 CHAPTER 33 Angel felt that he would like to spend a day with her before the wedding, somewhere away from the dairy, as had last jaunt in her company while they were mere lover and mistress. A romantic day, in circumstances that would never be repeated, with that other and greater day beaming close ahead of them. During the preceding week, therefore, he suggested making a few purchases in the nearest town, and they started together. Claire's life at the dairy had been that of a recluse in respect to the world of his own class. For months he had never gone nearer town, and, requiring no vehicle, had never kept one, hiring the dairyman's cob or gig if he rode or drove. They went in the gig that day, and then for the first time in their lives they shopped as partners in one concern. It was Christmas Eve, with its load of holly and mistletoe, and the town was very full of strangers who had come in from all parts of the country on account of the day. Tess paid the penalty of walking about with happiness super-added to beauty on her countenance by being much stared at as she moved amid them on his arm. In the evening they returned to the inn at which they had put up, and Tess waited in the entry while Angel went to see the horse and gig brought to the door. The general sitting-room was full of guests who were continually going in and out. As the door opened and shut each time for the passage of these, the light within the parlour fell full upon Tess's face. Two men came out and passed by her among the rest. One of them had stared her up and down in surprise, and she fancied he was a tranteridge man, though that village lay so many miles off that tranteridge folk were rarities there. "'A comely maid that,' said the other, "'true, comely enough, but let's say make a great mistake,' and he negative the remainder of the definition forthwith. Clare had just returned from the stable-yard, and confronting the man on the threshold heard the words and saw the shrinking of Tess. The insult at her stung him to the quick, and before he had considered anything at all he struck the man on the chin with the full force of his fist, sending him staggering backwards into the passage. The man recovered himself and seemed inclined to come on, and Clare, stopping outside the door, put himself in a posture of defence. But his opponent began to think better of the matter. He looked anew at Tess as he passed her, and said to Clare, "'I beg pardon, sir, to his complete mistake. I thought she was another woman, forty miles from here.' Clare, feeling then that he had been too hasty, and that he was moreover to blame for leaving her standing in an in-passage, did what he usually did in such cases, gave the man five shillings to plaster the blow, and thus they parted, bidding each other a pacific good-night." As soon as Clare had taken the range from the Osler and the young couple had driven off, the two men went in the other direction. "'And was it a mistake?' said the second one. "'Not a bit of it, but I didn't want to hurt the gentleman's feelings, not I.' In the meantime the lovers were driving onward. "'Could we put off our wedding till a little later?' Tess asked in a dry, dull voice. "'I mean, if we wished.' "'No, my love, calm yourself. Do you mean that the fellow may have time to summon me for assault?' he asked good-humidly. "'No, I only meant if it should have to be put off.' What she meant was not very clear, and he directed her to dismiss such fancies from her mind, which she obediently did as well as she could. But she was grave, very grave, all the way home, till she thought, We shall go away a very long distance, hundreds of miles from these parts, and such as this can never happen again, and no ghost of the past reached there. They parted tenderly that night on the landing, and Claire ascended to his attic. Tess sat up, getting on with some little requisites, lest the few remaining days should not afford sufficient time. While she sat she heard a noise in Angel's room overhead, a sound of thumping and struggling. Everybody else in the house was asleep, and in her anxiety, lest Claire should be ill, she ran up and knocked at his door, and asked him what was the matter. "'Oh, nothing, dear,' he said from within, "'I am so sorry I disturbed you. But the reason is rather an amusing one. I fell asleep and dreamt that I was fighting that fellow again who insulted you, and the noise you heard was my pummeling away with my fists at my portmento, which I pulled out to-day for packing. I am occasionally liable to these freaks in my sleep, go back to bed, and think of it no more.' This was the last dracum required to turn the scale of her indecision. Declare the past to him by word of mouth she could not. But there was another way. She sat down and wrote on the four pages of a note-sheet a succinct narrative of those events of three or four years ago, put it into an envelope, and directed it to Claire. Then, lest the flesh should again be weak, she crept upstairs without any shoes, and slipped the note under his door. Her night was a broken one, as it might well be, and she listened for the first faint noise overhead. It came as usual. He descended, as usual. She descended. He met her at the bottom of the stairs and kissed her. Surely it was as warmly as ever. He looked a little disturbed and worn, she thought, but he said not a word to her about her revelation, even when they were alone. Could he have had it? Unless he began the subject, she felt that she could say nothing. So the day passed, and it was evident that whatever he thought, he meant to keep it to himself. Yet he was frank and affectionate as ever. Could it be that her doubts were childish, that he forgave her, that he loved her from what she was, just as she was, and smiled at her disquiet as a foolish nightmare? Had he really received her note? She glanced into his room and could see nothing of it. It might be that he forgave her, and even if he had not received it, she had a sudden enthusiastic trust that he surely would forgive her. Every morning and night he was the same, and thus New Year's Eve broke, the wedding day. The lovers did not rise at milking time, having, through the whole of this last week of their sojourn at the dairy, been accorded something of the position of guests, tests being honoured with a room of her own. When they arrived downstairs at breakfast time, they were surprised to see what effects had been produced in the large kitchen for their glory since they had last beheld it. At some unnatural hour of the morning the dairyman had caused the yawning chimney corner to be whitened, and the brick hearth reddened, and a blazing yellow damask blower to be hung across the arch, in place of the old grimy blue cotton one with a black sprig pattern, which had formally done duty here. This renovated aspect of what was the focus indeed of the room on a dull winter morning through a smiling demeanor over the whole apartment. I was determined to do summer in honour, aren't, said the dairyman, and as you wouldn't hear of my getting a rattling good randy with fiddles and base veals complete, as we should have done in old times, this was all like a thinker as a noiseless thing. Tess's friends lived so far off that none could conveniently have been present at the ceremony, even had any been asked. But as a fact nobody was invited from Marlott. As for Angel's family he had written and duly informed them of the time, and assured them that he would be glad to see one at least of them here for the day if he would like to come. His brothers had not replied at all, seeming to be indignant with him, while his father and mother had written a rather sad letter, deploring his precipitancy in rushing into marriage, but making the best of the matter by saying that, though a dairywoman was the last daughter-in-law they could have expected, their son had arrived at an age at which he might be supposed to be the best judge. This coolness in his relations distressed clear, less than it would have done had he been without the grand card with which he meant to surprise them ere long. To produce Tess, fresh from the dairy as a Durberville, and a lady, he had felt to be temerarius and risky. Hence he had concealed her lineage until such times as, familiarised with worldly ways by a few months travel and reading with him, he could take her on a visit to his parents, and impart the knowledge while triumphantly producing her as worthy of such an ancient line. It was a pretty lover's dream, if no more. Perhaps Tess's lineage had more value for himself than for anybody in the world besides. Her perception that angels bearing towards her still remained in no wit altered by her own communication rendered Tess guiltily doubtful if he could have received it. She rose from breakfast before he had finished, and hastened upstairs. It had occurred to her to look once more into the queer gaunt room which had been clear as den or rather eerie for so long, and, climbing the ladder, she stood at the open door of the apartment, regarding and pondering. She stooped to the threshold of the doorway where she had pushed in the note two or three days earlier in such excitement. The carpet reached close to the sill, and under the edge of the carpet she discerned the faint white margin of the envelope containing her letter to him which he obviously had never seen owing to her having in her haste thrust it beneath the carpet as well as beneath the door. With a feeling of faintness she withdrew the letter. There it was, sealed up just as it had left her hands. The mountain had not been removed. She could not let him read it now, the house being in full bustle of preparation, and descending to her own room she destroyed the letter there. She was so pale when he saw her again that he felt quite anxious. The incident of the misplaced letter she had jumped at as if it prevented a confession, but she knew in her conscience that it need not. There was still time. Yet everything was in a stir, there was coming and going, all had to dress, the dairyman and Mrs. Crick having been asked to accompany them as witnesses, and reflection or deliberate talk was well nigh impossible. The only minute Tess could get to be alone with Claire was when they met upon the landing. I'm so anxious to talk to you, I want to confess all my faults and blunders, she said with affected lightness. No, no, we can't have any faults talked of, you must be deemed perfect today, at least, my sweet, he cried. We shall have plenty of time hereafter, I hope, to talk over our failings. I will confess mine at the same time. But it would be better for me to do it now, I think, so that you could not say, Well, my quixotic one, you shall tell me everything. Say, as soon as we are settled in our lodging, not now, I too will tell you my faults then. But do not let us spoil the day with them, they will be excellent matter for a dull time. Then you don't wish me to, dearest? I do not, Tessie, really. The hurry of dressing and starting left no time for more than this. Those words of his seemed to reassure her on further reflection. She was world onward through the next couple of critical hours by the mastering tide of her devotion to him, which closed up further meditation. Her one desire, so long resisted, to make herself his, to call him her lord, her own, then, if necessary, to die, had at last lifted her up from her plodding, reflective pathway. In dressing she moved about in a mental cloud of many colored idealities which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness. The church was a long way off, and they were obliged to drive, particularly as it was winter. A clothes carriage was ordered from a wayside inn, a vehicle that had been kept there ever since the old days of post-chase travelling. It had stout wheel spokes and heavy fellows, a great curved bed, immense straps and springs, and a pole like a battering ram. The pastillium was a venerable boy of sixty, a Marta-teramatic gout, the result of excessive exposure in youth, counteracted by strong liquors, who had stood at indoors doing nothing for the whole five and twenty years that had elapsed since he had no longer been required to ride professionally, as if expecting the old times to come back again. He had a permanent running wound on the outside of his right leg, originated by the constant bruisings of aristocratic carriage poles during the many years that he had been in regular employ at the King's Arms Caster Bridge. Inside this cumbrious and creaking structure, and behind this decayed conductor, the pâté carré took their seats, the bride and bridegroom, and Mr. and Mrs. Crick. Angel would have liked one at least of his brothers to be present as groom's man, but their silence after his gentle hint to that effect by letter had signified that they did not care to come. They disapproved the marriage, and could not be expected to countenance it. Perhaps it was as well that they could not be present. They were not worldly young fellows, but fraternizing with dairy folk would have struck unpleasantly upon their biased niceness, apart from their views of the match. Uphilled by the momentum of the time, Tess knew nothing of this, did not see anything, did not know the road they were taking to the church. She knew that Angel was close to her. All the rest was a luminous mist. She was a sort of celestial person who owed her being to poetry. One of those classical divinities, Claire, was accustomed to talk to her about when they took their walks together. The marriage, being by license, there were only a dozen or so of people in the church. Had there been a thousand, they would have produced no more effect upon her. They were at stellar distances from her present world. In the ecstatic solemnity with which she swore her faith to him, the ordinary sensibilities of sex seemed a flippancy. At a pause in the service, while they were kneeling together, she unconsciously inclined herself towards him so that her shoulder touched his arm. She had been frightened by a passing thought, and the movement had been automatic to assure herself that he was really there, and to fortify her belief that his fidelity would be proof against all things. Claire knew that she loved him every curve of her form showed that. But he did not know at this time the full depth of her devotion, its single-mindedness, its meekness, what long-suffering it guaranteed, what honesty, what endurance, what good faith. As they came out of church, the ringers swung the bells off their rests, and a modest peel of three notes broke forth. That limited amount of expression having been deemed sufficient by the church builders for the joys of such a small parish. Passing by the tower with her husband on the path to the gate, she could feel the vibrant air humming round them from the louvred belfry in a circle of sound, and it matched the highly charged mental atmosphere in which she was living. This condition of mind wherein she felt glorified by an irradiation not her own, like the angel whom St. John saw in the sun lasted till the sound of the church bells had died away, and the emotions of the wedding service had calmed down. Her eyes could dwell upon details more clearly now, and Mr. and Mrs. Crick, and Mr. and Mrs. Crick having directed their own gig to be sent for them, to leave the carriage to the young people, she observed the build and character of that conveyance for the first time. Sitting in silence she regarded it long. I fence you seem oppressed, Tessie, said Clare. Yes, she answered, putting her hand to her brow. I tremble at many things. It is all so serious, angel. Among other things I seem to have seen this carriage before, and to be well acquainted with it. It is very odd. I must have seen it in a dream. Oh, you have heard the legend of the Durbeville coach, that well-known superstition of this county about your family, when they were very popular here, and this lumbering old thing reminds you of it. I have never heard of it to my knowledge, said she. What is the legend? May I know it? Well, I would rather not tell it in detail just now. A certain Durbeville of the sixteenth or seventeenth century committed a dreadful crime in his family coach, and since that time members of the family see or hear the old coach whenever, um, but I'll tell you another day, it is rather gloomy. Evidently some dim knowledge of it has brought back to your mind by the sight of this venerable caravan. I don't remember hearing it before, she murmured. Is it when we are going to die, angel, that members of my family see it, or is it when we have committed a crime? Now, tess. He silenced her by a kiss. By the time they reached home she was contrite and spiritless. She was Mrs. Angel Claire indeed, but had she any moral right to the name? Or she not more truly Mrs. Alexander Durbeville? Could intensity of love justify what might be considered in upright souls as culpable reticence? She knew not what was expected of women in such cases, and she had no counsellor. However, when she found herself alone in her room for a few minutes, the last day on which she was ever to enter it, she knelt down and prayed. She tried to pray to God, but it was her husband who really had her supplication. Her idolatry of this man was such that she herself almost feared it to be ill-omined. She was conscious of the notion expressed by Friar Lawrence. These violent delights have violent ends. It might be too desperate for human conditions, too rank, too wild, too deadly. Oh, my love, my love, why do I love you so? She whispered there alone, for she you love is not my real self, but one in my image, the one I might have been. Afternoon came, and with it the hour for departure. They had decided to fulfill the plan of going for a few days to the lodging in the old farmhouse near Wellbridge Mill, at which he meant to reside during his investigation of flower processes. At two o'clock there was nothing left to do but to start. All the servants of the dairy were standing in the red brick entry to see them go out. The dairyman and his wife following to the door. Tess saw her three chamber-mates in a row against the wall, pensively inclining their heads. She had much questioned if they would appear at the parting moment, but there they were, stoical and staunch to the last. She knew why the delicate Retty looked so fragile, and is so tragically sorrowful, and Marion so blank, and she forgot her own dogging shadow for a moment in contemplating theirs. She impulsively whispered to him, will you kiss them all once, poor things, for the first and last time? Claire had not the least objection to such a farewell formality, which was all that it was to him, and as he passed them he kissed them in succession where they stood, saying goodbye to each as he did so. When they reached the door, Tess femininely glanced back to discern the effect of that kiss of charity. There was no triumph in her glance as there might have been. If there had it would have disappeared when she saw how moved the girls all were. The kiss had obviously done harm by awakening feelings they were trying to subdue. Of all this, Claire was unconscious. Passing on to the wicket-gate he shook hands with the dairyman and his wife, and expressed his last thanks to them for their attentions, after which there was a moment of silence before they moved off. It was interrupted by the crowing of a cock. The white one with the rose comb had come and settled on the palings in front of the house, within a few yards of them, and his notes thrilled their ears through, dwindling away like echoes down a valley of rocks. Oh! said Mrs. Crick, an afternoon crow! Two men were standing by the yard-gate holding it open. That's bad! one murmured to the other, not thinking the words could be heard by the group at the door wicket. The cock crew again, straight towards Claire. Well! said the dairyman. I don't like to hear him, said Tester, her husband, till the man to drive it away. Good boy, good boy! The cock crew again. Oh! just you be off, sir, or I'll twist your neck! said the dairyman, with some irritation, turning to the bird and driving him away. And his wife, as they went indoors. No, to think of that just today. I've not heard his crow of an afternoon all the year or four. It only means a change in the weather, she said. Not what you think? It is impossible. End of Chapter 33 Chapter 34 They drove by the level road along the valley to a distance of a few miles, and, reaching Wellbridge, turned away from the village to the left, and over the great Elizabethan Bridge, which gives the place half its name. Immediately behind it stood the house wherein they had engaged lodgings, whose exterior features are so well known to all travelers through the Froome Valley, once portion of a fine menorial residence, and the property and seat of a Durberville, but since its partial demolition, a farmhouse. Welcome to one of your ancestral mansions, said Claire as he handed her down. But he regretted the pleasantry. It was too near a satire. On entering they found that, though they had only engaged a couple of rooms, the farmer had taken advantage of their proposed presence during the coming days to pay a New Year's visit to some friends, leaving a woman from a neighbouring cottage to minister to their few once. The absoluteness of possession pleased them, and they realised it as the first moment of their experience under their own exclusive roof-tree. But he found that the mouldy old habitation somewhat depressed his bride. When the carriage was gone they ascended the stairs to wash their hands, the child-woman showing the way. On the landing Tess stopped and started. What's the matter, said he. Those horrid women, she answered with a smile, how they frightened me. He looked up and perceived two life-size portraits on panels built into the masonry. As all visitors to the mansion are aware, these paintings represent women of middle age of a date some two hundred years ago whose lineaments once seen can never be forgotten. The long, pointed features, narrow eye and smirk of the one so suggestive of merciless treachery. The bill-hook nose, large teeth and bold eye of the other, suggesting arrogance to the point of ferocity, haunt the beholder afterwards in his dreams. Whose portraits are those, asked Claire of the child-woman? I have been told by old folk that they were ladies of the Derbaville family, the ancient lords of this manner, she said, owing to their being builded into the wall they can't be moved away. The unpleasantness of the matter was that, in addition to their effect upon Tess, her fine features were unquestionably traceable in these exaggerated forms. He said nothing of this, however, and regretting that he had gone out of his way to choose the house for their bridal time went on into the joining-room. The place, having been rather hastily prepared for them, they washed their hands in one basin. Claire touched hers under the water. Which are my fingers and which are yours, he said looking up, they are very much mixed. They are all yours, said she very prettily, and endeavoured to be gayer than she was. He had not been displeased with her thoughtfulness on such an occasion. It was what every sensible woman would show, but Tess knew that she had been thoughtful to excess and struggled against it. The sun was so low on that short last afternoon of the year that it shone in through a small opening and formed a golden staff which stretched across to her skirt, where it made a spot like a paint mark set upon her. They went into the ancient parlour to tea, and here they shared their first common meal alone. Such was their childishness, or rather his, that he found it interesting to use the same bread and butter-plate as his self, and to brush crumbs from her lips with his own. He wondered a little that she did not enter into these revoleties with his own zest, looking at her silently for a long time. She is a dear, dear Tess. He thought to himself, as one deciding on the true construction of a difficult passage, do I realise solemnly enough how utterly and irretrievably this little womanly thing is the creature of my good or bad faith and fortune? I think not. I think I could not, unless I were a woman myself. What I am in worldly estate, she is. What I become, she must become. What I cannot be, she cannot be. And shall I ever neglect her or hurt her, or even forget to consider her? God forbid such a crime! They sat on over the tea-table waiting for their luggage, which the dairyman had promised to send before it grew dark. But evening began to close in, and the luggage did not arrive, and they had brought nothing more than they stood in. With the departure of the sun, the calm mood of the winter day changed. Out of doors there began noises, as of silk smartly rubbed. The restful dead leaves of the preceding autumn were stirred to irritated resurrection, and whirled about unwillingly, and tapped against the shutters. It soon began to rain. That cock knew the weather was going to change, said Claire. The woman who had attended upon them had gone home for the night, but she had placed candles upon the table, and now they lit them. Each candle flame drew towards the fireplace. These old houses are so draughty, continued Angel looking at the flames, and at the grease guttering down the sides. I wonder where that luggage is. We haven't even a brush and comb. I don't know, she answered, absent-minded. Tess, you're not a bit cheerful this evening, not as tall as you used to be. Those harridans on the panels upstairs have unsettled you. I'm sorry I brought you here. I wonder if you really love me after all. He knew that she did, and the words had no serious intent. But she was surcharged with emotion and winced like a wounded animal. Though she tried not to shed tears, she could not help showing one or two. I did not mean it, he said. Sorry. You are worried about not having your things, I know. I cannot think why old Jonathan has not come with them. Why, it is seven o'clock. Ah, there he is. A knock had come to the door, and there being no one else to answer it, Claire went out. He returned to the room with a small package in his hand. It is not Jonathan after all, he said. How vexing! said Tess. The package had been brought by a special messenger who had arrived at Talberthays from Emminsdegh Vicarage immediately after the departure of the married couple, and had followed them thither, being under injunction to deliver it into nobody's hands but theirs. Claire brought it to the light. It was less than a foot long, sewed up in canvas, sealed in red wax with his father's seal, and directed in his father's hand to Mrs. Angel Claire. It's a little wedding present for you, Tess, said he, handing it to her. How thoughtful they are! Tess looked a little flustered as she took it. I think I would rather have you open it, dearest, said she, turning over the parcel. I don't like to break those great seals. They look so serious. Please open it for me. He undid the parcel. Inside was a case of Morocco leather. On the top of which lay a note and a key. The note was for Claire in the following words. My dear son, possibly you have forgotten that on the death of your godmother, Mrs. Pitney, when you were a lad, she, vain, kind, woman that she was, left to me a portion of the contents of her jewel case in trust for your wife, if you should ever have one, as a mark of her affection for you and whomesoever you should choose. This trust I have fulfilled, and the diamonds have been locked up at my bankers ever since. Though I feel it to be a somewhat incongruous act in the circumstances, I am, as you will see, bound to hand over the articles to the woman to whom the use of them for her lifetime will now rightly belong, and they are therefore promptly sent. They become, I believe, heirlooms, strictly speaking, according to the terms of your godmother's will. The precise words of the clause that refers to the matter are enclosed. I do remember, said Claire, but I had quite forgotten. Unlocking the case they found it to contain a necklace with pendant, bracelets and earrings, and also some other small ornaments. Tests seemed afraid to touch them at first, but her eyes sparkled for a moment as much as the stones when Claire spread out the set. Are they mine? she asked incredulously. They are certainly, said he. He looked into the fire. He remembered how, when he was a lad of fifteen, his godmother, the squire's wife, the only rich person with whom he had ever come in contact, had pinned her faith to his success, had prophesied a wondrous career for him. There had seemed nothing at all out of keeping with such a conjectured career in the storing up of these showy ornaments for his wife and the wives of her descendants. They gleamed somewhat ironically now. Yet why, he asked himself. It was but a question of vanity throughout, and if it were admitted into one side of the question it should be admitted into the other. His wife was a Durberville. Whom could they become better than her? Suddenly he said with enthusiasm, Tests, put them on, put them on! and he turned from the fire to help her. But as if by magic she had already donned them, necklace, earrings, bracelets and all. But the gown isn't right, Tests, said Claire. It ought to be a low one for a set of brilliance like that. Or did, said Tests. Yes, said he. He suggested to her how to tuck in the upper edge of her bodice so as to make it roughly approximate to the cut for evening wear. And when she had done this and the pendant to the necklace hung isolated amid the whiteness of her throat as it was designed to do, he stepped back to survey her. My heavens! said Claire, how beautiful you are! As everybody knows, fine feathers make fine birds. A peasant girl, but very moderately prepossessing to the casual observer in her simple condition and attire, will bloom as an amazing beauty if clothed as a woman of fashion with the aids that art can render, while the beauty of a midnight crush would often cut but a sorry figure if placed inside a field woman's wrapper upon a monotonous acreage of turnips on a dull day. He had never till now estimated the artistic excellence of Tests' limbs and features. If you were only to appear in a ballroom, he said. But no, no, dearest, I think I love you best in the wing bonnets and cotton frock. Yes, better than in this. Yes, better than in this. Well, as you support these dignities. Tests' sense of her striking appearance had given her a flush of excitement, which was not yet happiness. I'll take them off, she said. In case Jonathan should see me, they are not fit for me, are they? They must be sold, I suppose. Let them stay a few minutes longer. Sell them? Never! It would be a breach of faith. Influenced by a second thought, she readily obeyed. She had something to tell, and there might be help in these. She sat down with the jewels upon her, and they again indulged in conjectures as to where Jonathan could possibly be with their baggage. The ale they had poured out for his consumption when he came had gone flat with the long standing. Shortly after this they began supper, which was already laid on a side table. ere they had finished there was a jerk in the fire-smoke, the rising skein of which bulged out into the room as if some giant had laid his hand on the chimney-top for a moment. It had been caused by the opening of the outer door. A heavy step was now heard in the passage, and Angel went out. I couldn't make nobody hear a tar by knocking. Apologize, Jonathan Cale, for it was he at last. And as to his reigning out, I opened the door. I brought the thing, sir. I'm very glad to see them, but you are very late. Well, yes, sir. There was something subdued in Jonathan Cale's tone which had not been there in the day, and lines of concern were plowed upon his forehead in addition to the lines of years. He continued, We've all been gallant at the dairy at what might have been a most terrible affliction, since you and your misses, so as to name her now, left us this afternoon. Perhaps you hadn't forgot the cocks afternoon crow. Dear me, what? Well, some says it do main one thing, and some another. But what's happened is that poor little Retty Priddle have tried to drown herself. No, really. Why, she bad-ass could buy with the rest. Yes, well, sir, when you and your misses, so as to name what she lawful is, when you two drove away, as I say, Retty and Marion put on their bonnets and went out, and as there was not much doing now, being New Year's Eve, and folks mobs and brooms from what's inside them, nobody took much notice. They went on to Lou Everard, where they had some at to drink, and then on they vamped to Drian Cross, and there they seemed to have parted, Retty stroking across the water-meads as if for home, and Marion going on to the next village, where there's another public house. Nothing more was either Retty to the water-man on his way home, noticed something down by the great pool, to his her bonnet and shawl packed up. In the water he found her, he and another man brought her home, thinking I was dead, but she fetched round by degrees. Angel, suddenly recollecting that Tess was overhearing this gloomy tale, went to shut the door between the passage and the anti-room to the inner parlour where she was, but his wife, flinging ashore round her, had come to the outer room, and was listening to the man's narrative, her eyes resting absently on the luggage, and the drops of rain glistening upon it. And more on this there's Marion, she being found dead drunk by the witty bed, a girl who have never been known to touch anything before, except shilling ale, though, to be sure, I was always a good trencher woman as her face showed. It seems as if the maids had all gone out of their minds. And is, asked Tess, is it about those as usual, but I do say I can guess how it happened, and she seemed to be very low in mind about it, poor maid as well as she mid-be. And so you see, sir, as all this happened just when we was packing your few traps and your Mrs. Nightrail and dressing things into the cart, why, it belated me. Yes, well, Jonathan, will you get the trunks upstairs and drink a cup of ale and hasten back as soon as you can, in case you should be wanted? Tess had gone back to the inner parlour, and sat down by the fire, looking wistfully into it. She heard Jonathan Cale's heavy footsteps up and down the stairs, till he had gone placing the luggage, and heard him express his thanks for the ale her husband took out to him, and for the gratuity he received. Jonathan's footsteps then died from the door, and his cart creaked away. Angel slid forward the massive oak bar which secured the door, and, coming into where she sat over the hearth, pressed her cheeks between his hands from behind. He expected her to jump up gaily and unpack the toilet-gear that she had been so anxious about. But as she did not rise, he sat down with her in the fire-light, the candles on the supper-table being too thin and glimmering to interfere with its glow. I'm so sorry you should have heard this sad story about the girls, he said. Still, don't let it depress you. Retty was naturally morbid, you know. Without the least cause, said Tess, while they who have cause to be hide it and pretend they are not. This incident had turned the scale for her. They were simple and innocent girls upon whom the unhappiness of unrequited love had fallen. They had deserved better at the hands of fate. She had deserved worse. Yet she was the chosen one. It was wicked of her to take all without paying. She would pay to the uttermost farthing she would tell there and then. This final determination she came to when she looked into the fire, he holding her hand. A steady glare from the now flameless embers painted the sides and back of the fireplace with its colour and the well-polished andions and the old brass tongs that would not meet. The underside of the mantel shelf was flushed with the high-coloured light and the legs of the table nearest the fire. Tess's face and neck reflected the same warmth, which each gem turned into an Aldebaran or a Sirius, a constellation of white, red and green flashes that interchanged their hues with her every pulsation. Do you remember what we had said to each other this morning about telling our thoughts, he asked abruptly, finding that she still remained immovable? We spoke lightly perhaps, and you may well have done so, but for me it was no light promise. I want to make a confession to you, love. This, from him, so unexpectedly apposite, had the effect upon her of a providential interposition. You have to confess something, she said quickly, and even with gladness and relief. You did not expect it? Ah, you thought too highly of me, but listen. Put your head there, because I want you to forgive me and not to be indignant with me for not telling you before, as perhaps I ought to have done. How strange it was. He seemed to be her double. She could not speak, and Claire went on. I did not mention it, because I was afraid of endangering my chance of you, darling. The greatest prize of my life, my fellowship, I call you. My brother's fellowship was run at his college, mine, at Talbothe's Dairy. Well, I would not risk it. I was going to tell you a month ago, at the time you agreed to be mine, but I could not. I thought it might frighten you away from me. I put it off, then I thought I would tell you yesterday to give you a chance, at least of escaping me, but I did not. And I did not this morning, when you proposed our confessing our faults on the landing, the sinner that I was, but I must. Now I see you sitting there so solemnly. I wonder if you will forgive me. Oh, yes, I am sure that—well, I hope so, but wait a minute. You don't know. To begin at the beginning. Though I imagine my poor father fears that I am one of the eternally lost for my doctrines, I am, of course, a believer in good morals, test as much as you. I used to wish to be a teacher of men, and it was a great disappointment to me when I found I could not enter the church. I admired spotlessness, even though I could lay no claim to it, and hated impurity, as I hope I do now. Whatever one may think of plenary inspiration, one must heartily subscribe to these words of Paul, be thou an example. In word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. It is the only safeguard for us poor human beings. Intergevite, says a Roman poet, who is a strange company for St. Paul. The man of upright life, from frailt is free, stands not in need of Moorish spear or bow. Well, a certain places are paved with good intentions, and having felt all that so strongly, you will see what a terrible remorse it bred in me when, in the midst of my fine aims for other people, I myself fell. He then told her of that time in his life to which allusion has been made. Tossed by doubts and difficulties in London, like a cork on the waves, he plunged into eight and forty hours' dissipation with a stranger. Happily I awoke almost immediately to a sense of my folly, he continued. I would have no more to say to her, and I came home. I have never repeated the offence, but I felt I should like to treat you with perfect frankness and honour, and could not do so without telling this. Do you forgive me? Do you forgive me? She pressed his hand tightly for an answer. Then we will dismiss it once and for ever, too painful as it is for the occasion, and talk of something lighter. O angel, I am almost glad, because now you can forgive me. I have not made my confession. I have a confession, too. Remember I said so. Ah, to be sure. Now then for it, wicked little one. Perhaps, though you smile, it is as serious as yours and more so. It can hardly be more serious, dearest. It cannot. Oh no, it cannot. She jumped up joyfully at the hope. No, it cannot be more serious, certainly, she cried, because it is just the same. I will tell you now. She sat down again. Their hands were still joined. The ashes under the grate were lit by the fire vertically, like a torrid waste. Imagination might have beheld a last-day luridness in this red-cold glow which fell on his face and hand, and on hers, peering into the loose hair about her brow, and firing the delicate skin underneath. A large shadow of her shape rose upon the wall and ceiling. She bent forward, at which each diamond on her neck gave a sinister wink like a toad's, and pressing her forehead against his temple, she entered on her story off her acquaintance with Alec Derbeville, and its results. murmuring the words without flinching, and with her eyelids drooping down. End of Chapter 34 and end of Phase IV. Chapter 35 of Tests of the Derbevilles 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 Derbevilles by Thomas Hardy Read by Adrian Pretzellus Phase V The Woman Pays Chapter 35 Her narrative ended. Even its reassertions and secondary explanations were done. Tests's voice throughout had hardly risen higher than its opening tone. There had been no esculpatory phrase of any kind, and she had not wept. But the complexion even of external things seemed to suffer transmutation as her announcement progressed. The fire in the grate looked impish, demoniacally funny, as if it did not care in the least about her straight. The fender grinned idly, as if it too did not care. The light from the water bottle was merely engaged on a chromatic problem. All material objects around announced their irresponsibility with terrible iteration, and yet nothing had changed since the moments when he had been kissing her, or rather nothing in the substance of things, but the essence of things had changed. When she ceased, the auricular impressions from their previous endearments seemed to hustle away into the corners of their brains, repeating themselves as echoes from a time of supremely per-blind foolishness. Claire performed the irrelevant act of stirring the fire. The intelligence had not even yet got to the bottom of him. After stirring the embers, he rose to his feet. All the force of her disclosure had imparted itself now. His face had withered. In the strenuousness of his concentration, he treadled fitfully on the floor. He could not, by any contrivance, think closely enough. That was the meaning of his vague movement. When he spoke, it was in the most inadequate, commonplace voice of the many varied tones she had heard from him. Tess? Yes, dearest? Am I to believe this? From your manner I am to take it as true. Oh, you cannot be out of your mind. You ought to be, yet you are not. My wife, my Tess, nothing in you warrants such a supposition as that. I'm not out of my mind, she said. And yet he looked vacantly at her to resume with dazed senses. Why didn't you tell me before? Ah, yes, you would have told me, in a way, but I hindered you, I remember. These and other of his words were nothing but the perfunctory babble of the surface, while the depths remained paralyzed. He turned away and bent over a chair. Tess followed him to the middle of the room where he was, and stood there staring at him with eyes that did not weep. Presently she slid down upon her knees beside his foot, and from this position she crouched in a heap. In the name of her love, forgive me, she whispered with a dry mouth. I have forgiven you for the same. And as he did not answer, she said again, forgive me as you are forgiven. I forgive you, angel. You, yes, you do. But you do not forgive me? Oh, Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case. You were one person, now you are another. My God, how can forgiveness meet such a grotesque breasted agitation as that? He paused, contemplating this definition. Then suddenly broke into horrible laughter, as unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell. Don't, don't, it kills me quite that. She shrieked. Oh, have mercy upon me, have mercy. He did not answer, and sickly white she jumped up. Angel, angel, what did you mean by that laugh? She cried out. Do you know what this is to me? He shook his head. I have been hoping, longing, praying to make you happy. I have thought what joy it will be to do it. What unworthy wife I shall be if I do not. That's what I have felt, angel. I know that. I thought, angel, that you loved me, me, my very self. If it is I, you do love. Oh, how can it be that you look and speak, so it frightens me? Having begun to love you, I love you forever in all changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself. I ask no more. Then how can you, oh, my husband, stop loving me? I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you. But who? Another woman in your shape. She perceived in his words the realisation of her own apprehensive foreboding in former times. He looked upon her as a species of imposter, a guilty woman, in the guise of an innocent one. Terror was upon her white face as she saw it. Her cheek was flaccid, and her mouth had almost the aspect of a round little hole. The horrible sense of his view of her so deadened her that she staggered, and he stepped forward, thinking she was going to fall. Sit down, sit down, he said gently. You're ill, and it is natural that you should be. She did sit down, without knowing where she was, that strained look still upon her face, and her eyes, such as to make his flesh creep. I don't belong to you any more, then, do I, angel? She asked, helplessly. It is not me, but another woman like me that he loved, he says. The image raised caused her to take pity upon herself as one who was ill-used. Her eyes filled as she regarded her position further. She turned round and burst into a flood of self-sympathetic tears. Blair was relieved at this change, for the effect on her of what had happened was beginning to be a trouble to him only less than the woe of the disclosure itself. He waited patiently, apathetically, till the violence of her grief had worn itself out, and her rush of weeping had lessened to a catching gasp at intervals. Angel, she said suddenly in her natural tones, the insane, dry voice of terror having left her now. Angel, am I too wicked for you and me to live together? I have not been able to think what we can do. I shan't ask you to let me live with you, angel, because I have no right to. I shall not write to mother and sisters to say we are married, as I said I would, and I shan't finish the good husse if I cut out, and meant to make, why we were in lodgings. Shant you? No, I shan't do anything unless you order me to, and if you go away from me, I shall not follow ye, and if you never speak to me any more, I shall not ask why, unless you tell me I may. And if I do order you to do anything, I will obey you, let your wretched slave, even if it is to lie down and die. You are very good. But it strikes me that there is a want of harmony between your present mood of self-sacrifice and your past mood of self-preservation. These were the first words of antagonism. To fling elaborate sarcasms at Tess, however, was my like flinging them at a dog or cat. The charms of their subtlety passed by her unappreciated, and she only received them as inimical sounds, which meant that anger ruled. She remained mute, not knowing that he was smothering her affection for her. She hardly observed that a tear descended slowly upon his cheek, a tear so large that it magnified the paws of the skin over which it rolled, like the object lens of a microscope. Meanwhile, re-illumination as to the terrible and total change that her confession had wrought in his life, in his universe, returned to him, and he tried desperately to advance among the new conditions in which he stood. Some subsequent action was necessary, yet what? Tess, he said, as gentle as he could, I cannot stay in this room just now, I will walk out a little way. He quietly left the room, and the two glasses of wine that he had poured out for their supper, one for her, one for him, remained on the table untasted. This was what their agape had come to. At tea, two or three hours earlier, they had in the freakishness of affection drunk from one cup. The closing of the door behind, gently as it had been pulled to, roused Tess from her stupor. He was gone, she could not stay. Hastily fleeing her cloak around her, she opened the door and followed, putting out the candles as if she were never coming back. The rain was over, and the night was now clear. She was soon closer to his heels, for Claire walked slowly and without purpose. His form beside her light grey figure looked black, sinister, and forbidding, and she felt as sarcasm the touch of the jewels of which she had been momentarily so proud. Claire turned at hearing her footsteps, but his recognition of her presence seemed to make no difference in him, and he went on over the five yawning arches of the great bridge in front of the house. The cow and horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain having been enough to charge them, but not enough to wash them away. Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick transit as she passed. She would not have known they were shining overhead if she had not seen them there. The vastest things in the universe imaged in objects so mean. The place to which they had travelled today was in the same valley as Talbothays, but some miles lower down the river, and the surroundings being open she kept easily in sight of him. Away from the house the road wound through the meads, and along these she followed Claire without any attempt to come up with him or to attract him, but with dumb and vacant fidelity. At last, however, her listless walk brought her up alongside him, and still he said nothing. The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great under enlightenment, and it was mighty in Claire now. The outdoor air had apparently taken away from him all tendency to act on impulse. She knew that he saw her without irradiation, in all her barrenness. The time was chanting his satiric psalm at her then. Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate. Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate. For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shared as the rain, and the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown shall be pain. He was still intently thinking, and her companionship had now insufficient power to break or divert the strain of thought. What a weak thing her presence must have become to him! She could not help addressing Claire. What have I done? What have I done? I've not told of anything that interferes with or belies my love for you. You don't think how I planned it, do you? It is in your own mind, but you are angry at, Angel. It is not in me. Oh, it is not in me, and I am not that deceitful woman you think me. Well, not deceitful, my wife. But not the same. No, not the same. But do not make me reproach you. I have sworn that I will not, and I will do everything to avoid it. But she went on pleading in her distraction, and perhaps said things that would have been better left to silence. Angel, Angel, I was a child, a child when it happened. I knew nothing of men. You were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit. Then will you not forgive me? I do forgive you, but forgiveness is not all. And love me? To this question he did not answer. Oh, Angel, my mother said that it sometimes happens so. She knows several cases where they were worse than I, and the husband has not minded it much, has got over it at last, and yet the woman has not loved him as I do you. Don't, Tess, don't argue. Different societies, different manners. You almost make me say you are an unapprehending peasant woman who have never been initiated into the proportions of social things. You don't know what you say. I'm only a peasant by position, not by nature. She spoke with an impulse to anger, but it went as it came. So much the worse for you. I think that person who unearthed your pedigree would have done better if he had held his tongue. I cannot help associating your decline as a family with this other fact of your want of firmness. Decrepid families imply decrepid wills, decrepid conduct. Heaven, why did you give me a handle for despising you more by informing me of your dissent? Here was I thinking you a new sprung child of nature. There were you, the belated seedling of an effete aristocracy. Lots of families are as bad as mine in that. Reti's families were once large landowners, and so were Derrymen billets. And the Debbie-houses, who are now Carter's, were once the Dibaya family. You find such as I everywhere, it is a feature of our country, and I can't help it. So much worse for the country. She took these reproaches in their bulk simply, not in their particulars. He did not love her as he had loved her hitherto, and to all else she was indifferent. They wandered on again in silence. It was said afterwards that a cottager of Wellbridge, who went out late that night for a doctor, met two lovers in the pastures, walking very slowly without converse, one behind the other, as in a funeral procession, and the glimpse that he obtained of their faces seemed to denote that they were anxious and sad. Returning later he passed them again in the same field, progressing just as slowly and regardless of the hour and of the cheerless night as before. It was only on account of his preoccupation with his own affairs and the illness of his house that he did not bear in mind the curious incident, which however he recalled a long while after. During the interval of the cottages going and coming, she had said to her husband, I don't see how I can help being the cause of much misery to you all your life. The river is down there. I can put an end to myself in it. I am not afraid. I don't wish to add murder to my other foibles, he said. I will leave something to show that I did it myself and account of my shame. They will not blame you then. Don't speak so absurdly. I do not wish to hear it. It is nonsense to have such thoughts in this kind of case, which is rather one for satirical laughter than for tragedy. You don't in the least understand the quality of the mishap. It would be viewed in the light of a joke by nine-tenths of the world if it were known. Please oblige me by returning to the house and going to bed. I will, she said dutifully. They had rambled round by the road which led to the well-known ruins of the Cistercian Abbey behind the mill, the latter having in centuries past been attached to the monastic establishment. The mill still worked on, food being a perennial necessity. The abbey had perished, creeds being transient. One continually seized the ministration of the temporary outlasting the ministration of the eternal. Their walk, having been circuitous, they were still not far from the house, and in obeying his direction she only had to reach the large stone bridge across the main river and follow the road for a few yards. When she got back everything remained as she had left it, the fire being still burning. She did not stay downstairs for more than a minute, but proceeded to her chamber whether the luggage had been taken. Here she sat down on the edge of the bed, looking blankly around, and presently began to undress. In removing the light towards the bedstead its rays fell upon the tester of white dimity. Something was hanging beneath it, and she lifted the candle to see what it was. A bow of mistletoe. Angel had put it there, she knew that in an instant. This was the explanation of that mysterious parcel which had been so difficult to pack and bring, whose contents he would not explain to her, saying that time would soon show her the purpose thereof. In his zest and his gaiety he had hung it there. How foolish and inopportune that mistletoe looked now. Having nothing more to fear, having scarce anything to hope, for that he would relent, there seemed no promise whatever, she lay down dullly. When sorrow ceases to be speculative, sleep sees her opportunity. Among so many happier moods, which forbid repose, this was a mood which welcomed it, and in a few minutes the lonely tess forgot existence, surrounded by the aromatic stillness of the chamber that had once, possibly, been the bride-chamber of her own ancestry. Later on that night Clare also retraced his steps to the house. Entering softly to the sitting room he obtained a light, and with the manner of one who had considered his course he spread his rugs upon the old horse-hair sofa which stood there, and roughly shaped it to a sleeping couch. Before lying down he crept shoeless upstairs, and listened at the door of her apartment. Her measured breathing told that she was sleeping profoundly. Thank God! murmured Clare, and yet he was conscious of a pang of bitterness at the thought. Approximately true, though not wholly so, that having shifted the burden of her life to his shoulders she was now reposing without care. He turned away to descend, then irresolute, faced round to her door again. In the act he caught sight of one of the Durberville Dames, whose portrait was immediately over the entrance to Tess's bed-chamber. In the candlelight the painting was more than unpleasant. Sinister design lurked in the woman's features a concentrated purpose of revenge on the other sex, so it seemed to him then. The Caroline bodice of the portrait was low, precisely as Tess's had been when he tucked it in to show the necklace, and again he experienced the distressing sensation of a resemblance between them. The check was sufficient. He resumed his retreat and ascended. His air remained calm and cold, his small, compressed mouth indexing his powers of self-control, his face wearing still that terrible, sterile expression which had spread thereupon since her disclosure. It was the face of a man who was no longer a passion's slave, yet who found no advantage in his enfranchisement. He was simply regarding the harrowing contingencies of human experience, the unexpectedness of things. Nothing so pure, so sweet, so virginal as Tess had seemed possible all the long while that he had adored her up to an hour ago, but the little less and what worlds away. He argued erroneously when he said to himself that her heart was not indexed in the honest freshness of her face, but Tess had no advocate to set him right. Could it be possible, he continued, that eyes which as they gazed never expressed any divergence from what the tongue was telling were yet ever seeing another world behind her ostensible one, discordant and contrasting. He reclined on his couch in the sitting-room and extinguished the light. The night came in and took up its place there, unconcerned and indifferent. The night which had already swallowed up his happiness, and was now digesting it listlessly, and was ready to swallow up the happiness of a thousand other people with as little disturbance or change of mean. 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 Derbervilles by Thomas Hardy Read by Adrian Pretzellus Chapter 36 Claire arose in the light of a dawn that was ashy and furtive, as though associated with crime. The fireplace confronted him with its extinct embers, the spread supper table, whereupon stood the two full glasses of untasted wine, now flat and filmy. Her vacated seat and his own, the other articles of furniture with their eternal look of not being able to help it, their intolerable inquiry what was to be done. From above there was no sound, but in a few minutes there came a knock at the door. He remembered that it would be the neighbouring cottage's wife who was to minister to their wants while they remained there. The presence of a third person in the house would be extremely awkward just now, and, being already dressed, he opened the window and informed her that they could manage to shift for themselves that morning. She had a milk-can in her hand which she told her to leave at the door. When the dame had gone away he searched in the back corners of the house for fuel, and speedily lit a fire. There was plenty of eggs, butter, bread, and so on in the larder, and Claire soon had breakfast laid. His experiences at the dairy-having rendered him facile in domestic preparations. The smoke of the kindled wood rose from the chimney without, like a lotus-headed column. Local people who were passing by saw it, and thought of the newly married couple and envied their happiness. Angel cast a final glance round, and then going to the foot of the stairs, called in a conventional voice, breakfast is ready. He opened the door, and took a few steps in the morning air. When, after a short space, he came back, she was already in the sitting room, mechanically readjusting the breakfast things. As she was fully attired and the interval since his calling had been but two or three minutes, she must have been dressed, or nearly so, before he went to summon her. Her hair was twisted up in a large round mass at the back of her head, and she had put on one of the new frocks, a pale blue woollen garment with neck frillings of white. Her hands and face appeared to be cold, and she had possibly been sitting dressed in the bedroom a long time without any fire. The marked civility of Claire's tone in calling her seemed to have inspired her for the moment with a new glimmer of hope, but it soon died when she looked at him. The pair were, in truth, but the ashes of their former fires. To the hot sorrow of the previous night had succeeded heaviness. It seemed as if nothing could kindle either of them to fervor of sensation any more. He spoke gently to her, and she replied with a like undemonstrativeness. At last she came up to him, looking in his sharp, defined face, as one who had no consciousness that her own formed a visible object or so. Angel, she said, and passed, touching him with her fingers lightly as a breeze, though she could hardly believe to be there, in the flesh, the man who was once her lover. Her eyes were bright, her pale cheek still showed its wanted roundness, though half-dried tears had left glistening traces thereon, and the usually ripe red mouth was almost as pale as her cheek. Throbbingly alive as she was still, under the stress of her mental grief, the life beat so brokenly that a little further pull upon it would cause real illness, dull her characteristic eyes, and make her mouth thin. She looked absolutely pure. Nature, in her fantastic trickery, had set such a seal of maidenhood upon Tess's countenance that he gazed at her with a stupefied air. Tess, say it is not true. No, it is not true. It is true. Every word? Every word. He looked at her imploringly, as if he would willingly have taken a lie from her lips, knowing it to be one, and have made it, by some sort of sophistry, a valid denial. However, she only repeated, it is true. Is he living? Angel then asked. The baby died. But the man? He is alive. A last despair passed over Clare's face. Is he in England? Yes. He took a few vague steps. My position is this, he said abruptly. I thought, any man would have thought, that by giving up all ambition to win a wife with social standing, with fortune, with knowledge of the world, I should secure rustic innocence as surely as I should secure pink cheeks. But, however, I am no man to reproach you, and I will not. Tess felt his position so entirely, that the remainder had not been needed. Therein lay just the distress of it. She saw that he had lost all round. Angel, I would not have let it go on to marriage with you, if I had not known that, after all, there was a last way out of it for you, though I hoped you would never, her voice grew husky. A last way? I mean, to get rid of me, you can get rid of me. How? By devassing me. Good heavens, how can you be so simple? How can I divorce you? Can't you? Now I have told you. I thought my confession would give you grounds for it. Oh, Tess, you are too, too childish, unformed, crude, I suppose. I don't know what you are. You don't understand the law. You don't understand. What? You cannot? Indeed I cannot. A quick shame mixed with the misery upon his listener's face. I thought, I thought, she whispered. Oh, now I see how wicked I seem to you. Believe me, believe me on my soul, I never thought the but you could. I hoped you would not, yet I believed, without a doubt, that you could cast me off if you were determined, and didn't love me at all. You were mistaken, he said. Oh, then I ought to have done it, to have done it last night, but I hadn't the courage, that's just like me. The courage to do what? As she did not answer, he took her by the hand. What were you thinking of doing, he inquired, of putting an end to myself? When? She writhed under this inquisitorial manner of his. Last night, she answered, Where? Under your mistletoe. My good! How? he asked sternly. I'll tell you, if you won't be angry with me, she said, shrinking. It was with the cord of my box, but I could not do the last thing. I was afraid that it might cause a scandal to your name. The unexpected quality of this confession, rung from her and not volunteered, shook him perceptibly. But he still held her, and letting his glance fall from her face downwards, he said, Now, listen to this, you must not dare to think of such a horrible thing. How could you? You will promise me, as your husband, to attempt that no more. I'm ready to promise. I see how wicked it was. Wicked! The idea was unworthy of you, beyond description. But Angel, she pleaded, enlarging her eyes in calm, unconcern upon him. It was thought of, entirely on your account, to set you free without the scandal of the divorce that I thought you would have to get. I should never have dreamt of doing it on mine. However, to do it with my own hand is too good for me, after all. It is you, my ruined husband, who ought to strike the blow. I think I should love you more, if that were possible, if you could bring yourself to do it. Since there's no other way of escape for me, I feel I am so utterly worthless, so very greatly in the way. Hush! Well, since you say no, I won't. I have no wish opposed to yours. He knew this to be true enough. Since the desperation of the night, her activities had dropped to zero, and there was no further rashness to be feared. Tess tried to busy herself again over the breakfast table, with more or less success, and they sat down, both on the same side, so that their glances did not meet. There was at first something awkward in hearing each other eat and drink, but this could not be escaped. Moreover, the amount of eating done was small on both sides. Breakfast over, he rose, and telling her the hour at which he might be expected to dinner, went off to the millers in a mechanical pursuance of the plan of studying that business, which had been his only practical reason for coming here. When he was gone, Tess stood at the window, and presently saw his form crossing the great stone bridge which conducted to the mill premises. He sank behind it, crossed the railway beyond, and disappeared. Then, without a sigh, she turned her attention to the room, and began clearing the table and setting it in order. The charwoman soon came. Her presence was at first a strain upon Tess, but afterwards an alleviation. At half-past twelve she left her assistant alone in the kitchen, and returning to the sitting-room waited for the reappearance of Angel's form behind the bridge. About one he showed himself. Her face flushed, though he was a quarter of a mile off. She ran to the kitchen to get the dinner served by the time he should enter. He went first to the room where they had washed their hands together the day before, and as he entered the sitting-room the dish-covers rose from the dishes as if by his own motion. How punctual, he said. Yes, I saw you coming over the bridge, said she. The meal was passed in commonplace talk of what he had been doing during the morning at the Abbey Mill, of the methods of bolting and the old-fashioned machinery which he feared would not enlighten him greatly on modern improved methods, some of it seeming to have been in use ever since the days it ground for the monks in the enjoining conventional buildings. Now a heap of ruins. He left the house again in the course of an hour, coming home at dusk, and occupying himself through the evening with his papers. She feared she was in the way, and when the old woman was gone, retired to the kitchen, where she made herself as busy as well as she could for more than an hour. Claire's shape appeared at the door. You must not work like this, he said. You are not my servant, you are my wife. She raised her eyes and brightened somewhat. I may think myself that, indeed, she murmured, impiteous railery. You mean in name. Well, I don't want to be anything more. You may think so, Tess. You are. What do you mean? I don't know, she said hastily, with tears in her accents. I thought I—because I am not respectable, I mean—I told you I thought I was not respectable enough long ago, and on that account I didn't want to marry you, only—only you urged me. She broke into sobs, and turned her back to him. It would almost have won round any man but Angel Claire. Within the remote depths of his constitution, so gentle and affectionate as he was in general, there lay hidden a hard, logical deposit, like a vein of metal in a soft loam, which turned the edge of everything that attempted to traverse it. It had blocked this new acceptance of the church. It blocked his acceptance of Tess. Moreover, his affection itself was less fire than radiance, and, with regard to the other sex, when he ceased to believe, he ceased to follow, contrasting in this with many impressionable natures who remain sensuously infatuated with what they intellectually despise. He waited till her sobbing ceased. I wish half the women in England were as respectable as you. He said in an ebullation of bitterness against womankind in general. It isn't a question of respectability, but one of principle. He spoke such things as these and more of a kindred thought to her, being still swayed by the antipathetic wave which warps direct souls with such persistence when once their vision finds itself mocked by appearances. There was, it is true, underneath a back-current of sympathy through which a woman of the world might have conquered him. But Tess did not think of this. She took everything as her deserts, and hardly opened her mouth. The firmness of her devotion to him was indeed most pitiful. Quick-tempered as she naturally was, nothing that he could say made her unseemly. She sought not her own, was not provoked, thought no evil of his treatment of her. She might just now have been apostolic charity herself returned to a self-seeking modern world. This evening, night, and morning were passed precisely as the preceding ones had been passed. On one and only one occasion did she, the formerly free and independent Tess, venture to make any advances. It was on the third occasion of his starting, after a meal, to go out to the flour mill. As he was leaving the table he said, Good-bye, and she replied in the same words, at the same time inclining her mouth in the way of his. He did not avail himself of the invitation, saying, as he turned hastily aside, I shall be home punctually. Tess shrank into herself as if she had been struck. Often enough he had tried to reach those lips against her consent. Often had he said gaily that her mouth and breath tasted of the butter and eggs and milk and honey on which she mainly lived, that he drew sustenance from them, and other follies of that sort. But he did not care for them now. He observed her, suddenly shrinking, and said gently, You know, I have to think of a course. It was imperative that we should stay together a little while to avoid the scandal to you that would have resulted from our immediate parting. But you must see it is only for form's sake. Yes, said Tess, absently. He went out and on his way to the mill stood still, and wished for a moment that he had responded yet more kindly, and kissed her once, at least. Thus they lived through this despairing day or two, in the same house truly, but more widely apart than before they were lovers. It was evident to her that he was, as he had said, living with paralyzed activities in his endeavour to think of a plan of procedure. She was awestruck and discovered such determination under such apparent flexibility. His consistency was indeed too cruel. She no longer expected forgiveness now. More than once she thought of going away from him during his absence at the mill. But she feared that this, instead of benefiting him, might be the means of hampering and humiliating him yet more if it should become known. Meanwhile Claire was meditating verily. His thoughts had been unsuspended. He was becoming ill with thinking. Eaten out with thinking, withered by thinking, scourged out of all his former pulsating, flexuous domesticity. He walked about saying to himself, What's to be done? What's to be done? And by chance she overheard him. It caused her to break the reserve about their future which had hitherto prevailed. I suppose you are not going to live with me long, are you, angel? she asked, the sunk corners of her mouth betraying how purely mechanical were the means by which she retained that expression of chastened calm upon her face. I cannot, he said, without despising myself and what is worth perhaps despising you. I mean, of course, I cannot live with you in the ordinary sense. At present, whatever I feel, I do not despise you, and let me speak plainly, or you may not see all my difficulties. How can we live together while that man lives? He being your husband in nature, and not I. If he were dead it might be different. Besides, that's not all the difficulty. It lies in another consideration, one bearing upon the future of other people than ourselves. Think of years to come and children being born to us, and this past matter getting known, for it must get known. There is not an uttermost part of the earth, but someone comes from it or goes to it from elsewhere. Well, think of wretches of our flesh and blood growing up under a taunt which they will gradually get to feel a full force of with their expanding years. What an awakening for them! What a prospect! Can you honestly say Remain after contemplating this contingency? Don't you think we had better endure the ills we have than fly to others? Her eyelids, weighted with trouble, continued drooping as before. I cannot say Remain, she answered. I cannot. I had not thought so far. Tess's feminine hope, shall we confess it, had been so obstinately recuperative as to revive in her surreptitious visions of a domiciliary intimacy continued long enough to break down his coldness, even against his judgment. Though unsophisticated in the usual sense, she was not incomplete, and it would have denoted deficiency of womanhood if she had not instinctively known what an argument lies in propinquity. Nothing else would serve her, she knew, if this failed. It was wrong to hope in what was the nature of strategy, she said to herself, yet that sort of hope she could not extinguish. His last representation had now been made, and it was, as she said, a new view. She had truly never thought so far as that, and his lucid picture of possible offspring who would scorn her was one that brought deadly conviction to an honest heart, which was humanitarian to its centre. Sheer experience had already taught her that, in some circumstances, there was one thing better than to lead a good life, and that was to be saved from leading any life whatever. Like all who have been provisioned by suffering, she could, in the words of Monsieur Sully Poudhon, hear a penal sentence in the fiat, you shall be born, particularly if addressed to potential issue of hers. Yet such is the vulpine slowness of dame nature that, till now, Tess had been hoodwinked by her love for Claire into forgetting it might result in vitalisations that would inflect upon others what she had been wailed as a misfortune to herself. She therefore could not withstand his argument, and with the self-combatting proclivity of the super-sensitive, an answer there too arose in Claire's own mind, and he almost feared it. It was based on her exceptional physical nature, and she might have used it promisingly. She might have added, besides, on an Australian upland or Texan plain, who is to know or care about my misfortunes or to reproach me or you. Yet, like the majority of women, she accepted the momentary presentiment as if it were the inevitable, and she may have been right. The intuitive heart of woman knoweth not only its own bitterness, but its husbands, and if these assumed approaches were not likely to be addressed to him or to his by strangers, they might have reached his ears from his own fastidious brain. It was the third day of the estrangement. Some might risk the odd paradox that with more animalism he might have been the nobler man. We do not say it. Yet Claire's love was doubtless ethereal to a fault, imaginative to impracticability. With these natures, corporeal presence is sometimes less appealing than corporeal absence, a latter creating an ideal presence that conveniently drops the defects of the real. She found that her personality did not plead her cause so forcibly as she had anticipated. The figurative phrase was true. She was another woman than the one who had excited his desire. I have thought over what you say, she remarked to him, moving her forefinger over the tablecloth, her other hand which bore the ring that mocked them both, supporting her forehead. It is quite true, all of it. It must be. You must go away from me. But what can you do? I can go home. Claire had not thought of that. Are you sure, he inquired. Quite sure. We ought to part, and we may as well get it passed and done. You once said that I was apt to win men against their better judgment, and if I am constantly before your eyes, I may cause you to change your plans in opposition to your reason and wish, and afterwards your repentance and my sorrow will be terrible. And you would like to go home? he asked. I want to leave you and to go home. Then it shall be so. Though she did not look up at him, she started. There was a difference between the proposition and the covenant, which she had felt only too quickly. I feared it would come to this, she murmured, her countenance meekly fixed. I don't complain, Angel. I think it best. What you said has quite convinced me, yes, though nobody else should reproach me, if we should stay together. Yet, some win, years hence, you might get angry with me for any ordinary matter, and knowing what you do of my boy-guns, you yourself might be tempted to say words, and they might be overheard, perhaps by my own children. Oh, what only hurts me now would torture and kill me then! I will go, tomorrow. And I shall not stay here, though I didn't like to initiate it. I have seen that it was advisable we should part, at least for a while, till I can better see the shape that things have taken, and can write to you. Tess stole a glance at her husband. He was pale, even tremulous. But, as before, she was appalled by the determination revealed in the depths of this gentle being she had married. The will to subdue the grocer to the subtler emotion, the substance to the conception, the flesh to the spirit, propensities, tendencies, habits, were as dead leaves upon the tyrannous wind of his imaginative ascendancy. He may have observed her look, for he explained, I think of people more kindly when I am away from them, adding cynically, God knows, perhaps we shall shake down together someday for weariness. Thousands have done it. That day he began to pack up, and she went upstairs and began to pack also. Both knew that it was in their two minds that they might part the next morning forever, despite the gloss of assuaging conjectures thrown over their proceeding, because they were of the sort to whom any parting which has an air of finality is a torture. He knew and she knew that, though the fascination which each had exercised over the other, on her part independently of accomplishments, would probably in the first days of their separation be even more potent than ever. Time must attenuate that effect. The practical arguments against accepting her as a housemate might pronounce themselves more strongly in the boreal light of a remote of you. Moreover, when two people are once parted, have abandoned a common domicile and a common environment, new growths insensibly bud upward to fill each vacated place. Unforeseen accidents hinder intentions, and old plans are forgotten.