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: Fulfillment, 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, and 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 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 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
today."

"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 today, 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
southwesterly from the town of Shaston on the
north-east.
dh
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, clanged 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 explanation 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. Tonight, 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 today 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 tomorrow with that load of
beehives, which must be delivered, family or no. He'll
have to start shortly after twelve tonight, 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
meta-physical 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 fetichistic
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 daytime, in company with her nine-year-old
brother Abraham, and her sister Eliza-Louisa of twelve
and a half, call "'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 today; her skin is as sumple as a
duchess's."

"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
today 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 tonight 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 of
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 then 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 tomorrow 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 has 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 retracted 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 Modest 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 handing 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 thefamily 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'Urbervillefamily 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 thepresent 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 TETE-A-TETE 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 close 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
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 of 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 had 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 more 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 today, 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 winds, 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, whistled 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 tomorrow, 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 generated 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 tomorrow 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 REGIME 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 smockfrocked 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? Tomorrow 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 suitable 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
today; 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 tonight 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 then 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 tomorrow, sir."

"No, you will not leave me tomorrow! 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 tonight."

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
today. 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 with 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 Blackmore 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 today, 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--goodbye!"

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 today 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 stileboards, 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 today 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
godlike 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
know 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 revolving
Maltese cross of the reaping-machine, which had been
brought to the field on the previous evening to be
ready for operations this day. The paint with which
they were smeared, intensified in hue by the sunlight,
imparted to them a look of having been dipped in liquid
fire.

The field had already been "opened"; that is to say,
a lane a few feet wide had been hand-cut through the
wheat along the whole circumference of the field for
the first passage of the horses and machine.

Two groups, one of men and lads, the other of women,
had come down the lane just at the hour when the
shadows of the eastern hedge-top struck the west hedge
midway, so that the heads of the groups were enjoying
sunrise while their feet were still in the dawn. They
disappeared from the lane between the two stone posts
which flanked the nearest field-gate.

Presently there arose from within a ticking like the
love-making of the grasshopper. The machine had begun,
and a moving concatenation of three horses and the
aforesaid long rickety machine was visible over the
gate, a driver sitting upon one of the hauling horses,
and an attendant on the seat of the implement. Along
one side of the field the whole wain went, the arms of
the mechanical reaper revolving slowly, till it passed
down the hill quite out of sight. In a minute it came
up on the other side of the field at the same equable
pace; the glistening brass star in the forehead of the
fore horse first catching the eye as it rose into view
over the stubble, then the bright arms, and then the
whole machine.

The narrow lane of stubble encompassing the field grew
wider with each circuit, and the standing corn was
reduced to smaller area as the morning wore on.
Rabbits, hares, snakes, rats, mice, retreated inwards
as into a fastness, unaware of the ephemeral nature of
their refuge, and of the doom that awaited them later
in the day when, their covert shrinking to a more and
more horrible narrowness, they were huddled together,
friends and foes, till the last few yards of upright
wheat fell also under the teeth of the unerring reaper,
and they were every one put to death by the sticks and
stones of the harvesters.

The reaping-machine left the fallen corn behind it in
little heaps, each heap being of the quantity for a
sheaf; and upon these the active binders in the rear
laid their hands--mainly women, but some of them men in
print shirts, and trousers supported round their waists
by leather straps, rendering useless the two buttons
behind, which twinkled and bristled with sunbeams at
every movement of each wearer, as if they were a pair
of eyes in the small of his back.

But those of the other sex were the most interesting of
this company of binders, by reason of the charm which
is acquired by woman when she becomes part and parcel
of outdoor nature, and is not merely an object set down
therein as at ordinary times. A field-man is a
personality afield; a field-woman is a portion of the
field; she had somehow lost her own margin, imbibed the
essence of her surrounding, and assimilated herself
with it.

The women--or rather girls, for they were mostly
young--wore drawn cotton bonnets with great flapping
curtains to keep off the sun, and gloves to prevent
their hands being wounded by the stubble. There was one
wearing a pale pink jacket, another in a cream-coloured
tight-sleeved gown, another in a petticoat as red as
the arms of the reaping-machine; and others, older, in
the brown-rough "wropper" or over-all--the
old-established and most appropriate dress of the
field-woman, which the young ones were abandoning.
This morning the eye returns involuntarily to the girl
in the pink cotton jacket, she being the most flexuous
and finely-drawn figure of them all. But her bonnet is
pulled so far over her brow that none of her face is
disclosed while she binds, though her complexion may be
guessed from a stray twine or two of dark brown hair
which extends below the curtain of her bonnet. Perhaps
one reason why she seduces casual attention is that she
never courts it, though the other women often gaze
around them.

Her binding proceeds with clock-like monotony. From
the sheaf last finished she draws a handful of ears,
patting their tips with her left palm to bring them
even. Then stooping low she moves forward, gathering
the corn with both hands against her knees, and pushing
her left gloved hand under the bundle to meet the right
on the other side, holding the corn in an embrace like
that of a lover. She brings the ends of the bond
together, and kneels on the sheaf while she ties it,
beating back her skirts now and then when lifted by the
breeze. A bit of her naked arm is visible between the
buff leather of the gauntlet and the sleeve of her
gown; and as the day wears on its feminine smoothness
becomes scarified by the stubble, and bleeds.

At intervals she stands up to rest, and to retie her
disarranged apron, or to pull her bonnet straight.
Then one can see the oval face of a handsome young
woman with deep dark eyes and long heavy clinging
tresses, which seem to clasp in a beseeching way
anything they fall against. The cheeks are paler, the
teeth more regular, the red lips thinner than is usual
in a country-bred girl.

It is Tess Durbeyfield, otherwise d'Urberville,
somewhat changed--the same, but not the same; at the
present stage of her existence living as a stranger and
an alien here, though it was no strange land that she
was in. After a long seclusion she had come to a
resolve to undertake outdoor work in her native
village, the busiest season of the year in the
agricultural world having arrived, and nothing that she
could do within the house being so remunerative for the
time as harvesting in the fields.

The movements of the other women were more or less
similar to Tess's, the whole bevy of them drawing
together like dancers in a quadrille at the completion
of a sheaf by each, every one placing her sheaf on end
against those of the rest, till a shock, or "stitch" as
it was here called, of ten or a dozen was formed.

They went to breakfast, and came again, and the work
proceeded as before. As the hour of eleven drew near a
person watching her might have noticed that every now
and then Tess's glance flitted wistfully to the brow of
the hill, though she did not pause in her sheafing. On
the verge of the hour the heads of a group of children,
of ages ranging from six to fourteen, rose over the
stubbly convexity of the hill.

The face of Tess flushed slightly, but still she did
not pause.

The eldest of the comers, a girl who wore a triangular
shawl, its corners draggling on the stubble, carried in
her arms what at first sight seemed to be a doll, but
proved to be an infant in long clothes. Another
brought some lunch. The harvesters ceased working,
took their provisions, and sat down against one of the
shocks. Here they fell to, the men plying a stone jar
freely, and passing round a cup.

Tess Durbeyfield had been one of the last to suspend
her labours. She sat down at the end of the shock, her
face turned somewhat away from her companions. When
she had deposited herself a man in a rabbit-skin cap
and with a red handkerchief tucked into his belt, held
the cup of ale over the top of the shock for her to
drink. But she did not accept his offer. As soon as
her lunch was spread she called up the big girl her
sister, and took the baby off her, who, glad to be
relieved of the burden, went away to the next shock and
joined the other children playing there. Tess, with a
curiously stealthy yet courageous movement, and with a
still rising colour, unfastened her frock and began
suckling the child.

The men who sat nearest considerately turned their
faces towards the other end of the field, some of them
beginning to smoke; one, with absent-minded fondness,
regretfully stroking the jar that would no longer yield
a stream. All the women but Tess fell into animated
talk, and adjusted the disarranged knots of their hair.

When the infant had taken its fill the young mother sat
it upright in her lap, and looking into the far
distance dandled it with a gloomy indifference that was
almost dislike; then all of a sudden she fell to
violently kissing it some dozens of times, as if she
could never leave off, the child crying at the
vehemence of an onset which strangely combined
passionateness with contempt.

"She's fond of that there child, though she mid pretend
to hate en, and say she wishes the baby and her too
were in the churchyard," observed the woman in the red
petticoat.

"She'll soon leave off saying that," replied the one in
buff. "Lord, 'tis wonderful what a body can get used to
o' that sort in time!"

"A little more than persuading had to do wi' the coming
o't, I reckon. There were they that heard a sobbing
one night last year in The Chase; and it mid ha' gone
hard wi' a certain party if folks had come along."

"Well, a little more, or a little less, 'twas a
thousand pities that it should have happened to she, of
all others. But 'tis always the comeliest! The plain
ones be as safe as churches--hey, Jenny?" The speaker
turned to one of the group who certainly was not
ill-defined as plain.

It was a thousand pities, indeed; it was impossible for
even an enemy to feel otherwise on looking at Tess as
she sat there, with her flower-like mouth and large
tender eyes, neither black nor blue nor grey nor
violet; rather all those shades together, and a hundred
others, which could be seen if one looked into their
irises--shade behind shade--tint beyond tint--around
pupils that had no bottom; an almost standard woman,
but for the slight incautiousness of character
inherited from her race.

A resolution which had surprised herself had brought
her into the fields this week for the first time during
many months. After wearing and wasting her palpitating
heart with every engine of regret that lonely
inexperience could devise, commonsense had illuminated
her. She felt that she would do well to be useful
again--to taste anew sweet independence at any price.
The past was past; whatever it had been it was no more
at hand. Whatever its consequences, time would close
over them; they would all in a few years be as if they
had never been, and she herself grassed down and
forgotten. Meanwhile the trees were just as green as
before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now
as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened
because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain.

She might have seen that what had bowed her head so
profoundly--the thought of the world's concern at her
situation--was founded on an illusion. She was not an
existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of
sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind
besides Tess was only a passing thought. Even to
friends she was no more than a frequently passing
thought. If she made herself miserable the livelong
night and day it was only this much to them--"Ah, she
makes herself unhappy." If she tried to be cheerful,
to dismiss all care, to take pleasure in the daylight,
the flowers, the baby, she could only be this idea to
them--"Ah, she bears it very well." Moreover, alone in
a desert island would she have been wretched at what
had happened to her? Not greatly. If she could have
been but just created, to discover herself as a
spouseless mother, with no experience of life except as
the parent of a nameless child, would the position have
caused her to despair? No, she would have taken it
calmly, and found pleasure therein. Most of the misery
had been generated by her conventional aspect, and not
by her innate sensations.

Whatever Tess's reasoning, some spirit had induced her
to dress herself up neatly as she had formerly done,
and come out into the fields, harvest-hands being
greatly in demand just then. This was why she had
borne herself with dignity, and had looked people
calmly in the face at times, even when holding the baby
in her arms.

The harvest-men rose from the shock of corn, and
stretched their limbs, and extinguished their pipes.
The horses, which had been unharnessed and fed, were
again attached to the scarlet machine. Tess, having
quickly eaten her own meal, beckoned to her eldest
sister to come and take away the baby, fastened her
dress, put on the buff gloves again, and stooped anew
to draw a bond from the last completed sheaf for the
tying of the next.

In the afternoon and evening the proceedings of the
morning were continued, Tess staying on till dusk with
the body of harvesters. Then they all rode home in one
of the largest wagons, in the company of a broad
tarnished moon that had risen from the ground to the
eastwards, its face resembling the outworn gold-leaf
halo of some worm-eaten Tuscan saint. Tess's female
companions sang songs, and showed themselves very
sympathetic and glad at her reappearance out of doors,
though they could not refrain from mischievously
throwing in a few verses of the ballad about the maid
who went to the merry green wood and came back a
changed state. There are counterpoises and
compensations in life; and the event which had made of
her a social warning had also for the moment made her
the most interesting personage in the village to many.
Their friendliness won her still farther away from
herself, their lively spirits were contagious, and she
became almost gay.

But now that her moral sorrows were passing away a
fresh one arose on the natural side of her which knew
no social law. When she reached home it was to learn
to her grief that the baby had been suddenly taken ill
since the afternoon. Some such collapse had been
probable, so tender and puny was its frame; but the
event came as a shock nevertheless.

The baby's offence against society in coming into the
world was forgotten by the girl-mother; her soul's
desire was to continue that offence by preserving the
life of the child. However, it soon grew clear that
the hour of emancipation for that little prisoner of
the flesh was to arrive earlier than her worst
misgiving had conjectured. And when she had discovered
this she was plunged into a misery which transcended
that of the child's simple loss. Her baby had not been
baptized.

Tess had drifted into a frame of mind which accepted
passively the consideration that if she should have to
burn for what she had done, burn she must, and there
was an end of it. Like all village girls she was well
grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and had dutifully
studied the histories of Aholah and Aholibah, and knew
the inferences to be drawn therefrom. But when the
same question arose with regard to the baby, it had a
very different colour. Her darling was about to die,
and no salvation.

It was nearly bedtime, but she rushed downstairs and
asked if she might send for the parson. The moment
happened to be one at which her father's sense of the
antique nobility of his family was highest, and his
sensitiveness to the smudge which Tess had set upon
that nobility most pronounced, for he had just returned
from his weekly booze at Rolliver's Inn. No parson
should come inside his door, he declared, prying into
his affairs, just then, when, by her shame, it had
become more necessary than ever to hide them. He locked
the door and put the key in his pocket.

The household went to bed, and, distressed beyond
measure, Tess retired also. She was continually waking
as she lay, and in the middle of the night found that
the baby was still worse. It was obviously
dying--quietly and painlessly, but none the less
surely.

In her misery she rocked herself upon the bed. The
clock struck the solemn hour of one, that hour when
fancy stalks outside reason, and malignant
possibilities stand rock-firm as facts. She thought of
the child consigned to the nethermost corner of hell,
as its double doom for lack of baptism and lack of
legitimacy; saw the arch-fiend tossing it with his
three-pronged fork, like the one they used for heating
the oven on baking days; to which picture she added
many other quaint and curious details of torment
sometimes taught the young in this Christian country.
The lurid presentment so powerfully affected her
imagination in the silence of the sleeping house that
her nightgown became damp with perspiration, and the
bedstead shook with each throb of her heart.

The infant's breathing grew more difficult, and the
mother's mental tension increased. It was useless to
devour the little thing with kisses; she could stay in
bed no longer, and walked feverishly about the room.

"O merciful God, have pity; have pity upon my poor
baby!" she cried. "Heap as much anger as you want to
upon me, and welcome; but pity the child!"

She leant against the chest of drawers, and murmured
incoherent supplications for a long while, till she
suddenly started up.

"Ah! perhaps baby can be saved! Perhaps it will be
just the same!"

She spoke so brightly that it seemed as though her face
might have shone in the gloom surrounding her. She lit
a candle, and went to a second and a third bed under
the wall, where she awoke her young sisters and
brothers, all of whom occupied the same room. Pulling
out the washing-stand so that she could get behind it,
she poured some water from a jug, and made them kneel
around, putting their hands together with fingers
exactly vertical. While the children, scarcely awake,
awe-stricken at her manner, their eyes growing larger
and larger, remained in this position, she took the
baby from her bed--a child's child--so immature as
scarce to seem a sufficient personality to endow its
producer with the maternal title. Tess then stood
erect with the infant on her arm beside the basin, the
next sister held the Prayer-Book open before her, as
the clerk at church held it before the parson; and thus
the girl set about baptizing her child.

Her figure looked singularly tall and imposing as she
stood in her long white nightgown, a thick cable of
twisted dark hair hanging straight down her back to her
waist. The kindly dimness of the weak candle
abstracted from her form and features the little
blemishes which sunlight might have revealed--the
stubble scratches upon her wrists, and the weariness of
her eyes--her high enthusiasm having a transfiguring
effect upon the face which had been her undoing,
showing it as a thing of immaculate beauty, with a
touch of dignity which was almost regal. The little
ones kneeling round, their sleepy eyes blinking and
red, awaited her preparations full of a suspended
wonder which their physical heaviness at that hour
would not allow to become active.

The most impressed of them said:

"Be you really going to christen him, Tess?"

The girl-mother replied in a grave affirmative.

"What's his name going to be?"

She had not thought of that, but a name suggested by a
phrase in the book of Genesis came into her head as she
proceeded with the baptismal service, and now she
pronounced it:

"SORROW, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Ghost."

She sprinkled the water, and there was silence.

"Say 'Amen,' children."

The tiny voices piped in obedient response "Amen!"

Tess went on:

"We receive this child"--and so forth--"and do sign him
with the sign of the Cross."

Here she dipped her hand into the basin, and fervently
drew an immense cross upon the baby with her
forefinger, continuing with the customary sentences as
to his manfully fighting against sin, the world, and
the devil, and being a faithful soldier and servant
unto his life's end. She duly went on with the Lord's
Prayer, the children lisping it after her in a thin
gnat-like wail, till, at the conclusion, raising their
voices to clerk's pitch, they again piped into silence,
"Amen!"

Then their sister, with much augmented confidence in
the efficacy of the sacrament, poured forth from the
bottom of her heart the thanksgiving that follows,
uttering it boldly and triumphantly in the
stopt-diapason note which her voice acquired when her
heart was in her speech, and which will never be
forgotten by those who knew her. The ecstasy of faith
almost apotheosized her; it set upon her face a glowing
irradiation, and brought a red spot into the middle of
each cheek; while the miniature candle-flame inverted
in her eye-pupils shone like a diamond. The children
gazed up at her with more and more reverence, and no
longer had a will for questioning. She did not look
like Sissy to them now, but as a being large, towering,
and awful--a divine personage with whom they had
nothing in common.

Poor Sorrow's campaign against sin, the world, and the
devil was doomed to be of limited brilliancy--luckily
perhaps for himself, considering his beginnings. In
the blue of the morning that fragile soldier and
servant breathed his last, and when the other children
awoke they cried bitterly, and begged Sissy to have
another pretty baby. The calmness which had possessed
Tess since the christening remained with her in the
infant's loss. In the daylight, indeed, she felt her
terrors about his soul to have been somewhat
exaggerated; whether well founded or not she had no
uneasiness now, reasoning that if Providence would not
ratify such an act of approximation she, for one, did
not value the kind of heaven lost by the
irregularity--either for herself or for her child.

So passed away Sorrow the Undesired--that intrusive
creature, that bastard gift of shameless Nature who
respects not the social law; a waif to whom eternal
Time had been a matter of days merely, who knew not
that such things as years and centuries ever were; to
whom the cottage interior was the universe, the week's
weather climate, new-born babyhood human existence, and
the instinct to suck human knowledge.

Tess, who mused on the christening a good deal,
wondered if it were doctrinally sufficient to secure a
Christian burial for the child. Nobody could tell this
but the parson of the parish, and he was a new-comer,
and did not know her. She went to his house after
dusk, and stood by the gate, but could not summon
courage to go in. The enterprise would have been
abandoned if she had not by accident met him coming
homeward as she turned away. In the gloom she did not
mind speaking freely.

"I should like to ask you something, sir."

He expressed his willingness to listen, and she told
the story of the baby's illness and the extemporized
ordinance. "And now, sir," she added earnestly, "can
you tell me this--will it be just the same for him as
if you had baptized him?"

Having the natural feelings of a tradesman at finding
that a job he should have been called in for had been
unskilfully botched by his customers among themselves,
he was disposed to say no. Yet the dignity of the
girl, the strange tenderness in her voice, combined to
affect his nobler impulses--or rather those that he had
left in him after ten years of endeavour to graft
technical belief on actual scepticism. The man and the
ecclesiastic fought within him, and the victory fell to
the man.

"My dear girl," he said, "it will be just the same."

"Then will you give him a Christian burial?" she asked
quickly.

The Vicar felt himself cornered. Hearing of the baby's
illness, he had conscientiously gone to the house after
nightfall to perform the rite, and, unaware that the
refusal to admit him had come from Tess's father and
not from Tess, he could not allow the plea of necessity
for its irregular administration.

"Ah--that's another matter," he said.

"Another matter--why?" asked Tess, rather warmly.

"Well--I would willingly do so if only we two were
concerned. But I must not--for certain reasons."

"Just for once, sir!"

"Really I must not."

"O sir!" She seized his hand as she spoke.

He withdrew it, shaking his head.

"Then I don't like you!" she burst out, "and I'll never
come to your church no more!"

"Don't talk so rashly."

"Perhaps it will be just the same to him if you don't?
... Will it be just the same? Don't for God's sake
speak as saint to sinner, but as you yourself to me
myself--poor me!"

How the Vicar reconciled his answer with the strict
notions he supposed himself to hold on these subjects
it is beyond a layman's power to tell, though not to
excuse. Somewhat moved, he said in this case also--

"It will be just the same."

So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an
ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night,
and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling
and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner
of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and
where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards,
suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are
laid. In spite of the untoward surroundings, however,
Tess bravely made a little cross of two laths and a
piece of string, and having bound it with flowers, she
stuck it up at the head of the grave one evening when
she could enter the churchyard without being seen,
putting at the foot also a bunch of the same flowers in
a little jar of water to keep them alive. What matter
was it that on the outside of the jar the eye of mere
observation noted the words "Keelwell's Marmalade"?
The eye of maternal affection did not see them in its
vision of higher things.

XV

"By experience," says Roger Ascham, "we find out a
short way by a long wandering." Not seldom that long
wandering unfits us for further travel, and of what use
is our experience to us then? Tess Durbeyfield's
experience was of this incapacitating kind. At last she
had learned what to do; but who would now accept her
doing?

If before going to the d'Urbervilles' she had
vigorously moved under the guidance of sundry gnomic
texts and phrases known to her and to the world in
general, no doubt she would never have been imposed on.
But it had not been in Tess's power--nor is it in
anybody's power--to feel the whole truth of golden
opinions while it is possible to profit by them.
She--and how many more--might have ironically said to
God with Saint Augustine: "Thou hast counselled a
better course than Thou hast permitted."

She remained at her father's house during the winter
months, plucking fowls, or cramming turkeys and geese,
or making clothes for her sisters and brothers out of
some finery which d'Urberville had given her, and she
had put by with contempt. Apply to him she would not.
But she would often clasp her hands behind her head and
muse when she was supposed to be working hard.

She philosophically noted dates as they came past in
the revolution of the year; the disastrous night of her
undoing at Trantridge with its dark background of The
Chase; also the dates of the baby's birth and death;
also her own birthday; and every other day
individualized by incidents in which she had taken some
share. She suddenly thought one afternoon, when
looking in the glass at her fairness, that there was
yet another date, of greater importance to her than
those; that of her own death, when all these charms
would had disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen
among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or
sound when she annually passed over it; but not the
less surely there. When was it? Why did she not feel
the chill of each yearly encounter with such a cold
relation? She had Jeremy Taylor's thought that some
time in the future those who had known her would say:
"It is the--th, the day that poor Tess Durbeyfield
died"; and there would be nothing singular to their
minds in the statement. Of that day, doomed to be her
terminus in time through all the ages, she did not know
the place in month, week, season or year.

Almost at a leap Tess thus changed from simple girl to
complex woman. Symbols of reflectiveness passed into
her face, and a note of tragedy at times into her
voice. Her eyes grew larger and more eloquent. She
became what would have been called a fine creature; her
aspect was fair and arresting; her soul that of a woman
whom the turbulent experiences of the last year or two
had quite failed to demoralize. But for the world's
opinion those experiences would have been simply a
liberal education.

She had held so aloof of late that her trouble, never
generally known, was nearly forgotten in Marlott. But
it became evident to her that she could never be really
comfortable again in a place which had seen the
collapse of her family's attempt to "claim kin"--
and, through her, even closer union--with the rich
d'Urbervilles. At least she could not be comfortable
there till long years should have obliterated her keen
consciousness of it. Yet even now Tess felt the pulse
of hopeful like still warm within her; she might be
happy in some nook which had no memories. To escape
the past and all that appertained thereto was to
annihilate it, and to do that she would have to get
away.

Was once lost always lost really true of chastity? she
would ask herself. She might prove it false if she
could veil bygones. The recuperative power which
pervaded organic nature was surely not denied to
maidenhood alone.

She waited a long time without finding opportunity for
a new departure. A particularly fine spring came
round, and the stir of germination was almost audible
in the buds; it moved her, as it moved the wild
animals, and made her passionate to go. At last, one
day in early May, a letter reached her from a former
friend of her mother's, to whom she had addressed
inquiries long before--a person whom she had never
seen--that a skilful milkmaid was required at a
dairy-house many miles to the southward, and that the
dairyman would be glad to have her for the summer
months.

It was not quite so far off as could have been wished;
but it was probably far enough, her radius of movement
and repute having been so small. To persons of limited
spheres, miles are as geographical degrees, parishes as
counties, counties as provinces and kingdoms. On one
point she was resolved: there should be no more
d'Urberville air-castles in the dreams and deeds of her
new life. She would be the dairymaid Tess, and nothing
more. Her mother knew Tess's feeling on this point so
well, though no words had passed between them on the
subject, that she never alluded to the knightly
ancestry now.

Yet such is human inconsistency that one of the
interests of the new place to her was the accidental
virtues of its lying near her forefathers' country (for
they were not Blakemore men, though her mother was
Blakemore to the bone). The dairy called Talbothays,
for which she was bound, stood not remotely from some
of the former estates of the d'Urbervilles, near the
great family vaults of her granddames and their
powerful husbands. She would be able to look at them,
and think not only that d'Urberville, like Babylon, had
fallen, but that the individual innocence of a humble
descendant could lapse as silently. All the while she
wondered if any strange good thing might come of her
being in her ancestral land; and some spirit within her
rose automatically as the sap in the twigs. It was
unexpected youth, surging up anew after its temporary
check, and bringing with it hope, and the invincible
instinct towards self-delight.

END OF PHASE THE SECOND

Phase the Third: The Rally

XVI

On a thyme-scented, bird-hatching morning in May,
between two and three years after the return from
Trantridge--silent reconstructive years for Tess
Durbeyfield--she left her home for the second time.

Having packed up her luggage so that it could be sent
to her later, she started in a hired trap for the
little town of Stourcastle, through which it was
necessary to pass on her journey, now in a direction
almost opposite to that of her first adventuring. On
the curve of the nearest hill she looked back
regretfully at Marlott and her father's house, although
she had been so anxious to get away.

Her kindred dwelling there would probably continue
their daily lives as heretofore, with no great
diminution of pleasure in their consciousness, although
she would be far off, and they deprived of her smile.
In a few days the children would engage in their games
as merrily as ever, without the sense of any gap left
by her departure. This leaving of the younger children
she had decided to be for the best; were she to remain
they would probably gain less good by her precepts than
harm by her example.

She went through Stourcastle without pausing, and
onward to a junction of highways, where she could await
a carrier's van that ran to the south-west; for the
railways which engirdled this interior tract of country
had never yet struck across it. While waiting,
however, there came along a farmer in his spring cart,
driving approximately in the direction that she wished
to pursue. Though he was a stranger to her she accepted
his offer of a seat beside him, ignoring that its
motive was a mere tribute to her countenance. He was
going to Weatherbury, and by accompanying him thither
she could walk the remainder of the distance instead of
travelling in the van by way of Casterbridge.

Tess did not stop at Weatherbury, after this long
drive, further than to make a slight nondescript meal
at noon at a cottage to which the farmer recommended
her. Thence she started on foot, basket in hand, to
reach the wide upland of heath dividing this district
from the low-lying meads of a further valley in which
the dairy stood that was the aim and end of her day's
pilgrimage.

Tess had never before visited this part of the country,
and yet she felt akin to the landscape. Not so very
far to the left of her she could discern a dark patch
in the scenery, which inquiry confirmed her in
supposing to be trees marking the environs of
Kingsbere--in the church of which parish the bones of
her ancestors--her useless ancestors--lay entombed.

She had no admiration for them now; she almost hated
them for the dance they had led her; not a thing of all
that had been theirs did she retain but the old seal
and spoon. "Pooh--I have as much of mother as father in
me!" she said. "All my prettiness comes from her, and
she was only a dairymaid."

The journey over the intervening uplands and lowlands
of Egdon, when she reached them, was a more troublesome
walk than she had anticipated, the distance being
actually but a few miles. It was two hours, owing to
sundry wrong turnings, ere she found herself on a
summit commanding the long-sought-for vale, the Valley
of the Great Dairies, the valley in which milk and
butter grew to rankness, and were produced more
profusely, if less delicately, than at her home--the
verdant plain so well watered by the river Var or
Froom.

It was intrinsically different from the Vale of Little
Dairies, Blackmoor Vale, which, save during her
disastrous sojourn at Trantridge, she had exclusively
known till now. The world was drawn to a larger
pattern here. The enclosures numbered fifty acres
instead of ten, the farmsteads were more extended, the
groups of cattle formed tribes hereabout; there only
families. These myriads of cows stretching under her
eyes from the far east to the far west outnumbered any
she had ever seen at one glance before. The green lea
was speckled as thickly with them as a canvas by Van
Alsloot or Sallaert with burghers. The ripe hue of the
red and dun kine absorbed the evening sunlight, which
the white-coated animals returned to the eye in rays
almost dazzling, even at the distant elevation on which
she stood.

The bird's-eye perspective before her was not so
luxuriantly beautiful, perhaps, as that other one which
she knew so well; yet it was more cheering. It lacked
the intensely blue atmosphere of the rival vale, and
its heavy soils and scents; the new air was clear,
bracing, ethereal. The river itself, which nourished
the grass and cows of these renowned dairies, flowed
not like the streams in Blackmoor. Those were slow,
silent, often turbid; flowing over beds of mud into
which the incautious wader might sink and vanish
unawares. The Froom waters were clear as the pure
River of Life shown to the Evangelist, rapid as the
shadow of a cloud, with pebbly shallows that prattled
to the sky all day long. There the water-flower was
the lily; the crowfoot here.

Either the change in the quality of the air from heavy
to light, or the sense of being amid new scenes where
there were no invidious eyes upon her, sent up her
spirits wonderfully. Her hopes mingled with the
sunshine in an ideal photosphere which surrounded her
as she bounded along against the soft south wind.
She heard a pleasant voice in every breeze, and in every
bird's note seemed to lurk a joy.

Her face had latterly changed with changing states of
mind, continually fluctuating between beauty and
ordinariness, according as the thoughts were gay or
grave. One day she was pink and flawless; another pale
and tragical. When she was pink she was feeling less
then when pale; her more perfect beauty accorded with
her less elevated mood; her more intense mood with her
less perfect beauty. It was her best face physically
that was now set against the south wind.

The irresistible, universal, automatic tendency to find
sweet pleasure somewhere, which pervades all life, from
the meanest to the highest, had at length mastered
Tess. Being even now only a young woman of twenty, one
who mentally and sentimentally had not finished
growing, it was impossible that any event should have
left upon her an impression that was not in time
capable of transmutation.

And thus her spirits, and her thankfulness, and her
hopes, rose higher and higher. She tried several
ballads, but found them inadequate; till, recollecting
the psalter that her eyes had so often wandered over of
a Sunday morning before she had eaten of the tree of
knowledge, she chanted: "O ye Sun and Moon ... O ye
Stars ... ye Green Things upon the Earth ... ye Fowls
of the Air ... Beasts and Cattle ... Children of Men
... bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for
ever!"

She suddenly stopped and murmured: "But perhaps I don't
quite know the Lord as yet."

And probably the half-unconscious rhapsody was a
Fetichistic utterance in a Monotheistic setting; women
whose chief companions are the forms and forces of
outdoor Nature retain in their souls far more of the
Pagan fantasy of their remote forefathers than of the
systematized religion taught their race at later date.
However, Tess found at least approximate expression for
her feelings in the old BENEDICITE that she had lisped
from infancy; and it was enough. Such high contentment
with such a slight initial performance as that of
having started towards a means of independent living
was a part of the Durbeyfield temperament. Tess really
wished to walk uprightly, while her father did nothing
of the kind; but she resembled him in being content
with immediate and small achievements, and in having no
mind for laborious effort towards such petty social
advancement as could alone be effected by a family so
heavily handicapped as the once powerful d'Urbervilles
were now.

There was, it might be said, the energy of her mother's
unexpected family, as well as the natural energy of
Tess's years, rekindled after the experience which had
so overwhelmed her for the time. Let the truth be
told--women do as a rule live through such
humiliations, and regain their spirits, and again look
about them with an interested eye. While there's life
there's hope is a conviction not so entirely unknown to
the "betrayed" as some amiable theorists would have us
believe.

Tess Durbeyfield, then, in good heart, and full of zest
for life, descended the Egdon slopes lower and lower
towards the dairy of her pilgrimage.

The marked difference, in the final particular, between
the rival vales now showed itself. The secret of
Blackmoor was best discovered from the heights around;
to read aright the valley before her it was necessary
to descend into its midst. When Tess had accomplished
this feat she found herself to be standing on a
carpeted level, which stretched to the east and west as
far as the eye could reach.

The river had stolen from the higher tracts and brought
in particles to the vale all this horizontal land; and
now, exhausted, aged, and attenuated, lay serpentining
along through the midst of its former spoils.

Not quite sure of her direction Tess stood still upon
the hemmed expanse of verdant flatness, like a fly on a
billiard-table of indefinite length, and of no more
consequence to the surroundings than that fly. The
sole effect of her presence upon the placid valley so
far had been to excite the mind of a solitary heron,
which, after descending to the ground not far from her
path, stood with neck erect, looking at her.

Suddenly there arose from all parts of the lowland a
prolonged and repeated call--"Waow! waow! waow!"

From the furthest east to the furthest west the cries
spread as if by contagion, accompanied in some cases by
the barking of a dog. It was not the expression of the
valley's consciousness that beautiful Tess had arrived,
but the ordinary announcement of
milking-time--half-past four o'clock, when the dairymen
set about getting in the cows.

The red and white herd nearest at hand, which had been
phlegmatically waiting for the call, now trooped
towards the steading in the background, their great
bags of milk swinging under them as they walked.
Tess followed slowly in their rear, and entered the barton
by the open gate through which they had entered before
her. Long thatched sheds stretched round the
enclosure, their slopes encrusted with vivid green
moss, and their eaves supported by wooden posts rubbed
to a glossy smoothness by the flanks of infinite cows
and calves of bygone years, now passed to an oblivion
almost inconceivable in its profundity. Between the
post were ranged the milchers, each exhibiting herself
at the present moment to a whimsical eye in the rear as
a circle on two stalks, down the centre of which a
switch moved pendulum-wise; while the sun, lowering
itself behind this patient row, threw their shadows
accurately inwards upon the wall. Thus it threw
shadows of these obscure and homely figures every
evening with as much care over each contour as if it
had been the profile of a court beauty on a palace
wall; copied them as diligently as it had copied
Olympian shapes on marble FACADES long ago, or the
outline of Alexander, Caesar, and the Pharaohs.

They were the less restful cows that were stalled.
Those that would stand still of their own will were
milked in the middle of the yard, where many of such
better behaved ones stood waiting now--all prime
milchers, such as were seldom seen out of this valley,
and not always within it; nourished by the succulent
feed which the water-meads supplied at this prime
season of the year. Those of them that were spotted
with white reflected the sunshine in dazzling
brilliancy, and the polished brass knobs of their horns
glittered with something of military display. Their
large-veined udders hung ponderous as sandbags, the
teats sticking out like the legs of a gipsy's crock;
and as each animal lingered for her turn to arrive the
milk oozed forth and fell in drops to the ground.

XVII

The dairymaids and men had flocked down from their
cottages and out of the dairy-house with the arrival of
the cows from the meads; the maids walking in patterns,
not on account of the weather, but to keep their shoes
above the mulch of the barton. Each girl sat down on
her three-legged stool, her face sideways, her right
cheek resting against the cow; and looked musingly
along the animal's flank at Tess as she approached.
The male milkers, with hat-brims turned down, resting
flat on their foreheads and gazing on the ground, did
not observe her.

One of these was a sturdy middle-aged man--whose long
white "pinner" was somewhat finer and cleaner than the
wraps of the others, and whose jacket underneath had a
presentable marketing aspect--the master-dairyman, of
whom she was in quest, his double character as a
working milker and butter maker here during six days,
and on the seventh as a man in shining broad-cloth in
his family pew at church, being so marked as to have
inspired a rhyme-

Dairyman Dick
All the week:--
On Sundays Mister Richard Crick.

Seeing Tess standing at gaze he went across to her.

The majority of dairymen have a cross manner at milking
time, but it happened that Mr Crick was glad to get a
new hand--for the days were busy ones now--and he
received her warmly; inquiring for her mother and the
rest of the family--(though this as a matter of form
merely, for in reality he had not been aware of Mrs
Durbeyfield's existence till apprised of the fact by a
brief business-letter about Tess).

"Oh--ay, as a lad I knowed your part o' the country
very well," he said terminatively. "Though I've never
been there since. And a aged woman of ninety that use
to live nigh here, but is dead and gone long ago, told
me that a family of some such name as yours in
Blackmoor Vale came originally from these parts, and
that 'twere a old ancient race that had all but
perished off the earth--though the new generations
didn't know it. But, Lord, I took no notice of the old
woman's ramblings, not I."

"Oh no--it is nothing," said Tess.

Then the talk was of business only.

"You can milk 'em clean, my maidy? I don't want my cow
going azew at this time o' year."

She reassured him on that point, and he surveyed her up
and down. She had been staying indoors a good deal, and
her complexion had grown delicate.

"Quite sure you can stand it? 'Tis comfortable enough
here for rough folk; but we don't live in a cowcumber
frame."

She declared that she could stand it, and her zest and
willingness seemed to win him over.

"Well, I suppose you'll want a dish o' tay, or victuals
of some sort, hey? Not yet? Well, do as ye like about
it. But faith, if 'twas I, I should be as dry as a kex
wi' travelling so far."

"I'll begin milking now, to get my hand in," said Tess.

She drank a little milk as temporary refreshment--
to the surprise--indeed, slight contempt--of Dairyman
Crick, to whose mind it had apparently never occurred
that milk was good as a beverage.

"Oh, if ye can swaller that, be it so," he said
indifferently, while holding up the pail that she
sipped from. "'Tis what I hain't touched for years--
not I. Rot the stuff; it would lie in my innerds like
lead. You can try your hand upon she," he pursued,
nodding to the nearest cow. "Not but what she do milk
rather hard. We've hard ones and we've easy ones, like
other folks. However, you'll find out that soon
enough."

When Tess had changed her bonnet for a hood, and was
really on her stool under the cow, and the milk was
squirting from her fists into the pail, she appeared to
feel that she really had laid a new foundation for her
future. The conviction bred serenity, her pulse
slowed, and she was able to look about her.

The milkers formed quite a little battalion of men and
maids, the men operating on the hard-teated animals,
the maids on the kindlier natures. It was a large
dairy. There were nearly a hundred milchers under
Crick's management, all told; and of the herd the
master-dairyman milked six or eight with his own hands,
unless away from home. These were the cows that milked
hardest of all; for his journey-milkmen being more or
less casually hired, he would not entrust this
half-dozen to their treatment, lest, from indifference,
they should not milk them fully; nor to the maids, lest
they should fail in the same way for lack of
finger-grip; with the result that in course of time the
cows would "go azew"--that is, dry up. It was not the
loss for the moment that made slack milking so serious,
but that with the decline of demand there came decline,
and ultimately cessation, of supply.

After Tess had settled down to her cow there was for a
time no talk in the barton, and not a sound interfered
with the purr of the milk-jets into the numerous pails,
except a momentary exclamation to one or other of the
beast requesting her to turn round or stand still. The
only movements were those of the milkers' hands up and
down, and the swing of the cows' tails. Thus they all
worked on, encompassed by the vast flat mead which
extended to either slope of the valley--a level
landscape compounded of old landscapes long forgotten,
and, no doubt, differing in character very greatly from
the landscape they composed now.

"To my thinking," said the dairyman, rising suddenly
from a cow he had just finished off, snatching up his
three-legged stool in one hand and the pail in the
other, and moving on to the next hard-yielder in his
vicinity; "to my thinking, the cows don't gie down
their milk today as usual. Upon my life, if Winker do
begin keeping back like this, she'll not be worth going
under by midsummer."

"'Tis because there's a new hand come among us,' said
Jonathan Kail. "I've noticed such things afore."

"To be sure. It may be so. I didn't think o't."

"I've been told that it goes up into their horns at
such times," said a dairymaid.

"Well, as to going up into their horns," replied
Dairyman Crick dubiously, as though even witchcraft
might be limited by anatomical possibilities, "I
couldn't say; I certainly could not. But as nott cows
will keep it back as well as the horned ones, I don't
quite agree to it. Do ye know that riddle about the
nott cows, Jonathan? Why do nott cows give less milk in
a year than horned?"

"I don't!" interposed the milkmaid, "Why do they?"

"Because there bain't so many of 'em," said the
dairyman. "Howsomever, these gam'sters do certainly
keep back their milk today. Folks, we must lift up a
stave or two--that's the only cure for't."

Songs were often resorted to in dairies hereabout as an
enticement to the cows when they showed signs of
withholding their usual yield; and the band of milkers
at this request burst into melody--in purely
business-like tones, it is true, and with no great
spontaneity; the result, according to their own belief,
being a decided improvement during the song's
continuance. When they had gone through fourteen or
fifteen verses of a cheerful ballad about a murderer
who was afraid to go to bed in the dark because he saw
certain brimstone flames around him, one of the male
milkers said--

"I wish singing on the stoop didn't use up so much of a
man's wind! You should get your harp, sir; not but what
a fiddle is best."

Tess, who had given ear to this, thought the words were
addressed to the dairyman, but she was wrong. A reply,
in the shape of "Why?" came as it were out of the belly
of a dun cow in the stalls; it had been spoken by a
milker behind the animal, whom she had not hitherto
perceived.

"Oh yes; there's nothing like a fiddle," said the
dairyman. "Though I do think that bulls are more moved
by a tune than cows--at least that's my experience.
Once there was an old aged man over at
Mellstock--William Dewy by name--one of the family that
used to do a good deal of business as tranters over
there, Jonathan, do ye mind?--I knowed the man by sight
as well as I know my own brother, in a manner of
speaking. Well, this man was a coming home-along from
a wedding where he had been playing his fiddle, one
fine moonlight night, and for shortness' sake he took a
cut across Forty-acres, a field lying that way, where a
bull was out to grass. The bull seed William, and took
after him, horns aground, begad; and though William
runned his best, and hadn't MUCH drink in him
(considering 'twas a wedding, and the folks well off),
he found he'd never reach the fence and get over in
time to save himself. Well, as a last thought, he
pulled out his fiddle as he runned, and struck up a
jig, turning to the bull, and backing towards the
corner. The bull softened down, and stood still,
looking hard at William Dewy, who fiddled on and on;
till a sort of a smile stole over the bull's face. But
no sooner did William stop his playing and turn to get
over hedge than the bull would stop his smiling and
lower his horns towards the seat of William's breeches.
Well, William had to turn about and play on,
willy-nilly; and 'twas only three o'clock in the world,
and 'a knowed that nobody would come that way for
hours, and he so leery and tired that 'a didn't know
what to do. When he had scraped till about four
o'clock he felt that he verily would have to give over
soon, and he said to himself, 'There's only this last
tune between me and eternal welfare! Heaven save me, or
I'm a done man.' Well, then he called to mind how he'd
seen the cattle kneel o' Christmas Eves in the dead o'
night. It was not Christmas Eve then, but it came into
his head to play a trick upon the bull. So he broke
into the 'Tivity Hymm, just as at Christmas
carol-singing; when, lo and behold, down went the bull
on his bended knees, in his ignorance, just as if
'twere the true 'Tivity night and hour. As soon as his
horned friend were down, William turned, clinked off
like a long-dog, and jumped safe over hedge, before
the praying bull had got on his feet again to take
after him. William used to say that he'd seen a man
look a fool a good many times, but never such a fool as
that bull looked when he found his pious feelings had
been played upon, and 'twas not Christmas Eve. ... Yes,
William Dewy, that was the man's name; and I can tell
you to a foot where's he a-lying in Mellstock
Churchyard at this very moment--just between the second
yew-tree and the north aisle."

"It's a curious story; it carries us back to medieval
times, when faith was a living thing!"

The remark, singular for a dairy-yard, was murmured by
the voice behind the dun cow; but as nobody understood
the reference no notice was taken, except that the
narrator seemed to think it might imply scepticism as
to his tale.

"Well, 'tis quite true, sir, whether or no. I knowed
the man well."

"Oh yes; I have no doubt of it," said the person behind
the dun cow.

Tess's attention was thus attracted to the dairyman's
interlocutor, of whom she could see but the merest
patch, owing to his burying his head so persistently in
the flank of the milcher. She could not understand why
he should be addressed as "sir" even by the dairyman
himself. But no explanation was discernible; he
remained under to cow long enough to have milked three,
uttering a private ejaculation now and then, as if he
could not get on.

"Take it gentle, sir; take it gentle," said the
dairyman. "'Tis knack, not strength that does it."

"So I find," said the other, standing up at last and
stretching his arms. "I think I have finished her,
however, though she made my fingers ache."

Tess could then see him at full length. He wore the
ordinary white pinner and leather leggings of a
dairy-farmer when milking, and his boots were clogged
with the mulch of the yard; but this was all his local
livery. Beneath it was something educated, reserved,
subtle, sad, differing.

But the details of his aspect were temporarily thrust
aside by the discovery that he was one whom she had
seen before. Such vicissitudes had Tess passed through
since that time that for a moment she could not
remember where she had met him; and then it flashed
upon her that he was the pedestrian who had joined in
the club-dance at Marlott--the passing stranger who had
come she knew not whence, had danced with others but
not with her, and slightingly left her, and gone on his
way with his friends.

The flood of memories brought back by this revival of
an incident anterior to her troubles produced a
momentary dismay lest, recognizing her also, he should
by some means discover her story. But it passed away
when she found no sign of remembrance in him. She saw
by degrees that since their first and only encounter
his mobile face had grown more thoughtful, and had
acquired a young man's shapely moustache and beard--the
latter of the palest straw colour where it began upon
his cheeks, and deepening to a warm brown farther from
its root. Under his linen milking-pinner he wore a
dark velveteen jacket, cord breeches and gaiters, and a
starched white shirt. Without the milking-gear nobody
could have guessed what he was. He might with equal
probability have been an eccentric landowner or a
gentlemanly ploughman. That he was but a novice at
dairy work she had realized in a moment, from the time
he had spent upon the milking of one cow.

Meanwhile many of the milkmaids had said to one another
of the newcomer, "How pretty she is!" with something of
real generosity and admiration, though with a half hope
that the auditors would qualify the assertion--which,
strictly speaking, they might have done, prettiness
being an inexact definition of what struck the eye in
Tess. When the milking was finished for the evening
they straggled indoors, where Mrs Crick, the dairyman's
wife--who was too respectable to go out milking
herself, and wore a hot stuff gown in warm weather
because the dairymaids wore prints--was giving an eye
to the leads and things.

Only two or three of the maids, Tess learnt, slept in
the dairy-house besides herself; most of the helpers
going to their homes. She saw nothing at supper-time of
the superior milker who had commented on the story, and
asked no questions about him, the remainder of the
evening being occupied in arranging her place in the
bed-chamber. It was a large room over the milk-house,
some thirty feet long; the sleeping-cots of the other
three indoor milkmaids being in the same apartment.
They were blooming young women, and, except one, rather
older than herself. By bedtime Tess was thoroughly
tired, and fell asleep immediately.

But one of the girls who occupied an adjoining bed was
more wakeful than Tess, and would insist upon relating
to the latter various particulars of the homestead into
which she had just entered. The girl's whispered words
mingled with the shades, and, to Tess's drowsy mind,
they seemed to be generated by the darkness in which
they floated.

"Mr Angel Clare--he that is learning milking, and that
plays the harp--never says much to us. He is a pa'son's
son, and is too much taken up wi' his own thoughts to
notice girls. He is the dairyman's pupil--learning
farming in all its branches. He has learnt
sheep-farming at another place, and he's now mastering
dairy-work.... Yes, he is quite the gentleman-born. His
father is the Reverent Mr Clare at Emminster--a good
many miles from here."

"Oh--I have heard of him," said her companion, now
awake. "A very earnest clergyman, is he not?"

"Yes--that he is--the earnestest man in all Wessex,
they say--the last of the old Low Church sort, they
tell me--for all about here be what they call High.
All his sons, except our Mr Clare, be made pa'sons too."

Tess had not at this hour the curiosity to ask why the
present Mr Clare was not made a parson like his
brethren, and gradually fell asleep again, the words of
her informant coming to her along with the smell of the
cheeses in the adjoining cheeseloft, and the measured
dripping of the whey from the wrings downstairs.

XVIII

Angel Clare rises out of the past not altogether as a
distinct figure, but as an appreciative voice, a long
regard of fixed, abstracted eyes, and a mobility of
mouth somewhat too small and delicately lined for a
man's, though with an unexpectedly firm close of the
lower lip now and then; enough to do away with any
inference of indecision. Nevertheless, something
nebulous, preoccupied, vague, in his bearing and
regard, marked him as one who probably had no very
definite aim or concern about his material future.
Yet as a lad people had said of him that he was one who
might do anything if he tried.

He was the youngest son of his father, a poor parson at
the other end of the county, and had arrived at
Talbothays Dairy as a six months' pupil, after going
the round of some other farms, his object being to
acquire a practical skill in the various processes of
farming, with a view either to the Colonies, or the
tenure of a home-farm, as circumstances might decide.

His entry into the ranks of the agriculturists and
breeders was a step in the young man's career which had
been anticipated neither by himself nor by others.

Mr Clare the elder, whose first wife had died and left
him a daughter, married a second late in life. This
lady had somewhat unexpectedly brought him three sons,
so that between Angel, the youngest, and his father the
Vicar there seemed to be almost a missing generation.
Of these boys the aforesaid Angel, the child of his old
age, was the only son who had not taken a University
degree, though he was the single one of them whose
early promise might have done full justice to an
academical training.

Some two or three years before Angel's appearance at
the Marlott dance, on a day when he had left school and
was pursuing his studies at home, a parcel came to the
Vicarage from the local bookseller's, directed to the
Reverend James Clare. The Vicar having opened it and
found it to contain a book, read a few pages; whereupon
he jumped up from his seat and went straight to the
shop with the book under his arm.

"Why has this been sent to my house?" he asked
peremptorily, holding up the volume.

"It was ordered, sir."

"Not by me, or any one belonging to me, I am happy to
say."

The shopkeeper looked into his order-book.

"Oh, it has been misdirected, sir," he said. "It was
ordered by Mr Angel Clare, and should have been sent to
him."

Mr Clare winced as if he had been struck. He went home
pale and dejected, and called Angel into his study.

"Look into this book, my boy," he said. "What do you
know about it?"

"I ordered it," said Angel simply.

"What for?"

"To read." "How can you think of reading it?"

"How can I? Why--it is a system of philosophy.
There is no more moral, or even religious, work published."

"Yes--moral enough; I don't deny that. But
religious!--and for YOU, who intend to be a minister of
the Gospel!"

"Since you have alluded to the matter, father," said
the son, with anxious thought upon his face, "I should
like to say, once for all, that I should prefer not to
take Orders. I fear I could not conscientiously do so.
I love the Church as one loves a parent. I shall always
have the warmest affection for her. There is no
institution for whose history I have a deeper
admiration; but I cannot honestly be ordained her
minister, as my brothers are, while she refuses to
liberate her mind from an untenable redemptive
theolarty."

It had never occurred to the straightforward and
simple-minded Vicar that one of his own flesh and blood
could come to this! He was stultified, shocked,
paralysed. And if Angel were not going to enter the
Church, what was the use of sending him to Cambridge?
The University as a step to anything but ordination
seemed, to this man of fixed ideas, a preface without a
volume. He was a man not merely religious, but devout;
a firm believer--not as the phrase is now elusively
construed by theological thimble-riggers in the Church
and out of it, but in the old and ardent sense of the
Evangelical school: one who could

Indeed opine
That the Eternal and Divine
Did, eighteen centuries ago
In very truth...

Angel's father tried argument, persuasion, entreaty.

"No, father; I cannot underwrite Article Four (leave
alone the rest), taking it 'in the literal and
grammatical sense' as required by the Declaration; and,
therefore, I can't be a parson in the present state of
affairs," said Angel. "My whole instinct in matters of
religion is towards reconstruction; to quote your
favorite Epistle to the Hebrews, 'THE REMOVING OF THOSE
THINGS THAT ARE SHAKEN, AS OF THINGS THAT ARE MADE,
THAT THOSE THINGS WHICH CANNOT BE SHAKEN MAY REMAIN.'"

His father grieved so deeply that it made Angel quite
ill to see him.

"What is the good of your mother and me economizing and
stinting ourselves to give you a University education,
if it is not to be used for the honour and glory of
God?" his father repeated.

"Why, that it may be used for the honour and glory of
man, father."

Perhaps if Angel had persevered he might have gone to
Cambridge like his brothers. But the Vicar's view of
that seat of learning as a stepping-stone to Orders
alone was quite a family tradition; and so rooted was
the idea in his mind that perseverance began to appear
to the sensitive son akin to an intent to
misappropriate a trust, and wrong the pious heads of
the household, who had been and were, as his father had
hinted, compelled to exercise much thrift to carry out
his uniform plan of education for the three young men.

"I will do without Cambridge," said Angel at last.
"I feel that I have no right to go there in the
circumstances."

The effects of this decisive debate were not long in
showing themselves. He spent years and years in
desultory studies, undertakings, and meditations; he
began to evince considerable indifference to social
forms and observances. The material distinctions of
rank and wealth he increasingly despised. Even the
"good old family" (to use a favourite phrase of a late
local worthy) had no aroma for him unless there were
good new resolutions in its representatives. As a
balance to these austerities, when he went to live in
London to see what the world was like, and with a view
to practising a profession or business there, he was
carried off his head, and nearly entrapped by a woman
much older than himself, though luckily he escaped not
greatly the worse for the experience.

Early association with country solitudes had bred in
him an unconquerable, and almost unreasonable, aversion
to modern town life, and shut him out from such success
as he might have aspired to by following a mundane
calling in the impracticability of the spiritual one.
But something had to be done; he had wasted many
valuable years; and having an acquaintance who was
starting on a thriving life as a Colonial farmer, it
occurred to Angel that this might be a lead in the
right direction. Farming, either in the Colonies,
America, or at home--farming, at any rate, after
becoming well qualified for the business by a careful
apprenticeship--that was a vocation which would
probably afford an independence without the sacrifice
of what he valued even more than a
competency--intellectual liberty.

So we find Angel Clare at six-and-twenty here at
Talbothays as a student of kine, and, as there were no
houses near at hand in which he could get a comfortable
lodging, a boarder at the dairyman's.

His room was an immense attic which ran the whole
length of the dairy-house. It could only be reached by
a ladder from the cheese-loft, and had been closed up
for a long time till he arrived and selected it as his
retreat. Here Clare had plenty of space, and could
often be heard by the dairy-folk pacing up and down
when the household had gone to rest. A portion was
divided off at one end by a curtain, behind which was
his bed, the outer part being furnished as a homely
sitting-room.

At first he lived up above entirely, reading a good
deal, and strumming upon an old harp which he had
bought at a sale, saying when in a bitter humour that
he might have to get his living by it in the streets
some day. But he soon preferred to read human nature
by taking his meals downstairs in the general
dining-kitchen, with the dairyman and his wife, and the
maids and men, who all together formed a lively
assembly; for though but few milking hands slept in the
house, several joined the family at meals. The longer
Clare resided here the less objection had he to his
company, and the more did he like to share quarters
with them in common.

Much to his surprise he took, indeed, a real delight in
their companionship. The conventional farm-folk of his
imagination--personified in the newspaper-press by the
pitiable dummy known as Hodge--were obliterated after a
few days' residence. At close quarters no Hodge was to
be seen. At first, it is true, when Clare's
intelligence was fresh from a contrasting society,
these friends with whom he now hobnobbed seemed a
little strange. Sitting down as a level member of the
dairyman's household seemed at the outset an
undignified proceeding. The ideas, the modes, the
surroundings, appeared retrogressive and unmeaning.
But with living on there, day after day, the acute
sojourner became conscious of a new aspect in the
spectacle. Without any objective change whatever,
variety had taken the place of monotonousness. His host
and his host's household, his men and his maids, as
they became intimately known to Clare, began to
differentiate themselves as in a chemical process. The
thought of Pascal's was brought home to him: "A MESURE
QU'ON A PLUS D'ESPRIT, ON TROUVE QU'IL Y A PLUS
D'HOMMES ORIGINAUX. LES GENS DU COMMUN NE TROUVENT PAS
DE DIFFERENCE ENTRE LES HOMMES." The typical and
unvarying Hodge ceased to exist. He had been
disintegrated into a number of varied
fellow-creatures--beings of many minds, beings infinite
in difference; some happy, many serene, a few
depressed, one here and there bright even to genius,
some stupid, others wanton, others austere; some mutely
Miltonic, some potentially Cromwellian; into men who
had private views of each other, as he had of his
friends; who could applaud or condemn each other, amuse
or sadden themselves by the contemplation of each
other's foibles or vices; men every one of whom walked
in his own individual way the road to dusty death.

Unexpectedly he began to like the outdoor life for its
own sake, and for what it brought, apart from its
bearing on his own proposed career. Considering his
position he became wonderfully free from the chronic
melancholy which is taking hold of the civilized races
with the decline of belief in a beneficent Power. For
the first time of late years he could read as his
musings inclined him, without any eye to cramming for a
profession, since the few farming handbooks which he
deemed it desirable to master occupied him but little
time.

He grew away from old associations, and saw something
new in life and humanity. Secondarily, he made close
acquaintance with phenomena which he had before known
but darkly--the seasons in their moods, morning and
evening, night and noon, winds in their different
tempers, trees, waters and mists, shades and silences,
and the voices of inanimate things.

The early mornings were still sufficiently cool to
render a fire acceptable in the large room wherein they
breakfasted; and, by Mrs Crick's orders, who held that
he was too genteel to mess at their table, it was Angel
Clare's custom to sit in the yawning chimney-corner
during the meal, his cup-and-saucer and plate being
placed on a hinged flap at his elbow. The light from
the long, wide, mullioned window opposite shone in upon
his nook, and, assisted by a secondary light of cold
blue quality which shone down the chimney, enabled him
to read there easily whenever disposed to do so.
Between Clare and the window was the table at which his
companions sat, their munching profiles rising sharp
against the panes; while to the side was the milk-house
door, through which were visible the rectangular leads
in rows, full to the brim with the morning's milk. At
the further end the great churn could be seen
revolving, and its slip-slopping heard--the moving
power being discernible through the window in the form
of a spiritless horse walking in a circle and driven by
a boy.

For several days after Tess's arrival Clare, sitting
abstractedly reading from some book, periodical, or
piece of music just come by post, hardly noticed that
she was present at table. She talked so little, and
the other maids talked so much, that the babble did not
strike him as possessing a new note, and he was ever in
the habit of neglecting the particulars of an outward
scene for the general impression. One day, however,
when he had been conning one of his music-scores, and
by force of imagination was hearing the tune in his
head, he lapsed into listlessness, and the music-sheet
rolled to the hearth. He looked at the fire of logs,
with its one flame pirouetting on the top in a dying
dance after the breakfast-cooking and boiling, and it
seemed to jig to his inward tune; also at the two
chimney crooks dangling down from the cotterel or
cross-bar, plumed with soot which quivered to the same
melody; also at the half-empty kettle whining an
accompaniment. The conversation at the table mixed in
with his phantasmal orchestra till he thought: "What a
fluty voice one of those milkmaids has! I suppose it is
the new one."

Clare looked round upon her, seated with the others.

She was not looking towards him. Indeed, owing to his
long silence, his presence in the room was almost
forgotten.

"I don't know about ghosts," she was saying; "but I do
know that our souls can be made to go outside our
bodies when we are alive."

The dairyman turned to her with his mouth full, his
eyes charged with serious inquiry, and his great knife
and fork (breakfasts were breakfasts here) planted
erect on the table, like the beginning of a gallows.

"What--really now? And is it so, maidy?" he said.

"A very easy way to feel 'em go," continued Tess, "is
to lie on the grass at night and look straight up at
some big bright star; and, by fixing your mind upon it,
you will soon find that you are hundreds and hundreds
o' miles away from your body, which you don't seem to
want at all."

The dairyman removed his hard gaze from Tess, and fixed
it on his wife.

"Now that's a rum thing, Christianner--hey? To think
o' the miles I've vamped o' starlight nights these last
thirty year, courting, or trading, or for doctor, or
for nurse, and yet never had the least notion o' that
till now, or feeled my soul rise so much as an inch
above my shirt-collar."

The general attention being drawn to her, including
that of the dairyman's pupil, Tess flushed, and
remarking evasively that it was only a fancy, resumed
her breakfast.

Clare continued to observe her. She soon finished her
eating, and having a consciousness that Clare was
regarding her, began to trace imaginary patterns on the
tablecloth with her forefinger with the constraint of a
domestic animal that perceives itself to be watched.

"What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature that
milkmaid is!" he said to himself.

And then he seemed to discern in her something that was
familiar, something which carried him back into a
joyous and unforeseeing past, before the necessity of
taking thought had made the heavens gray. He concluded
that he had beheld her before; where he could not tell.
A casual encounter during some country ramble it
certainly had been, and he was not greatly curious
about it. But the circumstance was sufficient to lead
him to select Tess in preference to the other pretty
milkmaids when he wished to contemplate contiguous
womankind.

XIX

In general the cows were milked as they presented
themselves, without fancy or choice. But certain cows
will show a fondness for a particular pair of hands,
sometimes carrying this predilection so far as to
refuse to stand at all except to their favourite, the
pail of a stranger being unceremoniously kicked over.

It was Dairyman Crick's rule to insist on breaking down
these partialities and aversions by constant
interchange, since otherwise, in the event of a milkman
or maid going away from the dairy, he was placed in a
difficulty. The maids' private aims, however, were the
reverse of the dairyman's rule, the daily selection by
each damsel of the eight or ten cows to which she had
grown accustomed rendering the operation on their
willing udders surprising easy and effortless.

Tess, like her compeers, soon discovered which of the
cows had a preference for her style of manipulation,
and her fingers having become delicate from the long
domiciliary imprisonments to which she had subjected
herself at intervals during the last two or three
years, she would have been glad to meet the milchers'
views in this respect. Out of the whole ninety-five
there were eight in particular--Dumpling, Fancy, Lofty,
Mist, Old Pretty, Young Pretty, Tidy, and Loud--who,
though the teats of one or two were as hard as carrots,
gave down to her with a readiness that made her work on
them a mere touch of the fingers. Knowing, however, the
dairyman's wish, she endeavoured conscientiously to
take the animals just as they came, expecting the very
hard yielders which she could not yet manage.

But she soon found a curious correspondence between the
ostensibly chance position of the cows and her wishes
in this matter, till she felt that their order could
not be the result of accident. The dairyman's pupil
had lent a hand in getting the cows together of late,
and at the fifth or sixth time she turned her eyes, as
she rested against the cow, full of sly inquiry upon
him.

"Mr Clare, you have ranged the cows!" she said,
blushing; and in making the accusation symptoms of a
smile gently lifted her upper lip in spite of her, so
as to show the tips of her teeth, the lower lip
remaining severely still.

"Well, it makes no difference," said he. "You will
always be here to milk them."

"Do you think so? I HOPE I shall! But I don't KNOW."

She was angry with herself afterwards, thinking that
he, unaware of her grave reasons for liking this
seclusion, might have mistaken her meaning. She had
spoken so earnestly to him, as if his presence were
somehow a factor in her wish. Her misgiving was such
that at dusk, when the milking was over, she walked in
the garden alone, to continue her regrets that she had
disclosed to him her discovery of his considerateness.

It was a typical summer evening in June, the atmosphere
being in such delicate equilibrium and so transmissive
that inanimate objects seemed endowed with two or three
senses, if not five. There was no distinction between
the near and the far, and an auditor felt close to
everything within the horizon. The soundlessness
impressed her as a positive entity rather than as the
mere negation of noise. It was broken by the strumming
of strings. Tess had heard those notes in the attic
above her head. Dim, flattened, constrained by their
confinement, they had never appealed to her as now,
when they wandered in the still air with a stark
quality like that of nudity. To speak absolutely, both
instrument and execution were poor; but the relative is
all, and as she listened Tess, like a fascinated bird,
could not leave the spot. Far from leaving she drew up
towards the performer, keeping behind the hedge that he
might not guess her presence.

The outskirt of the garden in which Tess found herself
had been left uncultivated for some years, and was now
damp and rank with juicy grass which sent up mists of
pollen at a touch; and with tall blooming weeds
emitting offensive smells--weeds whose red and yellow
and purple hues formed a polychrome as dazzling as that
of cultivated flowers. She went stealthily as a cat
through this profusion of growth, gathering
cuckoo-spittle on her skirts, cracking snails that were
underfoot, staining her hands with thistle-milk and
slug-slime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms sticky
blights which, though snow-white on the apple-tree
trunks, made madder stains on her skin; thus she drew
quite near to Clare, still unobserved of him.

Tess was conscious of neither time nor space. The
exaltation which she had described as being producible
at will by gazing at a star, came now without any
determination of hers; she undulated upon the thin
notes of the second-hand harp, and their harmonies
passed like breezes through her, bringing tears into
her eyes. The floating pollen seemed to be his notes
made visible, and the dampness of the garden the
weeping of the garden's sensibility. Though near
nightfall, the rank-smelling weed-flowers glowed as if
they would not close for intentness, and the waves of
colour mixed with the waves of sound.

The light which still shone was derived mainly from a
large hole in the western bank of cloud; it was like a
piece of day left behind by accident, dusk having
closed in elsewhere. He concluded his plaintive
melody, a very simple performance, demanding no great
skill; and she waited, thinking another might be begun.
But, tired of playing, he had desultorily come round
the fence, and was rambling up behind her. Tess, her
cheeks on fire, moved away furtively, as if hardly
moving at all.

Angel, however, saw her light summer gown, and he
spoke; his low tones reaching her, though he was some
distance off.

"What makes you draw off in that way, Tess?" said he.
"Are you afraid?"

"Oh no, sir ... not of outdoor things; especially just
now when the apple-blooth is falling, and everything is
so green."

"But you have your indoor fears--eh?"

"Well--yes, sir."

"What of?"

"I couldn't quite say."

"The milk turning sour?"

"No."

"Life in general?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ah--so have I, very often. This hobble of being alive
is rather serious, don't you think so?"

"It is--now you put it that way."

"All the same, I shouldn't have expected a young girl
like you to see it so just yet. How is it you do?"

She maintained a hesitating silence.

"Come, Tess, tell me in confidence."

She thought that he meant what were the aspects of
things to her, and replied shyly --

"The trees have inquisitive eyes, haven't they?--that
is, seem as if they had. And the river says,--'Why do
ye trouble me with your looks?' And you seem to see
numbers of tomorrows just all in a line, the first of
them the biggest and clearest, the others getting
smaller and smaller as they stand farther away; but
they all seem very fierce and cruel and as if they
said, 'I'm coming! Beware of me! Beware of me!' ...
But YOU, sir, can raise up dreams with your music, and
drive all such horrid fancies away!"

He was surprised to find this young woman--who though
but a milkmaid had just that touch of rarity about her
which might make her the envied of her
housemates--shaping such sad imaginings. She was
expressing in her own native phrases--assisted a little
by her Sixth Standard training--feelings which might
almost have been called those of the age--the ache of
modernism. The perception arrested him less when he
reflected that what are called advanced ideas are
really in great part but the latest fashion in
definition--a more accurate expression, by words in
LOGY and ISM, of sensations which men and women have
vaguely grasped for centuries.

Still, it was strange that they should have come to her
while yet so young; more than strange; it was
impressive, interesting, pathetic. Not guessing the
cause, there was nothing to remind him that experience
is as to intensity, and not as to duration. Tess's
passing corporeal blight had been her mental harvest.

Tess, on her part, could not understand why a man of
clerical family and good education, and above physical
want, should look upon it as a mishap to be alive. For
the unhappy pilgrim herself there was very good reason.
But how could this admirable and poetic man ever have
descended into the Valley of Humiliation, have felt
with the man of Uz--as she herself had felt two or
three years ago--'My soul chooseth strangling and death
rather than my life. I loathe it; I would not live
alway."

It was true that he was at present out of his class.
But she knew that was only because, like Peter the
Great in a shipwright's yard, he was studying what he
wanted to know. He did not milk cows because he was
obliged to milk cows, but because he was learning to be
a rich and prosperous dairyman, landowner,
agriculturist, and breeder of cattle. He would become
an American or Australian Abraham, commanding like a
monarch his flocks and his herds, his spotted and his
ring-straked, his men-servants and his maids. At times,
nevertheless, it did seem unaccountable to her that a
decidedly bookish, musical, thinking young man should
have chosen deliberately to be a farmer, and not a
clergyman, like his father and brothers.

Thus, neither having the clue to the other's secret,
they were respectively puzzled at what each revealed,
and awaited new knowledge of each other's character and
mood without attempting to pry into each other's
history.

Every day, every hour, brought to him one more little
stroke of her nature, and to her one more of his. Tess
was trying to lead a repressed life, but she little
divined the strength of her own vitality.

At first Tess seemed to regard Angel Clare as an
intelligence rather than as a man. As such she compared
him with herself; and at every discovery of the
abundance of his illuminations, and the unmeasurable,
Andean altitude of his, she became quite dejected,
disheartened from all further effort on her own part
whatever.

He observed her dejection one day, when he had casually
mentioned something to her about pastoral life in
ancient Greece. She was gathering the buds called
"lords and ladies" from the bank while he spoke.

"Why do you look so woebegone all of a sudden?" he
asked.

"Oh, 'tis only--about my own self," she said, with a
frail laugh of sadness, fitfully beginning to peel "a
lady" meanwhile. "Just a sense of what might have been
with me! My life looks as if it had been wasted for
want of chances! When I see what you know, what you
have read, and seen, and thought, I feel what a nothing
I am! I'm like the poor Queen of Sheba who lived in
the Bible. There is no more spirit in me."

"Bless my soul, don't go troubling about that! Why,"
he said with some enthusiasm, "I should be only too
glad, my dear Tess, to help you to anything in the way
of history, or any line of reading you would like to
take up--"

"It is a lady again," interrupted she, holding out the
bud she had peeled.

"What?"

"I meant that there are always more ladies than lords
when you come to peel them."

"Never mind about the lords and ladies. Would you like
to take up any course of study--history, for example?"

"Sometimes I feel I don't want to know anything more
about it than I know already."

"Why not?"

"Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a
long row only--finding out that there is set down in
some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I
shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all.
The best is not to remember that your nature and your
past doings have been just like thousands' and
thousands', and that your coming life and doings 'll be
like thousands's and thousands'."

"What, really, then, you don't want to learn anything?"

"I shouldn't mind learning why--why the sun do shine on
the just and the unjust alike," she answered, with a
slight quaver in her voice. "But that's what books
will not tell me." "Tess, fie for such bitterness!"
Of course he spoke with a conventional sense of duty only,
for that sort of wondering had not been unknown to
himself in bygone days. And as he looked at the
unpracticed mouth and lips, he thought that such a
daughter of the soil could only have caught up the
sentiment by rote. She went on peeling the lords and
ladies till Clare, regarding for a moment the wave-like
curl of her lashes as they dropped with her bent gaze
on her soft cheek, lingeringly went away. When he was
gone she stood awhile, thoughtfully peeling the last
bud; and then, awakening from her reverie, flung it and
all the crowd of floral nobility impatiently on the
ground, in an ebullition of displeasure with herself
for her NIAISERIES, and with a quickening warmth in her
heart of hearts.

How stupid he must think her! In an access of hunger
for his good opinion she bethought herself of what she
had latterly endeavoured to forget, so unpleasant had
been its issues--the identity of her family with that
of the knightly d'Urbervilles. Barren attribute as it
was, disastrous as its discovery had been in many ways
to her, perhaps Mr Clare, as a gentleman and a student
of history, would respect her sufficiently to forget
her childish conduct with the lords and ladies if he
knew that those Purbeck-marble and alabaster people in
Kingsbere Church really represented her own lineal
forefathers; that she was no spurious d'Urberville,
compounded of money and ambition like those at
Trantridge, but true d'Urberville to the bone.

But, before venturing to make the revelation, dubious
Tess indirectly sounded the dairyman as to its possible
effect upon Mr Clare, by asking the former if Mr Clare
had any great respect for old county families when they
had lost all their money and land.

"Mr Clare," said the dairyman emphatically, "is one of
the most rebellest rozums you ever knowed--not a bit
like the rest of his family; and if there's one thing
that he do hate more than another 'tis the notion of
what's called a' old family. He says that it stands to
reason that old families have done their spurt of work
in past days, and can't have anything left in 'em now.
There's the Billets and the Drenkhards and the Greys
and the St Quintins and the Hardys and the Goulds, who
used to own the lands for miles down this valley; you
could buy 'em all up now for an old song a'most. Why,
our little Retty Priddle here, you know, is one of the
Paridelles--the old family that used to own lots o' the
lands out by King's Hintock now owned by the Earl o'
Wessex, afore even he or his was heard of. Well, Mr
Clare found this out, and spoke quite scornful to the
poor girl for days. 'Ah!' he says to her, 'you'll never
make a good dairymaid! All your skill was used up ages
ago in Palestine, and you must lie fallow for a
thousand years to git strength for more deeds!' A boy
came here t'other day asking for a job, and said his
name was Matt, and when we asked him his surname he
said he'd never heard that 'a had any surname, and when
we asked why, he said he supposed his folks hadn't been
'stablished long enough. 'Ah! you're the very boy I
want!' says Mr Clare, jumping up and shaking hands
wi'en; 'I've great hopes of you;' and gave him
half-a-crown. O no! he can't stomach old families!'

After hearing this caricature of Clare's opinion poor
Tess was glad that she had not said a word in a weak
moment about her family--even though it was so
unusually old almost to have gone round the circle and
become a new one. Besides, another diary-girl was as
good as she, it seemed, in that respect. She held her
tongue about the d'Urberville vault, the Knight of the
Conqueror whose name she bore. The insight afforded
into Clare's character suggested to her that it was
largely owing to her supposed untraditional newness
that she had won interest in his eyes.

XX

The season developed and matured. Another year's
instalment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes,
finches, and such ephemeral creatures, took up their
positions where only a year ago others had stood in
their place when these were nothing more than germs and
inorganic particles. Rays from the sunrise drew forth
the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up
sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out
scents in invisible jets and breathings.

Dairyman Crick's household of maids and men lived on
comfortably, placidly, even merrily. Their position
was perhaps the happiest of all positions in the social
scale, being above the line at which neediness ends,
and below the line at which the CONVENANCES begin to
cramp natural feelings, and the stress of threadbare
modishness makes too little of enough.

Thus passed the leafy time when arborescence seems to
be the one thing aimed at out of doors. Tess and Clare
unconsciously studied each other, ever balanced on the
edge of a passion, yet apparently keeping out of it.
All the while they were converging, under an
irresistible law, as surely as two streams in one vale.

Tess had never in her recent life been so happy as she
was now, possibly never would be so happy again. She
was, for one thing, physically and mentally suited
among these new surroundings. The sapling which had
rooted down to a poisonous stratum on the spot of its
sowing had been transplanted to a deeper soil.
Moreover she, and Clare also, stood as yet on the
debatable land between predilection and love; where no
profundities have been reached; no reflections have set
in, awkwardly inquiring, "Whither does this new current
tend to carry me? What does it mean to my future? How
does it stand towards my past?"

Tess was the merest stray phenomenon to Angel Clare as
yet--a rosy warming apparition which had only just
acquired the attribute of persistence in his
consciousness. So he allowed his mind to be occupied
with her, deeming his preoccupation to be no more than
a philosopher's regard of an exceedingly novel, fresh,
and interesting specimen of womankind.

They met continually; they could not help it. They met
daily in that strange and solemn interval, the twilight
of the morning, in the violet or pink dawn; for it was
necessary to rise early, so very early, here. Milking
was done betimes; and before the milking came the
skimming, which began at a little past three. It
usually fell to the lot of some one or other of them to
wake the rest, the first being aroused by an
alarm-clock; and, as Tess was the latest arrival, and
they soon discovered that she could be depended upon
not to sleep though the alarm as others did, this task
was thrust most frequently upon her. No sooner had the
hour of three struck and whizzed, than she left her
room and ran to the dairyman's door; then up the ladder
to Angel's, calling him in a loud whisper; then woke
her fellow-milkmaids. By the time that Tess was
dressed Clare was downstairs and out in the humid air.
The remaining maids and the dairyman usually gave
themselves another turn on the pillow, and did not
appear till a quarter of an hour later.

The gray half-tones of daybreak are not the gray
half-tones of the day's close, though the degree of
their shade may be the same. In the twilight of the
morning light seems active, darkness passive; in the
twilight of evening it is the darkness which is active
and crescent, and the light which is the drowsy
reverse.

Being so often--possibly not always by chance--the
first two persons to get up at the dairy-house, they
seemed to themselves the first persons up of all the
world. In these early days of her residence here Tess
did not skim, but went out of doors at once after
rising, where he was generally awaiting her. The
spectral, half-compounded, aqueous light which pervaded
the open mead, impressed them with a feeling of
isolation, as if they were Adam and Eve. At this dim
inceptive stage of the day Tess seemed to Clare to
exhibit a dignified largeness both of disposition and
physique, an almost regnant power, possibly because he
knew that at that preternatural time hardly any woman
so well endowed in person as she was likely to be
walking in the open air within the boundaries of his
horizon; very few in all England. Fair women are
usually asleep at mid-summer dawns. She was close at
hand, and the rest were nowhere.

The mixed, singular, luminous gloom in which they
walked along together to the spot where the cows lay,
often made him think of the Resurrection hour. He
little thought that the Magdalen might be at his side.
Whilst all the landscape was in neutral shade his
companion's face, which was the focus of his eyes,
rising above the mist stratum, seemed to have a sort of
phosphorescence upon it. She looked ghostly, as if she
were merely a soul at large. In reality her face,
without appearing to do so, had caught the cold gleam
of day from the north-east; his own face, though he did
not think of it, wore the same aspect to her.

It was then, as has been said, that she impressed him
most deeply. She was no longer the milkmaid, but a
visionary essence of woman--a whole sex condensed into
one typical form. He called her Artemis, Demeter, and
other fanciful names half teasingly, which she did not
like because she did not understand them.

"Call me Tess," she would say askance; and he did.

Then it would grow lighter, and her features would
become simply feminine; they had changed from those of
a divinity who could confer bliss to those of a being
who craved it.

At these non-human hours they could get quite close to
the waterfowl. Herons came, with a great bold noise as
of opening doors and shutters, out of the boughs of a
plantation which they frequented at the side of the
mead; or, if already on the spot, hardily maintained
their standing in the water as the pair walked by,
watching them by moving their heads round in a slow,
horizontal, passionless wheel, like the turn of puppets
by clockwork.

They could then see the faint summer fogs in layers,
woolly, level, and apparently no thicker than
counterpanes, spread about the meadows in detached
remnants of small extent. On the gray moisture of the
grass were marks where the cows had lain through the
night--dark-green islands of dry herbage the size of
their carcasses, in the general sea of dew. From each
island proceeded a serpentine trail, by which the cow
had rambled away to feed after getting up, at the end
of which trail they found her; the snoring puff from
her nostrils, when she recognized them, making an
intenser little fog of her own amid the prevailing one.
Then they drove the animals back to the barton, or sat
down to milk them on the spot, as the case might
require.

Or perhaps the summer fog was more general, and the
meadows lay like a white sea, out of which the
scattered trees rose like dangerous rocks. Birds would
soar through it into the upper radiance, and hang on
the wing sunning themselves, or alight on the wet rails
subdividing the mead, which now shone like glass rods.
Minute diamonds of moisture from the mist hung, too,
upon Tess's eyelashes, and drops upon her hair, like
seed pearls. When the day grew quite strong and
commonplace these dried off her; moreover, Tess then
lost her strange and ethereal beauty; her teeth, lips,
and eyes scintillated in the sunbeams and she was again
the dazzlingly fair dairymaid only, who had to hold her
own against the other women of the world.

About this time they would hear Dairyman Crick's voice,
lecturing the non-resident milkers for arriving late,
and speaking sharply to old Deborah Fyander for not
washing her hands.

"For Heaven's sake, pop thy hands under the pump, Deb!
Upon my soul, if the London folk only knowed of thee
and thy slovenly ways, they'd swaller their milk and
butter more mincing than they do a'ready; and that's
saying a good deal."

The milking progressed, till towards the end Tess and
Clare, in common with the rest, could hear the heavy
breakfast table dragged out from the wall in the
kitchen by Mrs Crick, this being the invariable
preliminary to each meal; the same horrible scrape
accompanying its return journey when the table had been
cleared.

XXI

There was a great stir in the milk-house just after
breakfast. The churn revolved as usual, but the butter
would not come. Whenever this happened the dairy was
paralyzed. Squish, squash, echoed the milk in the great
cylinder, but never arose the sound they waited for.

Dairyman Crick and his wife, the milkmaids Tess,
Marian, Retty Priddle, Izz Huett, and the married ones
from the cottages; also Mr Clare, Jonathan Kail, old
Deborah, and the rest, stood gazing hopelessly at the
churn; and the boy who kept the horse going outside put
on moon-like eyes to show his sense of the situation.
Even the melancholy horse himself seemed to look in at
the window in inquiring despair at each walk round.

"'Tis years since I went to Conjuror Trendle's son in
Egdon--years!" said the dairyman bitterly. "And he was
nothing to what his father had been. I have said fifty
times, if I have said once, that I DON'T believe in en;
though 'a do cast folks' waters very true. But I shall
have to go to 'n if he's alive. O yes, I shall have to
go to 'n, if this sort of thing continnys!"

Even Mr Clare began to feel tragical at the dairyman's
desperation.

"Conjuror Fall, t'other side of Casterbridge, that they
used to call 'Wide-O', was a very good man when I was a
boy," said Jonathan Kail. "But he's rotten as
touchwood by now."

"My grandfather used to go to Conjuror Mynterne, out at
Owlscombe, and a clever man a' were, so I've heard
grandf'er say," continued Mr Crick. "But there's no
such genuine folk about nowadays!"

Mrs Crick's mind kept nearer to the matter in hand.

"Perhaps somebody in the house is in love," she said
tentatively. "I've heard tell in my younger days that
that will cause it. Why, Crick--that maid we had years
ago, do ye mind, and how the butter didn't come
then---"

"Ah yes, yes!--but that isn't the rights o't. It had
nothing to do with the love-making. I can mind all
about it--'twas the damage to the churn."

He turned to Clare.

"Jack Dollop, a 'hore's-bird of a fellow we had here as
milker at one time, sir, courted a young woman over at
Mellstock, and deceived her as he had deceived many
afore. But he had another sort o' woman to reckon wi'
this time, and it was not the girl herself. One Holy
Thursday of all days in the almanack, we was here as we
mid be now, only there was no churning in hand, when we
zid the girl's mother coming up to the door, wi' a
great brass-mounted umbrella in her hand that would ha'
felled an ox, and saying 'Do Jack Dollop work
here?--because I want him! I have a big bone to pick
with he, I can assure 'n!' And some way behind her
mother walked Jack's young woman, crying bitterly into
her handkercher. 'O Lard, here's a time!' said Jack,
looking out o' winder at 'em. 'She'll murder me! Where
shall I get--where shall I--? Don't tell her where I
be!' And with that he scrambled into the churn through
the trap-door, and shut himself inside, just as the
young woman's mother busted into the milk-house. 'The
villain--where is he?' says she, 'I'll claw his face
for'n, let me only catch him!' Well, she hunted about
everywhere, ballyragging Jack by side and by seam, Jack
lying a'most stifled inside the churn, and the poor
maid--or young woman rather--standing at the door
crying her eyes out. I shall never forget it, never!
'Twould have melted a marble stone! But she couldn't
find him nowhere at all."

The dairyman paused, and one or two words of comment
came from the listeners.

Dairyman Crick's stories often seemed to be ended when
they were not really so, and strangers were betrayed
into premature interjections of finality; though old
friends knew better. The narrator went on--

"Well, how the old woman should have had the wit to
guess it I could never tell, but she found out that he
was inside that there churn. Without saying a word she
took hold of the winch (it was turned by handpower
then), and round she swung him, and Jack began to flop
about inside. 'O Lard! stop the churn! let me out!'
says he, popping out his head, 'I shall be churned into
a pummy!' (he was a cowardly chap in his heart, as such
men mostly be). 'Not till ye make amends for ravaging
her virgin innocence!' says the old woman. 'Stop the
churn you old witch!' screams he. 'You call me old
witch, do ye, you deceiver!' says she, 'when ye ought
to ha' been calling me mother-law these last five
months!' And on went the churn, and Jack's bones
rattled round again. Well, none of us ventured to
interfere; and at last 'a promised to make it right wi'
her. 'Yes--I'll be as good as my word!' he said. And so
it ended that day."

While the listeners were smiling their comments there
was a quick movement behind their backs, and they
looked round. Tess, pale-faced, had gone to the door.

"How warm 'tis today!" she said, almost inaudibly.

It was warm, and none of them connected her withdrawal
with the reminiscences of the dairyman. He went
forward and opened the door for her, saying with tender
raillery--

"Why, maidy" (he frequently, with unconscious irony,
gave her this pet name), "the prettiest milker I've got
in my dairy; you mustn't get so fagged as this at the
first breath of summer weather, or we shall be finely
put to for want of 'ee by dog-days, shan't we, Mr Clare?"

"I was faint--and--I think I am better out o' doors,"
she said mechanically; and disappeared outside.

Fortunately for her the milk in the revolving churn at
that moment changed its squashing for a decided
flick-flack.

"'Tis coming!" cried Mrs Crick, and the attention of
all was called off from Tess.

That fair sufferer soon recovered herself externally;
but she remained much depressed all the afternoon.
When the evening milking was done she did not care to
be with the rest of them, and went out of doors
wandering along she knew not whither. She was
wretched--O so wretched--at the perception that to her
companions the dairyman's story had been rather a
humorous narration than otherwise; none of them but
herself seemed to see the sorrow of it; to a certainty,
not one knew how cruelly it touched the tender place in
her experience. The evening sun was now ugly to her,
like a great inflamed wound in the sky. Only a
solitary cracked-voice reed-sparrow greeted her from
the bushes by the river, in a sad, machine-made tone,
resembling that of a past friend whose friendship she
had outworn.

In these long June days the milkmaids, and, indeed,
most of the household, went to bed at sunset or sooner,
the morning work before milking being so early and
heavy at a time of full pairs. Tess usually
accompanied her fellows upstairs. Tonight, however,
she was the first to go to their common chamber; and
she had dozed when the other girls came in. She saw
them undressing in the orange light of the vanished
sun, which flushed their forms with its colour; she
dozed again, but she was reawakened by their voices,
and quietly turned her eyes towards them.

Neither of her three chamber-companions had got into
bed. They were standing in a group, in their
nightgowns, barefooted, at the window, the last red
rays of the west still warming their faces and necks,
and the walls around them. All were watching somebody
in the garden with deep interest, their three faces
close together: a jovial and round one, a pale one with
dark hair, and a fair one whose tresses were auburn.

"Don't push! You can see as well as I," said Retty,
the auburn-haired and youngest girl, without removing
her eyes from the window.

"'Tis no use for you to be in love with him any more
than me, Retty Priddle," said jolly-faced Marian, the
eldest, slily. "His thoughts be of other cheeks than
thine!"

Retty Priddle still looked, and the other looked again.

"There he is again!" cried Izz Huett, the pale girl
with dark damp hair and keenly cut lips.

"You needn't say anything, Izz," answered Retty.
"For I zid you kissing his shade."

"WHAT did you see her doing?" asked Marian.

"Why--he was standing over the whey-tub to let off the
whey, and the shade of his face came upon the wall
behind, close to Izz, who was standing there filling a
vat. She put her mouth against the wall and kissed the
shade of his mouth; I zid her, though he didn't."

"O Izz Huett!" said Marian.

A rosy spot came into the middle of Izz Huett's cheek.

"Well, there was no harm in it," she declared, with
attempted coolness. "And if I be in love wi'en, so is
Retty, too; and so be you, Marian, come to that."

Marian's full face could not blush past its chronic
pinkness.

"I!" she said. "What a tale! Ah, there he is again!
Dear eyes--dear face--dear Mr Clare!"

"There--you've owned it!"

"So have you--so have we all," said Marian, with the
dry frankness of complete indifference to opinion.
"It is silly to pretend otherwise amongst ourselves, though
we need not own it to other folks. I would just marry
'n to-morrow!"

"So would I--and more," murmured Izz Huett.

"And I too," whispered the more timid Retty.

The listener grew warm.

"We can't all marry him," said Izz.

"We shan't, either of us; which is worse still," said
the eldest. "There he is again!"

They all three blew him a silent kiss.

"Why?" asked Retty quickly.

"Because he likes Tess Durbeyfield best," said Marian,
lowering her voice. "I have watched him every day, and
have found it out."

There was a reflective silence.

"But she don't care anything for 'n?" at length
breathed Retty.

"Well--I sometimes think that too."

"But how silly all this is!" said Izz Huett
impatiently. "Of course he won't marry any one of us,
or Tess either--a gentleman's son, who's going to be a
great landowner and farmer abroad! More likely to ask
us to come wi'en as farm-hands at so much a year!"

One sighed, and another sighed, and Marian's plump
figure sighed biggest of all. Somebody in bed hard by
sighed too. Tears came into the eyes of Retty Priddle,
the pretty red-haired youngest--the last bud of the
Paridelles, so important in the county annals. They
watched silently a little longer, their three faces
still close together as before, and the triple hues of
their hair mingling. But the unconscious Mr Clare had
gone indoors, and they saw him no more; and, the shades
beginning to deepen, they crept into their beds. In a
few minutes they heard him ascend the ladder to his own
room. Marian was soon snoring, but Izz did not drop
into forgetfulness for a long time. Retty Priddle
cried herself to sleep.

The deeper-passioned Tess was very far from sleeping
even then. This conversation was another of the bitter
pills she had been obliged to swallow that day. Scarce
the least feeling of jealousy arose in her breast. For
that matter she knew herself to have the preference.
Being more finely formed, better educated, and, though
the youngest except Retty, more woman than either, she
perceived that only the slightest ordinary care was
necessary for holding her own in Angel Clare's heart
against these her candid friends. But the grave
question was, ought she to do this? There was, to be
sure, hardly a ghost of a chance for either of them, in
a serious sense; but there was, or had been, a chance
of one or the other inspiring him with a passing fancy
for her, and enjoying the pleasure of his attentions
while he stayed here. Such unequal attachments had led
to marriage; and she had heard from Mrs Crick that Mr
Clare had one day asked, in a laughing way, what would
be the use of his marrying a fine lady, and all the
while ten thousand acres of Colonial pasture to feed,
and cattle to rear, and corn to reap. A farm-woman
would be the only sensible kind of wife for him. But
whether Mr Clare had spoken seriously or not, why
should she, who could never conscientiously allow any
man to marry her now, and who had religiously
determined that she never would be tempted to do so,
draw off Mr Clare's attention from other women, for the
brief happiness of sunning herself in his eyes while he
remained at Talbothays?

XXII

They came downstairs yawning next morning; but skimming
and milking were proceeded with as usual, and they went
indoors to breakfast. Dairyman Crick was discovered
stamping about the house. He had received a letter, in
which a customer had complained that the butter had a
twang.

"And begad, so 't have!" said the dairyman, who held in
his left hand a wooden slice on which a lump of butter
was stuck. "Yes--taste for yourself!"

Several of them gathered round him; and Mr Clare
tasted, Tess tasted, also the other indoor milkmaids,
one or two of the milking-men, and last of all Mrs
Crick, who came out from the waiting breakfast-table.
There certainly was a twang.

The dairyman, who had thrown himself into abstraction
to better realize the taste, and so divine the
particular species of noxious weed to which it
appertained, suddenly exclaimed--

"'Tis garlic! and I thought there wasn't a blade left
in that mead!"

Then all the old hands remembered that a certain dry
mead, into which a few of the cows had been admitted of
late, had, in years gone by, spoilt the butter in the
same way. The dairyman had not recognized the taste at
that time, and thought the butter bewitched.

"We must overhaul that mead," he resumed; "this mustn't
continny!"

All having armed themselves with old pointed knives
they went out together. As the inimical plant could
only be present in very microscopic dimensions to have
escaped ordinary observation, to find it seemed rather
a hopeless attempt in the stretch of rich grass before
them. However, they formed themselves into line, all
assisting, owing to the importance of the search; the
dairyman at the upper end with Mr Clare, who had
volunteered to help; then Tess, Marian, Izz Huett, and
Retty; then Bill Lewell, Jonathan, and the married
dairywomen--Beck Knibbs, with her wooly black hair and
rolling eyes; and flaxen Frances, consumptive from the
winter damps of the water-meads--who lived in their
respective cottages.

With eyes fixed upon the ground they crept slowly
across a strip of the field, returning a little further
down in such a manner that, when they should have
finished, not a single inch of the pasture but would
have fallen under the eye of some one of them. It was
a most tedious business, not more than half a dozen
shoots of garlic being discoverable in the whole field;
yet such was the herb's pungency that probably one bite
of it by one cow had been sufficient to season the
whole dairy's produce for the day.

Differing one from another in natures and moods so
greatly as they did, they yet formed, bending, a
curiously uniform row--automatic, noiseless; and an
alien observer passing down the neighbouring lane might
well have been excused for massing them as "Hodge". As
they crept along, stooping low to discern the plant, a
soft yellow gleam was reflected from the buttercups
into their shaded faces, giving them an elfish, moonlit
aspect, though the sun was pouring upon their backs in
all the strength of noon.

Angel Clare, who communistically stuck to his rule of
taking part with the rest in everything, glanced up now
and then. It was not, of course, by accident that he
walked next to Tess.

"Well, how are you?" he murmured.

"Very well, thank you, sir," she replied demurely.

As they had been discussing a score of personal matters
only half-an-hour before, the introductory style seemed
a little superfluous. But they got no further in
speech just then. They crept and crept, the hem of her
petticoat just touching his gaiter, and his elbow
sometimes brushing hers. At last the dairyman, who
came next, could stand it no longer.

"Upon my soul and body, this here stooping do fairly
make my back open and shut!" he exclaimed,
straightening himself slowly with an excruciated look
till quite upright. "And you, maidy Tess, you wasn't
well a day or two ago--this will make your head ache
finely! Don't do any more, if you feel fainty; leave
the rest to finish it."

Dairyman Crick withdrew, and Tess dropped behind. Mr
Clare also stepped out of line, and began privateering
about for the weed. When she found him near her, her
very tension at what she had heard the night before
made her the first to speak.

"Don't they look pretty?" she said.

"Who?"

"Izzy Huett and Retty."

Tess had moodily decided that either of these maidens
would make a good farmer's wife, and that she ought to
recommend them, and obscure her own wretched charms.

"Pretty? Well, yes--they are pretty girls--fresh
looking. I have often thought so."

"Though, poor dears, prettiness won't last long!"

"O no, unfortunately."

"They are excellent dairywomen."

"Yes: though not better than you."

"They skim better than I."

"Do they?"

Clare remained observing them--not without their
observing him.

"She is colouring up," continued Tess heroically.

"Who?"

"Retty Priddle."

"Oh! Why it that?"

"Because you are looking at her."

Self-sacrificing as her mood might be Tess could not
well go further and cry, "Marry one of them, if you
really do want a dairywoman and not a lady; and don't
think of marrying me!" She followed Dairyman Crick,
and had the mournful satisfaction of seeing that Clare
remained behind.

From this day she forced herself to take pains to avoid
him--never allowing herself, as formerly, to remain
long in his company, even if their juxtaposition were
purely accidental. She gave the other three every
chance.

Tess was woman enough to realize from their avowals to
herself that Angel Clare had the honour of all the
dairymaids in his keeping, and her perception of his
care to avoid compromising the happiness of either in
the least degree bred a tender respect in Tess for what
she deemed, rightly or wrongly, the self-controlling
sense of duty shown by him, a quality which she had
never expected to find in one of the opposite sex, and
in the absence of which more than one of the simple
hearts who were his house-mates might have gone weeping
on her pilgrimage.

XXIII

The hot weather of July had crept upon them unawares,
and the atmosphere of the flat vale hung heavy as an
opiate over the dairy-folk, the cows, and the trees.
Hot steaming rains fell frequently, making the grass
where the cows fed yet more rank, and hindering the
late haymaking in the other meads.

It was Sunday morning; the milking was done; the
outdoor milkers had gone home. Tess and the other
three were dressing themselves rapidly, the whole bevy
having agreed to go together to Mellstock Church, which
lay some three or four miles distant from the
dairy-house. She had now been two months at
Talbothays, and this was her first excursion.

All the preceding afternoon and night heavy
thunderstorms had hissed down upon the meads, and
washed some of the hay into the river; but this morning
the sun shone out all the more brilliantly for the
deluge, and the air was balmy and clear.

The crooked lane leading from their own parrish to
Mellstock ran along the lowest levels in a portion of
its length, and when the girls reached the most
depressed spot they found that the result of the rain
had been to flood the lane over-shoe to a distance of
some fifty yards. This would have been no serious
hindrance on a week-day; they would have clicked
through it in their high patterns and boots quite
unconcerned; but on this day of vanity, this Sun's-day,
when flesh went forth to coquet with flesh while
hypocritically affecting business with spiritual
things; on this occasion for wearing their white
stockings and thin shoes, and their pink, white, and
lilac gowns, on which every mud spot would be visible,
the pool was an awkward impediment. They could hear
the church-bell calling--as yet nearly a mile off.

"Who would have expected such a rise in the river in
summer-time!" said Marian, from the top of the
roadside bank on which they had climbed, and were
maintaining a precarious footing in the hope of
creeping along its slope till they were past the pool.

"We can't get there anyhow, without walking right
through it, or else going round the Turnpike way; and
that would make us so very late!" said Retty, pausing
hopelessly.

"And I do colour up so hot, walking into church late,
and all the people staring round," said Marian,
"that I hardly cool down again till we get into the
That-it-may-please-Thees."

While they stood clinging to the bank they heard a
splashing round the bend of the road, and presently
appeared Angel Clare, advancing along the lane towards
them through the water.

Four hearts gave a big throb simultaneously.

His aspect was probably as un-Sabbatarian a one as a
dogmatic parson's son often presented; his attire being
his dairy clothes, long wading boots, a cabbage-leaf
inside his hat to keep his head cool, with a
thistle-spud to finish him off. "He's not going to
church," said Marian.

"No--I wish he was!" murmured Tess.

Angel, in fact, rightly or wrongly (to adopt the safe
phrase of evasive controversialists), preferred sermons
in stones to sermons in churches and chapels on fine
summer days. This morning, moreover, he had gone out
to see if the damage to the hay by the flood was
considerable or not. On his walk he observed the girls
from a long distance, though they had been so occupied
with their difficulties of passage as not to notice
him. He knew that the water had risen at that spot,
and that it would quite check their progress. So he
had hastened on, with a dim idea of how he could help
them--one of them in particular.

The rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed quartet looked so
charming in their light summer attire, clinging to the
roadside bank like pigeons on a roof-slope, that he
stopped a moment to regard them before coming close.
Their gauzy skirts had brushed up from the grass
innumerable flies and butterflies which, unable to
escape, remained caged in the transparent tissue as in
an aviary. Angel's eye at last fell upon Tess, the
hindmost of the four; she, being full of suppressed
laughter at their dilemma, could not help meeting his
glance radiantly.

He came beneath them in the water, which did not rise
over his long boots; and stood looking at the entrapped
flies and butterflies.

"Are you trying to get to church?" he said to Marian,
who was in front, including the next two in his remark,
but avoiding Tess.

"Yes, sir; and 'tis getting late; and my colour do come
up so----"

"I'll carry you through the pool--every Jill of you."

The whole four flushed as if one heart beat through
them.

"I think you can't, sir," said Marian.

"It is the only way for you to get past. Stand still.
Nonsense--you are not too heavy! I'd carry you all
four together. Now, Marian, attend," he continued, "and
put your arms round my shoulders, so. Now! Hold on.
That's well done."

Marian had lowered herself upon his arm and shoulder as
directed, and Angel strode off with her, his slim
figure, as viewed from behind, looking like the mere
stem to the great nosegay suggested by hers. They
disappeared round the curve of the road, and only his
sousing footsteps and the top ribbon of Marian's bonnet
told where they were. In a few minutes he reappeared.
Izz Huett was the next in order upon the bank.

"Here he comes," she murmured, and they could hear that
her lips were dry with emotion. "And I have to put my
arms round his neck and look into his face as Marian
did."

"There's nothing in that," said Tess quickly.

"There's a time for everything," continued Izz,
unheeding. "A time to embrace, and a time to refrain
from embracing; the first is now going to be mine."

"Fie--it is Scripture, Izz!"

"Yes," said Izz, "I've always a' ear at church for
pretty verses."

Angel Clare, to whom three-quarters of this performance
was a commonplace act of kindness, now approached Izz.
She quietly and dreamily lowered herself into his arms,
and Angel methodically marched off with her. When he
was heard returning for the third time Retty's
throbbing heart could be almost seen to shake her. He
went up to the red-haired girl, and while he was
seizing her he glanced at Tess. His lips could not
have pronounced more plainly, "It will soon be you and
I." Her comprehension appeared in her face; she could
not help it. There was an understanding between them.

Poor little Retty, though by far the lightest weight,
was the most troublesome of Clare's burdens. Marian
had been like a sack of meal, a dead weight of
plumpness under which he has literally staggered.
Izz had ridden sensibly and calmly. Retty was a bunch of
hysterics.

However, he got through with the disquieted creature,
deposited her, and returned. Tess could see over the
hedge the distant three in a group, standing as he had
placed them on the next rising ground. It was now her
turn. She was embarrassed to discover that excitement
at the proximity of Mr Clare's breath and eyes, which
she had contemned in her companions, was intensified in
herself; and as if fearful of betraying her secret she
paltered with him at the last moment.

"I may be able to clim' along the bank perhaps--I can
clim' better than they. You must be so tired, Mr Clare!"

"No, no, Tess," said he quickly. And almost before she
was aware she was seated in his arms and resting
against his shoulder.

"Three Leahs to get one Rachel," he whispered.

"They are better women than I," she replied,
magnanimously sticking to her resolve.

"Not to me," said Angel.

He saw her grow warm at this; and they went some steps
in silence.

"I hope I am not too heavy?" she said timidly.

"O no. You should lift Marian! Such a lump. You are
like an undulating billow warmed by the sun. And all
this fluff of muslin about you is the froth."

"It is very pretty--if I seem like that to you."

"Do you know that I have undergone three-quarters of
this labour entirely for the sake of the fourth
quarter?"

"No."

"I did not expect such an event today."

"Nor I.... The water came up so sudden."

That the rise in the water was what she understood him
to refer to, the state of breathing belied. Clare
stood still and inclinced his face towards hers.

"O Tessy!" he exclaimed.

The girl's cheeks burned to the breeze, and she could
not look into his eyes for her emotion. It reminded
Angel that he was somewhat unfairly taking advantage of
an accidental position; and he went no further with it.
No definite words of love had crossed their lips as
yet, and suspension at this point was desirable now.
However, he walked slowly, to make the remainder of the
distance as long as possible; but at last they came to
the bend, and the rest of their progress was in full
view of the other three. The dry land was reached, and
he set her down.

Her friends were looking with round thoughtful eyes at
her and him, and she could see that they had been
talking of her. He hastily bade them farewell, and
splashed back along the stretch of submerged road.

The four moved on together as before, till Marian broke
the silence by saying--

"No--in all truth; we have no chance against her!"
She looked joylessly at Tess.

"What do you mean?" asked the latter.

"He likes 'ee best--the very best! We could see it as
he brought 'ee. He would have kissed 'ee, if you had
encouraged him to do it, ever so little."

"No, no," said she.

The gaiety with which they had set out had somehow
vanished; and yet there was no enmity or malice between
them. They were generous young souls; they had been
reared in the lonely country nooks where fatalism is a
strong sentiment, and they did not blame her. Such
supplanting was to be.

Tess's heart ached. There was no concealing from
herself the fact that she loved Angel Clare, perhaps
all the more passionately from knowing that the others
had also lost their hearts to him. There is contagion
in this sentiment, especially among women. And yet
that same hungry nature had fought against this, but
too feebly, and the natural result had followed.

"I will never stand in your way, nor in the way of
either of you!" she declared to Retty that night in the
bedroom (her tears running down). "I can't help this,
my dear! I don't think marrying is in his mind at all;
but if he were ever to ask me I should refuse him, as I
should refuse any man."

"Oh! would you? Why?" said wondering Retty.

"It cannot be! But I will be plain. Putting myself
quite on one side. I don't think he will choose either
of you."

"I have never expected it--thought of it!" moaned
Retty. "But O! I wish I was dead!"

The poor child, torn by a feeling which she hardly
understood, turned to the other two girls who came
upstairs just then.

"We be friends with her again," she said to them.
"She thinks no more of his choosing her than we do."

So the reserve went off, and they were confiding and
warm.

"I don't seem to care what I do now," said Marian,
whose mood was turned to its lowest bass. "I was going
to marry a dairyman at Stickleford, who's asked me
twice; but--my soul--I would put an end to myself
rather'n be his wife now! Why don't ye speak, Izz?"

"To confess, then," murmured Izz, "I made sure today
that he was going to kiss me as he held me; and I lay
still against his breast, hoping and hoping, and never
moved at all. But he did not. I don't like biding
here at Talbothays any longer! I shall go hwome."

The air of the sleeping-chamber seemed to palpitate
with the hopeless passion of the girls. They writhed
feverishly under the oppressiveness of an emotion
thrust on them by cruel Nature's law--an emotion which
they had neither expected nor desired. The incident of
the day had fanned the flame that was burning the
inside of their hearts out, and the torture was almost
more than they could endure. The differences which
distinguished them as individuals were abstracted by
this passion, and each was but portion of one organism
called sex. There was so much frankness and so little
jealousy because there was no hope. Each one was a
girl of fair common sense, and she did not delude
herself with any vain conceits, or deny her love, or
give herself airs, in the idea of outshining the
others. The full recognition of the futility of their
infatuation, from a social point of view; its
purposeless beginning; its self-bounded outlook; its
lack of everything to justify its existence in the eye
of civilization (while lacking nothing in the eye of
Nature); the one fact that it did exist, ecstasizing
them to a killing joy; all this imparted to them a
resignation, a dignity, which a practical and sordid
expectation of winning him as a husband would have
destroyed.

They tossed and turned on their little beds, and the
cheese-wring dripped monotonously downstairs.

"B' you awake, Tess?" whispered one, half-an-hour
later.

It was Izz Huett's voice.

Tess replied in the affirmative, whereupon also Retty
and Marian suddenly flung the bedclothes off them, and
sighed--

"So be we!"

"I wonder what she is like--the lady they say his
family have looked out for him!"

"I wonder," said Izz.

"Some lady looked out for him?" gasped Tess, starting.
"I have never heard o' that!"

"O yes--'tis whispered; a young lady of his own rank,
chosen by his family; a Doctor of Divinity's daughter
near his father's parish of Emminster; he don't much
care for her, they say. But he is sure to marry her."

They had heard so very little of this; yet it was
enough to build up wretched dolorous dreams upon, there
in the shade of the night. They pictured all the
details of his being won round to consent, of the
wedding preparations, of the bride's happiness, of her
dress and veil, of her blissful home with him, when
oblivion would have fallen upon themselves as far as he
and their love were concerned. Thus they talked, and
ached, and wept till sleep charmed their sorrow away.

After this disclosure Tess nourished no further foolish
thought that there lurked any grave and deliberate
import in Clare's attentions to her. It was a passing
summer love of her face, for love's own temporary
sake--nothing more. And thorny crown of this sad
conception was that she whom he really did prefer in a
cursory way to the rest, she who knew herself to be
more impassioned in nature, cleverer, more beautiful
than they, was in the eyes of propriety far less worthy
of him than the homelier ones whom he ignored.

XXIV

Amid the oozing fatness and warm ferments of the Froom
Vale, at a season when the rush of juices could almost
be heard below the hiss of fertilization, it was
impossible that the most fanciful love should not grow
passionate. The ready bosoms existing there were
impregnated by their surroundings.

July passed over their heads, and the Thermidorean
weather which came in its wake seemed an effort on the
part of Nature to match the state of hearts at
Talbothays Dairy. The air of the place, so fresh in
the spring and early summer, was stagnant and
enervating now. Its heavy scents weighed upon them,
and at mid-day the landscape seemed lying in a swoon.
Ethiopic scorchings browned the upper slopes of the
pastures, but there was still bright green herbage here
where the watercourses purled. And as Clare was
oppressed by the outward heats, so was he burdened
inwardly by waxing fervour of passion for the soft and
silent Tess.

The rains having passed the uplands were dry. The
wheels of the dairyman's spring cart, as he sped home
from market, licked up the pulverized surface of the
highway, and were followed by white ribands of dust, as
if they had set a thin powertrain on fire. The cows
jumped wildly over the five-barred barton-gate,
maddened by the gad-fly; Dairyman Crick kept his
shirt-sleeves permanently rolled up from Monday to
Saturday; open windows had no effect in ventilation
without open doors, and in the dairy-garden the
blackbirds and thrushes crept about under the
currant-bushes, rather in the manner of quadrupeds than
of winged creatures. The flies in the kitchen were
lazy, teasing, and familiar, crawling about in the
unwonted places, on the floors, into drawers, and over
the backs of the milkmaids' hands. Conversations were
concerning sunstroke; while butter-making, and still
more butter-keeping, was a despair.

They milked entirely in the meads for coolness and
convenience, without driving in the cows. During the
day the animals obsequiously followed the shadow of the
smallest tree as it moved round the stem with the
diurnal roll; and when the milkers came they could
hardly stand still for the flies.

On one of these afternoons four or five unmilked cows
chanced to stand apart from the general herd, behind
the corner of a hedge, among them being Dumpling and
Old Pretty, who loved Tess's hands above those of any
other maid. When she rose from her stool under a
finished cow Angel Clare, who had been observing her
for some time, asked her if she would take the
aforesaid creatures next. She silently assented, and
with her stool at arm's length, and the pail against
her knee, went round to where they stood. Soon the
sound of Old Pretty's milk fizzing into the pail came
through the hedge, and then Angel felt inclined to go
round the corner also, to finish off a hard-yielding
milcher who had strayed there, he being now as capable
of this as the dairyman himself.

All the men, and some of the women, when milking, dug
their foreheads into the cows and gazed into the pail.
But a few--mainly the younger ones--rested their heads
sideways. This was Tess Durbeyfield's habit, her
temple pressing the milcher's flank, her eyes fixed on
the far end of the meadow with the quiet of one lost in
meditation. She was milking Old Pretty thus, and the
sun chancing to be on the milking-side it shone flat
upon her pink-gowned form and her white curtain-bonnet,
and upon her profile, rendering it keen as a cameo cut
from the dun background of the cow.

She did not know that Clare had followed her round, and
that he sat under his cow watching her. The stillness
of her head and features was remarkable: she might have
been in a trance, her eyes open, yet unseeing. Nothing
in the picture moved but Old Pretty's tail and Tess's
pink hands, the latter so gently as to be a rhythmic
pulsation only, as if they were obeying a reflex
stimulus, like a beating heart.

How very lovable her face was to him. yet there was
nothing ethereal about it; all was real vitality, real
warmth, real incarnation. And it was in her mouth that
this culminated. Eyes almost as deep and speaking he
had seen before, and cheeks perhaps as fair; brows as
arched, a chin and throat almost as shapely; her mouth
he had seen nothing to equal on the face of the earth.
To a young man with the least fire in him that little
upward lift in the middle of her red top lip was
distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had never
before seen a woman's lips and teeth which forced upon
his mind with such persistent iteration the old
Elizabethan simile of roses filled with snow. Perfect,
he, as a lover, might have called them off-hand. But
no--they were not perfect. And it was the touch of the
imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the
sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity.

Clare had studied the curves of those lips so many
times that he could reproduce them mentally with ease:
and now, as they again confronted him, clothed with
colour and life, they sent an AURA over his flesh, a
breeze through his nerves, which wellnigh produced a
qualm; and actually produced, by some mysterious
physiological process, a prosaic sneeze.

She then became conscious that he was observing her;
but she would not show it by any change of position,
though the curious dream-like fixity disappeared, and a
close eye might easily have discerned that the rosiness
of her face deepened, and then faded till only a tinge
of it was left.

The influence that had passed into Clare like an
excitation from the sky did not die down. Resolutions,
reticences, prudences, fears, fell back like a defeated
battalion. He jumped up from his seat, and, leaving his
pail to be kicked over if the milcher had such a mind,
went quickly towards the desire of his eyes, and,
kneeling down beside her, clasped her in his arms.

Tess was taken completely by surprise, and she yielded
to his embrace with unreflecting inevitableness.
Having seen that it was really her lover who had
advanced, and no one else, her lips parted, and she
sank upon him in her momentary joy, with something very
like an ecstatic cry.

He had been on the point of kissing that too tempting
mouth, but he checked himself, for tender conscience'
sake.

"Forgive me, Tess dear!" he whispered. "I ought to
have asked. I--did not know what I was doing. I do
not mean it as a liberty. I am devoted to you, Tessy,
dearest, in all sincerity!"

Old Pretty by this time had looked round, puzzled; and
seeing two people crouching under her where, by
immemorial custom, there should have been only one,
lifted her hind left crossly.

"She is angry--she doesn't know what we mean--she'll
kick over the milk!" exclaimed Tess, gently striving to
free herself, her eyes concerned with the quadruped's
actions, her heart more deeply concerned with herself
and Clare.

She slipped up from her seat, and they stood together,
his arm still encircling her. Tess's eyes, fixed on
distance, began to fill.

"Why do you cry, my darling?" he said.

"O--I don't know!" she murmured.

As she saw and felt more clearly the position she was
in she became agitated and tried to withdraw.

"Well, I have betrayed my feeling, Tess, at last," said
he, with a curious sigh of desperation, signifying
unconsciously that his heart had outrun his judgement.
"That I--love you dearly and truly I need not say. But
I--it shall go no further now--it distresses you--I am
as surprised as you are. You will not think I have
presumed upon your defencelessness--been too quick and
unreflecting, will you?"

"N'--I can't tell."

He had allowed her to free herself; and in a minute or
two the milking of each was resumed. Nobody had beheld
the gravitation of the two into one; and when the
dairyman came round by that screened nook a few minutes
later there was not a sign to reveal that the markedly
sundered pair were more to each other than mere
acquaintance. Yet in the interval since Crick's last
view of them something had occurred which changed the
pivot of the universe for their two natures; something
which, had he known its quality, the dairyman would
have despised, as a practical man; yet which was based
upon a more stubborn and resistless tendency than a
whole heap of so-called practicalities. A veil had
been whisked aside; the tract of each one's outlook was
to have a new horizon thenceforward--for a short time
or for a long.

END OF PHASE THE THIRD

Phase the Fourth: The Consequence

XXV

Clare, restless, went out into the dusk when evening
drew on, she who had won him having retired to her
chamber.

The night was as sultry as the day. There was no
coolness after dark unless on the grass. Roads,
garden-paths, the house-fronts, the barton-walls were
warm as hearths, and reflected the noontime temperature
into the noctambulist's face.

He sat on the east gate of the dairy-yard, and knew not
what to think of himself. Feeling had indeed smothered
judgement that day.

Since the sudden embrace, three hours before, the twain
had kept apart. She seemed stilled, almost alarmed, at
what had occurred, while the novelty, unpremeditation,
mastery of circumstance disquieted him--palpitating,
contemplative being that he was. He could hardly
realize their true relations to each other as yet, and
what their mutual bearing should be before third
parties thenceforward.

Angel had come as pupil to this dairy in the idea that
his temporary existence here was to be the merest
episode in his life, soon passed through and early
forgotten; he had come as to a place from which as from
a screened alcove he could calmly view the absorbing
world without, and, apostrophizing it with Walt
Whitman--

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes,
How curious you are to me!--

resolve upon a plan for plunging into that world anew.
But behold, the absorbing scene had been imported
hither. What had been the engrossing world had
dissolved into an uninteresting outer dumb-show; while
here, in this apparently dim and unimpassioned place,
novelty had volcanically started up, as it had never,
for him, started up elsewhere.

Every window of the house being open Clare could hear
across the yard each trivial sound of the retiring
household. The dairy-house, so humble, so
insignificant, so purely to him a place of constrained
sojourn that he had never hitherto deemed it of
sufficient importance to be reconnoitred as an object
of any quality whatever in the landscape; what was it
now? The aged and lichened brick gables breathed forth
"Stay!" The windows smiled, the door coaxed and
beckoned, the creeper blushed confederacy. A
personality within it was so far-reaching in her
influence as to spread into and make the bricks,
mortar, and whole overhanging sky throb with a burning
sensibility. Whose was this mighty personality? A
milkmaid's. It was amazing, indeed, to find how great a
matter the life of the obscure dairy had become to him.
And though new love was to be held partly responsible
for this it was not solely so. Many besides Angel have
learnt that the magnitude of lives is not as to their
external displacements, but as to their subjective
experiences. The impressionable peasant leads a
larger, fuller, more dramatic life than the
pachydermatous king. Looking at it thus he found that
life was to be seen of the same magnitude here as
elsewhere.

Despite his heterodoxy, faults, and weaknesses, Clare
was a man with a conscience. Tess was no insignificant
creature to toy with and dismiss; but a woman living
her precious life--a life which, to herself who
endured or enjoyed it, possessed as great a dimension
as the life of the mightiest to himself. Upon her
sensations the whole world depended to Tess; through
her existence all her fellow-creatures existed, to her.
The universe itself only came into being for Tess on
the particular day in the particular year in which she
was born.

This consciousness upon which he had intruded was the
single opportunity of existence ever vouchsafed to Tess
by an unsympathetic First Cause--her all; her every and
only chance. How then should he look upon her as of
less consequence than himself; as a pretty trifle to
caress and grow weary of; and not deal in the greatest
seriousness with the affection which he knew that he
had awakened in her--so fervid and so impressionable as
she was under her reserve; in order that it might not
agonize and wreck her?

To encounter her daily in the accustomed manner would
be to develop what had begun. Living in such close
relations, to meet meant to fall into endearment; flesh
and blood could not resist it; and, having arrived at
no conclusion as to the issue of such a tendency, he
decided to hold aloof for the present from occupations
in which they would be mutually engaged. As yet the
harm done was small.

But it was not easy to carry out the resolution never
to approach her. He was driven towards her by every
heave of his pulse.

He thought he would go and see his friends. It might
be possible to sound them upon this. In less than five
months his term here would have ended, and after a few
additional months spent upon other farms he would be
fully equipped in agricultural knowledge, and in a
position to start on his own account. Would not a
farmer want a wife, and should a farmer's wife be a
drawing-room wax-figure, or a woman who understood
farming? Notwithstanding the pleasing answer returned
to him by the silence he resolved to go his journey.

One morning when they sat down to breakfast at
Talbothays Dairy some maid observed that she had not
seen anything of Mr Clare that day.

"O no," said Dairyman Crick. "Mr Clare has gone hwome
to Emminster to spend a few days wi' his kinsfolk."

For four impassioned ones around that table the
sunshine of the morning went out at a stroke, and the
birds muffled their song. But neither girl by word or
gesture revealed her blankness. "He's getting on
towards the end of his time wi' me," added the
dairyman, with a phlegm which unconsciously was brutal;
"and so I suppose he is beginning to see about his
plans elsewhere."

"How much longer is he to bide here?" asked Izz Huett,
the only one of the gloom-stricken bevy who could trust
her voice with the question.

The others waited for the dairyman's answer as if their
lives hung upon it; Retty, with parted lips, gazing on
the tablecloth, Marian with heat added to her redness,
Tess throbbing and looking out at the meads.

"Well, I can't mind the exact day without looking at my
memorandum-book," replied Crick, with the same
intolerable unconcern. "And even that may be altered a
bit. He'll bide to get a little practice in the
calving out at the straw-yard, for certain. He'll
hang on till the end of the year I should say."

Four months or so of torturing ecstasy in his
society--of "pleasure girdled about with pain".
After that the blackness of unutterable night.

At this moment of the morning Angel Clare was riding
along a narrow lane ten miles distant from the
breakfasters, in the direction of his father's Vicarage
at Emminster, carrying, as well as he could, a little
basket which contained some black-puddings and a bottle
of mead, sent by Mrs Crick, with her kind respects, to
his parents. The white lane stretched before him, and
his eyes were upon it; but they were staring into next
year, and not at the lane. He loved her; ought he to
marry her? Dared he to marry her? What would his
mother and his brothers say? What would he himself say
a couple of years after the event? That would depend
upon whether the germs of staunch comradeship underlay
the temporary emotion, or whether it were a sensuous
joy in her form only, with no substratum of
everlastingness.

His father's hill-surrounded little town, the Tudor
church-tower of red stone, the clump of trees near the
Vicarage, came at last into view beneath him, and he
rode down towards the well-known gate. Casting a
glance in the direction of the church before entering
his home, he beheld standing by the vestry-door a group
of girls, of ages between twelve and sixteen,
apparently awaiting the arrival of some other one, who
in a moment became visible; a figure somewhat older
than the school-girls, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and
highly-starched cambric morning-gown, with a couple of
books in her hand.

Clare knew her well. He could not be sure that she
observed him; he hoped she did not, so as to render it
unnecessary that he should go and speak to her,
blameless creature that she was. An overpowering
reluctance to greet her made him decide that she had
not seen him. The young lady was Miss Mercy Chant, the
only daughter of his father's neighbour and friend,
whom it was his parents' quiet hope that he might wed
some day. She was great at Antinomianism and Bible-
classes, and was plainly going to hold a class now.
Clare's mind flew to the impassioned, summer-steeped
heathens in the Var Vale, their rosy faces
court-patched with cow-droppings; and to one the most
impassioned of them all. It was on the impulse of the
moment that he had resolved to trot over to Emminster,
and hence had not written to apprise his mother and
father, aiming, however, to arrive about the breakfast
hour, before they should have gone out to their parish
duties. He was a little late, and they had already sat
down to the morning meal. The group at the table
jumped up to welcome him as soon as he entered. They
were his father and mother, his brother the Reverend
Felix--curate at a town in the adjoining county, home
for the inside of a fortnight--and his other brother,
the Reverend Cuthbert, the classical scholar, and
Fellow and Dean of his College, down from Cambridge for
the long vacation. His mother appeared in a cap and
silver spectacles, and his father looked what in fact
he was--an earnest, God-fearing man, somewhat gaunt, in
years about sixty-five, his pale face lined with
thought and purpose. Over their heads hung the picture
of Angel's sister, the eldest of the family, sixteen
years his senior, who had married a missionary and gone
out to Africa.

Old Mr Clare was a clergyman of a type which, within
the last twenty years, has wellnigh dropped out of
contemporary life. A spiritual descendant in the
direct line from Wycliff, Huss, Luther, Calvin; an
Evangelical of the Evangelicals, a Conversionist, a man
of Apostolic simplicity in life and thought, he had in
his raw youth made up his mind once for all in the
deeper questions of existence, and admitted no further
reasoning on them thenceforward. He was regarded even
by those his own date and school of thinking as
extreme; while, on the other hand, those totally
opposed to him were unwillingly won to admiration for
his thoroughness, and for the remarkable power he
showed in dismissing all question as to principles in
his energy for applying them. He loved Paul of Tarsus,
liked St John, hated St James as much as he dared, and
regarded with mixed feelings Timothy, Titus, and
Philemon. The New Testament was less a Christiad then
a Pauliad to his intelligence--less an argument than an
intoxication. His creed of determinism was such that
it almost amounted to a vice, and quite amounted, on
its negative side, to a renunciative philosophy which
had cousinship with that of Schopenhauer and Leopardi.
He despised the Canons and Rubric, swore by the
Articles, and deemed himself consistent through the
whole category--which in a way he might have been. One
thing he certainly was--sincere.

To the aesthetic, sensuous, pagan pleasure in natural
life and lush womanhood which his son Angel had lately
been experiencing in Var Vale, his temper would have
been antipathetic in a high degree, had he either by
inquiry or imagination been able to apprehend it. Once
upon a time Angel had been so unlucky as to say to his
father, in a moment of irritation, that it might have
resulted far better for mankind if Greece had been the
source of the religion of modern civilization, and not
Palestine; and his father's grief was of that blank
description which could not realize that there might
lurk a thousandth part of a truth, much less a half
truth or a whole truth, in such a proposition. He had
simply preached austerely at Angel for some time after.
But the kindness of his heart was such that he never
resented anything for long, and welcomed his son today
with a smile which was as candidly sweet as a child's.

Angel sat down, and the place felt like home; yet he
did not so much as formerly feel himself one of the
family gathered there. Every time that he returned
hither he was conscious of this divergence, and since
he had last shared in the Vicarage life it had grown
even more distinctly foreign to his own than usual.
Its transcendental aspirations--still unconsciously
based on the geocentric view of things, a zenithal
paradise, a nadiral hell--were as foreign to his own as
if they had been the dreams of people on another
planet. Latterly he had seen only Life, felt only the
great passionate pulse of existence, unwarped,
uncontorted, untrammelled by those creeds which
futilely attempt to check what wisdom would be content
to regulate.

On their part they saw a great difference in him, a
growing divergence from the Angel Clare of former
times. It was chiefly a difference in his manner that
they noticed just now, particularly his brothers. He
was getting to behave like a farmer; he flung his legs
about; the muscles of his face had grown more
expressive; his eyes looked as much information as his
tongue spoke, and more. The manner of the scholar had
nearly disappeared; still more the manner of the
drawing-room young man. A prig would have said that he
had lost culture, and a prude that he had become
coarse. Such was the contagion of domiciliary
fellowship with the Talbothays nymphs and swains.

After breakfast he walked with his two brothers,
non-evangelical, well-educated, hall-marked young men,
correct to their remotest fibre, such unimpeachable
models as are turned out yearly by the lathe of a
systematic tuition. They were both somewhat
short-sighted, and when it was the custom to wear a
single eyeglass and string they wore a single eyeglass
and string; when it was the custom to wear a double
glass they wore a double glass; when it was the custom
to wear spectacles they wore spectacles straightway,
all without reference to the particular variety of
defect in their own vision. When Wordsworth was
enthroned they carried pocket copies; and when Shelley
was belittled they allowed him to grow dusty on their
shelves. When Correggio's Holy Families were admired,
they admired Correggio's Holy Families; when he was
decried in favour of Velasquez, they sedulously
followed suit without any personal objection.

If these two noticed Angel's growing social ineptness,
he noticed their growing mental limitations. Felix
seemed to him all Church; Cuthbert all College. His
Diocesan Synod and Visitations were the mainsprings of
the world to the one; Cambridge to the other. Each
brother candidly recognized that there were a few
unimportant score of millions of outsiders in civilized
society, persons who were neither University men nor
churchmen; but they were to be tolerated rather than
reckoned with and respected.

They were both dutiful and attentive sons, and were
regular in their visits to their parents. Felix, though
an offshoot from a far more recent point in the
devolution of theology than his father, was less
self-sacrificing and disinterested. More tolerant than
his father of a contradictory opinion, in its aspect as
a danger to its holder, he was less ready than his
father to pardon it as a slight to his own teaching.
Cuthbert was, upon the whole, the more liberal-minded,
though, with greater subtlety, he had not so much
heart.

As they walked along the hillside Angel's former
feeling revived in him--that whatever their advantages
by comparison with himself, neither saw or set forth
life as it really was lived. Perhaps, as with many
men, their opportunities of observation were not so
good as their opportunities of expression. Neither had
an adequate conception of the complicated forces at
work outside the smooth and gentle current in which
they and their associates floated. Neither saw the
difference between local truth and universal truth;
that what the inner world said in their clerical and
academic hearing was quite a different thing from what
the outer world was thinking.

"I suppose it is farming or nothing for you now, my
dear fellow," Felix was saying, among other things, to
his youngest brother, as he looked through his
spectacles at the distant fields with sad austerity.
"And, therefore, we must make the best of it. But I do
entreat you to endeavour to keep as much as possible in
touch with moral ideals. Farming, of course, means
roughing it externally; but high thinking may go with
plain living, nevertheless."

"Of course it may," said Angel. "Was it not proved
nineteen hundred years ago--if I may trespass upon your
domain a little? Why should you think, Felix, that I
am likely to drop my high thinking and my moral
ideals?"

"Well, I fancied, from the tone of your letters and our
conversation--it may be fancy only--that you were
somehow losing intellectual grasp. Hasn't it struck
you, Cuthbert?"

"Now, Felix," said Angel drily, "we are very good
friends, you know; each of us treading our allotted
circles; but if it comes to intellectual grasp, I think
you, as a contented dogmatist, had better leave mine
alone, and inquire what has become of yours."

They returned down the hill to dinner, which was fixed
at any time at which their father's and mother's
morning work in the parish usually concluded.
Convenience as regarded afternoon callers was the last
thing to enter into the consideration of unselfish Mr
and Mrs Clare; though the three sons were sufficiently
in unison on this matter to wish that their parents
would conform a little to modern notions.

The walk had made them hungry, Angel in particular, who
was now an outdoor man, accustomed to the profuse DAPES
INEMPTAE of the dairyman's somewhat coarsely-laden
table. But neither of the old people had arrived, and
it was not till the sons were almost tired of waiting
that their parents entered. The self-denying pair had
been occupied in coaxing the appetites of some of their
sick parishioners, whom they, somewhat inconsistently,
tried to keep imprisoned in the flesh, their own
appetites being quite forgotten.

The family sat down to table, and a frugal meal of cold
viands was deposited before them. Angel looked round
for Mrs Crick's black-puddings, which he had directed
to be nicely grilled as they did them at the dairy, and
of which he wished his father and mother to appreciate
the marvellous herbal savours as highly as he did
himself.

"Ah! you are looking for the black-puddings, my dear
boy," observed Clare's mother. "But I am sure you will
not mind doing without them as I am sure your father
and I shall not, when you know the reason. I suggested
to him that we should take Mrs Crick's kind present to
the children of the man who can earn nothing just now
because of his attacks of delirium tremens; and he
agreed that it would be a great pleasure to them; so we
did."

"Of course," said Angel cheerfully, looking round for
the mead.

"I found the mead so extremely alcoholic," continued
his mother, "that it was quite unfit for use as a
beverage, but as valuable as rum or brandy in an
emergency; so I have put it in my medicine-closet."

"We never drink spirits at this table, on principle,"
added his father.

"But what shall I tell the dairyman's wife?" said Angel.

"The truth, of course," said his father.

"I rather wanted to say we enjoyed the mead and the
black-puddings very much. She is a kind, jolly sort
of body, and is sure to ask me directly I return."

"You cannot, if we did not," Mr Clare answered lucidly.

"Ah--no; though that mead was a drop of pretty tipple."

"A what?" said Cuthbert and Felix both.

"Oh--'tis an expression they use down at Talbothays,"
replied Angel, blushing. He felt that his parents were
right in their practice if wrong in their want of
sentiment, and said no more.

XXVI

It was not till the evening, after family prayers, that
Angel found opportunity of broaching to his father one
or two subjects near his heart. He had strung himself
up to the purpose while kneeling behind his brothers on
the carpet, studying the little nails in the heels of
their walking boots. When the service was over they
went out of the room with their mother, and Mr Clare
and himself were left alone.

The young man first discussed with the elder his plans
for the attainment of his position as a farmer on an
extensive scale--either in England or in the Colonies.
His father then told him that, as he had not been put
to the expense of sending Angel up to Cambridge, he had
felt it his duty to set by a sum of money every year
towards the purchase or lease of land for him some day,
that he might not feel himself unduly slighted.

"As far as worldly wealth goes," continued his father,
"you will no doubt stand far superior to your brothers
in a few years."

This considerateness on old Mr Clare's part led Angel
onward to the other and dearer subject. He observed to
his father that he was then six-and-twenty, and that
when he should start in the farming business he would
require eyes in the back of his head to see to all
matters--some one would be necessary to superintend the
domestic labours of his establishment whilst he was
afield. Would it not be well, therefore, for him to
marry?

His father seemed to think this idea not unreasonable;
and then Angel put the question--

"What kind of wife do you think would be best for me as
a thrifty hard-working farmer?"

"A truly Christian woman, who will be a help and a
comfort to you in your goings-out and your comings-in.
Beyond that, it really matters little. Such an one can
be found; indeed, my earnest-minded friend and
neighbour, Dr Chant--"

"But ought she not primarily to be able to milk cows,
churn good butter, make immense cheeses; know how to
sit hens and turkeys and rear chickens, to direct a
field of labourers in an emergency, and estimate the
value of sheep and calves?"

"Yes; a farmer's wife; yes, certainly. It would be
desirable." Mr Clare, the elder, had plainly never
thought of these points before. "I was going to add,"
he said, "that for a pure and saintly woman you will
not find one more to your true advantage, and certainly
not more to your mother's mind and my own, than your
friend Mercy, whom you used to show a certain interest
in. It is true that my neighbour Chant's daughter had
lately caught up the fashion of the younger clergy
round about us for decorating the Communion-
table--alter, as I was shocked to hear her call it one
day--with flowers and other stuff on festival
occasions. But her father, who is quite as opposed to
such flummery as I, says that can be cured. It is a
mere girlish outbreak which, I am sure, will not be
permanent."

"Yes, yes; Mercy is good and devout, I know. But,
father, don't you think that a young woman equally pure
and virtuous as Miss Chant, but one who, in place of
that lady's ecclesiastical accomplishments, understands
the duties of farm life as well as a farmer himself,
would suit me infinitely better?"

His father persisted in his conviction that a knowledge
of a farmer's wife's duties came second to a Pauline
view of humanity; and the impulsive Angel, wishing to
honour his father's feelings and to advance the cause
of his heart at the same time, grew specious. He said
that fate or Providence had thrown in his way a woman
who possessed every qualification to be the helpmate of
an agriculturist, and was decidedly of a serious turn
of mind. He would not say whether or not she had
attached herself to the sound Low Church School of his
father; but she would probably be open to conviction on
that point; she was a regular church-goer of simple
faith; honest-hearted, receptive, intelligent, graceful
to a degree, chaste as a vestal, and, in personal
appearance, exceptionally beautiful.

"Is she of a family such as you would care to marry
into--a lady, in short?" asked his startled mother, who
had come softly into the study during the conversation.

"She is not what in common parlance is called a lady,"
said Angel, unflinchingly, "for she is a cottager's
daughter, as I am proud to say. But she IS a lady,
nevertheless--in feeling and nature."

"Mercy Chant is of a very good family."

"Pooh!--what's the advantage of that, mother?" said
Angel quickly. "How is family to avail the wife of a
man who has to rough it as I have, and shall have to
do?"

"Mercy is accomplished. And accomplishments have their
charm," returned his mother, looking at him through her
silver spectacles.

"As to external accomplishments, what will be the use
of them in the life I am going to lead?--while as to
her reading, I can take that in hand. She'll be apt
pupil enough, as you would say if you knew her. She's
brim full of poetry--actualized poetry, if I may use
the expression. She LIVES what paper-poets only
write.... And she is an unimpeachable Christian, I am
sure; perhaps of the very tribe, genus, and species you
desire to propagate."

"O Angel, you are mocking!"

"Mother, I beg pardon. But as she really does attend
Church almost every Sunday morning, and is a good
Christian girl, I am sure you will tolerate any social
shortcomings for the sake of that quality, and feel
that I may do worse than choose her." Angel waxed
quite earnest on that rather automatic orthodoxy in his
beloved Tess which (never dreaming that it might stand
him in such good stead) he had been prone to slight
when observing it practised by her and the other
milkmaids, because of its obvious unreality amid
beliefs essentially naturalistic.

In their sad doubts as to whether their son had himself
any right whatever to the title he claimed for the
unknown young woman, Mr and Mrs Clare began to feel it
as an advantage not to be overlooked that she at least
was sound in her views; especially as the conjunction
of the pair must have arisen by an act of Providence;
for Angel never would have made orthodoxy a condition
of his choice. They said finally that it was better
not to act in a hurry, but that they would not object
to see her.

Angel therefore refrained from declaring more
particulars now. He felt that, single-minded and
self-sacrificing as his parents were, there yet existed
certain latent prejudices of theirs, as middle-class
people, which it would require some tact to overcome.
For though legally at liberty to do as he chose, and
though their daughter-in-law's qualifications could
make no practical difference to their lives, in the
probability of her living far away from them, he wished
for affection's sake not to wound their sentiment in
the most important decision of his life.

He observed his own inconsistencies in dwelling upon
accidents in Tess's life as if they were vital
features. It was for herself that he loved Tess; her
soul, her heart, her substance--not for her skill in
the dairy, her aptness as his scholar, and certainly
not for her simple formal faith-professions. Her
unsophisticated open-air existence required no varnish
of conventionality to make it palatable to him. He held
that education had as yet but little affected the beats
of emotion and impulse on which domestic happiness
depends. It was probable that, in the lapse of ages,
improved systems of moral and intellectual training
would appreciably, perhaps considerably, elevate the
involuntary and even the unconscious instincts of human
nature; but up to the present day culture, as far as he
could see, might be said to have affected only the
mental epiderm of those lives which had been brought
under its influence. This belief was confirmed by his
experience of women, which, having latterly been
extended from the cultivated middle-class into the
rural community, had taught him how much less was the
intrinsic difference between the good and wise woman of
one social stratum and the good and wise woman of
another social stratum, than between the good and bad,
the wise and the foolish, of the same stratum or class.

It was the morning of his departure. His brothers had
already left the Vicarage to proceed on a walking tour
in the north, whence one was to return to his college,
and the other to his curacy. Angel might have
accompanied them, but preferred to rejoin his
sweetheart at Talbothays. He would have been an
awkward member of the party; for, though the most
appreciative humanist, the most ideal religionist, even
the best-versed Christologist of the three, there was
alienation in the standing consciousness that his
squareness would not fit the round hole that had been
prepared for him. To neither Felix nor Cuthbert had he
ventured to mention Tess.

His mother made him sandwiches, and his father
accompanied him, on his own mare, a little way along
the road. Having fairly well advanced his own affairs
Angel listened in a willing silence, as they jogged on
together through the shady lanes, to his father's
account of his parish difficulties, and the coldness of
brother clergymen whom he loved, because of his strict
interpretations of the New Testament by the light of
what they deemed a pernicious Calvinistic doctrine.

"Pernicious!" said Mr Clare, with genial scorn; and he
proceeded to recount experiences which would show the
absurdity of that idea. He told of wondrous
conversions of evil livers of which he had been the
instrument, not only amongst the poor, but amongst the
rich and well-to-do; and he also candidly admitted many
failures.

As an instance of the latter, he mentioned the case of
a young upstart squire named d'Urberville, living some
forty miles off, in the neighbourhood of Trantridge.

"Not one of the ancient d'Urbervilles of Kingsbere and
other places?" asked his son. "That curiously historic
worn-out family with its ghostly legend of the
coach-and-four?"

"O no. The original d'Urbervilles decayed and
disappeared sixty or eighty years ago--at least,
I believe so. This seems to be a new family which had
taken the name; for the credit of the former knightly
line I hope they are spurious, I'm sure. But it is odd
to hear you express interest in old families.
I thought you set less store by them even than I."

"You misapprehend me, father; you often do," said Angel
with a little impatience. "Politically I am sceptical
as to the virtue of their being old. Some of the wise
even among themselves 'exclaim against their own
succession,' as Hamlet puts it; but lyrically,
dramatically, and even historically, I am tenderly
attached to them."

This distinction, though by no means a subtle one, was
yet too subtle for Mr Clare the elder, and he went on
with the story he had been about to relate; which was
that after the death of the senior so-called
d'Urberville the young man developed the most culpable
passions, though he had a blind mother, whose condition
should have made him know better. A knowledge of his
career having come to the ears of Mr Clare, when he was
in that part of the country preaching missionary
sermons, he boldly took occasion to speak to the
delinquent on his spiritual state. Though he was a
stranger, occupying another's pulpit, he had felt this
to be his duty, and took for his text the words from St
Luke: "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required
of thee!" The young man much resented this directness
of attack, and in the war of words which followed when
they met he did not scruple publicly to insult Mr
Clare, without respect for his gray hairs.

Angel flushed with distress.

"Dear father," he said sadly, "I wish you would not
expose yourself to such gratuitous pain from
scoundrels!"

"Pain?" said his father, his rugged face shining in the
ardour of self-abnegation. "The only pain to me was
pain on his account, poor, foolish young man. Do you
suppose his incensed words could give me any pain, or
even his blows? 'Being reviled we bless; being
persecuted we suffer it; being defamed we entreat; we
are made as the filth of the world, and as the
offscouring of all things unto this day.' Those ancient
and noble words to the Corinthians are strictly true at
this present hour."

"Not blows, father? He did not proceed to blows?"

"No, he did not. Though I have borne blows from men in
a mad state of intoxication."

"No!" "A dozen times, my boy. What then? I have saved
them from the guilt of murdering their own flesh and
blood thereby; and they have lived to thank me, and
praise God."

"May this young man do the same!" said Angel fervently.
"But I fear otherwise, from what you say."

"We'll hope, nevertheless," said Mr Clare. "And I
continue to pray for him, though on this side of the
grave we shall probably never meet again. But, after
all, one of those poor words of mine may spring up in
his heart as a good seed some day."

Now, as always, Clare's father was sanguine as a child;
and though the younger could not accept his parent's
narrow dogma he revered his practice, and recognized
the hero under the pietist. Perhaps he revered his
father's practice even more now than ever, seeing that,
in the question of making Tessy his wife, his father
had not once thought of inquiring whether she were well
provided or penniless. The same unworldliness was what
had necessitated Angel's getting a living as a farmer,
and would probably keep his brothers in the position of
poor parsons for the term of their activities; yet
Angel admired it none the less. Indeed, despite his
own heterodoxy, Angel often felt that he was nearer to
his father on the human side than was either of his
brethren.

XXVII

An up-hill and down-hill ride of twenty-odd miles
through a garish mid-day atmosphere brought him in the
afternoon to a detached knoll a mile or two west of
Talbothays, whence he again looked into that green
trough of sappiness and humidity, the valley of the Var
or Froom. Immediately he began to descend from the
upland to the fat alluvial soil below, the atmosphere
grew heavier; the languid perfume of the summer fruits,
the mists, the hay, the flowers, formed therein a vast
pool of odour which at this hour seemed to make the
animals, the very bees and butterflies drowsy. Clare
was now so familiar with the spot that he knew the
individual cows by their names when, a long distance
off, he saw them dotted about the meads. It was with a
sense of luxury that he recognized his power of viewing
life here from its inner side, in a way that had been
quite foreign to him in his student-days; and, much as
he loved his parents, he could not help being aware
that to come here, as now, after an experience of
home-life, affected him like throwing off splints and
bandages; even the one customary curb on the humours of
English rural societies being absent in this place,
Talbothays having no resident landlord.

Not a human being was out of doors at the dairy. The
denizens were all enjoying the usual afternoon nap of
an hour or so which the exceedingly early hours kept in
summer-time rendered a necessity. At the door the
wood-hooped pails, sodden and bleached by infinite
scrubbings, hung like hats on a stand upon the forked
and peeled limb of an oak fixed there for that purpose;
all of them ready and dry for the evening milking.
Angel entered, and went through the silent passages of
the house to the back quarters, where he listened for a
moment. Sustained snores came from the cart-house,
where some of the men were lying down; the grunt and
squeal of sweltering pigs arose from the still further
distance. The large-leaved rhubarb and cabbage plants
slept too, their broad limp surfaces hanging in the sun
like half-closed umbrellas.

He unbridled and fed his horse, and as he re-entered
the house the clock struck three. Three was the
afternoon skimming-hour; and, with the stroke, Clare
heard the creaking of the floor-boards above, and then
the touch of a descending foot on the stairs. It was
Tess's, who in another moment came down before his
eyes.

She had not heard him enter, and hardly realized his
presence there. She was yawning, and he saw the red
interior of her mouth as if it had been a snake's. She
had stretched one arm so high above her coiled-up cable
of hair that he could see its satin delicacy above the
sunburn; her face was flushed with sleep, and her
eyelids hung heavy over their pupils. The brim-fulness
of her nature breathed from her. It was a moment when a
woman's soul is more incarnate than at any other time;
when the most spiritual beauty bespeaks itself flesh;
and sex takes the outside place in the presentation.

Then those eyes flashed brightly through their filmy
heaviness, before the remainder of her face was well
awake. With an oddly compounded look of gladness,
shyness, and surprise, she exclaimed--"O Mr Clare!
How you frightened me--I----"

There had not at first been time for her to think of
the changed relations which his declaration had
introduced; but the full sense of the matter rose up in
her face when she encountered Clare's tender look as he
stepped forward to the bottom stair.

"Dear, darling Tessy!" he whispered, putting his arm
round her, and his face to her flushed cheek. "Don't,
for Heaven's sake, Mister me any more. I have hastened
back so soon because of you!"

Tess's excitable heart beat against his by way of
reply; and there they stood upon the red-brick floor of
the entry, the sun slanting in by the window upon his
back, as he held her tightly to his breast; upon her
inclining face, upon the blue veins of her temple, upon
her naked arm, and her neck, and into the depths of her
hair. Having been lying down in her clothes she was
warm as a sunned cat. At first she would not look
straight up at him, but her eyes soon lifted, and his
plumbed the deepness of the ever-varying pupils, with
their radiating fibrils of blue, and black, and gray,
and violet, while she regarded him as Eve at her second
waking might have regarded Adam.

"I've got to go a-skimming," she pleaded, "and I have
on'y old Deb to help me today. Mrs Crick is gone to
market with Mr Crick, and Retty is not well, and the
others are gone out somewhere, and won't be home till
milking."

As they retreated to the milk-house Deborah Fyander
appeared on the stairs.

"I have come back, Deborah," said Mr Clare, upwards.
"So I can help Tess with the skimming; and, as you are
very tired, I am sure, you needn't come down till
milking-time."

Possibly the Talbothays milk was not very thoroughly
skimmed that afternoon. Tess was in a dream wherein
familiar objects appeared as having light and shade and
position, but no particular outline. Every time she
held the skimmer under the pump to cool it for the work
her hand trembled, the ardour of his affection being so
palpable that she seemed to flinch under it like a
plant in too burning a sun.

Then he pressed her again to his side, and when she had
done running her forefinger round the leads to cut off
the cream-edge, he cleaned it in nature's way; for the
unconstrained manners of Talbothays dairy came
convenient now.

"I may as well say it now as later, dearest," he
resumed gently. "I wish to ask you something of a very
practical nature, which I have been thinking of ever
since that day last week in the meads. I shall soon
want to marry, and, being a farmer, you see I shall
require for my wife a woman who knows all about the
management of farms. Will you be that woman, Tessy?"

He put it that way that she might not think he had
yielded to an impulse of which his head would
disapprove.

She turned quite careworn. She had bowed to the
inevitable result of proximity, the necessity of loving
him; but she had not calculated upon this sudden
corollary, which, indeed, Clare had put before her
without quite meaning himself to do it so soon. With
pain that was like the bitterness of dissolution she
murmured the words of her indispensable and sworn
answer as an honourable woman.

"O Mr Clare--I cannot be your wife--I cannot be!"

The sound of her own decision seemed to break Tess's
very heart, and she bowed her face in her grief.

"But, Tess!" he said, amazed at her reply, and holding
her still more greedily close. "Do you say no? Surely
you love me?"

"O yes, yes! And I would rather by yours than
anybody's in the world," returned the sweet and honest
voice of the distressed girl. "But I CANNOT marry you!"

"Tess," he said, holding her at arm's length, "you are
engaged to marry some one else!"

"No, no!"

"Then why do you refuse me?"

"I don't want to marry! I have not thought of doing
it. I cannot! I only want to love you."

"But why?"

Driven to subterfuge, she stammered--

"Your father is a parson, and your mother wouldn' like
you to marry such as me. She will want you to marry a
lady."

"Nonsense--I have spoken to them both. That was partly
why I went home."

"I feel I cannot--never, never!" she echoed.

"Is it too sudden to be asked thus, my Pretty?"

"Yes--I did not expect it."

"If you will let it pass, please, Tessy, I will give
you time," he said. "It was very abrupt to come home
and speak to you all at once. I'll not allude to it
again for a while."

She again took up the shining skimmer, held it beneath
the pump, and began anew. But she could not, as at
other times, hit the exact under-surface of the cream
with the delicate dexterity required, try as she might;
sometimes she was cutting down into the milk, sometimes
in the air. She could hardly see, her eyes having
filled with two blurring tears drawn forth by a grief
which, to this her best friend and dear advocate she
could never explain.

"I can't skim--I can't!" she said, turning away from
him.

Not to agitate and hinder her longer the considerate
Clare began talking in a more general way:

"You quite misapprehend my parents. They are the most
simple-mannered people alive, and quite unambitious.
They are two of the few remaining Evangelical school.
Tessy, are you an Evangelical?"

"I don't know."

"You go to church very regularly, and our parson here
is not very High, they tell me."

Tess's ideas on the views of the parish clergyman, whom
she heard every week, seemed to be rather more vague
than Clare's, who had never heard him at all.

"I wish I could fix my mind on what I hear there more
firmly than I do," she remarked as a safe generality.
"It is often a great sorrow to me."

She spoke so unaffectedly that Angel was sure in his
heart that his father could not object to her on
religious grounds, even though she did not know whether
her principles were High, Low or Broad. He himself
knew that, in reality, the confused beliefs which she
held, apparently imbibed in childhood, were, if
anything, Tractarian as to phraseology, and Pantheistic
as to essence. Confused or otherwise, to disturb them
was his last desire:

Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.

He had occasionally thought the counsel less honest
than musical; but he gladly conformed to it now.

He spoke further of the incidents of his visit, of his
father's mode of life, of his zeal for his principles;
she grew serener, and the undulations disappeared from
her skimming; as she finished one lead after another he
followed her, and drew the plugs for letting down the
milk.

"I fancied you looked a little downcast when you came
in," she ventured to observe, anxious to keep away from
the subject of herself.

"Yes--well, my father had been talking a good deal to
me of his troubles and difficulties, and the subject
always tends to depress me. He is so zealous that he
gets many snubs and buffetings from people of a
different way of thinking from himself, and I don't
like to hear of such humiliations to a man of his age,
the more particularly as I don't think earnestness does
any good when carried so far. He has been telling me
of a very unpleasant scene in which he took part quite
recently. He went as the deputy of some missionary
society to preach in the neighbourhood of Trantridge, a
place forty miles from here, and made it his business
to expostulate with a lax young cynic he met with
somewhere about there--son of some landowner up that
way--and who has a mother afflicted with blindness. My
father addressed himself to the gentleman point-blank,
and there was quite a disturbance. It was very foolish
of my father, I must say, to intrude his conversation
upon a stranger when the probabilities were so obvious
that it would be useless. But whatever he thinks to be
his duty, that he'll do, in season or out of season;
and, of course, he makes many enemies, not only among
the absolutely vicious, but among the easy-going, who
hate being bothered. He says he glories in what
happened, and that good may be done indirectly; but I
wish he would not wear himself out now he is getting
old, and would leave such pigs to their wallowing."

Tess's look had grown hard and worn, and her ripe mouth
tragical; but she no longer showed any tremulousness.
Clare's revived thoughts of his father prevented his
noticing her particularly; and so they went on down the
white row of liquid rectangles till they had finished
and drained them off, when the other maids returned,
and took their pails, and Deb came to scald out the
leads for the new milk. As Tess withdrew to go afield
to the cows he said to her softly--

"And my question, Tessy?"

"O no--no!" replied she with grave hopelessness, as one
who had heard anew the turmoil of her own past in the
allusion to Alec d'Urberville. "It CAN'T be!"

She went out towards the mead, joining the other
milkmaids with a bound, as if trying to make the open
air drive away her sad constraint. All the girls drew
onward to the spot where the cows were grazing in the
farther mead, the bevy advancing with the bold grace of
wild animals--the reckless unchastened motion of women
accustomed to unlimited space--in which they abandoned
themselves to the air as a swimmer to the wave. It
seemed natural enough to him now that Tess was again in
sight to choose a mate from unconstrained Nature, and
not from the abodes of Art.

XXVIII

Her refusal, though unexpected, did not permanently
daunt Clare. His experience of women was great enough
for him to be aware that the negative often meant
nothing more than the preface to the affirmative; and
it was little enough for him not to know that in the
manner of the present negative there lay a great
exception to the dallyings of coyness. That she had
already permitted him to make love to her he read as an
additional assurance, not fully trowing that in the
fields and pastures to "sigh gratis" is by no means
deemed waste; love-making being here more often
accepted inconsiderately and for its own sweet sake
than in the carking anxious homes of the ambitious,
where a girl's craving for an establishment paralyzes
her healthy thought of a passion as an end.

"Tess, why did you say 'no' in such a positive way?"
he asked her in the course of a few days.

She started.

"Don't ask me. I told you why--partly. I am not good
enough--not worthy enough."

"How? Not fine lady enough?"

"Yes--something like that," murmured she. "Your
friends would scorn me."

"Indeed, you mistake them--my father and mother.
As for my brothers, I don't care----" He clasped his
fingers behind her back to keep her from slipping away.
"Now--you did not mean it, sweet?--I am sure you did
not! You have made me so restless that I cannot read,
or play, or do anything. I am in no hurry, Tess, but I
want to know--to hear from your own warm lips--that you
will some day be mine--any time you may choose; but
some day?"

She could only shake her head and look away from him.

Clare regarded her attentively, conned the characters
of her face as if they had been hieroglyphics. The
denial seemed real.

"Then I ought not to hold you in this way--ought I?
I have no right to you--no right to seek out where you
are, or walk with you! Honestly, Tess, do you love any
other man?"

"How can you ask?" she said, with continued self-suppression.

"I almost know that you do not. But then, why do you
repulse me?"

"I don't repulse you. I like you to--tell me you love
me; and you may always tell me so as you go about with
me--and never offend me."

"But you will not accept me as a husband?"

"Ah--that's different--it is for your good, indeed, my
dearest! O, believe me, it is only for your sake!
I don't like to give myself the great happiness o'
promising to be yours in that way--because--because I
am SURE I ought not to do it."

"But you will make me happy!"

"Ah--you think so, but you don't know!"

At such times as this, apprehending the grounds of her
refusal to be her modest sense of incompetence in
matters social and polite, he would say that she was
wonderfully well-informed and versatile--which was
certainly true, her natural quickness, and her
admiration for him, having led her to pick up his
vocabulary, his accent, and fragments of his knowledge,
to a surprising extent. After these tender contests
and her victory she would go away by herself under the
remotest cow, if at milking-time, or into the sedge, or
into her room, if at a leisure interval, and mourn
silently, not a minute after an apparently phlegmatic
negative.

The struggle was so fearful; her own heart was so
strongly on the side of his--two ardent hearts against
one poor little conscience--that she tried to fortify
her resolution by every means in her power. She had
come to Talbothays with a made-up mind. On no account
could she agree to a step which might afterwards cause
bitter rueing to her husband for his blindness in
wedding her. And she held that what her conscience had
decided for her when her mind was unbiassed ought not
to be overruled now.

"Why don't somebody tell him all about me?" she said.
"It was only forty miles off--why hasn't it reached
here? Somebody must know!"

Yet nobody seemed to know; nobody told him.

For two or three days no more was said. She guessed
from the sad countenances of her chamber companions
that they regarded her not only as the favourite, but
as the chosen; but they could see for themselves that
she did not put herself in his way.

Tess had never before known a time in which the thread
of her life was so distinctly twisted of two strands,
positive pleasure and positive pain. At the next
cheese-making the pair were again left alone together.
The dairyman himself had been lending a hand; but Mr
Crick, as well as his wife, seemed latterly to have
acquired a suspicion of mutual interest between these
two; though they walked so circumspectly that suspicion
was but of the faintest. Anyhow, the dairyman left them
to themselves.

They were breaking up the masses of curd before putting
them into the vats. The operation resembled the act of
crumbling bread on a large scale; and amid the
immaculate whiteness of the curds Tess Durbeyfield's
hands showed themselves of the pinkness of the rose.
Angel, who was filling the vats with his handful,
suddenly ceased, and laid his hands flat upon hers.
Her sleeves were rolled far above the elbow, and
bending lower he kissed the inside vein of her soft arm.

Although the early September weather was sultry, her
arm, from her dabbling in the curds, was as cold and
damp to his mouth as a new-gathered mushroom, and
tasted of the whey. But she was such a sheaf of
susceptibilities that her pulse was accelerated by the
touch, her blood driven to her finder-ends, and the
cool arms flushed hot. Then, as though her heart had
said, "Is coyness longer necessary? Truth is truth
between man and woman, as between man and man," she
lifted her eyes and they beamed devotedly into his, as
her lip rose in a tender half-smile.

"Do you know why I did that, Tess?" he said.

"Because you love me very much!"

"Yes, and as a preliminary to a new entreaty."

"Not AGAIN!"

She looked a sudden fear that her resistance might
break down under her own desire.

"O, Tessy!" he went on, "I CANNOT think why you are so
tantalizing. Why do you disappoint me so? You seem
almost like a coquette, upon my life you do--a coquette
of the first urban water! They blow hot and blow cold,
just as you do, and it is the very last sort of thing
to expect to find in a retreat like Talbothays. ... And
yet, dearest," he quickly added, observing now the
remark had cut her, "I know you to be the most honest,
spotless creature that ever lived. So how can I
suppose you a flirt? Tess, why don't you like the idea
of being my wife, if you love me as you seem to do?"

"I have never said I don't like the idea, and I never
could say it; because--it isn't true!"

The stress now getting beyond endurance her lip
quivered, and she was obliged to go away. Clare was so
pained and perplexed that he ran after and caught her
in the passage.

"Tell me, tell me!" he said, passionately clasping her,
in forgetfulness of his curdy hands: "do tell me that
you won't belong to anybody but me!"

"I will, I will tell you!" she exclaimed. "And I will
give you a complete answer, if you will let me go now.
I will tell you my experiences--all about myself--all!"

"Your experiences, dear; yes, certainly; and number."
He expressed assent in loving satire, looking into her
face. "My Tess, no doubt, almost as many experiences as
that wild convolvulus out there on the garden hedge,
that opened itself this morning for the first time.
Tell me anything, but don't use that wretched
expression any more about not being worthy of me."

"I will try--not! And I'll give you my reasons
tomorrow--next week."

"Say on Sunday?"

"Yes, on Sunday."

At last she got away, and did not stop in her retreat
till she was in the thicket of pollard willows at the
lower side of the barton, where she could be quite
unseen. Here Tess flung herself down upon the rustling
undergrowth of spear-grass, as upon a bed, and
remained crouching in palpitating misery broken by
momentary shoots of joy, which her fears about the
ending could not altogether suppress.

In reality, she was drifting into acquiescence. Every
see-saw of her breath, every wave of her blood, every
pulse singing in her ears, was a voice that joined with
nature in revolt against her scrupulousness. Reckless,
inconsiderate acceptance of him; to close with him at
the altar, revealing nothing, and chancing discovery;
to snatch ripe pleasure before the iron teeth of pain
could have time to shut upon her: that was what love
counselled; and in almost a terror of ecstasy Tess
divined that, despite her many months of lonely
self-chastisement, wrestlings, communings, schemes to
lead a future of austere isolation, love's counsel
would prevail.

The afternoon advanced, and still she remained among
the willows. She heard the rattle of taking down the
pails from the forked stands; the "waow-waow!" which
accompanied the getting together of the cows. But she
did not go to the milking. They would see her
agitation; and the dairyman, thinking the cause to be
love alone, would good-naturedly tease her; and that
harassment could not be borne.

Her lover must have guessed her overwrought state, and
invented some excuse for her non-appearance, for no
inquiries were made or calls given. At half-past six
the sun settled down upon the levels, with the aspect
of a great forge in the heavens; and presently a
monstrous pumpkin-like moon arose on the other hand.
The pollard willows, tortured out of their natural
shape by incessant choppings, became spiny-haired
monsters as they stood up against it. She went in,
and upstairs without a light.

It was now Wednesday. Thursday came, and Angel looked
thoughtfully at her from a distance, but intruded in no
way upon her. The indoor milkmaids, Marian and the
rest, seemed to guess that something definite was
afoot, for they did not force any remarks upon her in
the bedchamber. Friday passed; Saturday. Tomorrow was
the day.

"I shall give way--I shall say yes--I shall let myself
marry him--I cannot help it!" she jealously panted,
with her hot face to the pillow that night, on hearing
one of the other girls sigh his name in her sleep.
"I can't bear to let anybody have him but me! Yet it is a
wrong to him, and may kill him when he knows! O my
heart--O--O--O!"

XXIX

"Now, who mid ye think I've heard news o' this
morning?" said Dairyman Crick, as he sat down to
breakfast next day, with a riddling gaze round upon the
munching men and maids. "Now, just who mid ye think?"

One guessed, and another guessed. Mrs Crick did not
guess, because she knew already.

"Well," said the dairyman, "'tis that slack-twisted
'hore's-bird of a feller, Jack Dollop. He's lately
got married to a widow-woman."

"Not Jack Dollop? A villain--to think o' that!" said a
milker.

The name entered quickly into Tess Durbeyfield's
consciousness, for it was the name of the lover who had
wronged his sweetheart, and had afterwards been so
roughly used by the young woman's mother in the
butter-churn.

"And had he married the valiant matron's daughter, as
he promised?" asked Angel Clare absently, as he turned
over the newspaper he was reading at the little table
to which he was always banished by Mrs Crick, in her
sense of his gentility.

"Not he, sir. Never meant to," replied the dairyman.
"As I say, 'tis a widow-woman, and she had money, it
seems--fifty poun' a year or so; and that was all he
was after. They were married in a great hurry; and
then she told him that by marrying she had lost her
fifty poun' a year. Just fancy the state o' my
gentleman's mind at that news! Never such a cat-
and-dog life as they've been leading ever since! Serve
him will beright. But onluckily the poor woman gets
the worst o't."

"Well, the silly body should have told en sooner that
the ghost of her first man would trouble him," said Mrs
Crick.

"Ay; ay," responded the dairyman indecisively.
"Still, you can see exactly how 'twas. She wanted a home,
and didn't like to run the risk of losing him. Don't ye
think that was something like it, maidens?"

He glanced towards the row of girls.

"She ought to ha' told him just before they went to
church, when he could hardly have backed out,"
exclaimed Marian.

"Yes, she ought," agreed Izz.

"She must have seen what he was after, and should ha'
refused him," cried Retty spasmodically.

"And what do you say, my dear?" asked the dairyman of
Tess.

"I think she ought--to have told him the true state of
things--or else refused him--I don't know," replied
Tess, the bread-and-butter choking her.

"Be cust if I'd have done either o't," said Beck
Knibbs, a married helper from one of the cottages.
"All's fair in love and war. I'd ha' married en just
as she did, and if he'd said two words to me about not
telling him beforehand anything whatsomdever about my
first chap that I hadn't chose to tell, I'd ha' knocked
him down wi' the rolling-pin--a scram little feller
like he! Any woman could do it."

The laughter which followed this sally was supplemented
only by a sorry smile, for form's sake, from Tess.
What was comedy to them was tragedy to her; and she
could hardly bear their mirth. She soon rose from
table, and, with an impression that Clare would soon
follow her, went along a little wriggling path, now
stepping to one side of the irrigating channels, and
now to the other, till she stood by the main stream of
the Var. Men had been cutting the water-weeds higher
up the river, and masses of them were floating past
her--moving islands of green crow-foot, whereon she
might almost have ridden; long locks of which weed had
lodged against the piles driven to keep the cows from
crossing.

Yes, there was the pain of it. This question of a
woman telling her story--the heaviest of crosses to
herself--seemed but amusement to others. It was as if
people should laugh at martyrdom.

"Tessy!" came from behind her, and Clare sprang across
the gully, alighting beside her feet. "My wife--soon!"

"No, no; I cannot. For your sake, O Mr Clare; for your
sake, I say no!"

"Tess!"

"Still I say no!" she repeated.

Not expecting this he had put his arm lightly round her
waist the moment after speaking, beneath her hanging
tail of hair. (The younger dairymaids, including Tess,
breakfasted with their hair loose on Sunday mornings
before building it up extra high for attending church,
a style they could not adopt when milking with their
heads against the cows.) If she had said "Yes" instead
of "No" he would have kissed her; it had evidently been
his intention; but her determined negative deterred his
scrupulous heart. Their condition of domiciliary
comradeship put her, as the woman, to such disadvantage
by its enforced intercourse, that he felt it unfair to
her to exercise any pressure of blandishment which he
might have honestly employed had she been better able
to avoid him. He release her momentarily-imprisoned
waist, and withheld the kiss.

It all turned on that release. What had given her
strength to refuse him this time was solely the tale of
the widow told by the dairyman; and that would have
been overcome in another moment. But Angel said no
more; his face was perplexed; he went away.

Day after day they met--somewhat less constantly than
before; and thus two or three weeks went by. The end
of September drew near, and she could see in his eye
that he might ask her again.

His plan of procedure was different now--as though he
had made up his mind that her negatives were, after
all, only coyness and youth startled by the novelty of
the proposal. The fitful evasiveness of her manner when
the subject was under discussion countenanced the idea.
So he played a more coaxing game; and while never going
beyond words, or attempting the renewal of caresses, he
did his utmost orally.

In this way Clare persistently wooed her in undertones
like that of the purling milk--at the cow's side, at
skimmings, at butter-makings, at cheese-makings, among
broody poultry, and among farrowing pigs--as no
milkmaid was ever wooed before by such a man.

Tess knew that she must break down. Neither a
religious sense of a certain moral validity in the
previous union nor a conscientious wish for candour
could hold out against it much longer. She loved him
so passionately, and he was so godlike in her eyes; and
being, though untrained, instinctively refined, her
nature cried for his tutelary guidance. And thus,
though Tess kept repeating to herself, "I can never be
his wife," the words were vain. A proof of her
weakness lay in the very utterance of what calm
strength would not have taken the trouble to formulate.
Every sound of his voice beginning on the old subject
stirred her with a terrifying bliss, and she coveted
the recantation she feared.

His manner was--what man's is not?--so much that of one
who would love and cherish and defend her under any
conditions, changes, charges, or revelations, that her
gloom lessened as she basked in it. The season
meanwhile was drawing onward to the equinox, and though
it was still fine, the days were much shorter. The
dairy had again worked by morning candlelight for a
long time; and a fresh renewal of Clare's pleading
occurred one morning between three and four.

She had run up in her bedgown to his door to call him
as usual; then had gone back to dress and call the
others; and in ten minutes was walking to the head of
the stairs with the candle in her hand. At the same
moment he came down his steps from above in his
shirt-sleeves and put his arm across the stairway.

"Now, Miss Flirt, before you go down," he said
peremptorily. "It is a fortnight since I spoke, and
this won't do any longer. You MUST tell me what you
mean, or I shall have to leave this house. My door was
ajar just now, and I saw you. For your own safety I
must go. You don't know. Well? Is it to be yes at
last?"

"I am only just up, Mr Clare, and it is too early to
take me to task!" she pouted. "You need not call me
Flirt. 'Tis cruel and untrue. Wait till by and by.
Please wait till by and by! I will really think
seriously about it between now and then. Let me go
downstairs!"

She looked a little like what he said she was as,
holding the candle sideways, she tried to smile away
the seriousness of her words.

"Call me Angel, then and not Mr Clare."

"Angel."

"Angel dearest--why not?"

"'Twould mean that I agree, wouldn't it?" "It would
only mean that you love me, even if you cannot marry
me; and you were so good as to own that long ago."

"Very well, then, 'Angel dearest', if I MUST," she
murmured, looking at her candle, a roguish curl coming
upon her mouth, notwithstanding her suspense.

Clare had resolved never to kiss her until he had
obtained her promise; but somehow, as Tess stood there
in her prettily tucked-up milking gown, her hair
carelessly heaped upon her head till there should be
leisure to arrange it when skimming and milking were
done, he broke his resolve, and brought his lips to her
cheek for one moment. She passed downstairs very
quickly, never looking back at him or saying another
word. The other maids were already down, and the
subject was not pursued. Except Marian, they all
looked wistfully and suspiciously at the pair, in the
sad yellow rays which the morning candles emitted in
contrast with the first cold signals of the dawn
without.

When skimming was done--which, as the milk diminished
with the approach of autumn, was a lessening process
day by day--Retty and the rest went out. The lovers
followed them.

"Our tremulous lives are so different from theirs, are
they not?" he musingly observed to her, as he regarded
the three figures tripping before him through the
frigid pallor of opening day.

"Not so very different, I think," she said.

"Why do you think that?"

"There are very few women's lives that are
not--tremulous," Tess replied, pausing over the new
word as if it impressed her. "There's more in those
three than you think."

"What is in them?"

"Almost either of 'em," she began, "would make--perhaps
would make--a properer wife than I. And perhaps they
love you as well as I--almost."

"O, Tessy!"

There were signs that it was an exquisite relief to her
to hear the impatient exclamation, though she had
resolved so intrepidly to let generosity make one bid
against herself. That was now done, and she had not the
power to attempt self-immolation a second time then.
They were joined by a milker from one of the cottages,
and no more was said on that which concerned them so
deeply. But Tess knew that this day would decide it.

In the afternoon several of the dairyman's household
and assistants went down to the meads as usual, a long
way from the dairy, where many of the cows were milked
without being driven home. The supply was getting less
as the animals advanced in calf, and the supernumerary
milkers of the lush green season had been dismissed.

The work progressed leisurely. Each pailful was poured
into tall cans that stood in a large spring-waggon
which had been brought upon the scene; and when they
were milked the cows trailed away. Dairyman Crick, who
was there with the rest, his wrapper gleaming
miraculously white against a leaden evening sky,
suddenly looked at his heavy watch.

"Why, 'tis later than I thought," he said. "Begad! We
shan't be soon enough with this milk at the station, if
we don't mind. There's no time today to take it home
and mix it with the bulk afore sending off. It must go
to station straight from here. Who'll drive it
across?"