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CHAPTER XLI
From the foregoing events of the winter- time let us press on to an October day,
more than eight months subsequent to the parting of Clare and Tess.
We discover the latter in changed conditions; instead of a bride with boxes
and trunks which others bore, we see her a lonely woman with a basket and a bundle in
her own porterage, as at an earlier time
when she was no bride; instead of the ample means that were projected by her husband
for her comfort through this probationary period, she can produce only a flattened
purse.
After again leaving Marlott, her home, she had got through the spring and summer
without any great stress upon her physical powers, the time being mainly spent in
rendering light irregular service at dairy-
work near Port-Bredy to the west of the Blackmoor Valley, equally remote from her
native place and from Talbothays. She preferred this to living on his
allowance.
Mentally she remained in utter stagnation, a condition which the mechanical occupation
rather fostered than checked.
Her consciousness was at that other dairy, at that other season, in the presence of
the tender lover who had confronted her there--he who, the moment she had grasped
him to keep for her own, had disappeared like a shape in a vision.
The dairy-work lasted only till the milk began to lessen, for she had not met with a
second regular engagement as at Talbothays, but had done duty as a supernumerary only.
However, as harvest was now beginning, she had simply to remove from the pasture to
the stubble to find plenty of further occupation, and this continued till harvest
was done.
Of the five-and-twenty pounds which had remained to her of Clare's allowance, after
deducting the other half of the fifty as a contribution to her parents for the trouble
and expense to which she had put them, she had as yet spent but little.
But there now followed an unfortunate interval of wet weather, during which she
was obliged to fall back upon her sovereigns.
She could not bear to let them go.
Angel had put them into her hand, had obtained them bright and new from his bank
for her; his touch had consecrated them to souvenirs of himself--they appeared to have
had as yet no other history than such as
was created by his and her own experiences- -and to disperse them was like giving away
relics. But she had to do it, and one by one they
left her hands.
She had been compelled to send her mother her address from time to time, but she
concealed her circumstances. When her money had almost gone a letter
from her mother reached her.
Joan stated that they were in dreadful difficulty; the autumn rains had gone
through the thatch of the house, which required entire renewal; but this could not
be done because the previous thatching had never been paid for.
New rafters and a new ceiling upstairs also were required, which, with the previous
bill, would amount to a sum of twenty pounds.
As her husband was a man of means, and had doubtless returned by this time, could she
not send them the money?
Tess had thirty pounds coming to her almost immediately from Angel's bankers, and, the
case being so deplorable, as soon as the sum was received she sent the twenty as
requested.
Part of the remainder she was obliged to expend in winter clothing, leaving only a
nominal sum for the whole inclement season at hand.
When the last pound had gone, a remark of Angel's that whenever she required further
resources she was to apply to his father, remained to be considered.
But the more Tess thought of the step, the more reluctant was she to take it.
The same delicacy, pride, false shame, whatever it may be called, on Clare's
account, which had led her to hide from her own parents the prolongation of the
estrangement, hindered her owning to his
that she was in want after the fair allowance he had left her.
They probably despised her already; how much more they would despise her in the
character of a mendicant!
The consequence was that by no effort could the parson's daughter-in-law bring herself
to let him know her state.
Her reluctance to communicate with her husband's parents might, she thought,
lessen with the lapse of time; but with her own the reverse obtained.
On her leaving their house after the short visit subsequent to her marriage they were
under the impression that she was ultimately going to join her husband; and
from that time to the present she had done
nothing to disturb their belief that she was awaiting his return in comfort, hoping
against hope that his journey to Brazil would result in a short stay only, after
which he would come to fetch her, or that
he would write for her to join him; in any case that they would soon present a united
front to their families and the world. This hope she still fostered.
To let her parents know that she was a deserted wife, dependent, now that she had
relieved their necessities, on her own hands for a living, after the eclat of a
marriage which was to nullify the collapse
of the first attempt, would be too much indeed.
The set of brilliants returned to her mind.
Where Clare had deposited them she did not know, and it mattered little, if it were
true that she could only use and not sell them.
Even were they absolutely hers it would be passing mean to enrich herself by a legal
title to them which was not essentially hers at all.
Meanwhile her husband's days had been by no means free from trial.
At this moment he was lying ill of fever in the clay lands near Curitiba in Brazil,
having been drenched with thunder-storms and persecuted by other hardships, in
common with all the English farmers and
farm-labourers who, just at this time, were deluded into going thither by the promises
of the Brazilian Government, and by the baseless assumption that those frames
which, ploughing and sowing on English
uplands, had resisted all the weathers to whose moods they had been born, could
resist equally well all the weathers by which they were surprised on Brazilian
plains.
To return.
Thus it happened that when the last of Tess's sovereigns had been spent she was
unprovided with others to take their place, while on account of the season she found it
increasingly difficult to get employment.
Not being aware of the rarity of intelligence, energy, health, and
willingness in any sphere of life, she refrained from seeking an indoor
occupation; fearing towns, large houses,
people of means and social sophistication, and of manners other than rural.
From that direction of gentility Black Care had come.
Society might be better than she supposed from her slight experience of it.
But she had no proof of this, and her instinct in the circumstances was to avoid
its purlieus.
The small dairies to the west, beyond Port- Bredy, in which she had served as
supernumerary milkmaid during the spring and summer required no further aid.
Room would probably have been made for her at Talbothays, if only out of sheer
compassion; but comfortable as her life had been there, she could not go back.
The anti-climax would be too intolerable; and her return might bring reproach upon
her idolized husband.
She could not have borne their pity, and their whispered remarks to one another upon
her strange situation; though she would almost have faced a knowledge of her
circumstances by every individual there, so
long as her story had remained isolated in the mind of each.
It was the interchange of ideas about her that made her sensitiveness wince.
Tess could not account for this distinction; she simply knew that she felt
it.
She was now on her way to an upland farm in the centre of the county, to which she had
been recommended by a wandering letter which had reached her from Marian.
Marian had somehow heard that Tess was separated from her husband--probably
through Izz Huett--and the good-natured and now tippling girl, deeming Tess in trouble,
had hastened to notify to her former friend
that she herself had gone to this upland spot after leaving the dairy, and would
like to see her there, where there was room for other hands, if it was really true that
she worked again as of old.
With the shortening of the days all hope of obtaining her husband's forgiveness began
to leave her; and there was something of the habitude of the wild animal in the
unreflecting instinct with which she
rambled on--disconnecting herself by littles from her eventful past at every
step, obliterating her identity, giving no thought to accidents or contingencies which
might make a quick discovery of her
whereabouts by others of importance to her own happiness, if not to theirs.
Among the difficulties of her lonely position not the least was the attention
she excited by her appearance, a certain bearing of distinction, which she had
caught from Clare, being superadded to her natural attractiveness.
Whilst the clothes lasted which had been prepared for her marriage, these casual
glances of interest caused her no inconvenience, but as soon as she was
compelled to don the wrapper of a
fieldwoman, rude words were addressed to her more than once; but nothing occurred to
cause her bodily fear till a particular November afternoon.
She had preferred the country west of the River Brit to the upland farm for which she
was now bound, because, for one thing, it was nearer to the home of her husband's
father; and to hover about that region
unrecognized, with the notion that she might decide to call at the Vicarage some
day, gave her pleasure.
But having once decided to try the higher and drier levels, she pressed back
eastward, marching afoot towards the village of Chalk-Newton, where she meant to
pass the night.
The lane was long and unvaried, and, owing to the rapid shortening of the days, dusk
came upon her before she was aware.
She had reached the top of a hill down which the lane stretched its serpentine
length in glimpses, when she heard footsteps behind her back, and in a few
moments she was overtaken by a man.
He stepped up alongside Tess and said-- "Good night, my pretty maid": to which she
civilly replied.
The light still remaining in the sky lit up her face, though the landscape was nearly
dark. The man turned and stared hard at her.
"Why, surely, it is the young *** who was at Trantridge awhile-- young Squire
d'Urberville's friend? I was there at that time, though I don't
live there now."
She recognized in him the well-to-do boor whom Angel had knocked down at the inn for
addressing her coarsely. A spasm of anguish shot through her, and
she returned him no answer.
"Be honest enough to own it, and that what I said in the town was true, though your
fancy-man was so up about it--hey, my sly one?
You ought to beg my pardon for that blow of his, considering."
Still no answer came from Tess. There seemed only one escape for her hunted
soul.
She suddenly took to her heels with the speed of the wind, and, without looking
behind her, ran along the road till she came to a gate which opened directly into a
plantation.
Into this she plunged, and did not pause till she was deep enough in its shade to be
safe against any possibility of discovery.
Under foot the leaves were dry, and the foliage of some holly bushes which grew
among the deciduous trees was dense enough to keep off draughts.
She scraped together the dead leaves till she had formed them into a large heap,
making a sort of nest in the middle. Into this Tess crept.
Such sleep as she got was naturally fitful; she fancied she heard strange noises, but
persuaded herself that they were caused by the breeze.
She thought of her husband in some vague warm clime on the other side of the globe,
while she was here in the cold. Was there another such a wretched being as
she in the world?
Tess asked herself; and, thinking of her wasted life, said, "All is vanity."
She repeated the words mechanically, till she reflected that this was a most
inadequate thought for modern days.
Solomon had thought as far as that more than two thousand years ago; she herself,
though not in the van of thinkers, had got much further.
If all were only vanity, who would mind it?
All was, alas, worse than vanity-- injustice, punishment, exaction, death.
The wife of Angel Clare put her hand to her brow, and felt its curve, and the edges of
her eye-sockets perceptible under the soft skin, and thought as she did so that a time
would come when that bone would be bare.
"I wish it were now," she said. In the midst of these whimsical fancies she
heard a new strange sound among the leaves. It might be the wind; yet there was
scarcely any wind.
Sometimes it was a palpitation, sometimes a flutter; sometimes it was a sort of gasp or
gurgle.
Soon she was certain that the noises came from wild creatures of some kind, the more
so when, originating in the boughs overhead, they were followed by the fall of
a heavy body upon the ground.
Had she been ensconced here under other and more pleasant conditions she would have
become alarmed; but, outside humanity, she had at present no fear.
Day at length broke in the sky.
When it had been day aloft for some little while it became day in the wood.
Directly the assuring and prosaic light of the world's active hours had grown strong,
she crept from under her hillock of leaves, and looked around boldly.
Then she perceived what had been going on to disturb her.
The plantation wherein she had taken shelter ran down at this spot into a peak,
which ended it hitherward, outside the hedge being arable ground.
Under the trees several pheasants lay about, their rich plumage dabbled with
blood; some were dead, some feebly twitching a wing, some staring up at the
sky, some pulsating quickly, some
contorted, some stretched out--all of them writhing in agony, except the fortunate
ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature to bear
more.
Tess guessed at once the meaning of this.
The birds had been driven down into this corner the day before by some shooting-
party; and while those that had dropped dead under the shot, or had died before
nightfall, had been searched for and
carried off, many badly wounded birds had escaped and hidden themselves away, or
risen among the thick boughs, where they had maintained their position till they
grew weaker with loss of blood in the
night-time, when they had fallen one by one as she had heard them.
She had occasionally caught glimpses of these men in girlhood, looking over hedges,
or peeping through bushes, and pointing their guns, strangely accoutred, a
bloodthirsty light in their eyes.
She had been told that, rough and brutal as they seemed just then, they were not like
this all the year round, but were, in fact, quite civil persons save during certain
weeks of autumn and winter, when, like the
inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula, they ran amuck, and made it their purpose to
destroy life--in this case harmless feathered creatures, brought into being by
artificial means solely to gratify these
propensities--at once so unmannerly and so unchivalrous towards their weaker fellows
in Nature's teeming family.
With the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred sufferers as much as for
herself, Tess's first thought was to put the still living birds out of their
torture, and to this end with her own hands
she broke the necks of as many as she could find, leaving them to lie where she had
found them till the game-keepers should come--as they probably would come--to look
for them a second time.
"Poor darlings--to suppose myself the most miserable being on earth in the sight o'
such misery as yours!" she exclaimed, her tears running down as she killed the birds
tenderly.
"And not a twinge of bodily pain about me! I be not mangled, and I be not bleeding,
and I have two hands to feed and clothe me."
She was ashamed of herself for her gloom of the night, based on nothing more tangible
than a sense of condemnation under an arbitrary law of society which had no
foundation in Nature.