 CHAPTER 47 It is the threshing of the last wheat-rick at Flint-Kamash Farm. The dawn of the March morning is singularly impressive, and there is nothing to show where the eastern horizon lies. Against the twilight arises the trapezoidal top of the stack, which is stood forlaundly here through the washing and bleaching of the wintry weather. When East Hewitt and Tess arrived at the scene of the operations, only a rustling denoted that others had preceded them, to which, as the light increased, there were presently added the silhouettes of two men on the summit. They were busily unhailing the rick, that is, stripping off the thatch before beginning to throw down the sheaves. And while this was in progress, is and Tess, with the other women workers in their whitey-brown pinners stood waiting and shivering, Farmer Grobey having insisted upon their being on the spot thus early to get the job over, if possible, by the end of the day. Close under the ease of the stack, and as yet barely visible, was the red tyrant that the woman had come to serve, a timber-frame construction with straps and wheels appertaining, the threshing machine which, whilst it was going, kept up a despotic demand upon the endurance of their muscles and nerves. A little way off there was another indistinct figure, this one black, with a sustained hiss that spoke of strength very much in reserve. The long chimney running up beside an ash tree and the warmth which radiated from the spot explained without the necessity of much daylight that here was the engine which was to act as the prime and mobile of this little world. By the engine stood a dark, motionless being, a sooty and grimy embodiment of tallness, in a sort of trance, with a heap of coals by his side. It was the engine-man. The isolation of his manner and colour lent him the appearance of a creature of Tofit who had strayed into the pollucid smokelessness of this region of yellow grain and pale soil, with which he had nothing in common to amaze and discompose its aborigines. What he looked, he felt. He was in the agricultural world, but not of it. He served fire and smoke. These denizens of the field served vegetation, weather, frost, and sun. He travelled with his engine from farm to farm, from county to county. For, as yet, the steam-threshing machine was itinerant in this part of Wessex. He spoke in a strange northern accent, his thoughts being turned inward upon himself, his eye on his iron charge, hardly perceiving the scenes around him, and caring for them not at all, holding only strictly necessary intercourse with the natives, as if some ancient doom compelled him to wander here against his will in the service of his plutonic master. The long strap which ran from the driving-wheel of his engine to the red thresher under the rick was the sole tie-line between agriculture and him. While they uncovered the sheaves, he stood apathetic beside his portable repository of force, round whose hot blackness the morning air quivered. He had nothing to do with preparatory labour. His fire was waiting, incandescent. His steam was at higher pressure. In a few seconds he would make the long strap move at an invisible velocity. Beyond its extent the environment might be corn, straw, or chaos. It was all the same to him. If any of the autochthonous idlers asked him what he called himself, he replied shortly, an engineer. The rick was unhailed by full daylight. The men then took their places, the women mounted, and the work began. Farmer Grobey, or as they called him, he, had arrived ere this, and by his orders Tess was placed on the platform of the machine, close to the man who fed it, her business being to untie every sheaf of corn handed to her by Iz Hewitt, who stood next, but on the rick, so that the feeder could seize it and spread it over the revolving drum which whisked out every grain in one moment. They were soon in full progress after a preparatory hitch or two, which rejoiced the hearts of those who hated machinery. The work spared on till breakfast time when the thresher was stopped for half an hour and on starting again after the meal, the whole supplementary strength of the farm was thrown into the labour of constructing the straw rick, which began to grow beside the stack of corn. A hasty lunch was eaten as they stood, without leaving their positions, and then another couple of hours brought them near to dinner time, the inexorable wheel continuing to spin, and the penetrating harm of the thresher to thrill to the very marrow all who were near the revolving wire cage. The old men on the rising straw rick talked of the past days when they had been accustomed to thresh with flails on the oak and barn floor, when everything, even to winnowing, was affected by hand labour which, to their thinking, though slow, produced better results. Those two on the corn rick talked a little, but the perspiring ones of the machine, including Tess, could not lighten their duties by an exchange of many words. It was the ceaselessness of the work which tired her so severely, and began to make her wish that she had never come to flint-camache. The women on the corn rick, Marion, who was one of them in particular, could stop to drink ale or cold tea from the flagon now and then, or to exchange a few gossiping remarks while they wiped their faces, or cleared the fragments of straw and husk from their clothing. But for Tess there was no respite, for, as the drum never stopped, the man who fed it could not stop, and she, who had to supply the man with untied sheaves, could not stop either, unless Marion changed places with her, which she sometimes did for half an hour, in spite of Grobe's objections that she was too slow-handed for a feeder. For some probably economical reason it was usually a woman who was chosen for this particular duty, and Grobe gave, as his motive in selecting Tess, that she was one of those who best combined strength with quickness in untying, and both with staying power, and this may have been true. The harm of the thrasher which prevented speech increased to a raving whenever the supply of corn fell short of the regular quantity. As Tess and the man who fed could never turn their heads, she did not know that just before the dinner-hour a person had come silently into the field by the gate, and had been standing under a second rick, watching the scene, and Tess in particular. He was dressed in a tweed suit of fashionable pattern, and he twirled a gay walking cane. "'Who is that?' said his hew it to Marion. She had at first addressed the inquiry to Tess, but the latter could not hear it. "'Somebody's fancy man, I suppose,' said Marion, laconically. "'I'll lay again he's after Tess.' "'Oh, note is a rant a person who's been sniffing after her lately, not a dandy like this. "'Well, tis the same man. The same man as the preacher? Why, he's quite different.' He have left off his black coat and white neckerchief, and have cut off his whiskers, but he's the same man for all that.' "'Do he really think so? Then I'll tell her,' said Marion. "'Don't. She'll see him so in enough good now.' "'Well, I don't think it at all right for him to join his preaching to court in a married woman, even though her husband might be abroad, and she, in a sense, a widow.' "'Oh, we can do her no harm,' said Isdreilly. "'Her mind can no more be he from that one place where it do abide than a studded wagon from the hole he's in. Lord Lovey, neither court pay no preaching, nor the seventh thunders themselves can wean a woman when twid better for her that she should be weaned.' Dinner time came, and the whirling ceased, whereupon Tess left her post, her knees trembling so wretchedly with the shaking of the machine that she could scarcely walk. "'You ought to hit a quart of drink into it as I've done,' said Marion. "'You wouldn't look so white then. Why, souls above us, your face is as if you'd been haggard.' It occurred to the good natured Marion that, as Tess was so tired, her discovery of her visitor's presence might have the bad effect of taking away her appetite. And Marion was thinking of inducing Tess to descend by a ladder on the further side of the stack when the gentleman came forward and looked up. Tess uttered a short little, "'Oh,' and a moment after she said quickly, "'I shall eat my dinner here right on the rick.' Sometimes when they were so far off from their cottages they all did this. But as there was a rather keen wind going to-day, Marion and the rest descended and sat under the straw-stack. The newcomer was indeed Alec Derbeville, the late evangelist, despite his changed attire and aspect. It was obvious at a glance that the original Vettelust had come back, that he had restored himself as nearly as a man could do who had grown three or four years older to the old jaunty, slap-dash guise under which Tess had first known her admirer and cousin, so-called. Having decided to remain where she was, Tess sat down among the bundles, out of sight on the ground, and began her meal till, by and by, she heard footsteps on the ladder, and immediately after Alec appeared upon the stack, now an oblong and level platform of sheaves. He strode across them, and sat down opposite of her, without a word. Tess continued to eat her modest dinner, a slice of thick pancake which she had brought with her. The other workfolk were by this time all gathered under the rick, where the loose straw formed a comfortable retreat. I'm here again, as you'll see, said Durberville. Why do you trouble me so? she cried, reproach flashing from her very finger ends. I trouble you? I think I may ask, why do you trouble me? Sure, I don't trouble you any when. You say you don't, but you do. You haunt me, those very eyes that you turned upon me with such a bitter flash a moment ago. They come to me just as you showed them, then, in the night and in the day. Tess, ever since you told me of that child of ours, it is just as if my feelings, which had been flowing in a strong puritanical stream, had suddenly found a way open in the direction of you, and had all at once gushed through. The religious channel is left dry forthwith, and it is you who have done it. She gazed in silence. What! you have given up your preaching entirely? she asked. She had gathered from Angel sufficient of the incredulity of modem thought to despise flash enthusiasm, but as a woman she was somewhat appalled. In effected severity, Durbeville continued. Entirely. I have broken every engagement since that afternoon. I was to address the drunkards at Castor Bridge Fair. The deuce only knows what I am thought of by the brethren. The brethren, no doubt they pray for me, weep for me. For they are kind people in their way, but what do I care? How could I go on with the thing when I had lost my faith in it? It would have been hypocrisy of the basest kind. Among them I should have stood like Chimenius and Alexander who were delivered over to Satan that they might learn not to blaspheme. What a grand revenge you have taken! I saw you innocent, and I deceived you. Four years after you find me a Christian enthusiast. You then work upon me, perhaps to my complete petition. But, Tess, my cause, as I used to call you, this is only my way of talking, and you must not look so horribly concerned. Of course you have done nothing except retain your pretty face and shapely figure. I saw it on the rick before you saw me. That tight pinafore thing sets it off, and that wing bonnet. You field girl should never wear those bonnets if you wish to keep out of danger. He regarded her silently for a few moments, and with a short cynical laugh resumed, I believe that if the bachelor apostle, whose deputy I thought I was, had been tempted by such a pretty face, he would have let go the plough for her sake as I do. Tess attempted to expostulate, but at this juncture all her fluency failed her, and without heeding he added, well, this paradise that you supply is perhaps as good as any other, after all. But to speak seriously, Tess, Durbeville rose and came nearer, reclining sideways amid the sheaves, and resting upon his elbow. Since I last saw you I have been thinking of what you said that he said. I have come to the conclusion that there does seem rather a want of common sense in these threadbare old propositions. How I could have been so fired by poor Parson-Claire's enthusiasm and have gone so madly to work transcending even him I cannot make out. As for what you said last time on the strength of your wonderful husband's intelligence, whose name you have never told me, about having what they call an ethical system without any dogma, I don't see my way to that at all. Why, you can have the religion of loving-kindness and purity at least. If you can't have, what do you call it, dogma? Oh no, I'm a different sort of fellow from that. If there's nobody to say, do this, and it will be a good thing for you after you're dead, do that, and it will be a bad thing for you, I can't warm up. Hang it, I'm not going to feel responsible for my deeds and passions if there's nobody to be responsible to, and if I were you, my dear, I wouldn't either. She tried to argue and tell him that he had mixed up in his dull brain two matters, theology and morals, which in the primitive days of mankind had been quite distinct. But owing to Angel-Claire's reticence, to her absolute want of training, and to her being a vessel of emotions rather than reasons, she could not get on. Well, never mind, he resumed. Here I am, my love, as in the old times. Not as then, never as then, it is different, she entreated, and there was never warmth with me. Oh, why didn't you keep to your faith, if the loss of it has brought you to speak to me like this? Because you've knocked it out of me, so the evil be upon your sweet head. Your husband little thought how his teaching would recoil upon him, ha-ha! I'm awfully glad you've made an apostate of me all the same. Tess, I am more taken with you than ever, and I pity you too. For all your closeness, I see you are in a bad way, neglected by one who ought to cherish you. She could not get her morsels of food down her throat. Her lips were dry, and she was ready to choke. The voices and laughs of the work folk, eating and drinking under the rick, came to her as if they were a quarter of a mile off. It is cruelty to me, she said. How can you treat me to this talk, if you care ever so little for me? True, true, he said, wincing a little. I did not come to reproach you for my deeds. I came, Tess, to say that I don't like you to be working like this, and I have come on purpose for you. You say you have a husband who is not I. Well, perhaps you have, but I've never seen him, and you've not told me his name, and altogether he seems a rather mythological personage. However, even if you have one, I think I am nearer to you than he is. I, at any rate, try to help you out of trouble, but he does not bless his invisible face. The words of the stern prophet Hosea that I used to read came back to me. Don't you know them, Tess? And she shall follow after her lover, but she shall not overtake him. And she shall seek him, and shall not find him. Then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better with me than now. Tess, my trap is waiting just under the hill, and, darling mine, not his, you know the rest. Her face had been rising to a dull crimson fire while he spoke, but she did not answer. You have been the cause of my backsliding, he continued, stretching his arm towards her waist. You should be willing to share it, and leave that mule you call husband forever. One of her leather gloves which she had taken off to eat her simmer-cake lay in her lap, and without the slightest warning she passionately swung the glove by the gauntlet directly in his face. It was heavy and thick as a warrior's, and it struck him flat on the mouth. Fancy might have regarded the act as the recredescence of a trick in which her armed progenitors were not unpracticed. Alec fiercely started up from his reclining position. A scarlet oozing appeared where her blow had elighted, and in a moment the blood began dropping from his mouth upon the straw. But he soon controlled himself, calmly drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and mopped his bleeding lips. She too had sprung up, but she sank down again. Now punish me, she said, turning up her eyes to him with the hopeless defiance of the sparrow's gaze before its captor twists its neck. Whip me, crush me. You need not mind these people under the rick I shall not cry out. Once victim, always victim. That's the law. Oh, no, Tess, he said blandly. I can make full allowance for this, yet you most unjustly forget one thing, that I would have married you if you had not put it out of my power to do so. Did I not ask you flatly to be my wife, eh? Answer me. You did. And you cannot be. But remember one thing. His voice hardened as his temper got the better of him, with the recollection of his sincerity in asking her and her present in gratitude, and he stepped across to her side and held her by the shoulders so that she shook under his grasp. Remember, my lady, I was your master once. I will be your master again. If you are any man's wife, you are mine. The threshers now began to stir below. So much for our quarrel, he said, letting her go. Now I shall leave you, and I shall come again for your answer during the afternoon. You don't know me yet, but I know you. She had not spoken again, remaining as if stunned. Derbeville retreated over the sheaves and descended the ladder, while the workers below rose and stretched their arms, and shook down the beer they had drunk. Then the threshing machine started afresh, and amid the renewed rustle of the straw, Tess resumed her position by the buzzing drum, as one in a dream, untying sheaf after sheaf, in endless succession. End of Chapter 47 Chapter 48 OF TESS OF THE DERBERVILLS Chapter 48 In the afternoon the farmer made it known that the rick was to be finished that night, since there was a moon by which they could see to work, and the man with the engine was engaged for another farm on the morrow. Hence the twanging and humming and rustling proceeded with even less intermission than usual. It was not till nammit time, about three o'clock, that Tess raised her eyes and gave a momentary glance round. She felt but little surprise at seeing that Alec Derbeville had come back, and was standing under the hedge by the gate. He had seen her lift her eyes, and waved his hand urbanely to her, while he blew her a kiss. It meant that their quarrel was over. Tess looked down again, and carefully abstained from gazing in that direction. Thus the afternoon dragged on. The wheat rick shrank lower, and the straw rick grew higher, and the corn sacks were carted away. At six o'clock the wheat rick was about shoulder high from the ground, but the unthreshed sheaves remaining untouched seemed countless still, notwithstanding the enormous numbers that had been gulped down by the insatiable swallower, fed by the man and Tess, through whose young hands the greater part of them had passed. And the immense stack of straw, where in the morning there had been nothing, appeared as the feces of the same buzzing red glutton. From the west sky a wrathful shine, all that wild march could afford in the way of sunset, had burst forth after the cloudy day, flooding the tired and sticky faces of the threshers, and dying them with a coppery light, as also the flapping garments of the women, which clung to them like dull flames. A panting ache ran through the rick. The man who fed was weary, and Tess could see that the red nape of his neck was encrusted with dirt and husks. She still stood at her post, her flushed and perspiring face coated with the corn dust, and her white bonnet imbrowned by it. She was the only woman whose place was upon the machine so as to be shaken bodily by its spinning, and the decrease of the stack now separated her from Marian and Ise, and prevented their changing duties with her as they had done. The incessant quivering, in which every fibre of her frame participated, had thrown her into a stupefied reverie in which her arms worked on independently of her consciousness. She hardly knew where she was, and did not hear Ise Hewitt tell her from below that her hair was tumbling down. By degrees the freshest among them began to grow cadaverous and saucer-eyed. Whenever Tess lifted her head she beheld always the great up-grown straw stack, with the man in shirt sleeves upon it, against the grey north sky. In front of it the long red elevator, like a Jacob's ladder, on which a perpetual stream of threshed straw ascended, a yellow river running uphill and spouting out on the top of the rick. She knew that Alec Derbeville was still on the scene, observing her from some point or other, though she could not say where. There was an excuse for his remaining, for when the threshed rick drew near its final sheaves, a little ratting was always done, and men unconnected with the threshing sometimes dropped in for that performance, sporting characters of all descriptions, gents with terriers and facetious pipes, ruffs with sticks and stones. But there was another hour's work before the layer of live rats at the base of the stack would be reached, and as the evening light in the direction of Giant's Hill by Abbott's churnal dissolved away, the white-faced moon of the season arose from the horizon that laid towards Middleton Abbey and Shotsford on the other side. For the last hour or two Marion had felt uneasy about Tess, whom she could not get near enough to speak to, the other women having kept up their strength by drinking ale, and Tess having done without it through traditionary dread owing to its results at her home in childhood. But Tess still kept going. If she could not fill her part she would have to leave, and this contingency which she would have regarded with equanimity and even relief on month or two earlier had become a terror since Durberville had began to hover around her. The chief pitchers and feeders had now worked the rick so low that people on the ground could talk to them. To Tess's surprise Farmer Grobe came up on the machine to her and said that if she desired to join her friend he did not wish her to keep on any longer and would send somebody else up to take her place. The friend was Durberville, she knew, and also that this concession had been granted in obedience to the request of that friend or enemy. She shook her head and toiled on. The time for the rat-catching arrived at last and the hunt began. The creatures had crept downwards with the subsidence of the rick till they were all together at the bottom, and being now uncovered from their last refuge they ran across the open ground in all directions, a loud shriek from the, by this time, half-tipsy Marian informing her companions that one of the rats had invaded her person, a terror which the rest of the women had guarded against by various schemes of skirt-tucking and self-elevation. The rat was at last dislodged and, amid the barking of dogs, masculine shouts, feminine screams, oaths, stampings, and confusion as a pandemonium, Tess untied her last sheaf. The drum slowed, the whizzing ceased, and she stepped down from the machine to the ground. Her lover, who had only looked on at the rat-catching, was promptly at her side. What, after all my insulting slap, too, she said in an underbreath. She was so utterly exhausted that she had not strength to speak louder. I should indeed be foolish to feel offended at anything you say or do, he answered in the seductive voice of the trench-ridge-time. How the little limbs tremble! You are as weak as a bled calf, you know you are, and yet you need to have done nothing since I arrived. How could you be so obstinate? However, I have told the farmer that he has no right to employ women at steam-threshing. It is not proper work for them, and on all the better class of farms it has been given up, as he knows very well. I will walk with you as far as your home. Oh yes, she answered with a jaded gait. Walk with me, if you will. I do bear in mind that you came to marry me before you knew of my state. Perhaps you are a little better and kinder than I have been thinking you were. Whatever is meant as kindness I am grateful for. Whatever is meant in any other way I am angered at. I cannot sense your meaning sometimes. If I cannot legitimize our former relations I can at least assist you, and I will do it with much more regard for your feelings than I formally showed. My religious mania or whatever it was is over, but I retain her a little good nature. I hope I do. Now, Tess, by all that is tender and strong between man and woman, trust me. I have enough and more than enough to put you out of anxiety, both for yourself and your parents and sisters. I can make them all comfortable if you will only show confidence in me. Have you seen them lately? She quickly inquired. Yes, they didn't know where you were. It was only by chance that I found you here. A cold moon looked a slant upon Tess's fagged face between the twigs of the garden hedge as she paused outside the cottage which was her temporary home, Durberville, pausing beside her. Don't mention my little brothers and sisters. Don't make me break down quite, she said. If you want to help them, God knows they need it. Do it without telling me. But no, no, she cried. I will take nothing from you, either for them or for me. He did not accompany her further since, as she lived with the household, all was public indoors. No sooner had she herself entered, lavered herself in a washing tub, and shared supper with the family, than she fell into thought, and withdrawing to the table under the wall by the light of her own little lamp, wrote in a passionate mood, My own husband. Let me call you so. I must, even if it makes you angry to think of such an unworthy wife as I. I must cry to you in my trouble. I have no one else. I am so exposed to temptation, Angel. I fear to say who it is, and I do not like to write about it at all, but I cling to you in a way you cannot think. Can you not come to me now, at once, before anything terrible happens? Oh, I know you cannot, because you are so far away. I think I must die if you do not come soon, or tell me to come to you. The punishment you have measured out to me is deserved. I know that, well deserved, and you are right in just to be angry with me. But Angel, please, please, do not be just, only a little coin to me, even if I do not deserve it, and come to me. If you would come, I could do in your arms. I would be well content to do that, if so be you had forgiven me. Angel, I live entirely for you. I love you too much to blame you for going away, and I know it was necessary you should find a farm. Do not think I shall say a word of sting or bitterness. Only come back to me. I am desolate without you, my darling. Oh, so desolate! I do not mind having to work, but you will send me one little line and say, I am coming soon. I will bide on, Angel. Oh, so cheerfully! It has been so much my religion ever since we were married to be faithful to you in every thought and look, that even when a man speaks a compliment to me before I am aware, it seems wronging you. Have you never felt one little bit of what you used to feel when we were at the dairy? If you have, how can you keep away from me? I am the same woman, Angel, as you fell in love with, yes, the very same, not the one you disliked, but never saw. What was the past to me, as soon as I met you? It was a dead thing altogether. I became another woman, filled full of new life from you. How could I be the early one? Why did you not see this? Dear, if you would only be a little more conceited and believe in yourself so far as to see that you were strong enough to work this change in me, you would perhaps be in a mind to come to me, your poor wife. How silly I was in my happiness when I thought I could trust you all was to love me. I ought to have known that such was not for poor me, but I am sick at heart, not only for old times, but for the present. Think, think how it do hurt my heart not to see you ever, ever. If I can only make your dear heart ache one little minute of each day, as mine does every day and all day long, it might lead you to show pity to your poor lonely one. People still say that I am rather pretty, angel. Handsome is the word they use, since I wish to be truthful. Perhaps I am what they say, but I do not value my good looks. I only like to have them because they belong to you, my dear, and that they may be at least one thing about me worth your having. So much have I felt this, that when I met with annoyance and account of the same, I toyed up my face in a bandage as long as people would believe in it. Oh, angel, I tell you this not from vanity. You will certainly know I do not, but only that you may come to me. If you really cannot come to me, will you let me come to you? I am, as I say, worried, pressed to do that I will not do. It cannot be that I shall yield one inch, yet I am in terror as to what an accident might lead to, and I so defenseless on account of my first error. I cannot say more about this. It makes me too miserable. But if I break down by falling into some fearful snare, my last state will be worse than my first. Oh, God, I cannot think of it. Let me come at once, or at once, come to me. I would be content, I glad to live with you as your servant, if I may not as your wife, so that I could only be near you and get glimpses of you and think of you as mine. The daylight has nothing to show me, since you are not here, and I don't like to see the rucks and stylings in the field, because I grieve and grieve to miss you, who used to see them with me. I long for only one thing in heaven or earth or under the earth to meet you, my own dear. Come to me, come to me, and save me from what threatens me. Me. Your faithful, heartbroken, Tess. End of Chapter 48, Chapter 49 of Tests of the Durbovilles. Chapter 49 The appeal duly found its way to the breakfast table of the quiet vicarage to the westward, in that valley where the air is so soft and the soil so rich that the effort of growth requires but superficial aid by comparison with the tillage at Flinkham Ash, and where, to Tess, the human world seemed so different, though it was much the same. It was purely for security that she had been requested by Angel to send her communications through his father, whom he kept pretty well informed of his changing addresses in the country he had gone to to exploit for himself with a heavy heart. Now, said old Mr. Clare to his wife when he had read the envelope, if Angel proposes leaving Rio for a visit home at the end of next month, as he told us he hoped to do, I hope this may hasten his plans, for I believe it to be from his wife. He breathed deeply at the thought of her, and the letter was redirected to be promptly sent on to Angel. Dear fellow, I hope he will get home safely, murmured Mrs. Clare, to my dying day I shall feel that he has been ill-used. You should have sent him to Cambridge in spite of his want of faith, and given him the same chance the other boys had. He would have grown out of it under proper influence, and perhaps would have taken orders after all. Church or no church it would have been fairer to him. This was the only wail with which Mrs. Clare ever disturbed her husband's peace in respect to their sons, and she did not vent this often, for she was as considerate as she was devout, and knew that his mind too was troubled by doubts as to his justice in this matter. Only too often had she heard him lying awake at night, stifling sighs for Angel with prayers. But the uncompromising evangelical did not even now hold that he would have been justified in giving his son an unbeliever, the same academic advantages that he had given the two others, when it was possible, if not probable, that those very advantages might have been used to decry the doctrines which he had made it his life's mission and desire to propagate, and the mission of his ordained sons likewise. To put with one hand a pedestal under the feet of the two faithful ones, and with the other to exalt the unfaithful by the same artificial means, he deemed to be alike inconsistent with his convictions, his position, and his hopes. Nevertheless he loved his misnamed Angel, and in secret mourned over this treatment of him as Abraham might have mourned over the doomed Isaac while they went up the hill together. His silent, self-generated regrets were far bitterer than the approaches which his wife rendered audible. They blamed themselves for this unlucky marriage. If Angel had never been destined for a farmer, he would never have been thrown with agricultural girls. They did not distinctly know what had separated him and his wife, nor the date on which the separation had taken place. At first they supposed it must be something of the nature of a serious aversion, but in his later letters he occasionally alluded to the intention of coming home to fetch her, from which expressions they hoped the division might not owe its origin to anything so hopelessly permanent as that. He had told them that she was with her relatives, and in their doubts they had decided not to intrude into a situation which they knew no way of bettering. The eyes for which Tess's letter was intended were gazing at this time on a limitless expanse of country from the back of a mule, which was bearing him from the interior of the South American continent towards the coast. His experiences of this strange land had been sad. The severe illness from which he had suffered shortly after his arrival had never wholly left him, and he had by degrees almost decided to relinquish his hope of farming here. Though, as long as the bare possibility existed of his remaining, he kept this change of view a secret from his parents. The crowds of agricultural labourers who had come out to the country in his wake, dazzled by representations of easy independence, had suffered, died, and wasted away. He would see mothers from English farms trudging along with their infants in their arms, when the child would be stricken with fever and would die. The mother would pause to dig a hole in the loose earth with her bare hands, would bury the babe therein with the same natural grave tools, shed one tear, and again, trudge on. Angel's original intention had not been emigration to Brazil, but a northern or eastern farm in his own country. He had come to this place in a fit of desperation. The Brazil movement among the English agriculturalists having by chance coincided with the fact that his desire to escape from his past existence. During this time of absence, he had mentally aged a dozen years. What arrested him now as a value in life was less its beauty than its pathos. Having long discredited the old systems of mysticism, he now began to discredit the old appraisements of morality. He thought they wanted readjusting. Who was the moral man? Still, more pertinently, who was the moral woman? The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses. Its true history lay not among things done, but among things willed. How, then, about Tess? Viewing her in these lights, a regret for his hasty judgment began to oppress him. Did he reject her eternally, or did he not? He could no longer say that he would always reject her, and not to say that was in spirit to accept her now. This growing fondness for her memory coincided in point of time with her residence at Flinkham Ash, but it was before she had found herself at liberty to trouble him with a word about her circumstances or her feelings. He was greatly perplexed, and in his perplexity as to her motives in withholding intelligence he did not inquire. Thus her silence of docility was misinterpreted. How much it really said, if he had understood, that she had heared with literal exactness to orders which he had given and forgotten. That despite her natural fearlessness she asserted no rights, admitted his judgment to be in every respect the true one, and bent her head dumbly there too. In the before mentioned journey by mules through the interior of the country, another man rode beside him. Angel's companion was also an Englishman, bent on the same errand, though he came from another part of the island. They were both in a state of mental depression, and they spoke of home affairs. Confidence begat confidence. With that curious tendency evidenced by men, more especially when in distant lands, to entrust to strangers details of their lives which they would on no account mention to friends, Angel admitted to this man as they rode along, the sorrowful facts of his marriage. The stranger had sojourned in many more lands and among many more peoples than Angel. To his cosmopolitan mind such deviations from the social norm, so immense to domesticity, were no more than the irregularities of veil and mountain chain to the whole terrestrial curve. He viewed the matter in quite a different light from Angel, thought that what Tess had been was of no importance besides what she would be, and plainly told Claire that he was wrong in coming away from her. The next day they were drenched in a thunderstorm. Angel's companion was struck down with fever, and died by the week's end. Claire waited a few hours to bury him, and then went on his way. The cursory remarks of the large-minded stranger, of whom he knew absolutely nothing beyond a mere commonplace name, were sublimed by his death and influenced Claire more than all the reasoned ethics of the philosophers. His own parochialism made him ashamed by its contrast. His inconsistencies rushed upon him in a flood. He had persistently elevated Hellenic paganism at the expense of Christianity, yet in that civilization an illegal surrender was not certain disesteem. Surely then he might have regarded the abhorrence of the unintact state which he had inherited with the creed of mysticism, as at least open to correction when the result was due to treachery. Remorse struck into him. The words of Iz Hewitt, never quite stilled in his memory, came back to him. He had asked Iz if she loved him, and she had replied in the affirmative. Did she love him more than Tess did? No, she had replied. Tess would lay down her life for him, and she herself could do no more. He thought of Tess as she had appeared on the day of the wedding, how her eyes had lingered upon him, how she had hung upon his words as if they were a gods. And during the terrible evening over the hearth, when her simple soul uncovered itself to his, how pitiful her face had looked by the rays of the fire in her inability to realize that his love and protection could possibly be withdrawn. Thus, from being her critic, he grew to be her advocate. Cynical things he had uttered to himself about her, but no man can be always a cynic and live, and he withdrew them. The mistake of expressing them had arisen by his allowing himself to be influenced by general principles to the disregard of the particular instance. But the reasoning is somewhat musty. Lovers and husbands have gone over the ground before today. Claire had been harsh towards her. There was no doubt of it. Men are too often harsh with women they love or have loved, women with men. And yet these harshnesses are tenderness itself when compared with the universal harshness out of which they grow, the harshness of the position towards the temperament, of the means towards the aims, of today towards yesterday, of hereafter towards today. The historic interest of her family, that masterful line of Durberville's, whom he had despised as a spent force, touched his sentiments now. Why had he not known the difference between the political value and the imaginative value of these things? In the latter aspect, her Durberville dissent was a fact of great dimensions. Worthless to economics, it was a most useful ingredient to the dreamer, to the moraliser on declines and falls. It was a fact that would soon be forgotten, that bit of distinction in poor Tess's blood and name, and oblivion would fall upon her hereditary link with the marble monuments and leaded skeletons at Kingsbeer. So does time ruthlessly destroy his own romances. In recalling her face again and again, he thought now that he could see therein a flash of the dignity which must have graced her grand-dams, and the vision sent that aura through his veins which he had formerly felt, and which left behind it a sense of sickness. Despite her not inviolate past, what still abode in such a woman as Tess outvalued the freshness of her fellows. Was not the gleaning of the grapes of f-frame better than the vintage of Abbe-Ezza? So spoke love renaissance, preparing the way for Tess's devoted outpouring, which was then just being forward to him by his father, though owing to his distance in land it was to be a long time in reaching him. Meanwhile the writer's expectation that Claire would come in response to the entreaty was alternately great and small. What lessened it was that the facts of her life which had led to the parting had not changed, could never change, and that if her presence had not attenuated them, her absence could not. Nevertheless she addressed her mind to the tender question of what she could do to please him best if he should arrive. Sighs were expended on the wish that she had taken more notice of the tunes he played on his harp, that she had inquired more curiously of him which were his favourite ballads among those the country girls sang. She indirectly inquired of Ambie Seedling, who had followed Liz from Tauberthays, and by chance Ambie remembered that amongst the snatches of melody in which they had indulged at the dairy-mans to induce the cows to let down their milk, Claire had seemed to like Cupid's gardens. I have parks, I have hounds, and the break of the day, and had not seemed to care for the tailor's breeches and such a beauty I did grow, excellent ditties as they were. To perfect the ballads was now her whimsical desire. She practised them privately at odd moments, especially the break of the day. Arise, arise, arise, and pick your lava posy. All are the sweetest flowers that in the garden grow, the turtle-dwarves and small birds in every bower building, so early in the maytime, at the break of the day. It would have melted the heart of stone to hear her singing these ditties whenever she worked apart from the rest of the girls in this cold, dry time, the tears running down her cheeks all the while of the thought that perhaps he would not, after all, come to hear her, and the simple, silly words of the songs resounding in painful mockery of the aching heart of the singer. Tess was so wrapped up in this fanciful dream that she seemed not to know how the season was advancing that the days had lengthened, that lady-day was at hand and would soon be followed by old lady-day, the end of her term here. But before the quarter-day had quite come, something happened which made Tess think of far different matters. She was at her lodging, as usual one evening, sitting in the downstairs room with the rest of the family, when somebody knocked at the door and inquired for Tess. Through the doorway she saw against the declining light a figure with the height of a woman and the breadth of a child, a tall, thin, girlish creature, whom she did not recognise in the twilight till the girl said, Tess? What? Is it Liza Lu? asked Tess in startled accents. Her sister, whom, a little over a year ago, she had left at home as a child, had sprung up by a sudden chute to a form of this presentation, of which, as yet, Lu said to the girl, her thin legs visible below her once-long frock, now short by her growing, and her uncomfortable hands and arms revealed her youth and inexperience. Her thin legs visible below her once-long frock, now short by her growing, and her uncomfortable hands and arms revealed her youth and inexperience. Yes, I have been traipsing about all day, Tess, said Lu, with unemotional gravity, a-trying to find ye, and I am very tired. What is the matter at home? Mother is took very bad, and the doctor says she's doing, and his father is not very well neither, and says to his wrong for a man of such high family as his to slave and drave at common labour-in-work, and we don't know what to do. Tess stood in reverie a long time before she thought of asking Liza Lu to come in and sit down. When she had done so, and Liza Lu was having some tea, she came to a decision. It was imperative that she should go home. Her agreement did not end till Old Lady Day, the 6th of April, but as the interval there too was not a long one, she resolved to run the risk of starting it once. To go that night would be a gain of twelve hours, but her sister was too tired to undertake such a distance till the morrow. Tess ran down to where Marianne and Ears lived, informed them of what had happened, and begged them to make the best of her case with the farmer. Returning she got Lu a supper, and after that having tucked the younger up into her own bed, packed up as many of her belongings as would go into a withy basket, and started, directing Lu to follow her the next morning. End of Chapter 49 Chapter 50 of Tests of the Durbovilles This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Tests of the Durbovilles by Thomas Hardy, read by Adrian Pretzelis Chapter 50 She plunged into the chilly equinoctial darkness as the clock struck ten for her fifteen miles walk under the steely stars. In lonely districts night is a protection rather than a danger to a noiseless pedestrian, and knowing this Tess pursued the nearest course along byways that she would almost have feared in the daytime, but marauders were wanting now, and spectral fears were driven out of her mind by thoughts of her mother. Thus she proceeded, mile after mile, ascending and descending, till she came to Balbaro, and about midnight looked from that height into the abyss of chaotic shade, which was all that had revealed itself of the veil on whose further side she was born. Having already traversed about five miles on the upland, she had some ten or eleven on the lowland before her journey would be finished. The winding road downwards became just visible to her under the worn starlight as she followed it, and soon she paced a soil so contrasting with that above it that the difference was perceptible to the tread and to the smell. It was the heavy clay land of Blackmore Vale, and a part of the Vale to which the Turnpike roads had never penetrated. Superstitions linger longest on these heavy soils. Having once been forest, at this shadowy time it seemed to assert something of its old character, the far and the near being blended, and every tree and tall hedge making the most of its presence. The hearts that had been hunted here, the witches that had been pricked and ducked, the green-spangled fairies that wicked as you passed, the place teemed with beliefs in them still, and they formed an impish multitude now. At Nuttlebury she passed the village in, whose sign creaked in response to the greeting of her footsteps, which not a human soul heard but herself. Under the thatched roofs her mind's eye beheld relaxed tendons and flaccid muscles, spread out in the darkness beneath coverlets, made of little purple patchwork squares, and undergoing a bracing process at the hands of sleep, for renewed labour on the morrow, as soon as a hint of pink nebulously appeared on Hamilton Hill. At three she turned the last corner of the maze of lanes she had threaded, and entered Marlott, passing the field in which as a club girl she had first seen Angel Claire when he had not danced with her. The sense of disappointment remained with her yet. In the direction of her mother's house she saw a light. It came from the bedroom window, and a branch waved in front of it and made it wink at her. As soon as she could discern the outline of the house, newly thatched with her money, it had all its old effect upon Tess's imagination. Part of her body and life it ever seemed to be, the slope of its dormers, the finish of its gables, the broken courses of brick which toppled the chimney, had all something in common with her personal character. A stupor faction had come into these features to her regard. It meant the illness of her mother. She opened the door so softly as to disturb nobody. The lower room was vacant, but the neighbour who was sitting up with her mother came to the top of the stairs and whispered that Mrs. Durbeyfield was no better, though she was sleeping just then. Tess prepared herself a breakfast, and then took her place as nurse in her mother's chamber. In the morning, when she contemplated the children, they had all a curiously elongated look, although she had been away little more than a year, their growth was astounding, and the necessity of applying herself heart and soul to their needs took her out of her own cares. Her father's ill health was the same indefinite kind, and he sat in his chair as usual. But the day after her arrival he was unusually bright. He had a rational scheme for living, and Tess asked him what it was. I'm thinking of sending round to all the old antiquarians in this part of England, he said, asking them to subscribe to a fund to maintain me. I'm sure they'd see it as a romantical, artistical and proper thing to do. They spend lots of money in keeping up old ruins and finding the bones of things and such like, and living remains must be more interesting to them still, if they only knowed of me. Would that somebody would go round and tell them what there is living among them, and they think in nothing of him? If Pass and Tringham who discovered me had lived, he'd had done it, I'm sure. Tess postponed her arguments on this high project, till she had grappled with pressing matters in hand, which seemed little improved by her remittances. When indoor necessities had been eased, she turned her attention to external things. It was now the season for planting and sowing. Many gardens and allotments of the villagers had already received their spring tillage, but the garden and the allotment of the derber fields were behind hand. She found, to her dismay, that this was owing to their having eaten all the seed potatoes that last lapse of the improvident. At the earliest moment she obtained what others she could procure, and in a few days her father was well enough to see to the garden, under Tess's persuasive efforts, while she herself undertook the allotment plot, which they rented in a field a couple of hundred yards out of the village. She liked doing it after the confinement of the sick chamber, where she was not now required by reasons of her mother's improvement. Violent motion relieved thought. The plot of ground was in a high, dry, open enclosure, where there were forty or fifty such pieces, and where labour was at its briskest when the hired labour of the day had ended. Digging began usually at six o'clock, and extended indefinitely into the dusk or moonlight. Just now heaps of dead weeds and refuse were burning on many of the plots, the dry weather favouring their combustion. One fine day Tess and Liza Lu worked on here with their neighbours, till the last rays of the sun smote flat upon the white pegs that divided the plots. As soon as twilight succeeded to sunset, the flare of the couch grass and the cabbage-stalked flies began to light up the allotments fitfully, their outlines appearing and disappearing under the dense smoke as wafted by the wind. When a fire glowed, banks of smoke blown level along the ground would themselves become illuminated to an opaque luster, screening the work people from one another, and the meaning of the pillar of a cloud, which was a wall by day and a light by night, could be understood. As evening thickened, some of the gardening men and women gave over for the night, but the greater number remained to get their planting done, Tess being among them, though she sent her sister home. It was on one of the couch-burning plots that she laboured with her fork, its four shining prongs resounding against the stones and dry clods in little clicks. Sometimes she was completely involved in the smoke of her fire, then it would leave her figure free, irradiated by the brassy glare from the heap. She was dressed oddly tonight, and presented a somewhat staring aspect, her attire being a gown bleached by many washings, with a short black jacket over it, the effect of the whole being that of a wedding and a funeral guest in one. The women further back wore white aprons which, with their pale faces, were all that could be seen of them in the gloom, except when at moments they caught a flash from the flames. Westward the wiry boughs of the bare thorn hedge which formed the boundary of the field rose against the pale opalescence of the lower sky. Above Jupiter hung like a full-blown John-Kill, as bright as almost a thrower's shade. A few small nondescript stars were appearing elsewhere. In the distance a dog barked, and wheels occasionally rattled along the dry road. Still the prongs continued to click assiduously, for it was not late, and though the air was fresh and keen, there was a whisper of spring in it that cheered the workers on. Something in the place, the hours, the crackling fires, the fantastic mysteries of light and shade made others, as well as Tess, enjoy being there. Nightfall, which in the frost of winter comes as a fiend, and in the warmth of summer as a lover, came as a tranquiliser on this March day. Nobody looked at his or her companions. The eyes of all were on the soil, as its turned surface was revealed by the fires. Hence, as Tess stirred the clods, and sang her foolish little songs with scarce now a hope that Claire would ever hear them, she did not for a long time notice the person who worked nearest her, a man in a long smock frock, who, she found, was forking the same plot as herself, and whom she supposed her father had sent there to advance the work. She became more conscious of him when the direction of his digging brought him closer. Sometimes the smoke divided them. Then it swerved, and the two were visible to each other, but divided from all the rest. Tess did not speak to her fellow worker, nor did he speak to her. Nor did she think of him further than to recollect that he had not been there when it was broad daylight, and that she did not know him as one of any of the Marlott labourers, which was no wonder her absence being so long and infrequent of late years. By and by he dug so close to her that the fire beams were reflected as distinctly from the steel prongs of his fork as from her own. On going up to the fire to throw a pitch of dead weeds upon it, she found that he did the same on the other side. The fire flared up, and she beheld the face of Derbaville. The unexpectedness of his presence, the grotesqueness of his appearance in a gathered smock frock, such as was now worn only by the most old fashioned of the labourers, had a ghastly comicality that chilled her as to its bearing. Derbaville emitted a long, low laugh. If I were inclined to joke, I should say, how much this seems like paradise, he remarked whimsically, looking at her with an inclined head. What do you say? she weakly asked. A jester might say, this is just like paradise. You are Eve, and I am the old other one, come to tempt you in the disguise of an inferior animal. I used to be quite up in that scene of Milton's when I was theological. Some of it goes, Empress, the way is ready and not long. Beyond a row of myrtles, if thou accept my conduct, I can bring thee hither soon. Lead then, said Eve, and so on. My dear Tess, I am only putting this to you as a thing that you might have supposed, or said quite untruly, because you think so badly of me. I never said you were Satan or thought it. I don't think of you in that way at all. My thoughts of you are quite cold, except when you affront me. What, did you come digging here entirely because of me? Entirely, to see you, nothing more. The smockfrog, which I saw hanging for sale as I came along, was an afterthought that I mightn't be noticed. I come to protest against your working like this. But I like doing it. It is for my father. Your engagement at the other places ended? Yes. Where are you going next? To join your dear husband? She could not bear the humiliating reminder. Oh, I don't know, she said bitterly. I have no husband. It is quite true in the sense you mean, but you have a friend, and I have determined that you shall be comfortable in spite of yourself. When you get down to your house, you will see what I have sent there for you. Oh Alec, I wish you wouldn't give me anything at all. I cannot take it from you. I don't like. It is not right. It is right, he cried lightly. I'm not going to see a woman whom I feel so tenderly for as I do for you, in trouble without trying to help her. But I am very well off. I'm only in trouble about living at all. Well, she turned and desperately resumed her digging, tears dripping upon the fork-handle and upon the clods. About the children, your brothers and sisters, he resumed, I've been thinking of them. Tess's heart quivered. He was touching her in a weak place. He had divined her chief anxiety. Since returning home, her soul had gone out to these children with an affection that was passionate. If your mother does not recover, somebody ought to do something for them, since your father will not be able to do much, I suppose. He can with my assistance. He must. And with mine. No, sir. How damned foolish this is, burst out Durberville. Why, he thinks we are the same family, and will be quite satisfied. He don't, I've undeceived him. The more fool you. Durberville, in anger, retreated from her to the hedge, where he pulled off the long smock frock which had disguised him, and rolling it up and pushing it into the couch fire, went away. Tess could not get on with her digging after this. She felt restless. She wondered if he had gone back to her father's house, and taking the fork in her hand proceeded homewards. Some twenty yards from the house she was met by one of her sisters. Oh, Tessie, what do you think? Liza Lou is a cryin', and there's a lot of folk in the house, and mother is a good deal better, but they think father is dead. The child realized the grandeur of the news, and not as yet its sadness, and stood looking at Tess, with round-eyed importance till, beholding the effect produced upon her, she said, What, Tess? Can't we talk to father never no more? But father was only a little bit ill. exclaimed Tess, distractedly. Liza Lou came up. He dropped down just now, and the doctor who was there from mother said there were no chance for him because his heart was groaned in. Yes. The derby-filled couple had changed places. The dying one was out of danger, and the indisposed one was dead. The news meant even more than it sounded. Her father's life had a value apart from his personal achievements, or perhaps it would not have had much. It was the last of the three lives for whose duration the house and premises were held under release, and it had been long coveted by the tenant farmer for his regular laborers, who were stinted in cottage accommodation. Moreover, livers were disapproved of in villages almost as much as little free-holders, because of their independence of manner, and when at least determined it was never renewed. Thus the derby-fields, once derby-villes, saw descending upon them the destiny which, no doubt, when they were among the Olympians of that country, they had caused to descend many a time, and severely enough, upon the heads of such landless ones as they themselves were now. So do flux and reflux, the rhythm of change, alternate and persist in everything under the sky. Chapter 51 At length it was the eve of old lady-day, and the agricultural world was in a fever of mobility, such as only occurs at that particular date of the year. It is a day of fulfilment. Agreements for outdoor service during the ensuing year, entered into a candle-mass, are to be now carried out. The labourers, or work-folk as they used to call themselves immemorially, till the other word was introduced from without, who wish to remain no longer in old places, are removing to the new farms. These annual migrations from farm to farm were on the increase here. When Tess's mother was a child, the majority of the field-folk about Marlott had remained all their lives on one farm, which had been the home also of their fathers and grandfathers. But latterly the desire for yearly removal had risen to a high pitch. With the younger families it was a pleasant excitement which might possibly be an advantage. The Egypt of one family was the land of promise to the family who saw it from a distance, till by residence there it became, in turn, their Egypt also, and so they changed and changed. However, all the mutations so increasingly discernible in village life did not originate entirely in the agricultural unrest. A depopulation was also going on. The village had formerly contained, side by side with the agricultural labourers, an interesting and better informed class, ranking distinctly above the former, the class to which Tess's father and mother had belonged, and including the carpenter, the smith, the shoemaker, the huckster, together with nondescript workers other than farm labourers, a set of people who owed a certain stability of aim and conduct to the fact of there being lifeholders, like Tess's father, or copy holders, or occasionally small free holders. But as the long holdings fell in, they were seldom again led to similar tenants, and were mostly pulled down, if not absolutely required by the farmer for his hands. Cottages who were not directly employed on the land were looked upon with disfavour, and the banishment of some starved the trade of others who were thus obliged to follow. These families who had formed the backbone of the village life in the past, who were the depositories of the village traditions, had to seek refuge in the large centres. The process humorously designated by statisticians as the tendency of the rural population towards the large towns, being really the tendency of water to flow uphill when forced by machinery. The cottage accommodation at Marlott, having been in this manner considerably curtailed by demolitions, every house which remained standing was required by the agriculturalist for his work people. Ever since the occurrence of the event which had cast such a shadow over Tess's life, the Derbyville family, whose descent was not credited, had been tacitly looked upon as one which would have to go when their lease ended, if only in the interests of morality. It was indeed quite true that the household had not been shining examples either of temperance, soberness or chastity. The father and even the mother had got drunk at times, the younger children seldom had gone to church, and the eldest daughter had made queer unions. By some means the village had to be kept pure, so on this the first lady day on which the Derby fields were expendable, the house of being roomy, was required for a carter with a large family, and Widow-Jone, her daughter's Tess and Liza-Lew, the boy Abraham and the younger children, had to go elsewhere. On the evening preceding their removal it was getting dark, be times by reason of a drizzling rain which blurred the sky. As it was the last night they would spend in the village which had been their home and birthplace, Mrs. Derbyfield, Liza-Lew and Abraham had gone out to bid some friends goodbye, and Tess was keeping house till they should return. She was kneeling in the window bench, her face close to the casement, where an outer pane of rainwater was sliding down the inner pane of glass. Her eyes rested on the web of a spider, probably starved long ago, which had been mistakenly placed on a corner where no flies ever came, and shivered in the slight draught through the casement. Tess was reflecting on the position of the household in which she perceived her own evil influence. Had she not come home, her mother and the children might probably have been allowed to stay on as weekly tenants. But she had been observed almost immediately on her return by some people of scrupulous character and great influence. They had seen her idling in the churchyard, restoring as well as she could with a little trowel, a baby's obliterated grave. By this means they had found that she was living here again. Her mother was scolded for harboring her. Sharp retorts had ensued from Joan, who had independently offered to leave at once. She had been taken at her word, and here was the result. I ought never to have come home, said Tess to herself, bitterly. She was so intent upon these thoughts that she had hardly at first took note of a man in a white Macintosh whom she saw riding down the street. Possibly it was owing to her face being near to the pain that he saw her so quickly, and directed his horse so close to the cottage front that his hoofs were almost upon the narrow borders for plants growing under the wall. It was not till he touched the window with his riding crop that she observed him. The rain had nearly ceased, and she opened the casement in obedience to his gesture. Didn't you see me? asked Durberville. I was not attending, she said. I heard you, I believe, though I fancied it was a carriage and horses. I was in a sort of dream. Ah, you heard the Durberville coach, perhaps. You know the legend, I suppose. No, my somebody was going to tell it to me once, but didn't. If you are a genuine Durberville, I ought not to tell you either, I suppose. As for me, I'm a sham one, so it doesn't matter. It is rather dismal. It is that this sound of a non-existent coach can only be heard by one of Durberville blood, and it is held to be of ill omen to the one who hears it. It has to do with a murder committed by one of the family centuries ago. No, you have begun it. Finish it. Very well. One of the family is said to have abducted some beautiful woman who tried to escape from the coach in which he was carrying her off, and in the struggle he killed her. Or she killed him, I forget which. Such is one version of the tale. I see that your tubs and buckets are packed. Going away, aren't you? Yes, to-morrow, old lady-day. I heard you were, but I could hardly believe it. It seemed so sudden. Why is it? Fathers was the last life on the property, and when that dropped we had no further right to stay, though we might perhaps have stayed as weakly tenants, if it had not been for me. What about you? I am not a proper woman. Durberville's face flushed. What a blasted shame, miserable snobs! May their dirty souls be burnt as cinders! he exclaimed in tones of ironic resentment. That's why you're going, is it? Turned out. We were not turned out exactly, but as they said we should have to go soon. It was best to go now, everybody was moving, because there are better chances. Where are you going to? Kingsbeer. We have taken rooms there. Mother is so foolish about father's people that she will go there. But your mother's family are not fit for lodgings, and in a little whole of a town like that. Now why not come to my garden house at Trantridge? There are hardly any poultry now, since my mother's death. But there's the house, as you know it, and the garden. It can be whitewashed in a day, and your mother can live there quite comfortably, and I will put the children to a good school. Really, I ought to do something for you. But we have already taken the rooms at Kingsbeer, she declared, and we can wait there. Wait for what? For that nice husband, no doubt. Now look here Tess, I know what men are, and bearing in mind the grounds of your separation, I am quite positive he will never make it up with you. Now, though I have been your enemy, I am your friend, even if you won't believe it. Come to this cottage of mine, we'll get up a regular colony of fowls, and your mother can attend them excellently, and the children can go to school. Tess breathed more and more quickly, and at length she said, How do I know that you would do all this? Your views may change, and then we should be, my mother would be, homeless again. Oh no, no, I would guarantee you against such as that in writing, if necessary, think it over. Tess shook her head, but Durberville persisted. She had seldom seen him, so determined he would not take a negative. Please just tell your mother, he said in emphatic tones. It is her business to judge, not yours. I shall get the house swept out and whitened tomorrow morning, and fires lit, and it will be dry by the evening, so that you can come straight there. Now mind, I shall expect you. Tess again shook her head, her throat swelling with complicated emotion. She could not look up at Durberville. I owe you something for the past, you know, he resumed, and you cured me too of that craze. I am so glad. I would rather you had kept the craze, so that you had kept the practice that went with it. I am glad of this opportunity of replaying you a little. Tomorrow I shall expect to hear your mother's goods unloading. Give me your hand now, dear, beautiful Tess. With the last sentence he had dropped his voice to a murmur, and put his hand in at the half-open casement. With stormy eyes she pulled the stay bar quickly, and in doing so caught his arm between the casement and the stone mullion. Damn nation, you are very cruel, he said, snatching out his arm. No, no, I know you didn't do it on purpose. Well, I shall expect you, or your mother and children at least. I shall not come, I have plenty of money, she cried. Where? At my father-in-law's, if I ask for it. If you ask for it, but you won't, Tess, I know you, you'll never ask for it. You'll starve first. With these words he rode off. Just at the corner of the street he met the man with the paint pot, who asked him if he had deserted the brethren. You go to the devil, said Durberville. Tess remained where she was a long while, till a sudden, rebellious sense of injustice caused the region of her eyes to swell with the rush of hot tears thither. Her husband, Angel Clear himself, had, like others, dealt out hard measure to her, surely he had. She had never before admitted such a thought, but he had, surely. Never in her life, she could swear it from the bottom of her soul. Had she ever intended to do wrong, yet these hard judgments had come. Whatever her sins, they were not sins of intention, but of inadvertence. And why should she have been punished so persistently? She passionately seized the first piece of paper that came to hand, and scribbled the following lines. Oh, why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel? I do not deserve it. I have thought it all over carefully, and I can never, never forgive you. You know that I did not intend to wrong you. Why have you so wronged me? You are cruel, cruel indeed. I will try to forget you. It is all injustice I have received at your hands. T. She watched till the postman passed by, ran out to him with her epistle, and then again took her listless place inside the window panes. It was just as well to write like that as to write tenderly. How could he give way to entreaty? The facts had not changed. There was no new event to alter his opinion. It grew darker, the firelight shining over the room. The two biggest of the younger children had gone out with their mother. The four smallest, their ages ranging from three and a half years to eleven, all in black frocks, were gathered round the hearth, babbling their own little subjects. Tass at length joined them, without lighting a candle. This is the last night we shall sleep here, dears, in the house where we were born. She said quickly, we ought to think of it, aren't we? They all became silent. With the impressibility of their age they were ready to burst into tears at the picture of finality she had conjured up. Though all the day hitherto they had been rejoicing in the idea of a new place. Tass changed the subject. Sing to me, dears, she said. What shall we sing? Anything you know, I don't mind. There was a momentary pause. It was broken first in one little tentative note, then a second voice strengthened it, and a third and a fourth chimed in unison, with words they had learned at the Sunday school. Here we suffer grief and pain, here we meet to part again. In heaven we part no more. The four sang on with the flagmatic passivity of persons who had long ago settled the question, and there being no mistake about it, felt that further thought was not required. With features strained hard to enunciate the syllables, they continued to regard the centre of the flickering fire, the notes of the youngest, straying over into the pauses of the rest. Tass turned from them, and went to the window again. Darkness had now fallen without, and she put her face to the pain as though to peer into the gloom. It was really to hide her tears. If she could only believe what the children were singing, if she were only sure how different all would now be, how confidently she would leave them to Providence and their future kingdom. But in default of that, it behooved her to do something. To be their Providence. For to Tass, as to not a few millions of others, there was a ghastly satire in the poet's lines, not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come. To her and her like, birth itself was an ordeal of degrading personal compulsion, whose gratuitousness nothing in the result seemed to justify, and at best could only palliate. In the shades of the wet road she soon discerned her mother, with tall Liza Lu and Abraham. Mrs. Durberfield's patterns clicked up to the door, and Tass opened it. I see the tracks of a horse outside the door, said Joan. Have somebody called? No, said Tass. The children by the fire looked gravely at her, and one murmured, Why, Tass, the gentleman a horseback? He didn't call, said Tass. He spoke to me in passing. Who was the gentleman? asked her mother. Your husband? No, he'll never, never come, answered Tass in stony hopelessness. Then who was it? Oh, you needn't ask. You've seen him before, and so have I. Ah, what did he say? said Joan curiously. I will tell you when we're settled in our lodging at King's Beer tomorrow, every word. It was not her husband, she had said, yet a consciousness that, in a physical sense, this man alone was her husband seemed to weigh on her more and more. End of Chapter 51 Chapter 52 of Tess of the Durbervilles This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Tess of the Durbervilles by Thomas Hardy Read by Adrian Pretzellus Chapter 52 During the small hours of the next morning, while it was still dark, dwellers near the highways were conscious of a disturbance of their night's rest by rumbling noises, intermittently continuing till daylight. Noises as certain to reoccur in this particular first week of the month as the voice of the cuckoo in the third week of the same. They were the preliminaries of the general removal, the passing of the empty wagons and teams to fetch the goods of the migrating families, for it was always by the vehicle of the farmer who required his services that the hired man was conveyed to his destination. That this might be accomplished within the day was the explanation of the reverberation occurring so soon after midnight. The aim of the carters being to reach the door of the outgoing households by six o'clock when the loading of their movables at once began. But Tess and her mother's household, no such anxious farmer, sent his team. They were only women. They were not regular labourers. They were not particularly required anywhere. Hence they had to hire a wagon at their own expense and got nothing sent gratuitously. It was a relief to Tess when she looked out of the window that morning to find that although the weather was windy and lowering, it did not rain, and that the wagon had come. A wet lady-day was a spectre which removing families never forgot. Damp furniture, damp bedding, damp clothing accompanied it, and left a train of ills. Her mother, Liza Lu, and Abraham were also awake, but the younger children were let sleep on. The four breakfasted by the thin light and the house-reading was taken in hand. It proceeded with some cheerfulness, a friendly neighbour or two assisting. When the large articles of furniture had been packed in position, a circular nest was made of the beds and bedding in which Joan Derbyfield and the young children were to sit through the journey. After loading there was a long delay before the horses were brought, those having been unharnessed during the ridding. But at length, about two o'clock, the hole was under way, the cooking-pot swinging from the axle of the wagon, Mrs. Derbyfield and family at the top, the matron having in her lap to prevent injury to its works, the head of the clock, which, at any exceptional lurch of the wagon, struck one or one-and-a-half in hurt tones. Tess and the next eldest girl walked alongside till they were out of the village. They had called on a few neighbours that morning and the previous evening, and some came to see them off, all wishing them well, though in their secret hearts hardly expecting welfare possible to such a family, harmless as the Derbyfields were to all accept themselves. Soon the equipage began to ascend to higher ground, and the wind grew keener with the change of level and soil. The day being the 6th of April, the Derbyfield wagon met many other wagons with families on the summit of the load, which was built on a well-nigh unvarying principle as peculiar probably to the rural labourer as the hexagon to the bee. The groundwork of the arrangement was the family dresser, which, with its shining handles and finger marks and domestic evidences thick upon it, stood importantly in front over the tails of the shaft horses, in its direct and natural position, like some arc of the covenant that they were bound to carry reverently. Some of the households were lively, some mournful, some were stopping at the doors of wayside inns, where in due time the Derbyfield menagerie also drew up to bait horses and to refresh the travellers. During the halt Tess's eye fell upon a three-pint blue mug, which was ascending and descending through the air to and from the feminine section of a household, sitting on the summit of a load that had also drawn up at a little distance from the same inn. She followed one of the mug's journeys upward, and perceived it to be clasped by hands whose owner she well knew. Tess went towards the wagon. Marianne and Ears, she cried to the girls, for it was they, sitting with the moving family at whose house they had lodged. Are you house-ridden today, like everybody else? They were, they said. It had been too rough a life for them at Flint-Kamash, and they had come away almost without notice, leaving Groby to prosecute them if he chose. They told Tess their destination, and Tess told them hers. Marianne lent over the load, and lowered her voice. Do you know that the gentleman who follows E, you'll guess who I mean, came to ask for it at Flint-Kam after you'd gone? We didn't tell him where you was, no, and you wouldn't wish to see him. Ah, but I did see him. Tess murmured, he found me. And do he know where you be going? I think so. Husband come back? No. She bade her acquaintance goodbye, for the respective carters had now come in from the inn, and the two wagons resumed their journey in opposite directions. The vehicle whereupon sat Marianne is, and the ploughman's family, with whom they had thrown in their lot, being brightly painted, and drawn by three powerful horses, with shining brass ornaments on their harness. While the wagon on which Mrs. Durbefield and her family rode was a creaking erection that would scarcely bear the weight of the super-incumbent load, one which had known no paint since it was made, and drawn by two horses only. The contrast well marked the difference between being fetched by a thriving farmer, and conveying oneself with a no-higherer wanted one's coming. The distance was great, too great for a day's journey, and it was with the utmost difficulty that the horses performed it. Though they had started so early, it was quite late in the afternoon when they had turned the flank of an eminence which formed part of the upland called Green Hill. While the horses stood to stale and breathed themselves, Tess looked around. Under the hill, and just ahead of them, was the half-dead townlet of their pilgrimage, King's Beer, where lay those ancestors of whom her father had spoken and sung to painfulness. King's Beer, the spot of all spots in the world which would be considered the Durbeville's home since they had resided there for full five hundred years. A man could be seen advancing from the outskirts towards them, and when he beheld the nature of their wagon-load he quickened his steps. You be the woman they car-misses, Durbefield, I reckon, he said to Tess's mother, who had descended to walk the remainder of the way. She nodded, the widow of the late Sir John Durbeville, poor nobleman, if they care for my rights, and return into the domain of his forefathers. Oh, well I know nothing about that, but if you be Mrs. Durbefield, I am sent to tell thee that the rooms you wanted be let. We didn't know that you was coming till you got your letter this morning, when it was too late. But no doubt you can get other lodging somewhere. The man had noticed the face of Tess, which had become ash pale at his intelligence. Her mother looked hopelessly at fault. What shall we do now, Tess? She said bitterly. Here's a welcome to your ancestors' lands. However, let's try further. They moved on into the town, and tried with all their might, Tess remaining with the wagon to take care of the children, whilst her mother and Liza Lou made inquiries. At the last return of Joan to the vehicle, an hour later, when her search for accommodation had still been fruitless, the driver of the wagon said the goods must be unloaded, as the horses were half-dead, and he was bound to return part of the way at least that night. Very well, unload it there, said Joan recklessly. Oh, get shelter somewhere! The wagon had drawn up under the churchyard wall, in a spot screened from view, and the driver, nothing loath, soon hauled down the poor heap of household goods. This done, she paid him, reducing herself almost to her last shilling thereby, and he moved off and left them, only too glad to get out of further dealings with such a family. It was a dry night, and he guessed that they would come to no harm. Tess gazed desperately at the pile of furniture. The cold sunlight of this spring evening peered invidiously upon the crocs and kettles, upon the bunches of dried herbs shivering in the breeze, upon the brass handles of the dresser, upon the wicker cradle that they had all been rocked in, and upon the well-rubbed clock case, all of which gave out the reproachful gleam of indoor articles abandoned to the vicissitudes of a ruthless exposure for which they were never made. Roundabout were deep-harked hills and slopes, now cut up into little paddocks, and the green foundations that showed where the Durberville mansion had once stood. Also, an outlying stretch of egged-and-heath that had always belonged to the estate. Hard by, the Isle of the Church, called the Durberville Isle, looked on imperturbably. Isn't your family vault your own freehold? asked Tess's mother as she returned from a reconnoiter of the church and graveyard. Why, of course it is, and that's where we will camp girls till the place of your ancestors finds us a roof. Now, Tess and Liza and Abraham, you help me. We'll make a nest for these children, and then we'll have another look around. Tess listlessly lent a hand, and in a quarter of an hour the old four-post bedstead was disassociated from the heap of goods, and erected under the south wall of the church, the part of the building known as the Durberville Isle, beneath which the huge vaults lay. Over the tester of the bedstead was a beautiful traceried window of many lights, its date being the fifteenth century. It was called the Durberville window, and in the upper part could be discerned heraldic emblems like those on Durberville's old seal and spoon. Joan drew the curtains round the bed so as to make an excellent tent of it, and put the smaller children inside. If it comes to the worse we can sleep there too for one night, she said, but let us try further on and get something for the deers to eat. Oh, Tess, what's the use of your playing at marrying gentlemen if it leaves us like this? Accompanied by Liza Lou and the boy, she again ascended the little lane, which secluded the church from the tablet. As soon as they got into the street they beheld a man on horseback gazing up and down. Ah, I'm looking for you, he said, riding up to them. This is indeed a family gathering on the historic spot. It was Alec Durberville. Where is Tess? he asked. Personally Joan had no liking for Alec. She cursorily signified the direction of the church and went on, Durberville saying that he would see them again in case they should still be unsuccessful in their search for shelter at which he had just heard. When they had gone Durberville rode to the inn, and shortly after came out on foot. In the interim Tess, left with the children inside the bedstead, remained talking with them a while till, seeing that no more could be done to make them comfortable just then, she walked about the churchyard, now beginning to be embrowned by the shades of nightfall. The door of the church was unfastened, and she entered it for the first time in her life. Within the window under which the bedstead stood were the tombs of the family, covering in their dates several centuries. They were canopied, altered shaped and plain, their carvings being defaced and broken, their brasses torn from the matrices, the rivet holes remaining like martin holes in a sandcliffe. All of the reminders that she had ever received that her people were socially extinct, there was none so forcible as this spoliation. She drew near to a dark stone on which was inscribed Ostium Sepulchre Antiquae Familae Durberville Tess did not read church Latin like a cardinal, but she knew that this was the door of her ancient sepulchre, and that the tall knights of whom my father had chanted in his cups lay inside. She musingly turned to withdraw, passing near an altar tomb, the oldest of them all, on which was a recumbent figure. In the dusk she had not noticed it before, and would hardly have noticed it now but for an odd fancy that the effigy moved. As soon as she drew close to it she discovered all in a moment that the figure was a living person, and the shock to her sense of not having been alone was so violent that she was quite overcome and sank down nigh to fainting, not however till she had recognised Alec Durberville in the form. He leapt off the slab and supported her. I saw you come in, he said, smiling, and got up there not to interrupt your meditations. A family gathering, is it not, with these old fellows under us here? Listen, he stamped with his heel heavily on the floor, whereupon there arose a hollow echo from below. That shook him a bit, our warrant, he continued, and you thought I was the mere stone reproduction of one of them, but no, the old order changeth. The little finger of the sham Durberville can do more for you than the whole dynasty of the real underneath. Now, command me, what shall I do? Go away, she murmured. I will, I'll look for your mother, said he, blandly. But in passing her he whispered, Mind this, you'll be civil yet. When he was gone she bent down upon the entrance to the vaults and said, Why am I on the wrong side of this door? In the meantime Marion and Is Hewitt had journeyed onwards with the chattels of the Ploughman in the direction of their land of Canaan, the Egypt of some other family who had left it only that morning. But the girls did not for a long time think of where they were going. Their talk was of Angel Clare and Tess, and Tess's persistent lover, whose connection with her previous history they had partly heard and partly guessed ere this. Tisner's though she'd never known him before, said Marion, his every morning once makes all difference in the world. To it be a thousand pities if he were to tow her away again. Mr. Clare can never be anything to us he is, and why should we grudge him to her, and not try to mend this quarrel? If he could only know what straight she's put to, and what's hovering around, he might come to take care of his own. Could we let him know? They thought of this all the way to their destination, but the bustle of re-establishment in their new place took up all their attention then, and when they were settled a month later they heard of Clare's approaching return, though they had learnt nothing more of Tess. Upon that, agitated anew by their attachment to him yet honourably disposed to her, Marion uncorked the penny-ink bottle they shared, and a few lines were concocted between the two girls. Honoured sir, look to your wife if you do love her as much as she do love you, for she is sore put to by an enemy in the shape of a friend. Sir, there is one nearer who ought to be away. A woman should not be tried beyond her strength, and continual drop him will wear away a stone, or more a diamond, from two well-wishers. This was addressed to Angel Clare, at the only place they had ever heard him to be connected with, Emmits de Vicarage, after which they continued in a mood of emotional exaltation at their own generosity, which made them seeing in hysterical snatches and weep at the same time. End of chapter 52. End of phase the sixth.