of them, except, perhaps, one. This white shape stood apart by the hedge
alone. From her position he knew it to be the pretty
maiden with whom he had not danced. Trifling as the matter was, he yet instinctively
felt that she was hurt by his oversight. He wished that he had asked her; he wished
that he had inquired her name. She was so modest, so expressive, she had
looked so soft in her thin white gown that he felt he had acted stupidly.
However, it could not be helped, and turning, and bending himself to a rapid walk, he dismissed
the subject from his mind.
III As for Tess Durbeyfield, she did not so easily
dislodge the incident from her consideration. She had no spirit to dance again for a long
time, though she might have had plenty of partners; but ah! they did not speak so nicely
as the strange young man had done. It was not till the rays of the sun had absorbed
the young stranger's retreating figure on the hill that she shook off her temporary
sadness and answered her would-be partner in the affirmative.
She remained with her comrades till dusk, and participated with a certain zest in the
dancing; though, being heart-whole as yet, she enjoyed treading a measure purely for
its own sake; little divining when she saw "the soft torments, the bitter sweets, the
pleasing pains, and the agreeable distresses" of those girls who had been wooed and won,
what she herself was capable of in that kind. The struggles and wrangles of the lads for
her hand in a jig were an amusement to her—no more; and when they became fierce she rebuked
them. She might have stayed even later, but the
incident of her father's odd appearance and manner returned upon the girl's mind to make
her anxious, and wondering what had become of him she dropped away from the dancers and
bent her steps towards the end of the village at which the parental cottage lay.
While yet many score yards off, other rhythmic sounds than those she had quitted became audible
to her; sounds that she knew well—so well. They were a regular series of thumpings from
the interior of the house, occasioned by the violent rocking of a cradle upon a stone floor,
to which movement a feminine voice kept time by singing, in a vigorous gallopade, the favourite
ditty of "The Spotted Cow"—
I saw her lie do'-own in yon'-der green gro'-ove;
Come, love!' and I'll tell' you where!' The cradle-rocking and the song would cease
simultaneously for a moment, and an exclamation at highest vocal pitch would take the place
of the melody. "God bless thy diment eyes!
And thy waxen cheeks! And thy cherry mouth!
And thy Cubit's thighs! And every bit o' thy blessed body!"
After this invocation the rocking and the singing would recommence, and the "Spotted
Cow" proceed as before. So matters stood when Tess opened the door
and paused upon the mat within it, surveying the scene.
The interior, in spite of the melody, struck upon the girl's senses with an unspeakable
dreariness. From the holiday gaieties of the field—the
white gowns, the nosegays, the willow-wands, the whirling movements on the green, the flash
of gentle sentiment towards the stranger—to the yellow melancholy of this one-candled
spectacle, what a step! Besides the jar of contrast there came to
her a chill self-reproach that she had not returned sooner, to help her mother in these
domesticities, instead of indulging herself out-of-doors.
There stood her mother amid the group of children, as Tess had left her, hanging over the Monday
washing-tub, which had now, as always, lingered on to the end of the week.
Out of that tub had come the day before—Tess felt it with a dreadful sting of remorse—the
very white frock upon her back which she had so carelessly greened about the skirt on the
damping grass—which had been wrung up and ironed by her mother's own hands.
As usual, Mrs Durbeyfield was balanced on one foot beside the tub, the other being engaged
in the aforesaid business of rocking her youngest child.
The cradle-rockers had done hard duty for so many years, under the weight of so many
children, on that flagstone floor, that they were worn nearly flat, in consequence of which
a huge jerk accompanied each swing of the cot, flinging the baby from side to side like
a weaver's shuttle, as Mrs Durbeyfield, excited by her song, trod the rocker with all the
spring that was left in her after a long day's seething in the suds.
Nick-knock, nick-knock, went the cradle; the candle-flame stretched itself tall, and began
jigging up and down; the water dribbled from the matron's elbows, and the song galloped
on to the end of the verse, Mrs Durbeyfield regarding her daughter the while.
Even now, when burdened with a young family, Joan Durbeyfield was a passionate lover of
tune. No ditty floated into Blackmoor Vale from
the outer world but Tess's mother caught up its notation in a week.
There still faintly beamed from the woman's features something of the freshness, and even
the prettiness, of her youth; rendering it probable that the personal charms which Tess
could boast of were in main part her mother's gift, and therefore unknightly, unhistorical.
"I'll rock the cradle for 'ee, mother," said the daughter gently. "Or I'll take off my
best frock and help you wring up? I thought you had finished long ago."
Her mother bore Tess no ill-will for leaving the housework to her single-handed efforts
for so long; indeed, Joan seldom upbraided her thereon at any time, feeling but slightly
the lack of Tess's assistance whilst her instinctive plan for relieving herself of her labours
lay in postponing them. To-night, however, she was even in a blither
mood than usual. There was a dreaminess, a pre-occupation,
an exaltation, in the maternal look which the girl could not understand.
"Well, I'm glad you've come," her mother said, as soon as the last note had passed out of
her. "I want to go and fetch your father; but what's
more'n that, I want to tell 'ee what have happened.
Y'll be fess enough, my poppet, when th'st know!"
(Mrs Durbeyfield habitually spoke the dialect; her daughter, who had passed the Sixth Standard
in the National School under a London-trained mistress, spoke two languages: the dialect
at home, more or less; ordinary English abroad and to persons of quality.)
"Since I've been away?" Tess asked. "Ay!"
"Had it anything to do with father's making such a mommet of himself in thik carriage
this afternoon? Why did 'er?
I felt inclined to sink into the ground with shame!"
"That wer all a part of the larry! We've been found to be the greatest gentlefolk
in the whole county—reaching all back long before Oliver Grumble's time—to the days
of the Pagan Turks—with monuments, and vaults, and crests, and 'scutcheons, and the Lord
knows what all. In Saint Charles's days we was made Knights
o' the Royal Oak, our real name being d'Urberville! ...
Don't that make your *** plim? 'Twas on this account that your father rode
home in the vlee; not because he'd been drinking, as people supposed."
"I'm glad of that. Will it do us any good, mother?"
"O yes! 'Tis thoughted that great things may come
o't. No doubt a mampus of volk of our own rank
will be down here in their carriages as soon as 'tis known.
Your father learnt it on his way hwome from Shaston, and he has been telling me the whole
pedigree of the matter." "Where is father now?" asked Tess suddenly.
Her mother gave irrelevant information by way of answer: "He called to see the doctor
to-day in Shaston. It is not consumption at all, it seems.
It is fat round his heart, 'a says. There, it is like this."
Joan Durbeyfield, as she spoke, curved a sodden thumb and forefinger to the shape of the letter
C, and used the other forefinger as a pointer. "'At the present moment,' he says to your
father, 'your heart is enclosed all round there, and all round there; this space is
still open,' 'a says. 'As soon as it do meet, so,'"—Mrs Durbeyfield
closed her fingers into a circle complete—"'off you will go like a shadder, Mr Durbeyfield,'
'a says. 'You mid last ten years; you mid go off in ten months, or ten days.'"
Tess looked alarmed. Her father possibly to go behind the eternal
cloud so soon, notwithstanding this sudden greatness!
"But where IS father?" she asked again. Her mother put on a deprecating look.
"Now don't you be bursting out angry! The poor man—he felt so rafted after his
uplifting by the pa'son's news—that he went up to Rolliver's half an hour ago.
He do want to get up his strength for his journey to-morrow with that load of beehives,
which must be delivered, family or no. He'll have to start shortly after twelve to-night,
as the distance is so long." "Get up his strength!" said Tess impetuously,
the tears welling to her eyes. "O my God!
Go to a public-house to get up his strength! And you as well agreed as he, mother!"
Her rebuke and her mood seemed to fill the whole room, and to impart a cowed look to
the furniture, and candle, and children playing about, and to her mother's face.
"No," said the latter touchily, "I be not agreed.
I have been waiting for 'ee to bide and keep house while I go fetch him."
"I'll go." "O no, Tess.
You see, it would be no use." Tess did not expostulate.
She knew what her mother's objection meant. Mrs Durbeyfield's jacket and bonnet were already
hanging slily upon a chair by her side, in readiness for this contemplated jaunt, the
reason for which the matron deplored more than its necessity.
"And take the _Compleat Fortune-Teller_ to the outhouse," Joan continued, rapidly wiping
her hands, and donning the garments. The _Compleat Fortune-Teller_ was an old thick
volume, which lay on a table at her elbow, so worn by pocketing that the margins had
reached the edge of the type. Tess took it up, and her mother started.
This going to hunt up her shiftless husband at the inn was one of Mrs Durbeyfield's still
extant enjoyments in the muck and muddle of rearing children.
To discover him at Rolliver's, to sit there for an hour or two by his side and dismiss
all thought and care of the children during the interval, made her happy.
A sort of halo, an occidental glow, came over life then.
Troubles and other realities took on themselves a metaphysical impalpability, sinking to mere
mental phenomena for serene contemplation, and no longer stood as pressing concretions
which chafed body and soul. The youngsters, not immediately within sight,
seemed rather bright and desirable appurtenances than otherwise; the incidents of daily life
were not without humorousness and jollity in their aspect there.
She felt a little as she had used to feel when she sat by her now wedded husband in
the same spot during his wooing, shutting her eyes to his defects of character, and
regarding him only in his ideal presentation as lover.
Tess, being left alone with the younger children, went first to the outhouse with the fortune-telling
book, and stuffed it into the thatch. A curious fetishistic fear of this grimy volume
on the part of her mother prevented her ever allowing it to stay in the house all night,
and hither it was brought back whenever it had been consulted. Between the mother, with
her fast-perishing lumber of superstitions, folk-lore, dialect, and orally transmitted
ballads, and the daughter, with her trained National teachings and Standard knowledge
under an infinitely Revised Code, there was a gap of two hundred years as ordinarily understood.
When they were together the Jacobean and the Victorian ages were juxtaposed.
Returning along the garden path Tess mused on what the mother could have wished to ascertain
from the book on this particular day. She guessed the recent ancestral discovery
to bear upon it, but did not divine that it solely concerned herself.
Dismissing this, however, she busied herself with sprinkling the linen dried during the
day-time, in company with her nine-year-old brother Abraham, and her sister Eliza-Louisa
of twelve and a half, called "'Liza-Lu," the youngest ones being put to bed.
There was an interval of four years and more between Tess and the next of the family, the
two who had filled the gap having died in their infancy, and this lent her a deputy-maternal
attitude when she was alone with her juniors. Next in juvenility to Abraham came two more
girls, Hope and Modesty; then a boy of three, and then the baby, who had just completed
his first year. All these young souls were passengers in the
Durbeyfield ship—entirely dependent on the judgement of the two Durbeyfield adults for
their pleasures, their necessities, their health, even their existence.
If the heads of the Durbeyfield household chose to sail into difficulty, disaster, starvation,
disease, degradation, death, thither were these half-dozen little captives under hatches
compelled to sail with them—six helpless creatures, who had never been asked if they
wished for life on any terms, much less if they wished for it on such hard conditions
as were involved in being of the shiftless house of Durbeyfield.
Some people would like to know whence the poet whose philosophy is in these days deemed
as profound and trustworthy as his song is breezy and pure, gets his authority for speaking
of "Nature's holy plan." It grew later, and neither father nor mother
reappeared. Tess looked out of the door, and took a mental
journey through Marlott. The village was shutting its eyes.
Candles and lamps were being put out everywhere: she could inwardly behold the extinguisher
and the extended hand. Her mother's fetching simply meant one more
to fetch. Tess began to perceive that a man in indifferent
health, who proposed to start on a journey before one in the morning, ought not to be
at an inn at this late hour celebrating his ancient blood.
"Abraham," she said to her little brother, "do you put on your hat—you bain't afraid?—and
go up to Rolliver's, and see what has gone wi' father and mother."
The boy jumped promptly from his seat, and opened the door, and the night swallowed him
up. Half an hour passed yet again; neither man,
woman, nor child returned. Abraham, like his parents, seemed to have
been limed and caught by the ensnaring inn. "I must go myself," she said.
'Liza-Lu then went to bed, and Tess, locking them all in, started on her way up the dark
and crooked lane or street not made for hasty progress; a street laid out before inches
of land had value, and when one-handed clocks sufficiently subdivided the day.
IV Rolliver's inn, the single alehouse at this
end of the long and broken village, could only boast of an off-licence; hence, as nobody
could legally drink on the premises, the amount of overt accommodation for consumers was strictly
limited to a little board about six inches wide and two yards long, fixed to the garden
palings by pieces of wire, so as to form a ledge.
On this board thirsty strangers deposited their cups as they stood in the road and drank,
and threw the dregs on the dusty ground to the pattern of Polynesia, and wished they
could have a restful seat inside. Thus the strangers.
But there were also local customers who felt the same wish; and where there's a will there's
a way. In a large bedroom upstairs, the window of
which was thickly curtained with a great woollen shawl lately discarded by the landlady, Mrs
Rolliver, were gathered on this evening nearly a dozen persons, all seeking beatitude; all
old inhabitants of the nearer end of Marlott, and frequenters of this retreat. Not only
did the distance to the The Pure Drop, the fully-licensed tavern at the further part
of the dispersed village, render its accommodation practically unavailable for dwellers at this
end; but the far more serious question, the quality of the liquor, confirmed the prevalent
opinion that it was better to drink with Rolliver in a corner of the housetop than with the
other landlord in a wide house. A gaunt four-post bedstead which stood in
the room afforded sitting-space for several persons gathered round three of its sides;
a couple more men had elevated themselves on a chest of drawers; another rested on the
oak-carved "cwoffer"; two on the wash-stand; another on the stool; and thus all were, somehow,
seated at their ease. The stage of mental comfort to which they
had arrived at this hour was one wherein their souls expanded beyond their skins, and spread
their personalities warmly through the room. In this process the chamber and its furniture
grew more and more dignified and luxurious; the shawl hanging at the window took upon
itself the richness of tapestry; the brass handles of the chest of drawers were as golden
knockers; and the carved bedposts seemed to have some kinship with the magnificent pillars
of Solomon's temple. Mrs Durbeyfield, having quickly walked hitherward
after parting from Tess, opened the front door, crossed the downstairs room, which was
in deep gloom, and then unfastened the stair-door like one whose fingers knew the tricks of
the latches well. Her ascent of the crooked staircase was a
slower process, and her face, as it rose into the light above the last stair, encountered
the gaze of all the party assembled in the bedroom.
"—Being a few private friends I've asked in to keep up club-walking at my own expense,"
the landlady exclaimed at the sound of footsteps, as glibly as a child repeating the Catechism,
while she peered over the stairs. "Oh, 'tis you, Mrs Durbeyfield—Lard—how
you frightened me!—I thought it might be some gaffer sent by Gover'ment."
Mrs Durbeyfield was welcomed with glances and nods by the remainder of the conclave,
and turned to where her husband sat. He was humming absently to himself, in a low
tone: "I be as good as some folks here and there!
I've got a great family vault at Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill, and finer skillentons than any man in Wessex!"
"I've something to tell 'ee that's come into my head about that—a grand projick!" whispered
his cheerful wife. "Here, John, don't 'ee see me?"
She nudged him, while he, looking through her as through a window-pane, went on with
his recitative. "Hush!
Don't 'ee sing so loud, my good man," said the landlady; "in case any member of the Gover'ment
should be passing, and take away my licends." "He's told 'ee what's happened to us, I suppose?"
asked Mrs Durbeyfield. "Yes—in a way.
D'ye think there's any money hanging by it?" "Ah, that's the secret," said Joan Durbeyfield
sagely. "However, 'tis well to be kin to a coach,
even if you don't ride in 'en." She dropped her public voice, and continued
in a low tone to her husband: "I've been thinking since you brought the news that there's a
great rich lady out by Trantridge, on the edge o' The Chase, of the name of d'Urberville."
"Hey—what's that?" said Sir John. She repeated the information.
"That lady must be our relation," she said. "And my projick is to send Tess to claim kin."
"There IS a lady of the name, now you mention it," said Durbeyfield. "Pa'son Tringham didn't
think of that. But she's nothing beside we—a junior branch
of us, no doubt, hailing long since King Norman's day."
While this question was being discussed neither of the pair noticed, in their preoccupation,
that little Abraham had crept into the room, and was awaiting an opportunity of asking
them to return. "She is rich, and she'd be sure to take notice
o' the maid," continued Mrs Durbeyfield; "and 'twill be a very good thing.
I don't see why two branches o' one family should not be on visiting terms."
"Yes; and we'll all claim kin!" said Abraham brightly from under the bedstead.
"And we'll all go and see her when Tess has gone to live with her; and we'll ride in her
coach and wear black clothes!" "How do you come here, child?
What nonsense be ye talking! Go away, and play on the stairs till father
and mother be ready! ... Well, Tess ought to go to this other member
of our family. She'd be sure to win the lady—Tess would;
and likely enough 'twould lead to some noble gentleman marrying her.
In short, I know it." "How?"
"I tried her fate in the _Fortune-Teller_, and it brought out that very thing! ...
You should ha' seen how pretty she looked to-day; her skin is as sumple as a duchess'."
"What says the maid herself to going?" "I've not asked her.
She don't know there is any such lady-relation yet.
But it would certainly put her in the way of a grand marriage, and she won't say nay
to going." "Tess is ***."
"But she's tractable at bottom. Leave her to me."
Though this conversation had been private, sufficient of its import reached the understandings
of those around to suggest to them that the Durbeyfields had weightier concerns to talk
of now than common folks had, and that Tess, their pretty eldest daughter, had fine prospects
in store. "Tess is a fine figure o' fun, as I said to
myself to-day when I zeed her vamping round parish with the rest," observed one of the
elderly boozers in an undertone. "But Joan Durbeyfield must mind that she don't
get green malt in floor." It was a local phrase which had a peculiar
meaning, and there was no reply. The conversation became inclusive, and presently
other footsteps were heard crossing the room below.
"—Being a few private friends asked in to-night to keep up club-walking at my own expense."
The landlady had rapidly re-used the formula she kept on hand for intruders before she
recognized that the newcomer was Tess. Even to her mother's gaze the girl's young
features looked sadly out of place amid the alcoholic vapours which floated here as no
unsuitable medium for wrinkled middle-age; and hardly was a reproachful flash from Tess's
dark eyes needed to make her father and mother rise from their seats, hastily finish their
ale, and descend the stairs behind her, Mrs Rolliver's caution following their footsteps.
"No noise, please, if ye'll be so good, my dears; or I mid lose my licends, and be summons'd,
and I don't know what all! 'Night t'ye!"
They went home together, Tess holding one arm of her father, and Mrs Durbeyfield the
other. He had, in truth, drunk very little—not
a fourth of the quantity which a systematic tippler could carry to church on a Sunday
afternoon without a hitch in his eastings or genuflections; but the weakness of Sir
John's constitution made mountains of his petty sins in this kind.
On reaching the fresh air he was sufficiently unsteady to incline the row of three at one
moment as if they were marching to London, and at another as if they were marching to
Bath—which produced a comical effect, frequent enough in families on nocturnal homegoings;
and, like most comical effects, not quite so comic after all.
The two women valiantly disguised these forced excursions and countermarches as well as they
could from Durbeyfield, their cause, and from Abraham, and from themselves; and so they
approached by degrees their own door, the head of the family bursting suddenly into
his former refrain as he drew near, as if to fortify his soul at sight of the smallness
of his present residence— "I've got a fam—ily vault at Kingsbere!"
"Hush—don't be so silly, Jacky," said his wife.
"Yours is not the only family that was of 'count in wold days.
Look at the Anktells, and Horseys, and the Tringhams themselves—gone to seed a'most
as much as you—though you was bigger folks than they, that's true. Thank God, I was never
of no family, and have nothing to be ashamed of in that way!"
"Don't you be so sure o' that. From you nater 'tis my belief you've disgraced
yourselves more than any o' us, and was kings and queens outright at one time."
Tess turned the subject by saying what was far more prominent in her own mind at the
moment than thoughts of her ancestry—"I am afraid father won't be able to take the
journey with the beehives to-morrow so early." "I? I shall be all right in an hour or two,"
said Durbeyfield. It was eleven o'clock before the family were
all in bed, and two o'clock next morning was the latest hour for starting with the beehives
if they were to be delivered to the retailers in Casterbridge before the Saturday market
began, the way thither lying by bad roads over a distance of between twenty and thirty
miles, and the horse and waggon being of the slowest.
At half-past one Mrs Durbeyfield came into the large bedroom where Tess and all her little
brothers and sisters slept. "The poor man can't go," she said to her eldest
daughter, whose great eyes had opened the moment her mother's hand touched the door.
Tess sat up in bed, lost in a vague interspace between a dream and this information.
"But somebody must go," she replied. "It is late for the hives already.
Swarming will soon be over for the year; and it we put off taking 'em till next week's
market the call for 'em will be past, and they'll be thrown on our hands."
Mrs Durbeyfield looked unequal to the emergency. "Some young feller, perhaps, would go?
One of them who were so much after dancing with 'ee yesterday," she presently suggested.
"O no—I wouldn't have it for the world!" declared Tess proudly. "And letting everybody
know the reason—such a thing to be ashamed of!
I think _I_ could go if Abraham could go with me to kip me company."
Her mother at length agreed to this arrangement. Little Abraham was aroused from his deep sleep
in a corner of the same apartment, and made to put on his clothes while still mentally
in the other world. Meanwhile Tess had hastily dressed herself; and the twain, lighting a
lantern, went out to the stable. The rickety little waggon was already laden,
and the girl led out the horse, Prince, only a degree less rickety than the vehicle.
The poor creature looked wonderingly round at the night, at the lantern, at their two
figures, as if he could not believe that at that hour, when every living thing was intended
to be in shelter and at rest, he was called upon to go out and labour.
They put a stock of candle-ends into the lantern, hung the latter to the off-side of the load,
and directed the horse onward, walking at his shoulder at first during the uphill parts
of the way, in order not to overload an animal of so little vigour.
To cheer themselves as well as they could, they made an artificial morning with the lantern,
some bread and butter, and their own conversation, the real morning being far from come.
Abraham, as he more fully awoke (for he had moved in a sort of trance so far), began to
talk of the strange shapes assumed by the various dark objects against the sky; of this
tree that looked like a raging tiger springing from a lair; of that which resembled a giant's
head. When they had passed the little town of Stourcastle,
dumbly somnolent under its thick brown thatch, they reached higher ground.
Still higher, on their left, the elevation called Bulbarrow, or Bealbarrow, well-nigh
the highest in South Wessex, swelled into the sky, engirdled by its earthen trenches.
From hereabout the long road was fairly level for some distance onward.
They mounted in front of the waggon, and Abraham grew reflective.
"Tess!" he said in a preparatory tone, after a silence.
"Yes, Abraham." "Bain't you glad that we've become gentlefolk?"
"Not particular glad." "But you be glad that you 'm going to marry
a gentleman?" "What?" said Tess, lifting her face.
"That our great relation will help 'ee to marry a gentleman."
"I? Our great relation?
We have no such relation. What has put that into your head?"
"I heard 'em talking about it up at Rolliver's when I went to find father.
There's a rich lady of our family out at Trantridge, and mother said that if you claimed kin with
the lady, she'd put 'ee in the way of marrying a gentleman."
His sister became abruptly still, and lapsed into a pondering silence.
Abraham talked on, rather for the pleasure of utterance than for audition, so that his
sister's abstraction was of no account. He leant back against the hives, and with
upturned face made observations on the stars, whose cold pulses were beating amid the black
hollows above, in serene dissociation from these two wisps of human life.
He asked how far away those twinklers were, and whether God was on the other side of them.
But ever and anon his childish prattle recurred to what impressed his imagination even more
deeply than the wonders of creation. If Tess were made rich by marrying a gentleman,
would she have money enough to buy a spyglass so large that it would draw the stars as near
to her as Nettlecombe-Tout? The renewed subject, which seemed to have
impregnated the whole family, filled Tess with impatience.
"Never mind that now!" she exclaimed. "Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"
"Yes." "All like ours?"
"I don't know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples
on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound—a few blighted."
"Which do we live on—a splendid one or a blighted one?"
"A blighted one." "'Tis very unlucky that we didn't pitch on
a sound one, when there were so many more of 'em!"
"Yes." "Is it like that REALLY, Tess?" said Abraham,
turning to her much impressed, on reconsideration of this rare information.
"How would it have been if we had pitched on a sound one?"
"Well, father wouldn't have coughed and creeped about as he does, and wouldn't have got too
tipsy to go on this journey; and mother wouldn't have been always washing, and never getting
finished." "And you would have been a rich lady ready-made,
and not have had to be made rich by marrying a gentleman?"
"O Aby, don't—don't talk of that any more!" Left to his reflections Abraham soon grew
drowsy. Tess was not skilful in the management of
a horse, but she thought that she could take upon herself the entire conduct of the load
for the present and allow Abraham to go to sleep if he wished to do so.
She made him a sort of nest in front of the hives, in such a manner that he could not
fall, and, taking the reins into her own hands, jogged on as before.
Prince required but slight attention, lacking energy for superfluous movements of any sort.
With no longer a companion to distract her, Tess fell more deeply into reverie than ever,
her back leaning against the hives. The mute procession past her shoulders of
trees and hedges became attached to fantastic scenes outside reality, and the occasional
heave of the wind became the sigh of some immense sad soul, conterminous with the universe
in space, and with history in time. Then, examining the mesh of events in her
own life, she seemed to see the vanity of her father's pride; the gentlemanly suitor
awaiting herself in her mother's fancy; to see him as a grimacing personage, laughing
at her poverty and her shrouded knightly ancestry. Everything grew more and more extravagant,
and she no longer knew how time passed. A sudden jerk shook her in her seat, and Tess
awoke from the sleep into which she, too, had fallen.
They were a long way further on than when she had lost consciousness, and the waggon
had stopped. A hollow groan, unlike anything she had ever
heard in her life, came from the front, followed by a shout of "Hoi there!"
The lantern hanging at her waggon had gone out, but another was shining in her face—much
brighter than her own had been. Something terrible had happened.
The harness was entangled with an object which blocked the way.
In consternation Tess jumped down, and discovered the dreadful truth. The groan had proceeded
from her father's poor horse Prince. The morning mail-cart, with its two noiseless
wheels, speeding along these lanes like an arrow, as it always did, had driven into her
slow and unlighted equipage. The pointed shaft of the cart had entered
the breast of the unhappy Prince like a sword, and from the wound his life's blood was spouting
in a stream, and falling with a hiss into the road.
In her despair Tess sprang forward and put her hand upon the hole, with the only result
that she became splashed from face to skirt with the crimson drops.
Then she stood helplessly looking on. Prince also stood firm and motionless as long
as he could; till he suddenly sank down in a heap.
By this time the mail-cart man had joined her, and began dragging and unharnessing the
hot form of Prince. But he was already dead, and, seeing that
nothing more could be done immediately, the mail-cart man returned to his own animal,
which was uninjured. "You was on the wrong side," he said.
"I am bound to go on with the mail-bags, so that the best thing for you to do is bide
here with your load. I'll send somebody to help you as soon as
I can. It is getting daylight, and you have nothing
to fear." He mounted and sped on his way; while Tess
stood and waited. The atmosphere turned pale, the birds shook
themselves in the hedges, arose, and twittered; the lane showed all its white features, and
Tess showed hers, still whiter. The huge pool of blood in front of her was
already assuming the iridescence of coagulation; and when the sun rose a hundred prismatic
hues were reflected from it. Prince lay alongside, still and stark; his
eyes half open, the hole in his chest looking scarcely large enough to have let out all
that had animated him. "'Tis all my doing—all mine!" the girl cried,
gazing at the spectacle. "No excuse for me—none.
What will mother and father live on now? Aby, Aby!"
She shook the child, who had slept soundly through the whole disaster.
"We can't go on with our load—Prince is killed!"
When Abraham realized all, the furrows of fifty years were extemporized on his young
face. "Why, I danced and laughed only yesterday!"
she went on to herself. "To think that I was such a fool!"
"'Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't it, Tess?" murmured
Abraham through his tears. In silence they waited through an interval
which seemed endless. At length a sound, and an approaching object,
proved to them that the driver of the mail-car had been as good as his word.
A farmer's man from near Stourcastle came up, leading a strong cob.
He was harnessed to the waggon of beehives in the place of Prince, and the load taken
on towards Casterbridge. The evening of the same day saw the empty
waggon reach again the spot of the accident. Prince had lain there in the ditch since the
morning; but the place of the blood-pool was still visible in the middle of the road, though
scratched and scraped over by passing vehicles. All that was left of Prince was now hoisted
into the waggon he had formerly hauled, and with his hoofs in the air, and his shoes shining
in the setting sunlight, he retraced the eight or nine miles to Marlott.
Tess had gone back earlier. How to break the news was more than she could
think. It was a relief to her tongue to find from
the faces of her parents that they already knew of their loss, though this did not lessen
the self-reproach which she continued to heap upon herself for her negligence.
But the very shiftlessness of the household rendered the misfortune a less terrifying
one to them than it would have been to a thriving family, though in the present case it meant
ruin, and in the other it would only have meant inconvenience.
In the Durbeyfield countenances there was nothing of the red wrath that would have burnt
upon the girl from parents more ambitious for her welfare.
Nobody blamed Tess as she blamed herself. When it was discovered that the knacker and
tanner would give only a very few shillings for Prince's carcase because of his decrepitude,
Durbeyfield rose to the occasion. "No," said he stoically, "I won't sell his
old body. When we d'Urbervilles was knights in the land,
we didn't sell our chargers for cat's meat. Let 'em keep their shillings!
He've served me well in his lifetime, and I won't part from him now."
He worked harder the next day in digging a grave for Prince in the garden than he had
worked for months to grow a crop for his family. When the hole was ready, Durbeyfield and his
wife tied a rope round the horse and dragged him up the path towards it, the children following
in funeral train. Abraham and 'Liza-Lu sobbed, Hope and Modesty
discharged their griefs in loud blares which echoed from the walls; and when Prince was
tumbled in they gathered round the grave. The bread-winner had been taken away from
them; what would they do? "Is he gone to heaven?" asked Abraham, between
the sobs. Then Durbeyfield began to shovel in the earth,
and the children cried anew. All except Tess.
Her face was dry and pale, as though she regarded herself in the light of a murderess.
V The haggling business, which had mainly depended
on the horse, became disorganized forthwith. Distress, if not penury, loomed in the distance.
Durbeyfield was what was locally called a slack-twisted fellow; he had good strength
to work at times; but the times could not be relied on to coincide with the hours of
requirement; and, having been unaccustomed to the regular toil of the day-labourer, he
was not particularly persistent when they did so coincide.
Tess, meanwhile, as the one who had dragged her parents into this quagmire, was silently
wondering what she could do to help them out of it; and then her mother broached her scheme.
"We must take the ups wi' the downs, Tess," said she; "and never could your high blood
have been found out at a more called-for moment. You must try your friends.
Do ye know that there is a very rich Mrs d'Urberville living on the outskirts o' The Chase, who
must be our relation? You must go to her and claim kin, and ask
for some help in our trouble." "I shouldn't care to do that," says Tess.
"If there is such a lady, 'twould be enough for us if she were friendly—not to expect
her to give us help." "You could win her round to do anything, my
dear. Besides, perhaps there's more in it than you
know of. I've heard what I've heard, good-now." The oppressive sense of the harm she had done
led Tess to be more deferential than she might otherwise have been to the maternal wish;
but she could not understand why her mother should find such satisfaction in contemplating
an enterprise of, to her, such doubtful profit. Her mother might have made inquiries, and
have discovered that this Mrs d'Urberville was a lady of unequalled virtues and charity.
But Tess's pride made the part of poor relation one of particular distaste to her.
"I'd rather try to get work," she murmured. "Durbeyfield, you can settle it," said his
wife, turning to where he sat in the background. "If you say she ought to go, she will go."
"I don't like my children going and making themselves beholden to strange kin," murmured
he. "I'm the head of the noblest branch o' the
family, and I ought to live up to it." His reasons for staying away were worse to
Tess than her own objections to going. "Well, as I killed the horse, mother," she
said mournfully, "I suppose I ought to do something.
I don't mind going and seeing her, but you must leave it to me about asking for help.
And don't go thinking about her making a match for me—it is silly."
"Very well said, Tess!" observed her father sententiously.
"Who said I had such a thought?" asked Joan. "I fancy it is in your mind, mother.
But I'll go." Rising early next day she walked to the hill-town
called Shaston, and there took advantage of a van which twice in the week ran from Shaston
eastward to Chaseborough, passing near Trantridge, the parish in which the vague and mysterious
Mrs d'Urberville had her residence. Tess Durbeyfield's route on this memorable
morning lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the Vale in which she had been born, and
in which her life had unfolded. The Vale of Blackmoor was to her the world,
and its inhabitants the races thereof. From the gates and stiles of Marlott she had
looked down its length in the wondering days of infancy, and what had been mystery to her
then was not much less than mystery to her now.
She had seen daily from her chamber-window towers, villages, faint white mansions; above
all, the town of Shaston standing majestically on its height; its windows shining like lamps
in the evening sun. She had hardly ever visited the place, only
a small tract even of the Vale and its environs being known to her by close inspection.
Much less had she been far outside the valley. Every contour of the surrounding hills was
as personal to her as that of her relatives' faces; but for what lay beyond, her judgment
was dependent on the teaching of the village school, where she had held a leading place
at the time of her leaving, a year or two before this date.
In those early days she had been much loved by others of her own sex and age, and had
used to be seen about the village as one of three—all nearly of the same year—walking
home from school side by side; Tess the middle one—in a pink print pinafore, of a finely
reticulated pattern, worn over a stuff frock that had lost its original colour for a nondescript
tertiary—marching on upon long stalky legs, in tight stockings which had little ladder-like
holes at the knees, torn by kneeling in the roads and banks in search of vegetable and
mineral treasures; her then earth-coloured hair hanging like pot-hooks; the arms of the
two outside girls resting round the waist of Tess; her arms on the shoulders of the
two supporters. As Tess grew older, and began to see how matters
stood, she felt quite a Malthusian towards her mother for thoughtlessly giving her so
many little sisters and brothers, when it was such a trouble to nurse and provide for
them. Her mother's intelligence was that of a happy
child: Joan Durbeyfield was simply an additional one, and that not the eldest, to her own long
family of waiters on Providence. However, Tess became humanely beneficent towards
the small ones, and to help them as much as possible she used, as soon as she left school,
to lend a hand at haymaking or harvesting on neighbouring farms; or, by preference,
at milking or butter-making processes, which she had learnt when her father had owned cows;
and being deft-fingered it was a kind of work in which she excelled.
Every day seemed to throw upon her young shoulders more of the family burdens, and that Tess
should be the representative of the Durbeyfields at the d'Urberville mansion came as a thing
of course. In this instance it must be admitted that the Durbeyfields were putting their fairest
side outward. She alighted from the van at Trantridge Cross,
and ascended on foot a hill in the direction of the district known as The Chase, on the
borders of which, as she had been informed, Mrs d'Urberville's seat, The Slopes, would
be found. It was not a manorial home in the ordinary
sense, with fields, and pastures, and a grumbling farmer, out of whom the owner had to squeeze
an income for himself and his family by hook or by crook.
It was more, far more; a country-house built for enjoyment pure and simple, with not an
acre of troublesome land attached to it beyond what was required for residential purposes,
and for a little fancy farm kept in hand by the owner, and tended by a bailiff.
The crimson brick lodge came first in sight, up to its eaves in dense evergreens.
Tess thought this was the mansion itself till, passing through the side wicket with some
trepidation, and onward to a point at which the drive took a turn, the house proper stood
in full view. It was of recent ***—indeed almost new—and of the same rich red colour
that formed such a contrast with the evergreens of the lodge.
Far behind the corner of the house—which rose like a geranium bloom against the subdued
colours around—stretched the soft azure landscape of The Chase—a truly venerable
tract of forest land, one of the few remaining woodlands in England of undoubted primaeval
date, wherein Druidical mistletoe was still found on aged oaks, and where enormous yew-trees,
not planted by the hand of man grew as they had grown when they were pollarded for bows.
All this sylvan antiquity, however, though visible from The Slopes, was outside the immediate
boundaries of the estate. Everything on this snug property was bright,
thriving, and well kept; acres of glass-houses stretched down the inclines to the copses
at their feet. Everything looked like money—like the last
coin issued from the Mint. The stables, partly screened by Austrian pines
and evergreen oaks, and fitted with every late appliance, were as dignified as Chapels-of-Ease.
On the extensive lawn stood an ornamental tent, its door being towards her.
Simple Tess Durbeyfield stood at gaze, in a half-alarmed attitude, on the edge of the
gravel sweep. Her feet had brought her onward to this point
before she had quite realized where she was; and now all was contrary to her expectation.
"I thought we were an old family; but this is all new!" she said, in her artlessness.
She wished that she had not fallen in so readily with her mother's plans for "claiming kin,"
and had endeavoured to gain assistance nearer home.
The d'Urbervilles—or Stoke-d'Urbervilles, as they at first called themselves—who owned
all this, were a somewhat unusual family to find in such an old-fashioned part of the
country. Parson Tringham had spoken truly when he said
that our shambling John Durbeyfield was the only really lineal representative of the old
d'Urberville family existing in the county, or near it; he might have added, what he knew
very well, that the Stoke-d'Urbervilles were no more d'Urbervilles of the true tree then
he was himself. Yet it must be admitted that this family formed
a very good stock whereon to regraft a name which sadly wanted such renovation.
When old Mr Simon Stoke, latterly deceased, had made his fortune as an honest merchant
(some said money-lender) in the North, he decided to settle as a county man in the South
of England, out of hail of his business district; and in doing this he felt the necessity of
recommencing with a name that would not too readily identify him with the smart tradesman
of the past, and that would be less commonplace than the original bald, stark words.
Conning for an hour in the British Museum the pages of works devoted to extinct, half-extinct,
obscured, and ruined families appertaining to the quarter of England in which he proposed
to settle, he considered that _d'Urberville_ looked and sounded as well as any of them:
and d'Urberville accordingly was annexed to his own name for himself and his heirs eternally.
Yet he was not an extravagant-minded man in this, and in constructing his family tree
on the new basis was duly reasonable in framing his inter-marriages and aristocratic links,
never inserting a single title above a rank of strict moderation.
Of this work of imagination poor Tess and her parents were naturally in ignorance—much
to their discomfiture; indeed, the very possibility of such annexations was unknown to them; who
supposed that, though to be well-favoured might be the gift of fortune, a family name
came by nature. Tess still stood hesitating like a bather
about to make his plunge, hardly knowing whether to retreat or to persevere, when a figure
came forth from the dark triangular door of the tent.
It was that of a tall young man, smoking. He had an almost swarthy complexion, with
full lips, badly moulded, though red and smooth, above which was a well-groomed black moustache
with curled points, though his age could not be more than three- or four-and-twenty.
Despite the touches of barbarism in his contours, there was a singular force in the gentleman's
face, and in his bold rolling eye. "Well, my Beauty, what can I do for you?"
said he, coming forward. And perceiving that she stood quite confounded: "Never mind me.
I am Mr d'Urberville. Have you come to see me or my mother?"
This embodiment of a d'Urberville and a namesake differed even more from what Tess had expected
than the house and grounds had differed. She had dreamed of an aged and dignified face,
the sublimation of all the d'Urberville lineaments, furrowed with incarnate memories representing
in hieroglyphic the centuries of her family's and England's history.
But she screwed herself up to the work in hand, since she could not get out of it, and
answered— "I came to see your mother, sir."
"I am afraid you cannot see her—she is an invalid," replied the present representative
of the spurious house; for this was Mr Alec, the only son of the lately deceased gentleman.
"Cannot I answer your purpose? What is the business you wish to see her about?"
"It isn't business—it is—I can hardly say what!"
"Pleasure?" "Oh no.
Why, sir, if I tell you, it will seem—" Tess's sense of a certain ludicrousness in
her errand was now so strong that, notwithstanding her awe of him, and her general discomfort
at being here, her rosy lips curved towards a smile, much to the attraction of the swarthy
Alexander. "It is so very foolish," she stammered; "I
fear can't tell you!" "Never mind; I like foolish things.
Try again, my dear," said he kindly. "Mother asked me to come," Tess continued;
"and, indeed, I was in the mind to do so myself likewise.
But I did not think it would be like this. I came, sir, to tell you that we are of the
same family as you." "Ho!
Poor relations?" "Yes."
"Stokes?" "No; d'Urbervilles."
"Ay, ay; I mean d'Urbervilles." "Our names are worn away to Durbeyfield; but
we have several proofs that we are d'Urbervilles. Antiquarians hold we are,—and—and we have
an old seal, marked with a ramping lion on a shield, and a castle over him.
And we have a very old silver spoon, round in the bowl like a little ladle, and marked
with the same castle. But it is so worn that mother uses it to stir
the pea-soup." "A castle argent is certainly my crest," said
he blandly. "And my arms a lion rampant."
"And so mother said we ought to make ourselves beknown to you—as we've lost our horse by
a bad accident, and are the oldest branch o' the family."
"Very kind of your mother, I'm sure. And I, for one, don't regret her step."
Alec looked at Tess as he spoke, in a way that made her blush a little.
"And so, my pretty girl, you've come on a friendly visit to us, as relations?"
"I suppose I have," faltered Tess, looking uncomfortable again.
"Well—there's no harm in it. Where do you live?
What are you?" She gave him brief particulars; and responding
to further inquiries told him that she was intending to go back by the same carrier who
had brought her. "It is a long while before he returns past
Trantridge Cross. Supposing we walk round the grounds to pass the time, my pretty Coz?"
Tess wished to abridge her visit as much as possible; but the young man was pressing,
and she consented to accompany him. He conducted her about the lawns, and flower-beds,
and conservatories; and thence to the fruit-garden and greenhouses, where he asked her if she
liked strawberries. "Yes," said Tess, "when they come."
"They are already here." D'Urberville began gathering specimens of
the fruit for her, handing them back to her as he stooped; and, presently, selecting a
specially fine product of the "British Queen" variety, he stood up and held it by the stem
to her mouth. "No—no!" she said quickly, putting her fingers
between his hand and her lips. "I would rather take it in my own hand."
"Nonsense!" he insisted; and in a slight distress she parted her lips and took it in.
They had spent some time wandering desultorily thus, Tess eating in a half-pleased, half-reluctant
state whatever d'Urberville offered her. When she could consume no more of the strawberries
he filled her little basket with them; and then the two passed round to the rose-trees,
whence he gathered blossoms and gave her to put in her ***. She obeyed like one in a
dream, and when she could affix no more he himself tucked a bud or two into her hat,
and heaped her basket with others in the prodigality of his bounty.
At last, looking at his watch, he said, "Now, by the time you have had something to eat,
it will be time for you to leave, if you want to catch the carrier to Shaston.
Come here, and I'll see what grub I can find." Stoke d'Urberville took her back to the lawn
and into the tent, where he left her, soon reappearing with a basket of light luncheon,
which he put before her himself. It was evidently the gentleman's wish not
to be disturbed in this pleasant _tête-à-tête_ by the servantry.
"Do you mind my smoking?" he asked. "Oh, not at all, sir."
He watched her pretty and unconscious munching through the skeins of smoke that pervaded
the tent, and Tess Durbeyfield did not divine, as she innocently looked down at the roses
in her ***, that there behind the blue narcotic haze was potentially the "tragic mischief"
of her drama—one who stood fair to be the blood-red ray in the spectrum of her young
life. She had an attribute which amounted to a disadvantage
just now; and it was this that caused Alec d'Urberville's eyes to rivet themselves upon
her. It was a luxuriance of aspect, a fulness of
growth, which made her appear more of a woman than she really was.
She had inherited the feature from her mother without the quality it denoted.
It had troubled her mind occasionally, till her companions had said that it was a fault
which time would cure. She soon had finished her lunch.
"Now I am going home, sir," she said, rising. "And what do they call you?" he asked, as
he accompanied her along the drive till they were out of sight of the house.
"Tess Durbeyfield, down at Marlott." "And you say your people have lost their horse?"
"I—killed him!" she answered, her eyes filling with tears as she gave particulars of Prince's
death. "And I don't know what to do for father on
account of it!" "I must think if I cannot do something.
My mother must find a berth for you. But, Tess, no nonsense about 'd'Urberville';—'Durbeyfield'
only, you know—quite another name." "I wish for no better, sir," said she with
something of dignity. For a moment—only for a moment—when they
were in the turning of the drive, between the tall rhododendrons and conifers, before
the lodge became visible, he inclined his face towards her as if—but, no: he thought
better of it, and let her go. Thus the thing began.
Had she perceived this meeting's import she might have asked why she was doomed to be
seen and coveted that day by the wrong man, and not by some other man, the right and desired
one in all respects—as nearly as humanity can supply the right and desired; yet to him
who amongst her acquaintance might have approximated to this kind, she was but a transient impression,
half forgotten. In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged
plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with
the hour for loving. Nature does not often say "See!" to her poor
creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply "Here!" to a body's
cry of "Where?" till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome, outworn game.
We may wonder whether at the acme and summit of the human progress these anachronisms will
be corrected by a finer intuition, a closer interaction of the social machinery than that
which now jolts us round and along; but such completeness is not to be prophesied, or even
conceived as possible. Enough that in the present case, as in millions,
it was not the two halves of a perfect whole that confronted each other at the perfect
moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness
till the late time came. Out of which maladroit delay sprang anxieties,
disappointments, shocks, catastrophes, and passing-strange destinies.
When d'Urberville got back to the tent he sat down astride on a chair, reflecting, with
a pleased gleam in his face. Then he broke into a loud laugh.
"Well, I'm damned! What a funny thing!
Ha-ha-ha! And what a crumby girl!"
VI Tess went down the hill to Trantridge Cross,
and inattentively waited to take her seat in the van returning from Chaseborough to
Shaston. She did not know what the other occupants said to her as she entered, though she answered
them; and when they had started anew she rode along with an inward and not an outward eye.
One among her fellow-travellers addressed her more pointedly than any had spoken before:
"Why, you be quite a posy! And such roses in early June!"
Then she became aware of the spectacle she presented to their surprised vision: roses
at her ***; roses in her hat; roses and strawberries in her basket to the brim.
She blushed, and said confusedly that the flowers had been given to her.
When the passengers were not looking she stealthily removed the more prominent blooms from her
hat and placed them in the basket, where she covered them with her handkerchief.
Then she fell to reflecting again, and in looking downwards a thorn of the rose remaining
in her breast accidentally pricked her chin. Like all the cottagers in Blackmoor Vale,
Tess was steeped in fancies and prefigurative superstitions; she thought this an ill omen—the
first she had noticed that day. The van travelled only so far as Shaston,
and there were several miles of pedestrian descent from that mountain-town into the vale
to Marlott. Her mother had advised her to stay here for
the night, at the house of a cottage-woman they knew, if she should feel too tired to
come on; and this Tess did, not descending to her home till the following afternoon.
When she entered the house she perceived in a moment from her mother's triumphant manner
that something had occurred in the interim. "Oh yes; I know all about it!
I told 'ee it would be all right, and now 'tis proved!"
"Since I've been away? What has?" said Tess rather wearily.
Her mother surveyed the girl up and down with arch approval, and went on banteringly: "So
you've brought 'em round!" "How do you know, mother?"
"I've had a letter." Tess then remembered that there would have
been time for this. "They say—Mrs d'Urberville says—that she
wants you to look after a little fowl-farm which is her hobby.
But this is only her artful way of getting 'ee there without raising your hopes.
She's going to own 'ee as kin—that's the meaning o't."
"But I didn't see her." "You zid somebody, I suppose?"
"I saw her son." "And did he own 'ee?"
"Well—he called me Coz." "An' I knew it!
Jacky—he called her Coz!" cried Joan to her husband.
"Well, he spoke to his mother, of course, and she do want 'ee there."
"But I don't know that I am apt at tending fowls," said the dubious Tess.
"Then I don't know who is apt. You've be'n born in the business, and brought
up in it. They that be born in a business always know
more about it than any 'prentice. Besides, that's only just a show of something
for you to do, that you midn't feel beholden." "I don't altogether think I ought to go,"
said Tess thoughtfully. "Who wrote the letter? Will you let me look at it?"
"Mrs d'Urberville wrote it. Here it is."
The letter was in the third person, and briefly informed Mrs Durbeyfield that her daughter's
services would be useful to that lady in the management of her poultry-farm, that a comfortable
room would be provided for her if she could come, and that the wages would be on a liberal
scale if they liked her. "Oh—that's all!" said Tess.
"You couldn't expect her to throw her arms round 'ee, an' to kiss and to coll 'ee all
at once." Tess looked out of the window.
"I would rather stay here with father and you," she said.
"But why?" "I'd rather not tell you why, mother; indeed,
I don't quite know why." A week afterwards she came in one evening
from an unavailing search for some light occupation in the immediate neighbourhood.
Her idea had been to get together sufficient money during the summer to purchase another
horse. Hardly had she crossed the threshold before
one of the children danced across the room, saying, "The gentleman's been here!"
Her mother hastened to explain, smiles breaking from every inch of her person.
Mrs d'Urberville's son had called on horseback, having been riding by chance in the direction
of Marlott. He had wished to know, finally, in the name
of his mother, if Tess could really come to manage the old lady's fowl-farm or not; the
lad who had hitherto superintended the birds having proved untrustworthy.
"Mr d'Urberville says you must be a good girl if you are at all as you appear; he knows
you must be worth your weight in gold. He is very much interested in 'ee—truth
to tell." Tess seemed for the moment really pleased
to hear that she had won such high opinion from a stranger when, in her own esteem, she
had sunk so low. "It is very good of him to think that," she
murmured; "and if I was quite sure how it would be living there, I would go any-when."
"He is a mighty handsome man!" "I don't think so," said Tess coldly.
"Well, there's your chance, whether or no; and I'm sure he wears a beautiful diamond
ring!" "Yes," said little Abraham, brightly, from
the window-bench; "and I seed it! and it did twinkle when he put his hand up to his mistarshers.
Mother, why did our grand relation keep on putting his hand up to his mistarshers?"
"Hark at that child!" cried Mrs Durbeyfield, with parenthetic admiration.
"Perhaps to show his diamond ring," murmured Sir John, dreamily, from his chair.
"I'll think it over," said Tess, leaving the room.
"Well, she's made a conquest o' the younger branch of us, straight off," continued the
matron to her husband, "and she's a fool if she don't follow it up."
"I don't quite like my children going away from home," said the haggler.
"As the head of the family, the rest ought to come to me."
"But do let her go, Jacky," coaxed his poor witless wife.
"He's struck wi' her—you can see that. He called her Coz!
He'll marry her, most likely, and make a lady of her; and then she'll be what her forefathers
was." John Durbeyfield had more conceit than energy
or health, and this supposition was pleasant to him.
"Well, perhaps that's what young Mr d'Urberville means," he admitted; "and sure enough he mid
have serious thoughts about improving his blood by linking on to the old line.
Tess, the little rogue! And have she really paid 'em a visit to such
an end as this?" Meanwhile Tess was walking thoughtfully among
the gooseberry-bushes in the garden, and over Prince's grave.
When she came in her mother pursued her advantage. "Well, what be you going to do?" she asked.
"I wish I had seen Mrs d'Urberville," said Tess.
"I think you mid as well settle it. Then you'll see her soon enough."
Her father coughed in his chair. "I don't know what to say!" answered the girl
restlessly. "It is for you to decide.
I killed the old horse, and I suppose I ought to do something to get ye a new one.
But—but—I don't quite like Mr d'Urberville being there!"
The children, who had made use of this idea of Tess being taken up by their wealthy kinsfolk
(which they imagined the other family to be) as a species of dolorifuge after the death
of the horse, began to cry at Tess's reluctance, and teased and reproached her for hesitating.
"Tess won't go-o-o and be made a la-a-dy of!—no, she says she wo-o-on't!" they wailed, with
square mouths. "And we shan't have a nice new horse, and
lots o' golden money to buy fairlings! And Tess won't look pretty in her best cloze
no mo-o-ore!" Her mother chimed in to the same tune: a certain
way she had of making her labours in the house seem heavier than they were by prolonging
them indefinitely, also weighed in the argument. Her father alone preserved an attitude of
neutrality. "I will go," said Tess at last.
Her mother could not repress her consciousness of the nuptial vision conjured up by the girl's
consent. "That's right!
For such a pretty maid as 'tis, this is a fine chance!"
Tess smiled crossly. "I hope it is a chance for earning money.
It is no other kind of chance. You had better say nothing of that silly sort
about parish." Mrs Durbeyfield did not promise.
She was not quite sure that she did not feel proud enough, after the visitor's remarks,
to say a good deal. Thus it was arranged; and the young girl wrote,
agreeing to be ready to set out on any day on which she might be required.
She was duly informed that Mrs d'Urberville was glad of her decision, and that a spring-cart
should be sent to meet her and her luggage at the top of the Vale on the day after the
morrow, when she must hold herself prepared to start.
Mrs d'Urberville's handwriting seemed rather masculine.
"A cart?" murmured Joan Durbeyfield doubtingly. "It might have been a carriage for her own
kin!" Having at last taken her course Tess was less
restless and abstracted, going about her business with some self-assurance in the thought of
acquiring another horse for her father by an occupation which would not be onerous.
She had hoped to be a teacher at the school, but the fates seemed to decide otherwise.
Being mentally older than her mother she did not regard Mrs Durbeyfield's matrimonial hopes
for her in a serious aspect for a moment. The light-minded woman had been discovering
good matches for her daughter almost from the year of her birth.
VII On the morning appointed for her departure
Tess was awake before dawn—at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still
mute, save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at
least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving silence as if equally convinced
that he is mistaken. She remained upstairs packing till breakfast-time,
and then came down in her ordinary week-day clothes, her Sunday apparel being carefully
folded in her box. Her mother expostulated. "You will never set
out to see your folks without dressing up more the dand than that?"
"But I am going to work!" said Tess. "Well, yes," said Mrs Durbeyfield; and in
a private tone, "at first there mid be a little pretence o't ...
But I think it will be wiser of 'ee to put your best side outward," she added.
"Very well; I suppose you know best," replied Tess with calm abandonment.
And to please her parent the girl put herself quite in Joan's hands, saying serenely—"Do
what you like with me, mother." Mrs Durbeyfield was only too delighted at
this tractability. First she fetched a great basin, and washed Tess's hair with such thoroughness
that when dried and brushed it looked twice as much as at other times.
She tied it with a broader pink ribbon than usual. Then she put upon her the white frock
that Tess had worn at the club-walking, the airy fulness of which, supplementing her enlarged
_coiffure_, imparted to her developing figure an amplitude which belied her age, and might
cause her to be estimated as a woman when she was not much more than a child.
"I declare there's a hole in my stocking-heel!" said Tess.
"Never mind holes in your stockings—they don't speak!
When I was a maid, so long as I had a pretty bonnet the devil might ha' found me in heels."
Her mother's pride in the girl's appearance led her to step back, like a painter from
his easel, and survey her work as a whole. "You must zee yourself!" she cried.
"It is much better than you was t'other day." As the looking-glass was only large enough
to reflect a very small portion of Tess's person at one time, Mrs Durbeyfield hung a
black cloak outside the casement, and so made a large reflector of the panes, as it is the
wont of bedecking cottagers to do. After this she went downstairs to her husband,
who was sitting in the lower room. "I'll tell 'ee what 'tis, Durbeyfield," said
she exultingly; "he'll never have the heart not to love her.
But whatever you do, don't zay too much to Tess of his fancy for her, and this chance
she has got. She is such an odd maid that it mid zet her against him, or against going
there, even now. If all goes well, I shall certainly be for
making some return to pa'son at Stagfoot Lane for telling us—dear, good man!"
However, as the moment for the girl's setting out drew nigh, when the first excitement of
the dressing had passed off, a slight misgiving found place in Joan Durbeyfield's mind.
It prompted the matron to say that she would walk a little way—as far as to the point
where the acclivity from the valley began its first steep ascent to the outer world.
At the top Tess was going to be met with the spring-cart sent by the Stoke-d'Urbervilles,
and her box had already been wheeled ahead towards this summit by a lad with trucks,
to be in readiness. Seeing their mother put on her bonnet, the
younger children clamoured to go with her. "I do want to walk a little-ways wi' Sissy,
now she's going to marry our gentleman-cousin, and wear fine cloze!"
"Now," said Tess, flushing and turning quickly, "I'll hear no more o' that!
Mother, how could you ever put such stuff into their heads?"
"Going to work, my dears, for our rich relation, and help get enough money for a new horse,"
said Mrs Durbeyfield pacifically. "Goodbye, father," said Tess, with a lumpy
throat. "Goodbye, my maid," said Sir John, raising
his head from his breast as he suspended his nap, induced by a slight excess this morning
in honour of the occasion. "Well, I hope my young friend will like such
a comely sample of his own blood. And tell'n, Tess, that being sunk, quite,
from our former grandeur, I'll sell him the title—yes, sell it—and at no onreasonable
figure." "Not for less than a thousand pound!" cried
Lady Durbeyfield. "Tell'n—I'll take a thousand pound.
Well, I'll take less, when I come to think o't.
He'll adorn it better than a poor lammicken feller like myself can.
Tell'n he shall hae it for a hundred. But I won't stand upon trifles—tell'n he
shall hae it for fifty—for twenty pound! Yes, twenty pound—that's the lowest.
Dammy, family honour is family honour, and I won't take a penny less!"
Tess's eyes were too full and her voice too choked to utter the sentiments that were in
her. She turned quickly, and went out.
So the girls and their mother all walked together, a child on each side of Tess, holding her
hand and looking at her meditatively from time to time, as at one who was about to do
great things; her mother just behind with the smallest; the group forming a picture
of honest beauty flanked by innocence, and backed by simple-souled vanity. They followed
the way till they reached the beginning of the ascent, on the crest of which the vehicle
from Trantridge was to receive her, this limit having been fixed to save the horse the labour
of the last slope. Far away behind the first hills the cliff-like
dwellings of Shaston broke the line of the ridge. Nobody was visible in the elevated
road which skirted the ascent save the lad whom they had sent on before them, sitting
on the handle of the barrow that contained all Tess's worldly possessions.
"Bide here a bit, and the cart will soon come, no doubt," said Mrs Durbeyfield.
"Yes, I see it yonder!" It had come—appearing suddenly from behind
the forehead of the nearest upland, and stopping beside the boy with the barrow.
Her mother and the children thereupon decided to go no farther, and bidding them a hasty
goodbye, Tess bent her steps up the hill. They saw her white shape draw near to the
spring-cart, on which her box was already placed.
But before she had quite reached it another vehicle shot out from a clump of trees on
the summit, came round the bend of the road there, passed the luggage-cart, and halted
beside Tess, who looked up as if in great surprise.
Her mother perceived, for the first time, that the second vehicle was not a humble conveyance
like the first, but a ***-and-span gig or dog-cart, highly varnished and equipped.
The driver was a young man of three- or four-and-twenty, with a cigar between his teeth; wearing a
dandy cap, drab jacket, breeches of the same hue, white neckcloth, stick-up collar, and
brown driving-gloves—in short, he was the handsome, horsey young buck who had visited
Joan a week or two before to get her answer about Tess.
Mrs Durbeyfield clapped her hands like a child. Then she looked down, then stared again.
Could she be deceived as to the meaning of this?
"Is dat the gentleman-kinsman who'll make Sissy a lady?" asked the youngest child.
Meanwhile the muslined form of Tess could be seen standing still, undecided, beside
this turn-out, whose owner was talking to her. Her seeming indecision was, in fact,
more than indecision: it was misgiving. She would have preferred the humble cart.
The young man dismounted, and appeared to urge her to ascend.
She turned her face down the hill to her relatives, and regarded the little group. Something seemed
to quicken her to a determination; possibly the thought that she had killed Prince.
She suddenly stepped up; he mounted beside her, and immediately whipped on the horse.
In a moment they had passed the slow cart with the box, and disappeared behind the shoulder
of the hill. Directly Tess was out of sight, and the interest
of the matter as a drama was at an end, the little ones' eyes filled with tears.
The youngest child said, "I wish poor, poor Tess wasn't gone away to be a lady!" and,
lowering the corners of his lips, burst out crying.
The new point of view was infectious, and the next child did likewise, and then the
next, till the whole three of them wailed loud.
There were tears also in Joan Durbeyfield's eyes as she turned to go home.
But by the time she had got back to the village she was passively trusting to the favour of
accident. However, in bed that night she sighed, and
her husband asked her what was the matter. "Oh, I don't know exactly," she said.
"I was thinking that perhaps it would ha' been better if Tess had not gone."
"Oughtn't ye to have thought of that before?" "Well, 'tis a chance for the maid—Still,
if 'twere the doing again, I wouldn't let her go till I had found out whether the gentleman
is really a good-hearted young man and choice over her as his kinswoman."
"Yes, you ought, perhaps, to ha' done that," snored Sir John.
Joan Durbeyfield always managed to find consolation somewhere: "Well, as one of the genuine stock,
she ought to make her way with 'en, if she plays her trump card aright.
And if he don't marry her afore he will after. For that he's all afire wi' love for her any
eye can see." "What's her trump card?
Her d'Urberville blood, you mean?" "No, stupid; her face—as 'twas mine."
VIII Having mounted beside her, Alec d'Urberville
drove rapidly along the crest of the first hill, chatting compliments to Tess as they
went, the cart with her box being left far behind.
Rising still, an immense landscape stretched around them on every side; behind, the green
valley of her birth, before, a gray country of which she knew nothing except from her
first brief visit to Trantridge. Thus they reached the verge of an incline
down which the road stretched in a long straight descent of nearly a mile.
Ever since the accident with her father's horse Tess Durbeyfield, courageous as she
naturally was, had been exceedingly timid on wheels; the least irregularity of motion
startled her. She began to get uneasy at a certain recklessness
in her conductor's driving. "You will go down slow, sir, I suppose?" she
said with attempted unconcern. D'Urberville looked round upon her, nipped
his cigar with the tips of his large white centre-teeth, and allowed his lips to smile
slowly of themselves. "Why, Tess," he answered, after another whiff
or two, "it isn't a brave bouncing girl like you who asks that?
Why, I always go down at full gallop. There's nothing like it for raising your spirits."
"But perhaps you need not now?" "Ah," he said, shaking his head, "there are
two to be reckoned with. It is not me alone. Tib has to be considered, and she has a very
*** temper." "Who?"
"Why, this mare. I fancy she looked round at me in a very grim
way just then. Didn't you notice it?"
"Don't try to frighten me, sir," said Tess stiffly.
"Well, I don't. If any living man can manage this horse I
can: I won't say any living man can do it—but if such has the power, I am he."
"Why do you have such a horse?" "Ah, well may you ask it!
It was my fate, I suppose. Tib has killed one chap; and just after I bought her she
nearly killed me. And then, take my word for it, I nearly killed
her. But she's touchy still, very touchy; and one's
life is hardly safe behind her sometimes." They were just beginning to descend; and it
was evident that the horse, whether of her own will or of his (the latter being the more
likely), knew so well the reckless performance expected of her that she hardly required a
hint from behind. Down, down, they sped, the wheels humming
like a top, the dog-cart rocking right and left, its axis acquiring a slightly oblique
set in relation to the line of progress; the figure of the horse rising and falling in
undulations before them. Sometimes a wheel was off the ground, it seemed,
for many yards; sometimes a stone was sent spinning over the hedge, and flinty sparks
from the horse's hoofs outshone the daylight. The aspect of the straight road enlarged with
their advance, the two banks dividing like a splitting stick; one rushing past at each
shoulder. The wind blew through Tess's white muslin
to her very skin, and her washed hair flew out behind.
She was determined to show no open fear, but she clutched d'Urberville's rein-arm.
"Don't touch my arm! We shall be thrown out if you do!
Hold on round my waist!" She grasped his waist, and so they reached
the bottom. "Safe, thank God, in spite of your fooling!"
said she, her face on fire. "Tess—fie! that's temper!" said d'Urberville.
"'Tis truth." "Well, you need not let go your hold of me
so thanklessly the moment you feel yourself our of danger."
She had not considered what she had been doing; whether he were man or woman, stick or stone,
in her involuntary hold on him. Recovering her reserve, she sat without replying,
and thus they reached the summit of another declivity.
"Now then, again!" said d'Urberville. "No, no!" said Tess.
"Show more sense, do, please." "But when people find themselves on one of
the highest points in the county, they must get down again," he retorted.
He loosened rein, and away they went a second time.
D'Urberville turned his face to her as they rocked, and said, in playful raillery: "Now
then, put your arms round my waist again, as you did before, my Beauty."
"Never!" said Tess independently, holding on as well as she could without touching him.
"Let me put one little kiss on those holmberry lips, Tess, or even on that warmed cheek,
and I'll stop—on my honour, I will!" Tess, surprised beyond measure, slid farther
back still on her seat, at which he urged the horse anew, and rocked her the more.
"Will nothing else do?" she cried at length, in desperation, her large eyes staring at
him like those of a wild animal. This dressing her up so prettily by her mother
had apparently been to lamentable purpose. "Nothing, dear Tess," he replied.
"Oh, I don't know—very well; I don't mind!" she panted miserably.
He drew rein, and as they slowed he was on the point of imprinting the desired salute,
when, as if hardly yet aware of her own modesty, she dodged aside.
His arms being occupied with the reins there was left him no power to prevent her manoeuvre.
"Now, damn it—I'll break both our necks!" swore her capriciously passionate companion.
"So you can go from your word like that, you young witch, can you?"
"Very well," said Tess, "I'll not move since you be so determined! But I—thought you
would be kind to me, and protect me, as my kinsman!"
"Kinsman be hanged! Now!"
"But I don't want anybody to kiss me, sir!" she implored, a big tear beginning to roll
down her face, and the corners of her mouth trembling in her attempts not to cry.
"And I wouldn't ha' come if I had known!" He was inexorable, and she sat still, and
d'Urberville gave her the kiss of mastery. No sooner had he done so than she flushed
with shame, took out her handkerchief, and wiped the spot on her cheek that had been
touched by his lips. His ardour was nettled at the sight, for the
act on her part had been unconsciously done. "You are mighty sensitive for a cottage girl!"
said the young man. Tess made no reply to this remark, of which,
indeed, she did not quite comprehend the drift, unheeding the snub she had administered by
her instinctive rub upon her cheek. She had, in fact, undone the kiss, as far
as such a thing was physically possible. With a dim sense that he was vexed she looked
steadily ahead as they trotted on near Melbury Down and Wingreen, till she saw, to her consternation,
that there was yet another descent to be undergone. "You shall be made sorry for that!" he resumed,
his injured tone still remaining, as he flourished the whip anew.
"Unless, that is, you agree willingly to let me do it again, and no handkerchief."
She sighed. "Very well, sir!" she said. "Oh—let me get my hat!"
At the moment of speaking her hat had blown off into the road, their present speed on
the upland being by no means slow. D'Urberville pulled up, and said he would
get it for her, but Tess was down on the other side.
She turned back and picked up the article. "You look prettier with it off, upon my soul,
if that's possible," he said, contemplating her over the back of the vehicle.
"Now then, up again! What's the matter?"
The hat was in place and tied, but Tess had not stepped forward.
"No, sir," she said, revealing the red and ivory of her mouth as her eye lit in defiant
triumph; "not again, if I know it!" "What—you won't get up beside me?"
"No; I shall walk." "'Tis five or six miles yet to Trantridge."
"I don't care if 'tis dozens. Besides, the cart is behind."
"You artful ***! Now, tell me—didn't you make that hat blow
off on purpose? I'll swear you did!"
Her strategic silence confirmed his suspicion. Then d'Urberville cursed and swore at her,
and called her everything he could think of for the trick.
Turning the horse suddenly he tried to drive back upon her, and so hem her in between the
gig and the hedge. But he could not do this short of injuring
her. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself for using
such wicked words!" cried Tess with spirit, from the top of the hedge into which she had
scrambled. "I don't like 'ee at all!
I hate and detest you! I'll go back to mother, I will!"
D'Urberville's bad temper cleared up at sight of hers; and he laughed heartily.
"Well, I like you all the better," he said. "Come, let there be peace.
I'll never do it any more against your will. My life upon it now!"
Still Tess could not be induced to remount. She did not, however, object to his keeping
his gig alongside her; and in this manner, at a slow pace, they advanced towards the
village of Trantridge. From time to time d'Urberville exhibited a
sort of fierce distress at the sight of the tramping he had driven her to undertake by
his misdemeanour. She might in truth have safely trusted him
now; but he had forfeited her confidence for the time, and she kept on the ground progressing
thoughtfully, as if wondering whether it would be wiser to return home.
Her resolve, however, had been taken, and it seemed vacillating even to childishness
to abandon it now, unless for graver reasons. How could she face her parents, get back her
box, and disconcert the whole scheme for the rehabilitation of her family on such sentimental
grounds? A few minutes later the chimneys of The Slopes
appeared in view, and in a snug nook to the right the poultry-farm and cottage of Tess'
destination.
IX The community of fowls to which Tess had been
appointed as supervisor, purveyor, nurse, surgeon, and friend made its headquarters
in an old thatched cottage standing in an enclosure that had once been a garden, but
was now a trampled and sanded square. The house was overrun with ivy, its chimney being
enlarged by the boughs of the parasite to the aspect of a ruined tower.
The lower rooms were entirely given over to the birds, who walked about them with a proprietary
air, as though the place had been built by themselves, and not by certain dusty copyholders
who now lay east and west in the churchyard. The descendants of these bygone owners felt
it almost as a slight to their family when the house which had so much of their affection,
had cost so much of their forefathers' money, and had been in their possession for several
generations before the d'Urbervilles came and built here, was indifferently turned into
a fowl-house by Mrs Stoke-d'Urberville as soon as the property fell into hand according
to law. "'Twas good enough for Christians in grandfather's
time," they said. The rooms wherein dozens of infants had wailed
at their nursing now resounded with the tapping of nascent chicks.
Distracted hens in coops occupied spots where formerly stood chairs supporting sedate agriculturists.
The chimney-corner and once-blazing hearth was now filled with inverted beehives, in
which the hens laid their eggs; while out of doors the plots that each succeeding householder
had carefully shaped with his spade were torn by the *** in wildest fashion.
The garden in which the cottage stood was surrounded by a wall, and could only be entered
through a door. When Tess had occupied herself about an hour
the next morning in altering and improving the arrangements, according to her skilled
ideas as the daughter of a professed poulterer, the door in the wall opened and a servant
in white cap and apron entered. She had come from the manor-house.
"Mrs d'Urberville wants the fowls as usual," she said; but perceiving that Tess did not
quite understand, she explained, "Mis'ess is a old lady, and blind."
"Blind!" said Tess. Almost before her misgiving at the news could
find time to shape itself she took, under her companion's direction, two of the most
beautiful of the Hamburghs in her arms, and followed the maid-servant, who had likewise
taken two, to the adjacent mansion, which, though ornate and imposing, showed traces
everywhere on this side that some occupant of its chambers could bend to the love of
dumb creatures—feathers floating within view of the front, and hen-coops standing
on the grass. In a sitting-room on the ground-floor, ensconced
in an armchair with her back to the light, was the owner and mistress of the estate,
a white-haired woman of not more than sixty, or even less, wearing a large cap.
She had the mobile face frequent in those whose sight has decayed by stages, has been
laboriously striven after, and reluctantly let go, rather than the stagnant mien apparent
in persons long sightless or born blind. Tess walked up to this lady with her feathered
charges—one sitting on each arm. "Ah, you are the young woman come to look
after my birds?" said Mrs d'Urberville, recognizing a new footstep.
"I hope you will be kind to them. My bailiff tells me you are quite the proper
person. Well, where are they? Ah, this is Strut!
But he is hardly so lively to-day, is he? He is alarmed at being handled by a stranger,
I suppose. And Phena too—yes, they are a little frightened—aren't you, dears? But
they will soon get used to you." While the old lady had been speaking Tess
and the other maid, in obedience to her gestures, had placed the fowls severally in her lap,
and she had felt them over from head to tail, examining their beaks, their combs, the manes
of the ***, their wings, and their claws. Her touch enabled her to recognize them in
a moment, and to discover if a single feather were crippled or draggled.
She handled their crops, and knew what they had eaten, and if too little or too much;
her face enacting a vivid pantomime of the criticisms passing in her mind.
The birds that the two girls had brought in were duly returned to the yard, and the process
was repeated till all the pet *** and hens had been submitted to the old woman—Hamburghs,
Bantams, Cochins, Brahmas, Dorkings, and such other sorts as were in fashion just then—her
perception of each visitor being seldom at fault as she received the bird upon her knees.
It reminded Tess of a Confirmation, in which Mrs d'Urberville was the bishop, the fowls
the young people presented, and herself and the maid-servant the parson and curate of
the parish bringing them up. At the end of the ceremony Mrs d'Urberville abruptly asked
Tess, wrinkling and twitching her face into undulations, "Can you whistle?"
"Whistle, Ma'am?" "Yes, whistle tunes."
Tess could whistle like most other country-girls, though the accomplishment was one which she
did not care to profess in genteel company. However, she blandly admitted that such was
the fact. "Then you will have to practise it every day.
I had a lad who did it very well, but he has left.
I want you to whistle to my bullfinches; as I cannot see them, I like to hear them, and
we teach 'em airs that way. Tell her where the cages are, Elizabeth.
You must begin to-morrow, or they will go back in their piping. They have been neglected
these several days." "Mr d'Urberville whistled to 'em this morning,
ma'am," said Elizabeth. "He!
Pooh!" The old lady's face creased into furrows of
repugnance, and she made no further reply. Thus the reception of Tess by her fancied
kinswoman terminated, and the birds were taken back to their quarters.
The girl's surprise at Mrs d'Urberville's manner was not great; for since seeing the
size of the house she had expected no more. But she was far from being aware that the
old lady had never heard a word of the so-called kinship. She gathered that no great affection
flowed between the blind woman and her son. But in that, too, she was mistaken.
Mrs d'Urberville was not the first mother compelled to love her offspring resentfully,
and to be bitterly fond. In spite of the unpleasant initiation of the
day before, Tess inclined to the freedom and novelty of her new position in the morning
when the sun shone, now that she was once installed there; and she was curious to test
her powers in the unexpected direction asked of her, so as to ascertain her chance of retaining
her post. As soon as she was alone within the walled garden she sat herself down on
a coop, and seriously screwed up her mouth for the long-neglected practice.
She found her former ability to have degenerated to the production of a hollow rush of wind
through the lips, and no clear note at all. She remained fruitlessly blowing and blowing,
wondering how she could have so grown out of the art which had come by nature, till
she became aware of a movement among the ivy-boughs which cloaked the garden-wall no less then
the cottage. Looking that way she beheld a form springing
from the coping to the plot. It was Alec d'Urberville, whom she had not
set eyes on since he had conducted her the day before to the door of the gardener's cottage
where she had lodgings. "Upon my honour!" cried he, "there was never
before such a beautiful thing in Nature or Art as you look, 'Cousin' Tess ('Cousin' had
a faint ring of mockery). I have been watching you from over the wall—sitting
like IM-patience on a monument, and pouting up that pretty red mouth to whistling shape,
and whooing and whooing, and privately swearing, and never being able to produce a note.
Why, you are quite cross because you can't do it."
"I may be cross, but I didn't swear." "Ah!
I understand why you are trying—those bullies! My mother wants you to carry on their musical
education. How selfish of her! As if attending to these
curst *** and hens here were not enough work for any girl.
I would flatly refuse, if I were you." "But she wants me particularly to do it, and
to be ready by to-morrow morning." "Does she?
Well then—I'll give you a lesson or two." "Oh no, you won't!" said Tess, withdrawing
towards the door. "Nonsense; I don't want to touch you.
See—I'll stand on this side of the wire-netting, and you can keep on the other; so you may
feel quite safe. Now, look here; you screw up your lips too
harshly. There 'tis—so." He suited the action to the word, and whistled
a line of "Take, O take those lips away." But the allusion was lost upon Tess.
"Now try," said d'Urberville. She attempted to look reserved; her face put
on a sculptural severity. But he persisted in his demand, and at last,
to get rid of him, she did put up her lips as directed for producing a clear note; laughing
distressfully, however, and then blushing with vexation that she had laughed.
He encouraged her with "Try again!" Tess was quite serious, painfully serious
by this time; and she tried—ultimately and unexpectedly emitting a real round sound.
The momentary pleasure of success got the better of her; her eyes enlarged, and she
involuntarily smiled in his face. "That's it!
Now I have started you—you'll go on beautifully. There—I said I would not come near you;
and, in spite of such temptation as never before fell to mortal man, I'll keep my word...
Tess, do you think my mother a *** old soul?" "I don't know much of her yet, sir."
"You'll find her so; she must be, to make you learn to whistle to her bullfinches.
I am rather out of her books just now, but you will be quite in favour if you treat her
live-stock well. Good morning.
If you meet with any difficulties and want help here, don't go to the bailiff, come to
me." It was in the economy of this _régime_ that
Tess Durbeyfield had undertaken to fill a place.
Her first day's experiences were fairly typical of those which followed through many succeeding
days. A familiarity with Alec d'Urberville's presence—which
that young man carefully cultivated in her by playful dialogue, and by jestingly calling
her his cousin when they were alone—removed much of her original shyness of him, without,
however, implanting any feeling which could engender shyness of a new and tenderer kind.
But she was more pliable under his hands than a mere companionship would have made her,
owing to her unavoidable dependence upon his mother, and, through that lady's comparative
helplessness, upon him. She soon found that whistling to the bullfinches
in Mrs d'Urberville's room was no such onerous business when she had regained the art, for
she had caught from her musical mother numerous airs that suited those songsters admirably.
A far more satisfactory time than when she practised in the garden was this whistling
by the cages each morning. Unrestrained by the young man's presence she
threw up her mouth, put her lips near the bars, and piped away in easeful grace to the
attentive listeners. Mrs d'Urberville slept in a large four-post
bedstead hung with heavy damask curtains, and the bullfinches occupied the same apartment,
where they flitted about freely at certain hours, and made little white spots on the
furniture and upholstery. Once while Tess was at the window where the
cages were ranged, giving her lesson as usual, she thought she heard a rustling behind the
bed. The old lady was not present, and turning
round the girl had an impression that the toes of a pair of boots were visible below
the fringe of the curtains. Thereupon her whistling became so disjointed
that the listener, if such there were, must have discovered her suspicion of his presence.
She searched the curtains every morning after that, but never found anybody within them.
Alec d'Urberville had evidently thought better of his freak to terrify her by an ambush of
that kind.
X Every village has its idiosyncrasy, its constitution,
often its own code of morality. The levity of some of the younger women in
and about Trantridge was marked, and was perhaps symptomatic of the choice spirit who ruled
The Slopes in that vicinity. The place had also a more abiding defect;
it drank hard. The staple conversation on the farms around
was on the uselessness of saving money; and smock-frocked arithmeticians, leaning on their
ploughs or hoes, would enter into calculations of great nicety to prove that parish relief
was a fuller provision for a man in his old age than any which could result from savings
out of their wages during a whole lifetime. The chief pleasure of these philosophers lay
in going every Saturday night, when work was done, to Chaseborough, a decayed market-town
two or three miles distant; and, returning in the small hours of the next morning, to
spend Sunday in sleeping off the dyspeptic effects of the curious compounds sold to them
as beer by the monopolizers of the once-independent inns.
For a long time Tess did not join in the weekly pilgrimages.
But under pressure from matrons not much older than herself—for a field-man's wages being
as high at twenty-one as at forty, marriage was early here—Tess at length consented
to go. Her first experience of the journey afforded
her more enjoyment than she had expected, the hilariousness of the others being quite
contagious after her monotonous attention to the poultry-farm all the week. She went
again and again. Being graceful and interesting, standing moreover
on the momentary threshold of womanhood, her appearance drew down upon her some sly regards
from loungers in the streets of Chaseborough; hence, though sometimes her journey to the
town was made independently, she always searched for her fellows at nightfall, to have the
protection of their companionship homeward. This had gone on for a month or two when there
came a Saturday in September, on which a fair and a market coincided; and the pilgrims from
Trantridge sought double delights at the inns on that account. Tess's occupations made her
late in setting out, so that her comrades reached the town long before her.
It was a fine September evening, just before sunset, when yellow lights struggle with blue
shades in hairlike lines, and the atmosphere itself forms a prospect without aid from more
solid objects, except the innumerable winged insects that dance in it.
Through this low-lit mistiness Tess walked leisurely along.
She did not discover the coincidence of the market with the fair till she had reached
the place, by which time it was close upon dusk.
Her limited marketing was soon completed; and then as usual she began to look about
for some of the Trantridge cottagers. At first she could not find them, and she
was informed that most of them had gone to what they called a private little jig at the
house of a hay-trusser and peat-dealer who had transactions with their farm.
He lived in an out-of-the-way nook of the townlet, and in trying to find her course
thither her eyes fell upon Mr d'Urberville standing at a street corner.
"What—my Beauty? You here so late?" he said.
She told him that she was simply waiting for company homeward.
"I'll see you again," said he over her shoulder as she went on down the back lane.
Approaching the hay-trussers, she could hear the fiddled notes of a reel proceeding from
some building in the rear; but no sound of dancing was audible—an exceptional state
of things for these parts, where as a rule the stamping drowned the music.
The front door being open she could see straight through the house into the garden at the back
as far as the shades of night would allow; and nobody appearing to her knock, she traversed
the dwelling and went up the path to the outhouse whence the sound had attracted her.
It was a windowless *** used for storage, and from the open door there floated into
the obscurity a mist of yellow radiance, which at first Tess thought to be illuminated smoke.
But on drawing nearer she perceived that it was a cloud of dust, lit by candles within
the outhouse, whose beams upon the haze carried forward the outline of the doorway into the
wide night of the garden. When she came close and looked in she beheld
indistinct forms racing up and down to the figure of the dance, the silence of their
footfalls arising from their being overshoe in "scroff"—that is to say, the powdery
residuum from the storage of peat and other products, the stirring of which by their turbulent
feet created the nebulosity that involved the scene.
Through this floating, fusty _debris_ of peat and hay, mixed with the perspirations and
warmth of the dancers, and forming together a sort of vegeto-human pollen, the muted fiddles
feebly pushed their notes, in marked contrast to the spirit with which the measure was trodden
out. They coughed as they danced, and laughed as
they coughed. Of the rushing couples there could barely
be discerned more than the high lights—the indistinctness shaping them to satyrs clasping
nymphs—a multiplicity of Pans whirling a multiplicity of Syrinxes; Lotis attempting
to elude Priapus, and always failing. At intervals a couple would approach the doorway
for air, and the haze no longer veiling their features, the demigods resolved themselves
into the homely personalities of her own next-door neighbours.
Could Trantridge in two or three short hours have metamorphosed itself thus madly!
Some Sileni of the throng sat on benches and hay-trusses by the wall; and one of them recognized
her. "The maids don't think it respectable to dance
at The Flower-de-Luce," he explained. "They don't like to let everybody see which
be their fancy-men. Besides, the house sometimes shuts up just
when their jints begin to get greased. So we come here and send out for liquor."
"But when be any of you going home?" asked Tess with some anxiety.
"Now—a'most directly. This is all but the last jig."
She waited. The reel drew to a close, and some of the
party were in the mind of starting. But others would not, and another dance was
formed. This surely would end it, thought Tess.
But it merged in yet another. She became restless and uneasy; yet, having
waited so long, it was necessary to wait longer; on account of the fair the roads were dotted
with roving characters of possibly ill intent; and, though not fearful of measurable dangers,
she feared the unknown. Had she been near Marlott she would have had less dread.
"Don't ye be nervous, my dear good soul," expostulated, between his coughs, a young
man with a wet face and his straw hat so far back upon his head that the brim encircled
it like the nimbus of a saint. "What's yer hurry?
To-morrow is Sunday, thank God, and we can sleep it off in church-time.
Now, have a turn with me?" She did not abhor dancing, but she was not
going to dance here. The movement grew more passionate: the fiddlers
behind the luminous pillar of cloud now and then varied the air by playing on the wrong
side of the bridge or with the back of the bow.
But it did not matter; the panting shapes spun onwards.
They did not vary their partners if their inclination were to stick to previous ones.
Changing partners simply meant that a satisfactory choice had not as yet been arrived at by one
or other of the pair, and by this time every couple had been suitably matched.
It was then that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which emotion was the matter of
the universe, and matter but an adventitious intrusion likely to hinder you from spinning
where you wanted to spin. Suddenly there was a dull thump on the ground:
a couple had fallen, and lay in a mixed heap. The next couple, unable to check its progress,
came toppling over the obstacle. An inner cloud of dust rose around the prostrate
figures amid the general one of the room, in which a twitching entanglement of arms
and legs was discernible. "You shall catch it for this, my gentleman,
when you get home!" burst in female accents from the human heap—those of the unhappy
partner of the man whose clumsiness had caused the mishap; she happened also to be his recently
married wife, in which assortment there was nothing unusual at Trantridge as long as any
affection remained between wedded couples; and, indeed, it was not uncustomary in their
later lives, to avoid making odd lots of the single people between whom there might be
a warm understanding. A loud laugh from behind Tess's back, in the
shade of the garden, united with the titter within the room.
She looked round, and saw the red coal of a cigar: Alec d'Urberville was standing there
alone. He beckoned to her, and she reluctantly retreated towards him.
"Well, my Beauty, what are you doing here?" She was so tired after her long day and her
walk that she confided her trouble to him—that she had been waiting ever since he saw her
to have their company home, because the road at night was strange to her.
"But it seems they will never leave off, and I really think I will wait no longer."
"Certainly do not. I have only a saddle-horse here to-day; but
come to The Flower-de-Luce, and I'll hire a trap, and drive you home with me."
Tess, though flattered, had never quite got over her original mistrust of him, and, despite
their tardiness, she preferred to walk home with the work-folk.
So she answered that she was much obliged to him, but would not trouble him.
"I have said that I will wait for 'em, and they will expect me to now."
"Very well, Miss Independence. Please yourself...
Then I shall not hurry... My good Lord, what a kick-up they are having
there!" He had not put himself forward into the light,
but some of them had perceived him, and his presence led to a slight pause and a consideration
of how the time was flying. As soon as he had re-lit a cigar and walked
away the Trantridge people began to collect themselves from amid those who had come in
from other farms, and prepared to leave in a body.
Their bundles and baskets were gathered up, and half an hour later, when the clock-chime
sounded a quarter past eleven, they were straggling along the lane which led up the hill towards
their homes. It was a three-mile walk, along a dry white
road, made whiter to-night by the light of the moon.
Tess soon perceived as she walked in the flock, sometimes with this one, sometimes with that,
that the fresh night air was producing staggerings and serpentine courses among the men who had
partaken too freely; some of the more careless women also were wandering in their gait—to
wit, a dark virago, Car Darch, dubbed Queen of Spades, till lately a favourite of d'Urberville's;
Nancy, her sister, nicknamed the Queen of Diamonds; and the young married woman who
had already tumbled down. Yet however terrestrial and lumpy their appearance
just now to the mean unglamoured eye, to themselves the case was different.
They followed the road with a sensation that they were soaring along in a supporting medium,
possessed of original and profound thoughts, themselves and surrounding nature forming
an organism of which all the parts harmoniously and joyously interpenetrated each other.
They were as sublime as the moon and stars above them, and the moon and stars were as
ardent as they. Tess, however, had undergone such painful
experiences of this kind in her father's house that the discovery of their condition spoilt
the pleasure she was beginning to feel in the moonlight journey.
Yet she stuck to the party, for reasons above given.
In the open highway they had progressed in scattered order; but now their route was through
a field-gate, and the foremost finding a difficulty in opening it, they closed up together.
This leading pedestrian was Car the Queen of Spades, who carried a wicker-basket containing
her mother's groceries, her own draperies, and other purchases for the week.
The basket being large and heavy, Car had placed it for convenience of porterage on
the top of her head, where it rode on in jeopardized balance as she walked with arms akimbo.
"Well—whatever is that a-creeping down thy back, Car Darch?" said one of the group suddenly.
All looked at Car. Her gown was a light cotton print, and from
the back of her head a kind of rope could be seen descending to some distance below
her waist, like a Chinaman's queue. "'Tis her hair falling down," said another.
No; it was not her hair: it was a black stream of something oozing from her basket, and it
glistened like a slimy snake in the cold still rays of the moon.
"'Tis treacle," said an observant matron. Treacle it was.
Car's poor old grandmother had a weakness for the sweet stuff.
Honey she had in plenty out of her own hives, but treacle was what her soul desired, and
Car had been about to give her a treat of surprise.
Hastily lowering the basket the dark girl found that the vessel containing the syrup
had been smashed within. By this time there had arisen a shout of laughter
at the extraordinary appearance of Car's back, which irritated the dark queen into getting
rid of the disfigurement by the first sudden means available, and independently of the
help of the scoffers. She rushed excitedly into the field they were
about to cross, and flinging herself flat on her back upon the grass, began to wipe
her gown as well as she could by spinning horizontally on the herbage and dragging herself
God!" End of Chapter XII