Tess of the D'urbervilles

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Title: Tess of the d'Urbervilles

A Pure Woman

Author: Thomas Hardy

Release Date: February, 1994 [eBook #110]

This edition 11 released June 17, 2005

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES***

E-text transcribed by Steve Menyhert, proof-read by Meredith Ricker and

John Hamm, and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.

TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES

A Pure Woman

Faithfully presented by

THOMAS HARDY

Contents

Phase the First: The Maiden, I-XI

Phase the Second: Maiden No More, XII-XV

Phase the Third: The Rally, XVI-XXIV

Phase the Fourth: The Consequence, XXV-XXXIV

Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays, XXXV-XLIV

Phase the Sixth: The Convert, XLV-LII

Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment, LIII-LIX

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 bosom plim? 'Twas on this account that your father rode home

in the vlee; not because he'd been drinking, as people supposed."

"I'm glad of that. Will it do us any good, mother?"

"O yes! 'Tis thoughted that great things may come o't. No doubt a

mampus of volk of our own rank will be down here in their carriages

as soon as 'tis known. Your father learnt it on his way hwome

from Shaston, and he has been telling me the whole pedigree of the

matter."

"Where is father now?" asked Tess suddenly.

Her mother gave irrelevant information by way of answer: "He called

to see the doctor to-day in Shaston. It is not consumption at all,

it seems. It is fat round his heart, 'a says. There, it is like

this." Joan Durbeyfield, as she spoke, curved a sodden thumb

and forefinger to the shape of the letter C, and used the other

forefinger as a pointer. "'At the present moment,' he says to your

father, 'your heart is enclosed all round there, and all round

there; this space is still open,' 'a says. 'As soon as it do

meet, so,'"--Mrs Durbeyfield closed her fingers into a circle

complete--"'off you will go like a shadder, Mr Durbeyfield,' 'a says.

'You mid last ten years; you mid go off in ten months, or ten days.'"

Tess looked alarmed. Her father possibly to go behind the eternal

cloud so soon, notwithstanding this sudden greatness!

"But where IS father?" she asked again.

Her mother put on a deprecating look. "Now don't you be bursting out

angry! The poor man--he felt so rafted after his uplifting by the

pa'son's news--that he went up to Rolliver's half an hour ago. He do

want to get up his strength for his journey to-morrow with that load

of beehives, which must be delivered, family or no. He'll have to

start shortly after twelve to-night, as the distance is so long."

"Get up his strength!" said Tess impetuously, the tears welling to

her eyes. "O my God! Go to a public-house to get up his strength!

And you as well agreed as he, mother!"

Her rebuke and her mood seemed to fill the whole room, and to impart

a cowed look to the furniture, and candle, and children playing

about, and to her mother's face.

"No," said the latter touchily, "I be not agreed. I have been

waiting for 'ee to bide and keep house while I go 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 queer."

"But she's tractable at bottom. Leave her to me."

Though this conversation had been private, sufficient of its import

reached the understandings of those around to suggest to them that

the Durbeyfields had weightier concerns to talk of now than common

folks had, and that Tess, their pretty eldest daughter, had fine

prospects in store.

"Tess is a fine figure o' fun, as I said to myself 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 erection--indeed almost new--and of the same rich

red colour that formed such a contrast with the evergreens of the

lodge. Far behind the corner of the house--which rose like a

geranium bloom against the subdued colours around--stretched the soft

azure landscape of The Chase--a truly venerable tract of forest land,

one of the few remaining woodlands in England of undoubted primaeval

date, wherein Druidical mistletoe was still found on aged oaks, and

where enormous yew-trees, not planted by the hand of man grew as

they had grown when they were pollarded for bows. All this sylvan

antiquity, however, though visible from The Slopes, was outside the

immediate boundaries of the estate.

Everything on this snug property was bright, thriving, and well kept;

acres of glass-houses stretched down the inclines to the copses at

their feet. Everything looked like money--like the last coin issued

from the Mint. The stables, partly screened by Austrian pines

and evergreen oaks, and fitted with every late appliance, were

as dignified as Chapels-of-Ease. On the extensive lawn stood an

ornamental tent, its door being towards her.

Simple Tess Durbeyfield stood at gaze, in a half-alarmed attitude,

on the edge of the gravel sweep. Her feet had brought her onward to

this point before she had quite realized where she was; and now all

was contrary to her expectation.

"I thought we were an old family; but this is all new!" she said, in

her artlessness. She wished that she had not fallen in so readily

with her mother's plans for "claiming kin," and had endeavoured to

gain assistance nearer home.

The d'Urbervilles--or Stoke-d'Urbervilles, as they at first called

themselves--who owned all this, were a somewhat unusual family to

find in such an old-fashioned part of the country. Parson Tringham

had spoken truly when he said that our shambling John Durbeyfield was

the only really lineal representative of the old d'Urberville family

existing in the county, or near it; he might have added, what he knew

very well, that the Stoke-d'Urbervilles were no more d'Urbervilles of

the true tree 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

bosom. She obeyed like one in a dream, and when she could affix no

more he himself tucked a bud or two into her hat, and heaped her

basket with others in the prodigality of his bounty. At last,

looking at his watch, he said, "Now, by the time you have had

something to eat, it will be time for you to leave, if you want to

catch the carrier to Shaston. Come here, and I'll see what grub I

can find."

Stoke d'Urberville took her back to the lawn and into the tent, where

he left her, soon reappearing with a basket of light luncheon, which

he put before her himself. It was evidently the gentleman's wish not

to be disturbed in this pleasant _tкte-а-tкte_ by the servantry.

"Do you mind my smoking?" he asked.

"Oh, not at all, sir."

He watched her pretty and unconscious munching through the skeins of

smoke that pervaded the tent, and Tess Durbeyfield did not divine,

as she innocently looked down at the roses in her bosom, that there

behind the blue narcotic haze was potentially the "tragic mischief"

of her drama--one who stood fair to be the blood-red ray in the

spectrum of her young life. She had an attribute which amounted

to a disadvantage just now; and it was 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 breasts; 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 spick-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

queer temper."

"Who?"

"Why, this mare. I fancy she looked round at me in a very grim way

just then. Didn't you notice it?"

"Don't try to frighten me, sir," said Tess stiffly.

"Well, I don't. If any living man can manage this horse I can: I

won't say any living man can do it--but if such has the power, I am

he."

"Why do you have such a horse?"

"Ah, well may you ask it! It was my fate, I suppose. Tib has killed

one chap; and just after I bought her she nearly killed me. And

then, take my word for it, I nearly killed her. But she's touchy

still, very touchy; and one's life is hardly safe behind her

sometimes."

They were just beginning to descend; and it was evident that the

horse, whether of her own will or of his (the latter being the more

likely), knew so well the reckless performance expected of her that

she hardly required a hint from behind.

Down, down, they sped, the wheels humming like a top, the dog-cart

rocking right and left, its axis acquiring a slightly oblique set

in relation to the line of progress; the figure of the horse rising

and falling in undulations before them. Sometimes a wheel was off

the ground, it seemed, for many yards; sometimes a stone was sent

spinning over the hedge, and flinty sparks from the horse's hoofs

outshone the daylight. The aspect of the straight road enlarged with

their advance, the two banks dividing like a splitting stick; one

rushing past at each shoulder.

The wind blew through Tess's white muslin to her very skin, and her

washed hair flew out behind. She was determined to show no open

fear, but she clutched d'Urberville's rein-arm.

"Don't touch my arm! We shall be thrown out if you do! Hold on

round my waist!"

She grasped his waist, and so they reached the bottom.

"Safe, thank God, in spite of your fooling!" said she, her face on

fire.

"Tess--fie! that's temper!" said d'Urberville.

"'Tis truth."

"Well, you need not let go your hold of me so thanklessly the moment

you feel yourself 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 hussy! Now, tell me--didn't you make that hat blow off

on purpose? I'll swear you did!"

Her strategic silence confirmed his suspicion.

Then d'Urberville cursed and swore at her, and called her everything

he could think of for the trick. Turning the horse suddenly he tried

to drive back upon her, and so hem her in between the gig and the

hedge. But he could not do this short of injuring her.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself for using such wicked words!"

cried Tess with spirit, from the top of the hedge into which she had

scrambled. "I don't like 'ee at all! I hate and detest you! I'll

go back to mother, I will!"

D'Urberville's bad temper cleared up at sight of hers; and he laughed

heartily.

"Well, I like you all the better," he said. "Come, let there be

peace. I'll never do it any more against your will. My life upon

it now!"

Still Tess could not be induced to remount. She did not, however,

object to his keeping his gig alongside her; and in this manner, at

a slow pace, they advanced towards the village of Trantridge. From

time to time d'Urberville exhibited a sort of fierce distress at

the sight of the tramping he had driven her to undertake by his

misdemeanour. She might in truth have safely trusted him now; but he

had forfeited her confidence for the time, and she kept on the ground

progressing thoughtfully, as if wondering whether it would be wiser

to return home. Her resolve, however, had been taken, and it seemed

vacillating even to childishness to abandon it now, unless for graver

reasons. How could she face her parents, get back her box, and

disconcert the whole scheme for the rehabilitation of her family on

such sentimental grounds?

A few minutes later the chimneys of The Slopes appeared in view, and

in a snug nook to the right the poultry-farm and cottage of Tess'

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 cocks in wildest

fashion.

The garden in which the cottage stood was surrounded by a wall, and

could only be entered through a door.

When Tess had occupied herself about an hour the next morning in

altering and improving the arrangements, according to her skilled

ideas as the daughter of a professed poulterer, the door in the wall

opened and a servant in white cap and apron entered. She had come

from the manor-house.

"Mrs d'Urberville wants the fowls as usual," she said; but perceiving

that Tess did not quite understand, she explained, "Mis'ess is a old

lady, and blind."

"Blind!" said Tess.

Almost before her misgiving at the news could find time to shape

itself she took, under her companion's direction, two of the

most beautiful of the Hamburghs in her arms, and followed the

maid-servant, who had likewise taken two, to the adjacent mansion,

which, though ornate and imposing, showed traces everywhere on this

side that some occupant of its chambers could bend to the love of

dumb creatures--feathers floating within view of the front, and

hen-coops standing on the grass.

In a sitting-room on the ground-floor, ensconced in an armchair with

her back to the light, was the owner and mistress of the estate, a

white-haired woman of not more than sixty, or even less, wearing a

large cap. She had the mobile face frequent in those whose sight

has decayed by stages, has been laboriously striven after, and

reluctantly let go, rather than the stagnant mien apparent in persons

long sightless or born blind. Tess walked up to this lady with her

feathered charges--one sitting on each arm.

"Ah, you are the young woman come to look after my birds?" said Mrs

d'Urberville, recognizing a new footstep. "I hope you will be kind

to them. My bailiff tells me you are quite the proper person.

Well, where are they? Ah, this is Strut! But he is hardly so

lively 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 cocks, their wings, and their claws.

Her touch enabled her to recognize them in a moment, and to discover

if a single feather were crippled or 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 cocks and hens

had been submitted to the old woman--Hamburghs, Bantams, Cochins,

Brahmas, Dorkings, and such other sorts as were in fashion just

then--her perception of each visitor being seldom at fault as she

received the bird upon her knees.

It reminded Tess of a Confirmation, in which Mrs d'Urberville was the

bishop, the fowls the young people presented, and herself and the

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 cocks and hens here were not enough

work for any girl. I would flatly refuse, if I were you."

"But she wants me particularly to do it, and to be ready by to-morrow

morning."

"Does she? Well then--I'll give you a lesson or two."

"Oh no, you won't!" said Tess, withdrawing towards the door.

"Nonsense; I don't want to touch you. See--I'll stand on this side

of the wire-netting, and you can keep on the other; so you may feel

quite safe. Now, look here; you screw up your lips too harshly.

There 'tis--so."

He suited the action to the word, and whistled a line of "Take, O

take those lips away." But the allusion was lost upon Tess.

"Now try," said d'Urberville.

She attempted to look reserved; her face put on a sculptural

severity. But he persisted in his demand, and at last, to get rid of

him, she did put up her lips as directed for producing a clear note;

laughing distressfully, however, and then blushing with vexation that

she had laughed.

He encouraged her with "Try again!"

Tess was quite serious, painfully serious by this time; and she

tried--ultimately and unexpectedly emitting a real round sound.

The momentary pleasure of success got the better of her; her eyes

enlarged, and she involuntarily smiled in his face.

"That's it! Now I have started you--you'll go on beautifully.

There--I said I would not come near you; and, in spite of such

temptation as never before fell to mortal man, I'll keep my

word... Tess, do you think my mother a queer old soul?"

"I don't know much of her yet, sir."

"You'll find her so; she must be, to make you learn to whistle to her

bullfinches. I am rather out of her books just now, but you will be

quite in favour if you treat her live-stock well. Good morning. If

you meet with any difficulties and want help here, don't go to the

bailiff, come to me."

It was in the economy of this _rйgime_ 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 erection used for storage, and from the open door

there floated into the obscurity a mist of yellow radiance, which at

first Tess thought to be illuminated smoke. But on drawing nearer

she perceived that it was a cloud of dust, lit by 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 over it upon her elbows.

The laughter rang louder; they clung to the gate, to the posts,

rested on their staves, in the weakness engendered by their

convulsions at the spectacle of Car. Our heroine, who had hitherto

held her peace, at this wild moment could not help joining in with

the rest.

It was a misfortune--in more ways than one. No sooner did the dark

queen hear the soberer richer note of Tess among those of the other

work-people than a long-smouldering sense of rivalry inflamed her to

madness. She sprang to her feet and closely faced the object of her

dislike.

"How darest th' laugh at me, hussy!" she cried.

"I couldn't really help it when t'others did," apologized Tess,

still tittering.

"Ah, th'st think th' beest everybody, dostn't, because th' beest

first favourite with He just now! But stop a bit, my lady, stop a

bit! I'm as good as two of such! Look here--here's at 'ee!"

To Tess's horror the dark queen began stripping off the bodice of

her gown--which for the added reason of its ridiculed condition she

was only too glad to be free of--till she had bared her plump neck,

shoulders, and arms to the moonshine, under which they looked as

luminous and beautiful as some Praxitelean creation, in their

possession of the faultless rotundities of a lusty country-girl.

She closed her fists and squared up at Tess.

"Indeed, then, I shall not fight!" said the latter majestically; "and

if I had know you was of that sort, I wouldn't have so let myself

down as to come with such a whorage as this is!"

The rather too inclusive speech brought down a torrent of

vituperation from other quarters upon fair Tess's unlucky head,

particularly from the Queen of Diamonds, who having stood in the

relations to d'Urberville that Car had also been suspected of, united

with the latter against the common enemy. Several other women also

chimed in, with an animus which none of them would have been so

fatuous as to show but for the rollicking evening they had passed.

Thereupon, finding Tess unfairly browbeaten, the husbands and lovers

tried to make peace by defending her; but the result of that attempt

was directly to increase the war.

Tess was indignant and ashamed. She no longer minded the loneliness

of the way and the lateness of the hour; her one object was to get

away from the whole crew as soon as possible. She knew well enough

that the better among them would repent of their passion next day.

They were all now inside the field, and she was edging back to rush

off alone when a horseman emerged almost silently from the corner of

the hedge that screened the road, and Alec d'Urberville looked round

upon them.

"What the devil is all this row about, work-folk?" he asked.

The explanation was not readily forthcoming; and, in truth, he did

not require any. Having heard their voices while yet some way off he

had ridden creepingly forward, and learnt enough to satisfy himself.

Tess was standing apart from the rest, near the gate. He bent over

towards her. "Jump up behind me," he whispered, "and we'll get shot

of the screaming cats in a jiffy!"

She felt almost ready to faint, so vivid was her sense of the crisis.

At almost any other moment of her life she would have refused such

proffered aid and company, as she had refused them several times

before; and now the loneliness would not of itself have forced her

to do otherwise. But coming as the invitation did at the particular

juncture when fear and indignation at these adversaries could be

transformed by a spring of the foot into a triumph over them, she

abandoned herself to her impulse, climbed the gate, put her toe upon

his instep, and scrambled into the saddle behind him. The pair were

speeding away into the distant gray by the time that the contentious

revellers became aware of what had happened.

The Queen of Spades forgot the stain on her bodice, and stood

beside the Queen of Diamonds and the new-married, staggering young

woman--all with a gaze of fixity in the direction in which the

horse's tramp was diminishing into silence on the road.

"What be ye looking at?" asked a man who had not observed the

incident.

"Ho-ho-ho!" laughed dark Car.

"Hee-hee-hee!" laughed the tippling bride, as she steadied herself on

the arm of her fond husband.

"Heu-heu-heu!" laughed dark Car's mother, stroking her moustache as

she explained laconically: "Out of the frying-pan into the fire!"

Then these children of the open air, whom even excess of alcohol

could scarce injure permanently, betook themselves to the field-path;

and as they went there moved onward with them, around the shadow of

each one's head, a circle of opalized light, formed by the moon's

rays upon the glistening sheet of dew. Each pedestrian could see

no halo but his or her own, which never deserted the head-shadow,

whatever its vulgar unsteadiness might be; but adhered to it, and

persistently beautified it; till the erratic motions seemed an

inherent part of the irradiation, and the fumes of their breathing

a component of the night's mist; and the spirit of the scene, and

of the moonlight, and of Nature, seemed harmoniously to mingle with

the spirit of wine.

XI

The twain cantered along for some time without speech, Tess as she

clung to him still panting in her triumph, yet in other respects

dubious. She had perceived that the horse was not the spirited one

he sometimes rose, and felt no alarm on that score, though her seat

was precarious enough despite her tight hold of him. She begged him

to slow the animal to a walk, which Alec accordingly did.

"Neatly done, was it not, dear Tess?" he said by and by.

"Yes!" said she. "I am sure I ought to be much obliged to you."

"And are you?"

She did not reply.

"Tess, why do you always dislike my kissing you?"

"I suppose--because I don't love you."

"You are quite sure?"

"I am angry with you sometimes!"

"Ah, I half feared as much." Nevertheless, Alec did not object to

that confession. He knew that anything was better then frigidity.

"Why haven't you told me when I have made you angry?"

"You know very well why. Because I cannot help myself here."

"I haven't offended you often by love-making?"

"You have sometimes."

"How many times?"

"You know as well as I--too many times."

"Every time I have tried?"

She was silent, and the horse ambled along for a considerable

distance, till a faint luminous fog, which had hung in the hollows

all the evening, became general and enveloped them. It seemed to

hold the moonlight in suspension, rendering it more pervasive than in

clear air. Whether on this account, or from absent-mindedness, or

from sleepiness, she did not perceive that they had long ago passed

the point at which the lane to Trantridge branched from the highway,

and that her conductor had not taken the Trantridge track.

She was inexpressibly weary. She had risen at five o'clock every

morning of that week, had been on foot the whole of each day, and on

this evening had in addition walked the three miles to Chaseborough,

waited three hours for her neighbours without eating or drinking,

her impatience to start them preventing either; she had then walked

a mile of the way home, and had undergone the excitement of the

quarrel, till, with the slow progress of their steed, it was now

nearly one o'clock. Only once, however, was she overcome by actual

drowsiness. In that moment of oblivion her head sank gently against

him.

D'Urberville stopped the horse, withdrew his feet from the stirrups,

turned sideways on the saddle, and enclosed her waist with his arm to

support her.

This immediately put her on the defensive, and with one of those

sudden impulses of reprisal to which she was liable she gave him a

little push from her. In his ticklish position he nearly lost his

balance and only just avoided rolling over into the road, the horse,

though a powerful one, being fortunately the quietest he rode.

"That is devilish unkind!" he said. "I mean no harm--only to keep

you from falling."

She pondered suspiciously, till, thinking that this might after all

be true, she relented, and said quite humbly, "I beg your pardon,

sir."

"I won't pardon you unless you show some confidence in me. Good

God!" he burst out, "what am I, to be repulsed so by a mere chit like

you? For near three mortal months have you trifled with my feelings,

eluded me, and snubbed me; and I won't stand it!"

"I'll leave you to-morrow, sir."

"No, you will not leave me to-morrow! Will you, I ask once more,

show your belief in me by letting me clasp you with my arm? Come,

between us two and nobody else, now. We know each other well; and

you know that I love you, and think you the prettiest girl in the

world, which you are. Mayn't I treat you as a lover?"

She drew a quick pettish breath of objection, writhing uneasily on

her seat, looked far ahead, and murmured, "I don't know--I wish--how

can I say yes or no when--"

He settled the matter by clasping his arm round her as he desired,

and Tess expressed no further negative. Thus they sidled

slowly onward till it struck her they had been advancing for an

unconscionable time--far longer than was usually occupied by the

short journey from Chaseborough, even at this walking pace, and

that they were no longer on hard road, but in a mere trackway.

"Why, where be we?" she exclaimed.

"Passing by a wood."

"A wood--what wood? Surely we are quite out of the road?"

"A bit of The Chase--the oldest wood in England. It is a lovely

night, and why should we not prolong our ride a little?"

"How could you be so treacherous!" said Tess, between archness and

real dismay, and getting rid of his arm by pulling open his fingers

one by one, though at the risk of slipping off herself. "Just when

I've been putting such trust in you, and obliging you to please you,

because I thought I had wronged you by that push! Please set me

down, and let me walk home."

"You cannot walk home, darling, even if the air were clear. We are

miles away from Trantridge, if I must tell you, and in this growing

fog you might wander for hours among these trees."

"Never mind that," she coaxed. "Put me down, I beg you. I don't

mind where it is; only let me get down, sir, please!"

"Very well, then, I will--on one condition. Having brought you

here to this out-of-the-way place, I feel myself responsible for

your safe-conduct home, whatever you may yourself feel about it.

As to your getting to Trantridge without assistance, it is quite

impossible; for, to tell the truth, dear, owing to this fog, which so

disguises everything, I don't quite know where we are myself. Now,

if you will promise to wait beside the horse while I walk through the

bushes till I come to some road or house, and ascertain exactly our

whereabouts, I'll deposit you here willingly. When I come back I'll

give you full directions, and if you insist upon walking you may; or

you may ride--at your pleasure."

She accepted these terms, and slid off on the near side, though not

till he had stolen a cursory kiss. He sprang down on the other side.

"I suppose I must hold the horse?" said she.

"Oh no; it's not necessary," replied Alec, patting the panting

creature. "He's had enough of it for to-night."

He turned the horse's head into the bushes, hitched him on to a

bough, and made a sort of couch or nest for her in the deep mass of

dead leaves.

"Now, you sit there," he said. "The leaves have not got damp as yet.

Just give an eye to the horse--it will be quite sufficient."

He took a few steps away from her, but, returning, said, "By the bye,

Tess, your father has a new cob to-day. Somebody gave it to him."

"Somebody? You!"

D'Urberville nodded.

"O how very good of you that is!" she exclaimed, with a painful sense

of the awkwardness of having to thank him just then.

"And the children have some toys."

"I didn't know--you ever sent them anything!" she murmured, much

moved. "I almost wish you had not--yes, I almost wish it!"

"Why, dear?"

"It--hampers me so."

"Tessy--don't you love me ever so little now?"

"I'm grateful," she reluctantly admitted. "But I fear I do not--"

The sudden vision of his passion for herself as a factor in this

result so distressed her that, beginning with one slow tear, and

then following with another, she wept outright.

"Don't cry, dear, dear one! Now sit down here, and wait till I

come." She passively sat down amid the leaves he had heaped, and

shivered slightly. "Are you cold?" he asked.

"Not very--a little."

He touched her with his fingers, which sank into her as into down.

"You have only that puffy muslin dress on--how's that?"

"It's my best summer one. 'Twas very warm when I started, and I

didn't know I was going to ride, and that it would be night."

"Nights grow chilly in September. Let me see." He pulled off a

light overcoat that he had worn, and put it round her tenderly.

"That's it--now you'll feel warmer," he continued. "Now, my pretty,

rest there; I shall soon be back again."

Having buttoned the overcoat round her shoulders he plunged into the

webs of vapour which by this time formed veils between the trees.

She could hear the rustling of the branches as he ascended the

adjoining slope, till his movements were no louder than the hopping

of a bird, and finally died away. With the setting of the moon the

pale light lessened, and Tess became invisible as she fell into

reverie upon the leaves where he had left her.

In the meantime Alec d'Urberville had pushed on up the slope to clear

his genuine doubt as to the quarter of The Chase they were in. He

had, in fact, ridden quite at random for over an hour, taking any

turning that came to hand in order to prolong companionship with her,

and giving far more attention to Tess's moonlit person than to any

wayside object. A little rest for the jaded animal being desirable,

he did not hasten his search for landmarks. A clamber over the

hill into the adjoining vale brought him to the fence of a highway

whose contours he recognized, which settled the question of their

whereabouts. D'Urberville thereupon turned back; but by this time

the moon had quite gone down, and partly on account of the fog The

Chase was wrapped in thick darkness, although morning was not far

off. He was obliged to advance with outstretched hands to avoid

contact with the boughs, and discovered that to hit the exact spot

from which he had started was at first entirely beyond him. Roaming

up and down, round and round, he at length heard a slight movement of

the horse close at hand; and the sleeve of his overcoat unexpectedly

caught his foot.

"Tess!" said d'Urberville.

There was no answer. The obscurity was now so great that he could

see absolutely nothing but a pale nebulousness at his feet, which

represented the white muslin figure he had left upon the dead leaves.

Everything else was blackness alike. D'Urberville stooped; and heard

a gentle regular breathing. He knelt and bent lower, till her breath

warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers.

She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered

tears.

Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Above them rose the

primeval yews and oaks of The Chase, in which there poised gentle

roosting birds in their last nap; and about them stole the hopping

rabbits and hares. But, might some say, where was Tess's guardian

angel? where was the providence of her simple faith? Perhaps, like

that other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking,

or he was pursuing, or he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and

not to be awaked.

Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as

gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have

been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why

so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the

woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical

philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order. One may,

indeed, admit the possibility of a retribution lurking in the present

catastrophe. Doubtless some of Tess d'Urberville's mailed ancestors

rollicking home from a fray had dealt the same measure even more

ruthlessly towards peasant girls of their time. But though to visit

the sins of the fathers upon the children may be a morality good

enough for divinities, it is scorned by average human nature; and it

therefore does not mend the matter.

As Tess's own people down in those retreats are never tired of saying

among each other in their fatalistic way: "It was to be." There

lay the pity of it. An immeasurable social chasm was to divide our

heroine's personality thereafter from that previous self of hers

who stepped from her mother's door to try her fortune at Trantridge

poultry-farm.

END OF PHASE THE FIRST

Phase the Second: Maiden No More

XII

The basket was heavy and the bundle was large, but she lugged them

along like a person who did not find her especial burden in material

things. Occasionally she stopped to rest in a mechanical way by some

gate or post; and then, giving the baggage another hitch upon her

full round arm, went steadily on again.

It was a Sunday morning in late October, about four months after Tess

Durbeyfield's arrival at Trantridge, and some few weeks subsequent to

the night ride in The Chase. The time was not long past daybreak,

and the yellow luminosity upon the horizon behind her back lighted

the ridge towards which her face was set--the barrier of the vale

wherein she had of late been a stranger--which she would have to

climb over to reach her birthplace. The ascent was gradual on this

side, and the soil and scenery differed much from those within

Blakemore Vale. Even the character and accent of the two peoples

had shades of difference, despite the amalgamating effects of a

roundabout railway; so that, though less than twenty miles from the

place of her sojourn at Trantridge, her native village had seemed a

far-away spot. The field-folk shut in there traded northward and

westward, travelled, courted, and married northward and westward,

thought northward and westward; those on this side mainly directed

their energies and attention to the east and south.

The incline was the same down which d'Urberville had driven her so

wildly on that day in June. Tess went up the remainder of its length

without stopping, and on reaching the edge of the escarpment gazed

over the familiar green world beyond, now half-veiled in mist. It

was always beautiful from here; it was terribly beautiful to Tess

to-day, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the

serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing, and her views of life had

been totally changed for her by the lesson. Verily another girl than

the simple one she had been at home was she who, bowed by thought,

stood still here, and turned to look behind her. She could not bear

to look forward into the Vale.

Ascending by the long white road that Tess herself had just laboured

up, she saw a two-wheeled vehicle, beside which walked a man, who

held up his hand to attract her attention.

She obeyed the signal to wait for him with unspeculative repose, and

in a few minutes man and horse stopped beside her.

"Why did you slip away by stealth like this?" said d'Urberville, with

upbraiding breathlessness; "on a Sunday morning, too, when people

were all in bed! I only discovered it by accident, and I have been

driving like the deuce to overtake you. Just look at the mare. Why

go off like this? You know that nobody wished to hinder your going.

And how unnecessary it has been for you to toil along on foot, and

encumber yourself with this heavy load! I have followed like a

madman, simply to drive you the rest of the distance, if you won't

come back."

"I shan't come back," said she.

"I thought you wouldn't--I said so! Well, then, put up your basket,

and let me help you on."

She listlessly placed her basket and bundle within the dog-cart, and

stepped up, and they sat side by side. She had no fear of him now,

and in the cause of her confidence her sorrow lay.

D'Urberville mechanically lit a cigar, and the journey was continued

with broken unemotional conversation on the commonplace objects by

the wayside. He had quite forgotten his struggle to kiss her when,

in the early summer, they had driven in the opposite direction along

the same road. But she had not, and she sat now, like a puppet,

replying to his remarks in monosyllables. After some miles they came

in view of the clump of trees beyond which the village of Marlott

stood. It was only then that her still face showed the least

emotion, a tear or two beginning to trickle down.

"What are you crying for?" he coldly asked.

"I was only thinking that I was born over there," murmured Tess.

"Well--we must all be born somewhere."

"I wish I had never been born--there or anywhere else!"

"Pooh! Well, if you didn't wish to come to Trantridge why did you

come?"

She did not reply.

"You didn't come for love of me, that I'll swear."

"'Tis quite true. If I had gone for love o' you, if I had ever

sincerely loved you, if I loved you still, I should not so loathe and

hate myself for my weakness as I do now! ... My eyes were dazed by

you for a little, and that was all."

He shrugged his shoulders. She resumed--

"I didn't understand your meaning till it was too late."

"That's what every woman says."

"How can you dare to use such words!" she cried, turning impetuously

upon him, her eyes flashing as the latent spirit (of which he was to

see more some day) awoke in her. "My God! I could knock you out of

the gig! Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says

some women may feel?"

"Very well," he said, laughing; "I am sorry to wound you. I did

wrong--I admit it." He dropped into some little bitterness as he

continued: "Only you needn't be so everlastingly flinging it in my

face. I am ready to pay to the uttermost farthing. You know you

need not work in the fields or the dairies again. You know you may

clothe yourself with the best, instead of in the bald plain way you

have lately affected, as if you couldn't get a ribbon more than you

earn."

Her lip lifted slightly, though there was little scorn, as a rule,

in her large and impulsive nature.

"I have said I will not take anything more from you, and I will

not--I cannot! I SHOULD be your creature to go on doing that, and

I won't!"

"One would think you were a princess from your manner, in addition

to a true and original d'Urberville--ha! ha! Well, Tess, dear, I

can say no more. I suppose I am a bad fellow--a damn bad fellow.

I was born bad, and I have lived bad, and I shall die bad in all

probability. But, upon my lost soul, I won't be bad towards you

again, Tess. And if certain circumstances should arise--you

understand--in which you are in the least need, the least difficulty,

send me one line, and you shall have by return whatever you require.

I may not be at Trantridge--I am going to London for a time--I can't

stand the old woman. But all letters will be forwarded."

She said that she did not wish him to drive her further, and they

stopped just under the clump of trees. D'Urberville alighted, and

lifted her down bodily in his arms, afterwards placing her articles

on the ground beside her. She bowed to him slightly, her eye just

lingering in his; and then she turned to take the parcels for

departure.

Alec d'Urberville removed his cigar, bent towards her, and said--

"You are not going to turn away like that, dear! Come!"

"If you wish," she answered indifferently. "See how you've mastered

me!"

She thereupon turned round and lifted her face to his, and remained

like a marble term while he imprinted a kiss upon her cheek--half

perfunctorily, half as if zest had not yet quite died out. Her eyes

vaguely rested upon the remotest trees in the lane while the kiss was

given, as though she were nearly unconscious of what he did.

"Now the other side, for old acquaintance' sake."

She turned her head in the same passive way, as one might turn at the

request of a sketcher or hairdresser, and he kissed the other side,

his lips touching cheeks that were damp and smoothly chill as the

skin of the mushrooms in the fields around.

"You don't give me your mouth and kiss me back. You never willingly

do that--you'll never love me, I fear."

"I have said so, often. It is true. I have never really and truly

loved you, and I think I never can." She added mournfully, "Perhaps,

of all things, a lie on this thing would do the most good to me now;

but I have honour enough left, little as 'tis, not to tell that lie.

If I did love you, I may have the best o' causes for letting you know

it. But I don't."

He emitted a laboured breath, as if the scene were getting rather

oppressive to his heart, or to his conscience, or to his gentility.

"Well, you are absurdly melancholy, Tess. I have no

reason for flattering you now, and I can say plainly

that you need not be so sad. You can hold your own for

beauty against any woman of these parts, gentle or

simple; I say it to you as a practical man and

well-wisher. If you are wise you will show it to the

world more than you do before it fades... And yet,

Tess, will you come back to me! Upon my soul, I don't

like to let you go like this!"

"Never, never! I made up my mind as soon as I saw--what I ought to

have seen sooner; and I won't come."

"Then good morning, my four months' cousin--good-bye!"

He leapt up lightly, arranged the reins, and was gone between the

tall red-berried hedges.

Tess did not look after him, but slowly wound along the crooked lane.

It was still early, and though the sun's lower limb was just free of

the hill, his rays, ungenial and peering, addressed the eye rather

than the touch as yet. There was not a human soul near. Sad October

and her sadder self seemed the only two existences haunting that

lane.

As she walked, however, some footsteps approached behind her, the

footsteps of a man; and owing to the briskness of his advance he was

close at her heels and had said "Good morning" before she had been

long aware of his propinquity. He appeared to be an artisan of some

sort, and carried a tin pot of red paint in his hand. He asked

in a business-like manner if he should take her basket, which she

permitted him to do, walking beside him.

"It is early to be astir this Sabbath morn!" he said cheerfully.

"Yes," said Tess.

"When most people are at rest from their week's work."

She also assented to this.

"Though I do more real work to-day than all the week besides."

"Do you?"

"All the week I work for the glory of man, and on Sunday for the

glory of God. That's more real than the other--hey? I have a little

to do here at this stile." The man turned, as he spoke, to an

opening at the roadside leading into a pasture. "If you'll wait a

moment," he added, "I shall not be long."

As he had her basket she could not well do otherwise; and she waited,

observing him. He set down her basket and the tin pot, and stirring

the paint with the brush that was in it began painting large square

letters on the middle board of the three composing the stile, placing

a comma after each word, as if to give pause while that word was

driven well home to the reader's heart--

THY, DAMNATION, SLUMBERETH, NOT.

2 Pet. ii. 3.

Against the peaceful landscape, the pale, decaying tints of the

copses, the blue air of the horizon, and the lichened stile-boards,

these staring vermilion words shone forth. They seemed to shout

themselves out and make the atmosphere ring. Some people might have

cried "Alas, poor Theology!" at the hideous defacement--the last

grotesque phase of a creed which had served mankind well in its time.

But the words entered Tess with accusatory horror. It was as if this

man had known her recent history; yet he was a total stranger.

Having finished his text he picked up her basket, and she

mechanically resumed her walk beside him.

"Do you believe what you paint?" she asked in low tones.

"Believe that tex? Do I believe in my own existence!"

"But," said she tremulously, "suppose your sin was not of your own

seeking?"

He shook his head.

"I cannot split hairs on that burning query," he said. "I have

walked hundreds of miles this past summer, painting these texes on

every wall, gate, and stile the length and breadth of this district.

I leave their application to the hearts of the people who read 'em."

"I think they are horrible," said Tess. "Crushing! Killing!"

"That's what they are meant to be!" he replied in a trade voice.

"But you should read my hottest ones--them I kips for slums and

seaports. They'd make ye wriggle! Not but what this is a very good

tex for rural districts. ... Ah--there's a nice bit of blank wall up

by that barn standing to waste. I must put one there--one that it

will be good for dangerous young females like yerself to heed. Will

ye wait, missy?"

"No," said she; and taking her basket Tess trudged on. A little way

forward she turned her head. The old gray wall began to advertise

a similar fiery lettering to the first, with a strange and unwonted

mien, as if distressed at duties it had never before been called upon

to perform. It was with a sudden flush that she read and realized

what was to be the inscription he was now halfway through--

THOU, SHALT, NOT, COMMIT--

Her cheerful friend saw her looking, stopped his brush, and shouted--

"If you want to ask for edification on these things of moment,

there's a very earnest good man going to preach a charity-sermon

to-day in the parish you are going to--Mr Clare of Emminster. I'm

not of his persuasion now, but he's a good man, and he'll expound as

well as any parson I know. 'Twas he began the work in me."

But Tess did not answer; she throbbingly resumed her walk, her eyes

fixed on the ground. "Pooh--I don't believe God said such things!"

she murmured contemptuously when her flush had died away.

A plume of smoke soared up suddenly from her father's chimney, the

sight of which made her heart ache. The aspect of the interior, when

she reached it, made her heart ache more. Her mother, who had just

come down stairs, turned to greet her from the fireplace, where she

was kindling barked-oak twigs under the breakfast kettle. The young

children were still above, as was also her father, it being Sunday

morning, when he felt justified in lying an additional half-hour.

"Well!--my dear Tess!" exclaimed her surprised mother, jumping up and

kissing the girl. "How be ye? I didn't see you till you was in upon

me! Have you come home to be married?"

"No, I have not come for that, mother."

"Then for a holiday?"

"Yes--for a holiday; for a long holiday," said Tess.

"What, isn't your cousin going to do the handsome thing?"

"He's not my cousin, and he's not going to marry me."

Her mother eyed her narrowly.

"Come, you have not told me all," she said.

Then Tess went up to her mother, put her face upon Joan's neck, and

told.

"And yet th'st not got him to marry 'ee!" reiterated her mother. "Any

woman would have done it but you, after that!"

"Perhaps any woman would except me."

"It would have been something like a story to come back with, if

you had!" continued Mrs Durbeyfield, ready to burst into tears of

vexation. "After all the talk about you and him which has reached

us here, who would have expected it to end like this! Why didn't ye

think of doing some good for your family instead o' thinking only of

yourself? See how I've got to teave and slave, and your poor weak

father with his heart clogged like a dripping-pan. I did hope for

something to come out o' this! To see what a pretty pair you and he

made that day when you drove away together four months ago! See what

he has given us--all, as we thought, because we were his kin. But if

he's not, it must have been done because of his love for 'ee. And

yet you've not got him to marry!"

Get Alec d'Urberville in the mind to marry her! He marry HER! On

matrimony he had never once said a word. And what if he had? How a

convulsive snatching at social salvation might have impelled her to

answer him she could not say. But her poor foolish mother little

knew her present feeling towards this man. Perhaps it was unusual

in the circumstances, unlucky, unaccountable; but there it was; and

this, as she had said, was what made her detest herself. She had

never wholly cared for him; she did not at all care for him now. She

had dreaded him, winced before him, succumbed to adroit advantages

he took of her helplessness; then, temporarily blinded by his ardent

manners, had been stirred to confused surrender awhile: had suddenly

despised and disliked him, and had run away. That was all. Hate him

she did not quite; but he was dust and ashes to her, and even for her

name's sake she scarcely wished to marry him.

"You ought to have been more careful if you didn't mean to get him to

make you his wife!"

"O mother, my mother!" cried the agonized girl, turning passionately

upon her parent as if her poor heart would break. "How could I be

expected to know? I was a child when I left this house four months

ago. Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why

didn't you warn me? Ladies know what to fend hands against, because

they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the

chance o' learning in that way, and you did not help me!"

Her mother was subdued.

"I thought if I spoke of his fond feelings and what they might lead

to, you would be hontish wi' him and lose your chance," she murmured,

wiping her eyes with her apron. "Well, we must make the best of it,

I suppose. 'Tis nater, after all, and what do please God!"

XIII

The event of Tess Durbeyfield's return from the manor of her bogus

kinsfolk was rumoured abroad, if rumour be not too large a word for

a space of a square mile. In the afternoon several young girls of

Marlott, former schoolfellows and acquaintances of Tess, called to

see her, arriving dressed in their best starched and ironed, as

became visitors to a person who had made a transcendent conquest (as

they supposed), and sat round the room looking at her with great

curiosity. For the fact that it was this said thirty-first cousin,

Mr d'Urberville, who had fallen in love with her, a gentleman

not altogether local, whose reputation as a reckless gallant and

heartbreaker was beginning to spread beyond the immediate boundaries

of Trantridge, lent Tess's supposed position, by its fearsomeness, a

far higher fascination that it would have exercised if unhazardous.

Their interest was so deep that the younger ones whispered when her

back was turned--

"How pretty she is; and how that best frock do set her off! I

believe it cost an immense deal, and that it was a gift from him."

Tess, who was reaching up to get the tea-things from the

corner-cupboard, did not hear these commentaries. If she had heard

them, she might soon have set her friends right on the matter. But

her mother heard, and Joan's simple vanity, having been denied the

hope of a dashing marriage, fed itself as well as it could upon

the sensation of a dashing flirtation. Upon the whole she felt

gratified, even though such a limited and evanescent triumph should

involve her daughter's reputation; it might end in marriage yet, and

in the warmth of her responsiveness to their admiration she invited

her visitors to stay to tea.

Their chatter, their laughter, their good-humoured innuendoes, above

all, their flashes and flickerings of envy, revived Tess's spirits

also; and, as the evening wore on, she caught the infection of their

excitement, and grew almost gay. The marble hardness left her face,

she moved with something of her old bounding step, and flushed in all

her young beauty.

At moments, in spite of thought, she would reply to their inquiries

with a manner of superiority, as if recognizing that her experiences

in the field of courtship had, indeed, been slightly enviable. But

so far was she from being, in the words of Robert South, "in love

with her own ruin," that the illusion was transient as lightning;

cold reason came back to mock her spasmodic weakness; the ghastliness

of her momentary pride would convict her, and recall her to reserved

listlessness again.

And the despondency of the next morning's dawn, when it was no longer

Sunday, but Monday; and no best clothes; and the laughing visitors

were gone, and she awoke alone in her old bed, the innocent younger

children breathing softly around her. In place of the excitement of

her return, and the interest it had inspired, she saw before her a

long and stony highway which she had to tread, without aid, and with

little sympathy. Her depression was then terrible, and she could

have hidden herself in a tomb.

In the course of a few weeks Tess revived sufficiently to show

herself so far as was necessary to get to church one Sunday morning.

She liked to hear the chanting--such as it was--and the old Psalms,

and to join in the Morning Hymn. That innate love of melody, which

she had inherited from her ballad-singing mother, gave the simplest

music a power over her which could well-nigh drag her heart out of

her bosom at times.

To be as much out of observation as possible for reasons of her own,

and to escape the gallantries of the young men, she set out before

the chiming began, and took a back seat under the gallery, close to

the lumber, where only old men and women came, and where the bier

stood on end among the churchyard tools.

Parishioners dropped in by twos and threes, deposited themselves

in rows before her, rested three-quarters of a minute on their

foreheads as if they were praying, though they were not; then sat up,

and looked around. When the chants came on, one of her favourites

happened to be chosen among the rest--the old double chant

"Langdon"--but she did not know what it was called, though she would

much have liked to know. She thought, without exactly wording the

thought, how strange and god-like was a composer's power, who from

the grave could lead through sequences of emotion, which he alone had

felt at first, a girl like her who had never heard of his name, and

never would have a clue to his personality.

The people who had turned their heads turned them again as the

service proceeded; and at last observing her, they whispered to each

other. She knew what their whispers were about, grew sick at heart,

and felt that she could come to church no more.

The bedroom which she shared with some of the children formed her

retreat more continually than ever. Here, under her few square yards

of thatch, she watched winds, and snows, and rains, gorgeous sunsets,

and successive moons at their full. So close kept she that at length

almost everybody thought she had gone away.

The only exercise that Tess took at this time was after dark; and it

was then, when out in the woods, that she seemed least solitary. She

knew how to hit to a hair's-breadth that moment of evening when the

light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of

day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute

mental liberty. It is then that the plight of being alive becomes

attenuated to its least possible dimensions. She had no fear of the

shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind--or rather that

cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is

so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units.

On these lonely hills and dales her quiescent glide was of a piece

with the element she moved in. Her flexuous and stealthy figure

became an integral part of the scene. At times her whimsical fancy

would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part

of her own story. Rather they became a part of it; for the world is

only a psychological phenomenon, and what they seemed they were. The

midnight airs and gusts, moaning amongst the tightly-wrapped buds and

bark of the winter twigs, were formulae of bitter reproach. A wet

day was the expression of irremediable grief at her weakness in the

mind of some vague ethical being whom she could not class definitely

as the God of her childhood, and could not comprehend as any other.

But this encompassment of her own characterization, based on shreds

of convention, peopled by phantoms and voices antipathetic to her,

was a sorry and mistaken creation of Tess's fancy--a cloud of moral

hobgoblins by which she was terrified without reason. It was they

that were out of harmony with the actual world, not she. Walking

among the sleeping birds in the hedges, watching the skipping rabbits

on a moonlit warren, or standing under a pheasant-laden bough, she

looked upon herself as a figure of Guilt intruding into the haunts

of Innocence. But all the while she was making a distinction where

there was no difference. Feeling herself in antagonism, she was

quite in accord. She had been made to break an accepted social law,

but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such

an anomaly.

XIV

It was a hazy sunrise in August. The denser nocturnal vapours,

attacked by the warm beams, were dividing and shrinking into isolated

fleeces within hollows and coverts, where they waited till they

should be dried away to nothing.

The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal

look, demanding the masculine pronoun for its adequate expression.

His present aspect, coupled with the lack of all human forms in the

scene, explained the old-time heliolatries in a moment. One could

feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky. The

luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like creature,

gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth that

was brimming with interest for him.

His light, a little later, broke though chinks of cottage shutters,

throwing stripes like red-hot pokers upon cupboards, chests of

drawers, and other furniture within; and awakening harvesters who

were not already astir.

But of all ruddy things that morning the brightest were two broad

arms of painted wood, which rose from the margin of yellow cornfield

hard by Marlott village. They, with two others below, formed the