Chapter LIX

Explanatory Note to the First Edition

The main portion of the following story appeared—with slight

modifications—in the _Graphic_ newspaper; other chapters, more

especially addressed to adult readers, in the _Fortnightly Review_ and

the _National Observer_, as episodic sketches. My thanks are tendered

to the editors and proprietors of those periodicals for enabling me now

to piece the trunk and limbs of the novel together, and print it

complete, as originally written two years ago.

I will just add that the story is sent out in all sincerity of purpose,

as an attempt to give artistic form to a true sequence of things; and

in respect of the book’s opinions and sentiments, I would ask any too

genteel reader, who cannot endure to have said what everybody nowadays

thinks and feels, to remember a well-worn sentence of St. Jerome’s: If

an offense come out of the truth, better it is that the offense come

than that the truth be concealed.

T.H.

_November_ 1891.

Author’s Preface to the Fifth and Later Editions

This novel being one wherein the great campaign of the heroine begins

after an event in her experience which has usually been treated as

fatal to her part of protagonist, or at least as the virtual ending of

her enterprises and hopes, it was quite contrary to avowed conventions

that the public should welcome the book and agree with me in holding

that there was something more to be said in fiction than had been said

about the shaded side of a well-known catastrophe. But the responsive

spirit in which _Tess of the d’Urbervilles_ has been received by the

readers of England and America would seem to prove that the plan of

laying down a story on the lines of tacit opinion, instead of making it

to square with the merely vocal formulae of society, is not altogether

a wrong one, even when exemplified in so unequal and partial an

achievement as the present. For this responsiveness I cannot refrain

from expressing my thanks; and my regret is that, in a world where one

so often hungers in vain for friendship, where even not to be wilfully

misunderstood is felt as a kindness, I shall never meet in person these

appreciative readers, male and female, and shake them by the hand.

I include amongst them the reviewers—by far the majority—who have so

generously welcomed the tale. Their words show that they, like the

others, have only too largely repaired my defects of narration by their

own imaginative intuition.

Nevertheless, though the novel was intended to be neither didactic nor

aggressive, but in the scenic parts to be representative simply and in

the contemplative to be oftener charged with impressions than with

convictions, there have been objectors both to the matter and to the

rendering.

The more austere of these maintain a conscientious difference of

opinion concerning, among other things, subjects fit for art, and

reveal an inability to associate the idea of the sub-title adjective

with any but the artificial and derivative meaning which has resulted

to it from the ordinances of civilization. They ignore the meaning of

the word in Nature, together with all aesthetic claims upon it, not to

mention the spiritual interpretation afforded by the finest side of

their own Christianity. Others dissent on grounds which are

intrinsically no more than an assertion that the novel embodies the

views of life prevalent at the end of the nineteenth century, and not

those of an earlier and simpler generation—an assertion which I can

only hope may be well founded. Let me repeat that a novel is an

impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest; as one is

reminded by a passage which occurs in the letters of Schiller to Goethe

on judges of this class: “They are those who seek only their own ideas

in a representation, and prize that which should be as higher than what

is. The cause of the dispute, therefore, lies in the very first

principles, and it would be utterly impossible to come to an

understanding with them.” And again: “As soon as I observe that any

one, when judging of poetical representations, considers anything more

important than the inner Necessity and Truth, I have done with him.”

In the introductory words to the first edition I suggested the possible

advent of the genteel person who would not be able to endure something

or other in these pages. That person duly appeared among the aforesaid

objectors. In one case he felt upset that it was not possible for him

to read the book through three times, owing to my not having made that

critical effort which “alone can prove the salvation of such an one.”

In another, he objected to such vulgar articles as the Devil’s

pitchfork, a lodging-house carving-knife, and a shame-bought parasol,

appearing in a respectable story. In another place he was a gentleman

who turned Christian for half-an-hour the better to express his grief

that a disrespectful phrase about the Immortals should have been used;

though the same innate gentility compelled him to excuse the author in

words of pity that one cannot be too thankful for: “He does but give us

of his best.” I can assure this great critic that to exclaim

illogically against the gods, singular or plural, is not such an

original sin of mine as he seems to imagine. True, it may have some

local originality; though if Shakespeare were an authority on history,

which perhaps he is not, I could show that the sin was introduced into

Wessex as early as the Heptarchy itself. Says Glo’ster in _Lear_,

otherwise Ina, king of that country:

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;

They kill us for their sport.

The remaining two or three manipulators of Tess were of the

predetermined sort whom most writers and readers would gladly forget;

professed literary boxers, who put on their convictions for the

occasion; modern “Hammers of Heretics”; sworn Discouragers, ever on the

watch to prevent the tentative half-success from becoming the whole

success later on; who pervert plain meanings, and grow personal under

the name of practising the great historical method. However, they may

have causes to advance, privileges to guard, traditions to keep going;

some of which a mere tale-teller, who writes down how the things of the

world strike him, without any ulterior intentions whatever, has

overlooked, and may by pure inadvertence have run foul of when in the

least aggressive mood. Perhaps some passing perception, the outcome of

a dream hour, would, if generally acted on, cause such an assailant

considerable inconvenience with respect to position, interests, family,

servant, ox, ass, neighbour, or neighbour’s wife. He therefore

valiantly hides his personality behind a publisher’s shutters, and

cries “Shame!” So densely is the world with any shifting of positions,

even the best warranted advance, galls somebody’s kibe. Such shiftings

often begin in sentiment, and such sentiment sometimes begins in a

novel.

_July_ 1892.

The foregoing remarks were written during the early career of this

story, when a spirited public and private criticism of its points was

still fresh to the feelings. The pages are allowed to stand for what

they are worth, as something once said; but probably they would not

have been written now. Even in the first short time which has elapsed

since the book was first published, some of the critics who have

provoked the reply have “gone down into silence,” as if to remind one

of the infinite unimportance of both their say and mine.

_January_ 1895.

The present edition of this novel contains a few pages that have never

appeared in any previous edition. When the detached episodes were

collected as stated in the preface of 1891, these pages were

overlooked, though they were in the original manuscript. They occur in

Chapter X.

Respecting the sub-title, to which allusion was made above, I may add

that it was appended at the last moment, after reading the final

proofs, as being the estimate left in a candid mind of the heroine’s

character—an estimate that nobody would be likely to dispute. It was

disputed more than anything else in the book. _Melius fuerat non

scibere._ But there it stands.

The novel was first published complete, in three volumes, in November,

1891.

T.H.

_March_ 1912.

Phase the First:

The Maiden

I

On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking

homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale

of Blakemore, or Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were

rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat

to the left of a straight line. He occasionally gave a smart nod, as if

in confirmation of some opinion, though he was not thinking of anything

in particular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon his arm, the nap of

his hat was ruffled, a patch being quite worn away at its brim where

his thumb came in taking it off. Presently he was met by an elderly

parson astride on a gray mare, who, as he rode, hummed a wandering

tune.

“Good night t’ee,” said the man with the basket.

“Good night, Sir John,” said the parson.

The pedestrian, after another pace or two, halted, and turned round.

“Now, sir, begging your pardon; we met last market-day on this road

about this time, and I said ‘Good night,’ and you made reply ‘_Good

night, Sir John_,’ as now.”

“I did,” said the parson.

“And once before that—near a month ago.”

“I may have.”

“Then what might your meaning be in calling me ‘Sir John’ these

different times, when I be plain Jack Durbeyfield, the haggler?”

The parson rode a step or two nearer.

“It was only my whim,” he said; and, after a moment’s hesitation: “It

was on account of a discovery I made some little time ago, whilst I was

hunting up pedigrees for the new county history. I am Parson Tringham,

the antiquary, of Stagfoot Lane. Don’t you really know, Durbeyfield,

that you are the lineal representative of the ancient and knightly

family of the d’Urbervilles, who derive their descent from Sir Pagan

d’Urberville, that renowned knight who came from Normandy with William

the Conqueror, as appears by Battle Abbey Roll?”

“Never heard it before, sir!”

“Well it’s true. Throw up your chin a moment, so that I may catch the

profile of your face better. Yes, that’s the d’Urberville nose and

chin—a little debased. Your ancestor was one of the twelve knights who

assisted the Lord of Estremavilla in Normandy in his conquest of

Glamorganshire. Branches of your family held manors over all this part

of England; their names appear in the Pipe Rolls in the time of King

Stephen. In the reign of King John one of them was rich enough to give

a manor to the Knights Hospitallers; and in Edward the Second’s time

your forefather Brian was summoned to Westminster to attend the great

Council there. You declined a little in Oliver Cromwell’s time, but to

no serious extent, and in Charles the Second’s reign you were made

Knights of the Royal Oak for your loyalty. Aye, there have been

generations of Sir Johns among you, and if knighthood were hereditary,

like a baronetcy, as it practically was in old times, when men were

knighted from father to son, you would be Sir John now.”

“Ye don’t say so!”

“In short,” concluded the parson, decisively smacking his leg with his

switch, “there’s hardly such another family in England.”

“Daze my eyes, and isn’t there?” said Durbeyfield. “And here have I

been knocking about, year after year, from pillar to post, as if I was

no more than the commonest feller in the parish.... And how long hev

this news about me been knowed, Pa’son Tringham?”

The clergyman explained that, as far as he was aware, it had quite died

out of knowledge, and could hardly be said to be known at all. His own

investigations had begun on a day in the preceding spring when, having

been engaged in tracing the vicissitudes of the d’Urberville family, he

had observed Durbeyfield’s name on his waggon, and had thereupon been

led to make inquiries about his father and grandfather till he had no

doubt on the subject.

“At first I resolved not to disturb you with such a useless piece of

information,” said he. “However, our impulses are too strong for our

judgement sometimes. I thought you might perhaps know something of it

all the while.”

“Well, I have heard once or twice, ’tis true, that my family had seen

better days afore they came to Blackmoor. But I took no notice o’t,

thinking it to mean that we had once kept two horses where we now keep

only one. I’ve got a wold silver spoon, and a wold graven seal at home,

too; but, Lord, what’s a spoon and seal?... And to think that I and

these noble d’Urbervilles were one flesh all the time. ’Twas said that

my gr’t-granfer had secrets, and didn’t care to talk of where he came

from.... And where do we raise our smoke, now, parson, if I may make so

bold; I mean, where do we d’Urbervilles live?”

“You don’t live anywhere. You are extinct—as a county family.”

“That’s bad.”

“Yes—what the mendacious family chronicles call extinct in the male

line—that is, gone down—gone under.”

“Then where do we lie?”

“At Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill: rows and rows of you in your vaults, with

your effigies under Purbeck-marble canopies.”

“And where be our family mansions and estates?”

“You haven’t any.”

“Oh? No lands neither?”

“None; though you once had ’em in abundance, as I said, for your family

consisted of numerous branches. In this county there was a seat of

yours at Kingsbere, and another at Sherton, and another in Millpond,

and another at Lullstead, and another at Wellbridge.”

“And shall we ever come into our own again?”

“Ah—that I can’t tell!”

“And what had I better do about it, sir?” asked Durbeyfield, after a

pause.

“Oh—nothing, nothing; except chasten yourself with the thought of ‘how

are the mighty fallen.’ It is a fact of some interest to the local

historian and genealogist, nothing more. There are several families

among the cottagers of this county of almost equal lustre. Good night.”

“But you’ll turn back and have a quart of beer wi’ me on the strength

o’t, Pa’son Tringham? There’s a very pretty brew in tap at The Pure

Drop—though, to be sure, not so good as at Rolliver’s.”

“No, thank you—not this evening, Durbeyfield. You’ve had enough

already.” Concluding thus, the parson rode on his way, with doubts as

to his discretion in retailing this curious bit of lore.

When he was gone, Durbeyfield walked a few steps in a profound reverie,

and then sat down upon the grassy bank by the roadside, depositing his

basket before him. In a few minutes a youth appeared in the distance,

walking in the same direction as that which had been pursued by

Durbeyfield. The latter, on seeing him, held up his hand, and the lad

quickened his pace and came near.

“Boy, take up that basket! I want ’ee to go on an errand for me.”

The lath-like stripling frowned. “Who be you, then, John Durbeyfield,

to order me about and call me ‘boy’? You know my name as well as I know

yours!”

“Do you, do you? That’s the secret—that’s the secret! Now obey my

orders, and take the message I’m going to charge ’ee wi’... Well, Fred,

I don’t mind telling you that the secret is that I’m one of a noble

race—it has been just found out by me this present afternoon, p.m.” And

as he made the announcement, Durbeyfield, declining from his sitting

position, luxuriously stretched himself out upon the bank among the

daisies.

The lad stood before Durbeyfield, and contemplated his length from

crown to toe.

“Sir John d’Urberville—that’s who I am,” continued the prostrate man.

“That is if knights were baronets—which they be. ’Tis recorded in

history all about me. Dost know of such a place, lad, as

Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill?”

“Ees. I’ve been there to Greenhill Fair.”

“Well, under the church of that city there lie—”

“’Tisn’t a city, the place I mean; leastwise ’twaddn’ when I was

there—’twas a little one-eyed, blinking sort o’ place.”

“Never you mind the place, boy, that’s not the question before us.

Under the church of that there parish lie my ancestors—hundreds of

’em—in coats of mail and jewels, in gr’t lead coffins weighing tons and

tons. There’s not a man in the county o’ South-Wessex that’s got

grander and nobler skillentons in his family than I.”

“Oh?”

“Now take up that basket, and goo on to Marlott, and when you’ve come

to The Pure Drop Inn, tell ’em to send a horse and carriage to me

immed’ately, to carry me hwome. And in the bottom o’ the carriage they

be to put a noggin o’ rum in a small bottle, and chalk it up to my

account. And when you’ve done that goo on to my house with the basket,

and tell my wife to put away that washing, because she needn’t finish

it, and wait till I come hwome, as I’ve news to tell her.”

As the lad stood in a dubious attitude, Durbeyfield put his hand in his

pocket, and produced a shilling, one of the chronically few that he

possessed.

“Here’s for your labour, lad.”

This made a difference in the young man’s estimate of the position.

“Yes, Sir John. Thank ’ee. Anything else I can do for ’ee, Sir John?”

“Tell ’em at hwome that I should like for supper,—well, lamb’s fry if

they can get it; and if they can’t, black-pot; and if they can’t get

that, well chitterlings will do.”

“Yes, Sir John.”

The boy took up the basket, and as he set out the notes of a brass band

were heard from the direction of the village.

“What’s that?” said Durbeyfield. “Not on account o’ I?”

“’Tis the women’s club-walking, Sir John. Why, your da’ter is one o’

the members.”

“To be sure—I’d quite forgot it in my thoughts of greater things! Well,

vamp on to Marlott, will ye, and order that carriage, and maybe I’ll

drive round and inspect the club.”

The lad departed, and Durbeyfield lay waiting on the grass and daisies

in the evening sun. Not a soul passed that way for a long while, and

the faint notes of the band were the only human sounds audible within

the rim of blue hills.

II

The village of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the

beautiful Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor, aforesaid, an engirdled and

secluded region, for the most part untrodden as yet by tourist or

landscape-painter, though within a four hours’ journey from London.

It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made by viewing it from the

summits of the hills that surround it—except perhaps during the

droughts of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather

is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous, and miry

ways.

This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are

never brown and the springs never dry, is bounded on the south by the

bold chalk ridge that embraces the prominences of Hambledon Hill,

Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, and Bubb Down. The

traveller from the coast, who, after plodding northward for a score of

miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the verge

of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted to behold,

extended like a map beneath him, a country differing absolutely from

that which he has passed through. Behind him the hills are open, the

sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed character

to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the

atmosphere colourless. Here, in the valley, the world seems to be

constructed upon a smaller and more delicate scale; the fields are mere

paddocks, so reduced that from this height their hedgerows appear a

network of dark green threads overspreading the paler green of the

grass. The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with

azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that

hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Arable

lands are few and limited; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a

broad rich mass of grass and trees, mantling minor hills and dales

within the major. Such is the Vale of Blackmoor.

The district is of historic, no less than of topographical interest.

The Vale was known in former times as the Forest of White Hart, from a

curious legend of King Henry III’s reign, in which the killing by a

certain Thomas de la Lynd of a beautiful white hart which the king had

run down and spared, was made the occasion of a heavy fine. In those

days, and till comparatively recent times, the country was densely

wooded. Even now, traces of its earlier condition are to be found in

the old oak copses and irregular belts of timber that yet survive upon

its slopes, and the hollow-trunked trees that shade so many of its

pastures.

The forests have departed, but some old customs of their shades remain.

Many, however, linger only in a metamorphosed or disguised form. The

May-Day dance, for instance, was to be discerned on the afternoon under

notice, in the guise of the club revel, or “club-walking,” as it was

there called.

It was an interesting event to the younger inhabitants of Marlott,

though its real interest was not observed by the participators in the

ceremony. Its singularity lay less in the retention of a custom of

walking in procession and dancing on each anniversary than in the

members being solely women. In men’s clubs such celebrations were,

though expiring, less uncommon; but either the natural shyness of the

softer sex, or a sarcastic attitude on the part of male relatives, had

denuded such women’s clubs as remained (if any other did) of this their

glory and consummation. The club of Marlott alone lived to uphold the

local Cerealia. It had walked for hundreds of years, if not as

benefit-club, as votive sisterhood of some sort; and it walked still.

The banded ones were all dressed in white gowns—a gay survival from Old

Style days, when cheerfulness and May-time were synonyms—days before

the habit of taking long views had reduced emotions to a monotonous

average. Their first exhibition of themselves was in a processional

march of two and two round the parish. Ideal and real clashed slightly

as the sun lit up their figures against the green hedges and

creeper-laced house-fronts; for, though the whole troop wore white

garments, no two whites were alike among them. Some approached pure

blanching; some had a bluish pallor; some worn by the older characters

(which had possibly lain by folded for many a year) inclined to a

cadaverous tint, and to a Georgian style.

In addition to the distinction of a white frock, every woman and girl

carried in her right hand a peeled willow wand, and in her left a bunch

of white flowers. The peeling of the former, and the selection of the

latter, had been an operation of personal care.

There were a few middle-aged and even elderly women in the train, their

silver-wiry hair and wrinkled faces, scourged by time and trouble,

having almost a grotesque, certainly a pathetic, appearance in such a

jaunty situation. In a true view, perhaps, there was more to be

gathered and told of each anxious and experienced one, to whom the

years were drawing nigh when she should say, “I have no pleasure in

them,” than of her juvenile comrades. But let the elder be passed over

here for those under whose bodices the life throbbed quick and warm.

The young girls formed, indeed, the majority of the band, and their

heads of luxuriant hair reflected in the sunshine every tone of gold,

and black, and brown. Some had beautiful eyes, others a beautiful nose,

others a beautiful mouth and figure: few, if any, had all. A difficulty

of arranging their lips in this crude exposure to public scrutiny, an

inability to balance their heads, and to dissociate self-consciousness

from their features, was apparent in them, and showed that they were

genuine country girls, unaccustomed to many eyes.

And as each and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each had

a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some

affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which,

though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will. They

were all cheerful, and many of them merry.

They came round by The Pure Drop Inn, and were turning out of the high

road to pass through a wicket-gate into the meadows, when one of the

women said—

“The Load-a-Lord! Why, Tess Durbeyfield, if there isn’t thy father

riding hwome in a carriage!”

A young member of the band turned her head at the exclamation. She was

a fine and handsome girl—not handsomer than some others, possibly—but

her mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes added eloquence to

colour and shape. She wore a red ribbon in her hair, and was the only

one of the white company who could boast of such a pronounced

adornment. As she looked round Durbeyfield was seen moving along the

road in a chaise belonging to The Pure Drop, driven by a frizzle-headed

brawny damsel with her gown-sleeves rolled above her elbows. This was

the cheerful servant of that establishment, who, in her part of

factotum, turned groom and ostler at times. Durbeyfield, leaning back,

and with his eyes closed luxuriously, was waving his hand above his

head, and singing in a slow recitative—

“I’ve-got-a-gr’t-family-vault-at-Kingsbere—and

knighted-forefathers-in-lead-coffins-there!”

The clubbists tittered, except the girl called Tess—in whom a slow heat

seemed to rise at the sense that her father was making himself foolish

in their eyes.

“He’s tired, that’s all,” she said hastily, “and he has got a lift

home, because our own horse has to rest to-day.”

“Bless thy simplicity, Tess,” said her companions. “He’s got his

market-nitch. Haw-haw!”

“Look here; I won’t walk another inch with you, if you say any jokes

about him!” Tess cried, and the colour upon her cheeks spread over her

face and neck. In a moment her eyes grew moist, and her glance drooped

to the ground. Perceiving that they had really pained her they said no

more, and order again prevailed. Tess’s pride would not allow her to

turn her head again, to learn what her father’s meaning was, if he had

any; and thus she moved on with the whole body to the enclosure where

there was to be dancing on the green. By the time the spot was reached

she had recovered her equanimity, and tapped her neighbour with her

wand and talked as usual.

Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of emotion

untinctured by experience. The dialect was on her tongue to some

extent, despite the village school: the characteristic intonation of

that dialect for this district being the voicing approximately rendered

by the syllable UR, probably as rich an utterance as any to be found in

human speech. The pouted-up deep red mouth to which this syllable was

native had hardly as yet settled into its definite shape, and her lower

lip had a way of thrusting the middle of her top one upward, when they

closed together after a word.

Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still. As she walked along

to-day, for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could sometimes

see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her

eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now

and then.

Yet few knew, and still fewer considered this. A small minority, mainly

strangers, would look long at her in casually passing by, and grow

momentarily fascinated by her freshness, and wonder if they would ever

see her again: but to almost everybody she was a fine and picturesque

country girl, and no more.

Nothing was seen or heard further of Durbeyfield in his triumphal

chariot under the conduct of the ostleress, and the club having entered

the allotted space, dancing began. As there were no men in the company,

the girls danced at first with each other, but when the hour for the

close of labour drew on, the masculine inhabitants of the village,

together with other idlers and pedestrians, gathered round the spot,

and appeared inclined to negotiate for a partner.

Among these on-lookers were three young men of a superior class,

carrying small knapsacks strapped to their shoulders, and stout sticks

in their hands. Their general likeness to each other, and their

consecutive ages, would almost have suggested that they might be, what

in fact they were, brothers. The eldest wore the white tie, high

waistcoat, and thin-brimmed hat of the regulation curate; the second

was the normal undergraduate; the appearance of the third and youngest

would hardly have been sufficient to characterize him; there was an

uncribbed, uncabined aspect in his eyes and attire, implying that he

had hardly as yet found the entrance to his professional groove. That

he was a desultory tentative student of something and everything might

only have been predicted of him.

These three brethren told casual acquaintance that they were spending

their Whitsun holidays in a walking tour through the Vale of Blackmoor,

their course being south-westerly from the town of Shaston on the

north-east.

They leant over the gate by the highway, and inquired as to the meaning

of the dance and the white-frocked maids. The two elder of the brothers

were plainly not intending to linger more than a moment, but the

spectacle of a bevy of girls dancing without male partners seemed to

amuse the third, and make him in no hurry to move on. He unstrapped his

knapsack, put it, with his stick, on the hedge-bank, and opened the

gate.

“What are you going to do, Angel?” asked the eldest.

“I am inclined to go and have a fling with them. Why not all of us—just

for a minute or two—it will not detain us long?”

“No—no; nonsense!” said the first. “Dancing in public with a troop of

country hoydens—suppose we should be seen! Come along, or it will be

dark before we get to Stourcastle, and there’s no place we can sleep at

nearer than that; besides, we must get through another chapter of _A

Counterblast to Agnosticism_ before we turn in, now I have taken the

trouble to bring the book.”

“All right—I’ll overtake you and Cuthbert in five minutes; don’t stop;

I give my word that I will, Felix.”

The two elder reluctantly left him and walked on, taking their

brother’s knapsack to relieve him in following, and the youngest

entered the field.

“This is a thousand pities,” he said gallantly, to two or three of the

girls nearest him, as soon as there was a pause in the dance. “Where

are your partners, my dears?”

“They’ve not left off work yet,” answered one of the boldest. “They’ll

be here by and by. Till then, will you be one, sir?”

“Certainly. But what’s one among so many!”

“Better than none. ’Tis melancholy work facing and footing it to one of

your own sort, and no clipsing and colling at all. Now, pick and

choose.”

“’Ssh—don’t be so for’ard!” said a shyer girl.

The young man, thus invited, glanced them over, and attempted some

discrimination; but, as the group were all so new to him, he could not

very well exercise it. He took almost the first that came to hand,

which was not the speaker, as she had expected; nor did it happen to be

Tess Durbeyfield. Pedigree, ancestral skeletons, monumental record, the

d’Urberville lineaments, did not help Tess in her life’s battle as yet,

even to the extent of attracting to her a dancing-partner over the

heads of the commonest peasantry. So much for Norman blood unaided by

Victorian lucre.

The name of the eclipsing girl, whatever it was, has not been handed

down; but she was envied by all as the first who enjoyed the luxury of

a masculine partner that evening. Yet such was the force of example

that the village young men, who had not hastened to enter the gate

while no intruder was in the way, now dropped in quickly, and soon the

couples became leavened with rustic youth to a marked extent, till at

length the plainest woman in the club was no longer compelled to foot

it on the masculine side of the figure.

The church clock struck, when suddenly the student said that he must

leave—he had been forgetting himself—he had to join his companions. As

he fell out of the dance his eyes lighted on Tess Durbeyfield, whose

own large orbs wore, to tell the truth, the faintest aspect of reproach

that he had not chosen her. He, too, was sorry then that, owing to her

backwardness, he had not observed her; and with that in his mind he

left the pasture.

On account of his long delay he started in a flying-run down the lane

westward, and had soon passed the hollow and mounted the next rise. He

had not yet overtaken his brothers, but he paused to get breath, and

looked back. He could see the white figures of the girls in the green

enclosure whirling about as they had whirled when he was among them.

They seemed to have quite forgotten him already.

All of them, except, perhaps, one. This white shape stood apart by the

hedge alone. From her position he knew it to be the pretty maiden with

whom he had not danced. Trifling as the matter was, he yet

instinctively felt that she was hurt by his oversight. He wished that

he had asked her; he wished that he had inquired her name. She was so

modest, so expressive, she had looked so soft in her thin white gown

that he felt he had acted stupidly.

However, it could not be helped, and turning, and bending himself to a

rapid walk, he dismissed the subject from his mind.

III

As for Tess Durbeyfield, she did not so easily dislodge the incident

from her consideration. She had no spirit to dance again for a long

time, though she might have had plenty of partners; but ah! they did

not speak so nicely as the strange young man had done. It was not till

the rays of the sun had absorbed the young stranger’s retreating figure

on the hill that she shook off her temporary sadness and answered her

would-be partner in the affirmative.

She remained with her comrades till dusk, and participated with a

certain zest in the dancing; though, being heart-whole as yet, she

enjoyed treading a measure purely for its own sake; little divining

when she saw “the soft torments, the bitter sweets, the pleasing pains,

and the agreeable distresses” of those girls who had been wooed and

won, what she herself was capable of in that kind. The struggles and

wrangles of the lads for her hand in a jig were an amusement to her—no

more; and when they became fierce she rebuked them.

She might have stayed even later, but the incident of her father’s odd

appearance and manner returned upon the girl’s mind to make her

anxious, and wondering what had become of him she dropped away from the

dancers and bent her steps towards the end of the village at which the

parental cottage lay.

While yet many score yards off, other rhythmic sounds than those she

had quitted became audible to her; sounds that she knew well—so well.

They were a regular series of thumpings from the interior of the house,

occasioned by the violent rocking of a cradle upon a stone floor, to

which movement a feminine voice kept time by singing, in a vigorous

gallopade, the favourite ditty of “The Spotted Cow”—

I saw her lie do′-own in yon′-der green gro′-ove;

Come, love!′ and I'll tell′ you where!′

The cradle-rocking and the song would cease simultaneously for a

moment, and an exclamation at highest vocal pitch would take the place

of the melody.

“God bless thy diment eyes! And thy waxen cheeks! And thy cherry mouth!

And thy Cubit’s thighs! And every bit o’ thy blessed body!”

After this invocation the rocking and the singing would recommence, and

the “Spotted Cow” proceed as before. So matters stood when Tess opened

the door and paused upon the mat within it, surveying the scene.

The interior, in spite of the melody, struck upon the girl’s senses

with an unspeakable dreariness. From the holiday gaieties of the

field—the white gowns, the nosegays, the willow-wands, the whirling

movements on the green, the flash of gentle sentiment towards the

stranger—to the yellow melancholy of this one-candled spectacle, what a

step! Besides the jar of contrast there came to her a chill

self-reproach that she had not returned sooner, to help her mother in

these domesticities, instead of indulging herself out-of-doors.

There stood her mother amid the group of children, as Tess had left

her, hanging over the Monday washing-tub, which had now, as always,

lingered on to the end of the week. Out of that tub had come the day

before—Tess felt it with a dreadful sting of remorse—the very white

frock upon her back which she had so carelessly greened about the skirt

on the damping grass—which had been wrung up and ironed by her mother’s

own hands.

As usual, Mrs Durbeyfield was balanced on one foot beside the tub, the

other being engaged in the aforesaid business of rocking her youngest

child. The cradle-rockers had done hard duty for so many years, under

the weight of so many children, on that flagstone floor, that they were

worn nearly flat, in consequence of which a huge jerk accompanied each

swing of the cot, flinging the baby from side to side like a weaver’s

shuttle, as Mrs Durbeyfield, excited by her song, trod the rocker with

all the spring that was left in her after a long day’s seething in the

suds.

Nick-knock, nick-knock, went the cradle; the candle-flame stretched

itself tall, and began jigging up and down; the water dribbled from the

matron’s elbows, and the song galloped on to the end of the verse, Mrs

Durbeyfield regarding her daughter the while. Even now, when burdened

with a young family, Joan Durbeyfield was a passionate lover of tune.

No ditty floated into Blackmoor Vale from the outer world but Tess’s

mother caught up its notation in a week.

There still faintly beamed from the woman’s features something of the

freshness, and even the prettiness, of her youth; rendering it probable

that the personal charms which Tess could boast of were in main part

her mother’s gift, and therefore unknightly, unhistorical.

“I’ll rock the cradle for ’ee, mother,” said the daughter gently. “Or

I’ll take off my best frock and help you wring up? I thought you had

finished long ago.”

Her mother bore Tess no ill-will for leaving the housework to her

single-handed efforts for so long; indeed, Joan seldom upbraided her

thereon at any time, feeling but slightly the lack of Tess’s assistance

whilst her instinctive plan for relieving herself of her labours lay in

postponing them. To-night, however, she was even in a blither mood than

usual. There was a dreaminess, a pre-occupation, an exaltation, in the

maternal look which the girl could not understand.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve come,” her mother said, as soon as the last note

had passed out of her. “I want to go and fetch your father; but what’s

more’n that, I want to tell ’ee what have happened. Y’ll be fess

enough, my poppet, when th’st know!” (Mrs Durbeyfield habitually spoke

the dialect; her daughter, who had passed the Sixth Standard in the

National School under a London-trained mistress, spoke two languages:

the dialect at home, more or less; ordinary English abroad and to

persons of quality.)

“Since I’ve been away?” Tess asked.

“Ay!”

“Had it anything to do with father’s making such a mommet of himself in

thik carriage this afternoon? Why did ’er? I felt inclined to sink into

the ground with shame!”

“That wer all a part of the larry! We’ve been found to be the greatest

gentlefolk in the whole county—reaching all back long before Oliver

Grumble’s time—to the days of the Pagan Turks—with monuments, and

vaults, and crests, and ’scutcheons, and the Lord knows what all. In

Saint Charles’s days we was made Knights o’ the Royal Oak, our real

name being d’Urberville!... Don’t that make your bosom plim? ’Twas on

this account that your father rode home in the vlee; not because he’d

been drinking, as people supposed.”

“I’m glad of that. Will it do us any good, mother?”

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

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

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

Shaston, and he has been telling me the whole pedigree of the matter.”

“Where is father now?” asked Tess suddenly.

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

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

seems. It is fat round his heart, ’a says. There, it is like this.”

Joan Durbeyfield, as she spoke, curved a sodden thumb and forefinger to

the shape of the letter C, and used the other forefinger as a pointer.

“‘At the present moment,’ he says to your father, ‘your heart is

enclosed all round there, and all round there; this space is still

open,’ ’a says. ‘As soon as it do meet, so,’”—Mrs Durbeyfield closed

her fingers into a circle complete—“‘off you will go like a shadder, Mr

Durbeyfield,’ ’a says. ‘You mid last ten years; you mid go off in ten

months, or ten days.’”

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

so soon, notwithstanding this sudden greatness!

“But where _is_ father?” she asked again.

Her mother put on a deprecating look. “Now don’t you be bursting out

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

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

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

beehives, which must be delivered, family or no. He’ll have to start

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

“Get up his strength!” said Tess impetuously, the tears welling to her

eyes. “O my God! Go to a public-house to get up his strength! And you

as well agreed as he, mother!”

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

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

and to her mother’s face.

“No,” said the latter touchily, “I be not agreed. I have been waiting

for ’ee to bide and keep house while I go fetch him.”

“I’ll go.”

“O no, Tess. You see, it would be no use.”

Tess did not expostulate. She knew what her mother’s objection meant.

Mrs Durbeyfield’s jacket and bonnet were already hanging slily upon a

chair by her side, in readiness for this contemplated jaunt, the reason

for which the matron deplored more than its necessity.

“And take the _Compleat Fortune-Teller_ to the outhouse,” Joan

continued, rapidly wiping her hands, and donning the garments.

The _Compleat Fortune-Teller_ was an old thick volume, which lay on a

table at her elbow, so worn by pocketing that the margins had reached

the edge of the type. Tess took it up, and her mother started.

This going to hunt up her shiftless husband at the inn was one of Mrs

Durbeyfield’s still extant enjoyments in the muck and muddle of rearing

children. To discover him at Rolliver’s, to sit there for an hour or

two by his side and dismiss all thought and care of the children during

the interval, made her happy. A sort of halo, an occidental glow, came

over life then. Troubles and other realities took on themselves a

metaphysical impalpability, sinking to mere mental phenomena for serene

contemplation, and no longer stood as pressing concretions which chafed

body and soul. The youngsters, not immediately within sight, seemed

rather bright and desirable appurtenances than otherwise; the incidents

of daily life were not without humorousness and jollity in their aspect

there. She felt a little as she had used to feel when she sat by her

now wedded husband in the same spot during his wooing, shutting her

eyes to his defects of character, and regarding him only in his ideal

presentation as lover.

Tess, being left alone with the younger children, went first to the

outhouse with the fortune-telling book, and stuffed it into the thatch.

A curious fetishistic fear of this grimy volume on the part of her

mother prevented her ever allowing it to stay in the house all night,

and hither it was brought back whenever it had been consulted. Between

the mother, with her fast-perishing lumber of superstitions, folk-lore,

dialect, and orally transmitted ballads, and the daughter, with her

trained National teachings and Standard knowledge under an infinitely

Revised Code, there was a gap of two hundred years as ordinarily

understood. When they were together the Jacobean and the Victorian ages

were juxtaposed.

Returning along the garden path Tess mused on what the mother could

have wished to ascertain from the book on this particular day. She

guessed the recent ancestral discovery to bear upon it, but did not

divine that it solely concerned herself. Dismissing this, however, she

busied herself with sprinkling the linen dried during the day-time, in

company with her nine-year-old brother Abraham, and her sister

Eliza-Louisa of twelve and a half, called “’Liza-Lu,” the youngest ones

being put to bed. There was an interval of four years and more between

Tess and the next of the family, the two who had filled the gap having

died in their infancy, and this lent her a deputy-maternal attitude

when she was alone with her juniors. Next in juvenility to Abraham came

two more girls, Hope and Modesty; then a boy of three, and then the

baby, who had just completed his first year.

All these young souls were passengers in the Durbeyfield ship—entirely

dependent on the judgement of the two Durbeyfield adults for their

pleasures, their necessities, their health, even their existence. If

the heads of the Durbeyfield household chose to sail into difficulty,

disaster, starvation, disease, degradation, death, thither were these

half-dozen little captives under hatches compelled to sail with

them—six helpless creatures, who had never been asked if they wished

for life on any terms, much less if they wished for it on such hard

conditions as were involved in being of the shiftless house of

Durbeyfield. Some people would like to know whence the poet whose

philosophy is in these days deemed as profound and trustworthy as his

song is breezy and pure, gets his authority for speaking of “Nature’s

holy plan.”

It grew later, and neither father nor mother reappeared. Tess looked

out of the door, and took a mental journey through Marlott. The village

was shutting its eyes. Candles and lamps were being put out everywhere:

she could inwardly behold the extinguisher and the extended hand.

Her mother’s fetching simply meant one more to fetch. Tess began to

perceive that a man in indifferent health, who proposed to start on a

journey before one in the morning, ought not to be at an inn at this

late hour celebrating his ancient blood.

“Abraham,” she said to her little brother, “do you put on your hat—you

bain’t afraid?—and go up to Rolliver’s, and see what has gone wi’

father and mother.”

The boy jumped promptly from his seat, and opened the door, and the

night swallowed him up. Half an hour passed yet again; neither man,

woman, nor child returned. Abraham, like his parents, seemed to have

been limed and caught by the ensnaring inn.

“I must go myself,” she said.

’Liza-Lu then went to bed, and Tess, locking them all in, started on

her way up the dark and crooked lane or street not made for hasty

progress; a street laid out before inches of land had value, and when

one-handed clocks sufficiently subdivided the day.

IV

Rolliver’s inn, the single alehouse at this end of the long and broken

village, could only boast of an off-licence; hence, as nobody could

legally drink on the premises, the amount of overt accommodation for

consumers was strictly limited to a little board about six inches wide

and two yards long, fixed to the garden palings by pieces of wire, so

as to form a ledge. On this board thirsty strangers deposited their

cups as they stood in the road and drank, and threw the dregs on the

dusty ground to the pattern of Polynesia, and wished they could have a

restful seat inside.

Thus the strangers. But there were also local customers who felt the

same wish; and where there’s a will there’s a way.

In a large bedroom upstairs, the window of which was thickly curtained

with a great woollen shawl lately discarded by the landlady, Mrs

Rolliver, were gathered on this evening nearly a dozen persons, all

seeking beatitude; all old inhabitants of the nearer end of Marlott,

and frequenters of this retreat. Not only did the distance to the The

Pure Drop, the fully-licensed tavern at the further part of the

dispersed village, render its accommodation practically unavailable for

dwellers at this end; but the far more serious question, the quality of

the liquor, confirmed the prevalent opinion that it was better to drink

with Rolliver in a corner of the housetop than with the other landlord

in a wide house.

A gaunt four-post bedstead which stood in the room afforded

sitting-space for several persons gathered round three of its sides; a

couple more men had elevated themselves on a chest of drawers; another

rested on the oak-carved “cwoffer”; two on the wash-stand; another on

the stool; and thus all were, somehow, seated at their ease. The stage

of mental comfort to which they had arrived at this hour was one

wherein their souls expanded beyond their skins, and spread their

personalities warmly through the room. In this process the chamber and

its furniture grew more and more dignified and luxurious; the shawl

hanging at the window took upon itself the richness of tapestry; the

brass handles of the chest of drawers were as golden knockers; and the

carved bedposts seemed to have some kinship with the magnificent

pillars of Solomon’s temple.

Mrs Durbeyfield, having quickly walked hitherward after parting from

Tess, opened the front door, crossed the downstairs room, which was in

deep gloom, and then unfastened the stair-door like one whose fingers

knew the tricks of the latches well. Her ascent of the crooked

staircase was a slower process, and her face, as it rose into the light

above the last stair, encountered the gaze of all the party assembled

in the bedroom.

“—Being a few private friends I’ve asked in to keep up club-walking at

my own expense,” the landlady exclaimed at the sound of footsteps, as

glibly as a child repeating the Catechism, while she peered over the

stairs. “Oh, ’tis you, Mrs Durbeyfield—Lard—how you frightened me!—I

thought it might be some gaffer sent by Gover’ment.”

Mrs Durbeyfield was welcomed with glances and nods by the remainder of

the conclave, and turned to where her husband sat. He was humming

absently to himself, in a low tone: “I be as good as some folks here

and there! I’ve got a great family vault at Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill,

and finer skillentons than any man in Wessex!”

“I’ve something to tell ’ee that’s come into my head about that—a grand

projick!” whispered his cheerful wife. “Here, John, don’t ’ee see me?”

She nudged him, while he, looking through her as through a window-pane,

went on with his recitative.

“Hush! Don’t ’ee sing so loud, my good man,” said the landlady; “in

case any member of the Gover’ment should be passing, and take away my

licends.”

“He’s told ’ee what’s happened to us, I suppose?” asked Mrs

Durbeyfield.

“Yes—in a way. D’ye think there’s any money hanging by it?”

“Ah, that’s the secret,” said Joan Durbeyfield sagely. “However, ’tis

well to be kin to a coach, even if you don’t ride in ’en.” She dropped

her public voice, and continued in a low tone to her husband: “I’ve

been thinking since you brought the news that there’s a great rich lady

out by Trantridge, on the edge o’ The Chase, of the name of

d’Urberville.”

“Hey—what’s that?” said Sir John.

She repeated the information. “That lady must be our relation,” she

said. “And my projick is to send Tess to claim kin.”

“There _is_ a lady of the name, now you mention it,” said Durbeyfield.

“Pa’son Tringham didn’t think of that. But she’s nothing beside we—a

junior branch of us, no doubt, hailing long since King Norman’s day.”

While this question was being discussed neither of the pair noticed, in

their preoccupation, that little Abraham had crept into the room, and

was awaiting an opportunity of asking them to return.

“She is rich, and she’d be sure to take notice o’ the maid,” continued

Mrs Durbeyfield; “and ’twill be a very good thing. I don’t see why two

branches o’ one family should not be on visiting terms.”

“Yes; and we’ll all claim kin!” said Abraham brightly from under the

bedstead. “And we’ll all go and see her when Tess has gone to live with

her; and we’ll ride in her coach and wear black clothes!”

“How do you come here, child? What nonsense be ye talking! Go away, and

play on the stairs till father and mother be ready!... Well, Tess ought

to go to this other member of our family. She’d be sure to win the

lady—Tess would; and likely enough ’twould lead to some noble gentleman

marrying her. In short, I know it.”

“How?”

“I tried her fate in the _Fortune-Teller_, and it brought out that very

thing!... You should ha’ seen how pretty she looked to-day; her skin is

as sumple as a duchess’.”

“What says the maid herself to going?”

“I’ve not asked her. She don’t know there is any such lady-relation

yet. But it would certainly put her in the way of a grand marriage, and

she won’t say nay to going.”

“Tess is queer.”

“But she’s tractable at bottom. Leave her to me.”

Though this conversation had been private, sufficient of its import

reached the understandings of those around to suggest to them that the

Durbeyfields had weightier concerns to talk of now than common folks

had, and that Tess, their pretty eldest daughter, had fine prospects in

store.

“Tess is a fine figure o’ fun, as I said to myself to-day when I zeed

her vamping round parish with the rest,” observed one of the elderly

boozers in an undertone. “But Joan Durbeyfield must mind that she don’t

get green malt in floor.” It was a local phrase which had a peculiar

meaning, and there was no reply.

The conversation became inclusive, and presently other footsteps were

heard crossing the room below.

“—Being a few private friends asked in to-night to keep up club-walking

at my own expense.” The landlady had rapidly re-used the formula she

kept on hand for intruders before she recognized that the newcomer was

Tess.

Even to her mother’s gaze the girl’s young features looked sadly out of

place amid the alcoholic vapours which floated here as no unsuitable

medium for wrinkled middle-age; and hardly was a reproachful flash from

Tess’s dark eyes needed to make her father and mother rise from their

seats, hastily finish their ale, and descend the stairs behind her, Mrs

Rolliver’s caution following their footsteps.

“No noise, please, if ye’ll be so good, my dears; or I mid lose my

licends, and be summons’d, and I don’t know what all! ’Night t’ye!”

They went home together, Tess holding one arm of her father, and Mrs

Durbeyfield the other. He had, in truth, drunk very little—not a fourth

of the quantity which a systematic tippler could carry to church on a

Sunday afternoon without a hitch in his eastings or genuflections; but

the weakness of Sir John’s constitution made mountains of his petty

sins in this kind. On reaching the fresh air he was sufficiently

unsteady to incline the row of three at one moment as if they were

marching to London, and at another as if they were marching to

Bath—which produced a comical effect, frequent enough in families on

nocturnal homegoings; and, like most comical effects, not quite so

comic after all. The two women valiantly disguised these forced

excursions and countermarches as well as they could from Durbeyfield,

their cause, and from Abraham, and from themselves; and so they

approached by degrees their own door, the head of the family bursting

suddenly into his former refrain as he drew near, as if to fortify his

soul at sight of the smallness of his present residence—

“I’ve got a fam—ily vault at Kingsbere!”

“Hush—don’t be so silly, Jacky,” said his wife. “Yours is not the only

family that was of ’count in wold days. Look at the Anktells, and

Horseys, and the Tringhams themselves—gone to seed a’most as much as

you—though you was bigger folks than they, that’s true. Thank God, I

was never of no family, and have nothing to be ashamed of in that way!”

“Don’t you be so sure o’ that. From your nater ’tis my belief you’ve

disgraced yourselves more than any o’ us, and was kings and queens

outright at one time.”

Tess turned the subject by saying what was far more prominent in her

own mind at the moment than thoughts of her ancestry—“I am afraid

father won’t be able to take the journey with the beehives to-morrow so

early.”

“I? I shall be all right in an hour or two,” said Durbeyfield.

It was eleven o’clock before the family were all in bed, and two

o’clock next morning was the latest hour for starting with the beehives

if they were to be delivered to the retailers in Casterbridge before

the Saturday market began, the way thither lying by bad roads over a

distance of between twenty and thirty miles, and the horse and waggon

being of the slowest. At half-past one Mrs Durbeyfield came into the

large bedroom where Tess and all her little brothers and sisters slept.

“The poor man can’t go,” she said to her eldest daughter, whose great

eyes had opened the moment her mother’s hand touched the door.

Tess sat up in bed, lost in a vague interspace between a dream and this

information.

“But somebody must go,” she replied. “It is late for the hives already.

Swarming will soon be over for the year; and it we put off taking ’em

till next week’s market the call for ’em will be past, and they’ll be

thrown on our hands.”

Mrs Durbeyfield looked unequal to the emergency. “Some young feller,

perhaps, would go? One of them who were so much after dancing with ’ee

yesterday,” she presently suggested.

“O no—I wouldn’t have it for the world!” declared Tess proudly. “And

letting everybody know the reason—such a thing to be ashamed of! I

think _I_ could go if Abraham could go with me to kip me company.”

Her mother at length agreed to this arrangement. Little Abraham was

aroused from his deep sleep in a corner of the same apartment, and made

to put on his clothes while still mentally in the other world.

Meanwhile Tess had hastily dressed herself; and the twain, lighting a

lantern, went out to the stable. The rickety little waggon was already

laden, and the girl led out the horse, Prince, only a degree less

rickety than the vehicle.

The poor creature looked wonderingly round at the night, at the

lantern, at their two figures, as if he could not believe that at that

hour, when every living thing was intended to be in shelter and at

rest, he was called upon to go out and labour. They put a stock of

candle-ends into the lantern, hung the latter to the off-side of the

load, and directed the horse onward, walking at his shoulder at first

during the uphill parts of the way, in order not to overload an animal

of so little vigour. To cheer themselves as well as they could, they

made an artificial morning with the lantern, some bread and butter, and

their own conversation, the real morning being far from come. Abraham,

as he more fully awoke (for he had moved in a sort of trance so far),

began to talk of the strange shapes assumed by the various dark objects

against the sky; of this tree that looked like a raging tiger springing

from a lair; of that which resembled a giant’s head.

When they had passed the little town of Stourcastle, dumbly somnolent

under its thick brown thatch, they reached higher ground. Still higher,

on their left, the elevation called Bulbarrow, or Bealbarrow, well-nigh

the highest in South Wessex, swelled into the sky, engirdled by its

earthen trenches. From hereabout the long road was fairly level for

some distance onward. They mounted in front of the waggon, and Abraham

grew reflective.

“Tess!” he said in a preparatory tone, after a silence.

“Yes, Abraham.”

“Bain’t you glad that we’ve become gentlefolk?”

“Not particular glad.”

“But you be glad that you ’m going to marry a gentleman?”

“What?” said Tess, lifting her face.

“That our great relation will help ’ee to marry a gentleman.”

“I? Our great relation? We have no such relation. What has put that

into your head?”

“I heard ’em talking about it up at Rolliver’s when I went to find

father. There’s a rich lady of our family out at Trantridge, and mother

said that if you claimed kin with the lady, she’d put ’ee in the way of

marrying a gentleman.”

His sister became abruptly still, and lapsed into a pondering silence.

Abraham talked on, rather for the pleasure of utterance than for

audition, so that his sister’s abstraction was of no account. He leant

back against the hives, and with upturned face made observations on the

stars, whose cold pulses were beating amid the black hollows above, in

serene dissociation from these two wisps of human life. He asked how

far away those twinklers were, and whether God was on the other side of

them. But ever and anon his childish prattle recurred to what impressed

his imagination even more deeply than the wonders of creation. If Tess

were made rich by marrying a gentleman, would she have money enough to

buy a spyglass so large that it would draw the stars as near to her as

Nettlecombe-Tout?

The renewed subject, which seemed to have impregnated the whole family,

filled Tess with impatience.

“Never mind that now!” she exclaimed.

“Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?”

“Yes.”

“All like ours?”

“I don’t know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the

apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound—a few

blighted.”

“Which do we live on—a splendid one or a blighted one?”

“A blighted one.”

“’Tis very unlucky that we didn’t pitch on a sound one, when there were

so many more of ’em!”

“Yes.”

“Is it like that _really_, Tess?” said Abraham, turning to her much

impressed, on reconsideration of this rare information. “How would it

have been if we had pitched on a sound one?”

“Well, father wouldn’t have coughed and creeped about as he does, and

wouldn’t have got too tipsy to go on this journey; and mother wouldn’t

have been always washing, and never getting finished.”

“And you would have been a rich lady ready-made, and not have had to be

made rich by marrying a gentleman?”

“O Aby, don’t—don’t talk of that any more!”

Left to his reflections Abraham soon grew drowsy. Tess was not skilful

in the management of a horse, but she thought that she could take upon

herself the entire conduct of the load for the present and allow

Abraham to go to sleep if he wished to do so. She made him a sort of

nest in front of the hives, in such a manner that he could not fall,

and, taking the reins into her own hands, jogged on as before.

Prince required but slight attention, lacking energy for superfluous

movements of any sort. With no longer a companion to distract her, Tess

fell more deeply into reverie than ever, her back leaning against the

hives. The mute procession past her shoulders of trees and hedges

became attached to fantastic scenes outside reality, and the occasional

heave of the wind became the sigh of some immense sad soul,

conterminous with the universe in space, and with history in time.

Then, examining the mesh of events in her own life, she seemed to see

the vanity of her father’s pride; the gentlemanly suitor awaiting

herself in her mother’s fancy; to see him as a grimacing personage,

laughing at her poverty and her shrouded knightly ancestry. Everything

grew more and more extravagant, and she no longer knew how time passed.

A sudden jerk shook her in her seat, and Tess awoke from the sleep into

which she, too, had fallen.

They were a long way further on than when she had lost consciousness,

and the waggon had stopped. A hollow groan, unlike anything she had

ever heard in her life, came from the front, followed by a shout of

“Hoi there!”

The lantern hanging at her waggon had gone out, but another was shining

in her face—much brighter than her own had been. Something terrible had

happened. The harness was entangled with an object which blocked the

way.

In consternation Tess jumped down, and discovered the dreadful truth.

The groan had proceeded from her father’s poor horse Prince. The

morning mail-cart, with its two noiseless wheels, speeding along these

lanes like an arrow, as it always did, had driven into her slow and

unlighted equipage. The pointed shaft of the cart had entered the

breast of the unhappy Prince like a sword, and from the wound his

life’s blood was spouting in a stream, and falling with a hiss into the

road.

In her despair Tess sprang forward and put her hand upon the hole, with

the only result that she became splashed from face to skirt with the

crimson drops. Then she stood helplessly looking on. Prince also stood

firm and motionless as long as he could; till he suddenly sank down in

a heap.

By this time the mail-cart man had joined her, and began dragging and

unharnessing the hot form of Prince. But he was already dead, and,

seeing that nothing more could be done immediately, the mail-cart man

returned to his own animal, which was uninjured.

“You was on the wrong side,” he said. “I am bound to go on with the

mail-bags, so that the best thing for you to do is bide here with your

load. I’ll send somebody to help you as soon as I can. It is getting

daylight, and you have nothing to fear.”

He mounted and sped on his way; while Tess stood and waited. The

atmosphere turned pale, the birds shook themselves in the hedges,

arose, and twittered; the lane showed all its white features, and Tess

showed hers, still whiter. The huge pool of blood in front of her was

already assuming the iridescence of coagulation; and when the sun rose

a hundred prismatic hues were reflected from it. Prince lay alongside,

still and stark; his eyes half open, the hole in his chest looking

scarcely large enough to have let out all that had animated him.

“’Tis all my doing—all mine!” the girl cried, gazing at the spectacle.

“No excuse for me—none. What will mother and father live on now? Aby,

Aby!” She shook the child, who had slept soundly through the whole

disaster. “We can’t go on with our load—Prince is killed!”

When Abraham realized all, the furrows of fifty years were extemporized

on his young face.

“Why, I danced and laughed only yesterday!” she went on to herself. “To

think that I was such a fool!”

“’Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn’t it,

Tess?” murmured Abraham through his tears.

In silence they waited through an interval which seemed endless. At

length a sound, and an approaching object, proved to them that the

driver of the mail-car had been as good as his word. A farmer’s man

from near Stourcastle came up, leading a strong cob. He was harnessed

to the waggon of beehives in the place of Prince, and the load taken on

towards Casterbridge.

The evening of the same day saw the empty waggon reach again the spot

of the accident. Prince had lain there in the ditch since the morning;

but the place of the blood-pool was still visible in the middle of the

road, though scratched and scraped over by passing vehicles. All that

was left of Prince was now hoisted into the waggon he had formerly

hauled, and with his hoofs in the air, and his shoes shining in the

setting sunlight, he retraced the eight or nine miles to Marlott.

Tess had gone back earlier. How to break the news was more than she

could think. It was a relief to her tongue to find from the faces of

her parents that they already knew of their loss, though this did not

lessen the self-reproach which she continued to heap upon herself for

her negligence.

But the very shiftlessness of the household rendered the misfortune a

less terrifying one to them than it would have been to a thriving

family, though in the present case it meant ruin, and in the other it

would only have meant inconvenience. In the Durbeyfield countenances

there was nothing of the red wrath that would have burnt upon the girl

from parents more ambitious for her welfare. Nobody blamed Tess as she

blamed herself.

When it was discovered that the knacker and tanner would give only a

very few shillings for Prince’s carcase because of his decrepitude,

Durbeyfield rose to the occasion.

“No,” said he stoically, “I won’t sell his old body. When we

d’Urbervilles was knights in the land, we didn’t sell our chargers for

cat’s meat. Let ’em keep their shillings! He’ve served me well in his

lifetime, and I won’t part from him now.”

He worked harder the next day in digging a grave for Prince in the

garden than he had worked for months to grow a crop for his family.

When the hole was ready, Durbeyfield and his wife tied a rope round the

horse and dragged him up the path towards it, the children following in

funeral train. Abraham and ’Liza-Lu sobbed, Hope and Modesty discharged

their griefs in loud blares which echoed from the walls; and when

Prince was tumbled in they gathered round the grave. The bread-winner

had been taken away from them; what would they do?

“Is he gone to heaven?” asked Abraham, between the sobs.

Then Durbeyfield began to shovel in the earth, and the children cried

anew. All except Tess. Her face was dry and pale, as though she

regarded herself in the light of a murderess.

V

The haggling business, which had mainly depended on the horse, became

disorganized forthwith. Distress, if not penury, loomed in the

distance. Durbeyfield was what was locally called a slack-twisted

fellow; he had good strength to work at times; but the times could not

be relied on to coincide with the hours of requirement; and, having

been unaccustomed to the regular toil of the day-labourer, he was not

particularly persistent when they did so coincide.

Tess, meanwhile, as the one who had dragged her parents into this

quagmire, was silently wondering what she could do to help them out of

it; and then her mother broached her scheme.

“We must take the ups wi’ the downs, Tess,” said she; “and never could

your high blood have been found out at a more called-for moment. You

must try your friends. Do ye know that there is a very rich Mrs

d’Urberville living on the outskirts o’ The Chase, who must be our

relation? You must go to her and claim kin, and ask for some help in

our trouble.”

“I shouldn’t care to do that,” says Tess. “If there is such a lady,

’twould be enough for us if she were friendly—not to expect her to give

us help.”

“You could win her round to do anything, my dear. Besides, perhaps

there’s more in it than you know of. I’ve heard what I’ve heard,

good-now.”

The oppressive sense of the harm she had done led Tess to be more

deferential than she might otherwise have been to the maternal wish;

but she could not understand why her mother should find such

satisfaction in contemplating an enterprise of, to her, such doubtful

profit. Her mother might have made inquiries, and have discovered that

this Mrs d’Urberville was a lady of unequalled virtues and charity. But

Tess’s pride made the part of poor relation one of particular distaste

to her.

“I’d rather try to get work,” she murmured.

“Durbeyfield, you can settle it,” said his wife, turning to where he

sat in the background. “If you say she ought to go, she will go.”

“I don’t like my children going and making themselves beholden to

strange kin,” murmured he. “I’m the head of the noblest branch o’ the

family, and I ought to live up to it.”

His reasons for staying away were worse to Tess than her own objections

to going. “Well, as I killed the horse, mother,” she said mournfully,

“I suppose I ought to do something. I don’t mind going and seeing her,

but you must leave it to me about asking for help. And don’t go

thinking about her making a match for me—it is silly.”

“Very well said, Tess!” observed her father sententiously.

“Who said I had such a thought?” asked Joan.

“I fancy it is in your mind, mother. But I’ll go.”

Rising early next day she walked to the hill-town called Shaston, and

there took advantage of a van which twice in the week ran from Shaston

eastward to Chaseborough, passing near Trantridge, the parish in which

the vague and mysterious Mrs d’Urberville had her residence.

Tess Durbeyfield’s route on this memorable morning lay amid the

north-eastern undulations of the Vale in which she had been born, and

in which her life had unfolded. The Vale of Blackmoor was to her the

world, and its inhabitants the races thereof. From the gates and stiles

of Marlott she had looked down its length in the wondering days of

infancy, and what had been mystery to her then was not much less than

mystery to her now. She had seen daily from her chamber-window towers,

villages, faint white mansions; above all, the town of Shaston standing

majestically on its height; its windows shining like lamps in the

evening sun. She had hardly ever visited the place, only a small tract

even of the Vale and its environs being known to her by close

inspection. Much less had she been far outside the valley. Every

contour of the surrounding hills was as personal to her as that of her

relatives’ faces; but for what lay beyond, her judgment was dependent

on the teaching of the village school, where she had held a leading

place at the time of her leaving, a year or two before this date.

In those early days she had been much loved by others of her own sex

and age, and had used to be seen about the village as one of three—all

nearly of the same year—walking home from school side by side; Tess the

middle one—in a pink print pinafore, of a finely reticulated pattern,

worn over a stuff frock that had lost its original colour for a

nondescript tertiary—marching on upon long stalky legs, in tight

stockings which had little ladder-like holes at the knees, torn by

kneeling in the roads and banks in search of vegetable and mineral

treasures; her then earth-coloured hair hanging like pot-hooks; the

arms of the two outside girls resting round the waist of Tess; her arms

on the shoulders of the two supporters.

As Tess grew older, and began to see how matters stood, she felt quite

a Malthusian towards her mother for thoughtlessly giving her so many

little sisters and brothers, when it was such a trouble to nurse and

provide for them. Her mother’s intelligence was that of a happy child:

Joan Durbeyfield was simply an additional one, and that not the eldest,

to her own long family of waiters on Providence.

However, Tess became humanely beneficent towards the small ones, and to

help them as much as possible she used, as soon as she left school, to

lend a hand at haymaking or harvesting on neighbouring farms; or, by

preference, at milking or butter-making processes, which she had learnt

when her father had owned cows; and being deft-fingered it was a kind

of work in which she excelled.

Every day seemed to throw upon her young shoulders more of the family

burdens, and that Tess should be the representative of the Durbeyfields

at the d’Urberville mansion came as a thing of course. In this instance

it must be admitted that the Durbeyfields were putting their fairest

side outward.

She alighted from the van at Trantridge Cross, and ascended on foot a

hill in the direction of the district known as The Chase, on the

borders of which, as she had been informed, Mrs d’Urberville’s seat,

The Slopes, would be found. It was not a manorial home in the ordinary

sense, with fields, and pastures, and a grumbling farmer, out of whom

the owner had to squeeze an income for himself and his family by hook

or by crook. It was more, far more; a country-house built for enjoyment

pure and simple, with not an acre of troublesome land attached to it

beyond what was required for residential purposes, and for a little

fancy farm kept in hand by the owner, and tended by a bailiff.

The crimson brick lodge came first in sight, up to its eaves in dense

evergreens. Tess thought this was the mansion itself till, passing

through the side wicket with some trepidation, and onward to a point at

which the drive took a turn, the house proper stood in full view. It

was of recent erection—indeed almost new—and of the same rich red

colour that formed such a contrast with the evergreens of the lodge.

Far behind the corner of the house—which rose like a geranium bloom

against the subdued colours around—stretched the soft azure landscape

of The Chase—a truly venerable tract of forest land, one of the few

remaining woodlands in England of undoubted primaeval date, wherein

Druidical mistletoe was still found on aged oaks, and where enormous

yew-trees, not planted by the hand of man grew as they had grown when

they were pollarded for bows. All this sylvan antiquity, however,

though visible from The Slopes, was outside the immediate boundaries of

the estate.

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

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

their feet. Everything looked like money—like the last coin issued from

the Mint. The stables, partly screened by Austrian pines and evergreen

oaks, and fitted with every late appliance, were as dignified as

Chapels-of-Ease. On the extensive lawn stood an ornamental tent, its

door being towards her.

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

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

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

contrary to her expectation.

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

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

her mother’s plans for “claiming kin,” and had endeavoured to gain

assistance nearer home.

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

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

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

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

only really lineal representative of the old d’Urberville family

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

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

the true tree then he was himself. Yet it must be admitted that this

family formed a very good stock whereon to regraft a name which sadly

wanted such renovation.

When old Mr Simon Stoke, latterly deceased, had made his fortune as an

honest merchant (some said money-lender) in the North, he decided to

settle as a county man in the South of England, out of hail of his

business district; and in doing this he felt the necessity of

recommencing with a name that would not too readily identify him with

the smart tradesman of the past, and that would be less commonplace

than the original bald, stark words. Conning for an hour in the British

Museum the pages of works devoted to extinct, half-extinct, obscured,

and ruined families appertaining to the quarter of England in which he

proposed to settle, he considered that _d’Urberville_ looked and

sounded as well as any of them: and d’Urberville accordingly was

annexed to his own name for himself and his heirs eternally. Yet he was

not an extravagant-minded man in this, and in constructing his family

tree on the new basis was duly reasonable in framing his

inter-marriages and aristocratic links, never inserting a single title

above a rank of strict moderation.

Of this work of imagination poor Tess and her parents were naturally in

ignorance—much to their discomfiture; indeed, the very possibility of

such annexations was unknown to them; who supposed that, though to be

well-favoured might be the gift of fortune, a family name came by

nature.

Tess still stood hesitating like a bather about to make his plunge,

hardly knowing whether to retreat or to persevere, when a figure came

forth from the dark triangular door of the tent. It was that of a tall

young man, smoking.

He had an almost swarthy complexion, with full lips, badly moulded,

though red and smooth, above which was a well-groomed black moustache

with curled points, though his age could not be more than three- or

four-and-twenty. Despite the touches of barbarism in his contours,

there was a singular force in the gentleman’s face, and in his bold

rolling eye.

“Well, my Beauty, what can I do for you?” said he, coming forward. And

perceiving that she stood quite confounded: “Never mind me. I am Mr

d’Urberville. Have you come to see me or my mother?”

This embodiment of a d’Urberville and a namesake differed even more

from what Tess had expected than the house and grounds had differed.

She had dreamed of an aged and dignified face, the sublimation of all

the d’Urberville lineaments, furrowed with incarnate memories

representing in hieroglyphic the centuries of her family’s and

England’s history. But she screwed herself up to the work in hand,

since she could not get out of it, and answered—

“I came to see your mother, sir.”

“I am afraid you cannot see her—she is an invalid,” replied the present

representative of the spurious house; for this was Mr Alec, the only

son of the lately deceased gentleman. “Cannot I answer your purpose?

What is the business you wish to see her about?”

“It isn’t business—it is—I can hardly say what!”

“Pleasure?”

“Oh no. Why, sir, if I tell you, it will seem—”

Tess’s sense of a certain ludicrousness in her errand was now so strong

that, notwithstanding her awe of him, and her general discomfort at

being here, her rosy lips curved towards a smile, much to the

attraction of the swarthy Alexander.

“It is so very foolish,” she stammered; “I fear I can’t tell you!”

“Never mind; I like foolish things. Try again, my dear,” said he

kindly.

“Mother asked me to come,” Tess continued; “and, indeed, I was in the

mind to do so myself likewise. But I did not think it would be like

this. I came, sir, to tell you that we are of the same family as you.”

“Ho! Poor relations?”

“Yes.”

“Stokes?”

“No; d’Urbervilles.”

“Ay, ay; I mean d’Urbervilles.”

“Our names are worn away to Durbeyfield; but we have several proofs

that we are d’Urbervilles. Antiquarians hold we are,—and—and we have an

old seal, marked with a ramping lion on a shield, and a castle over

him. And we have a very old silver spoon, round in the bowl like a

little ladle, and marked with the same castle. But it is so worn that

mother uses it to stir the pea-soup.”

“A castle argent is certainly my crest,” said he blandly. “And my arms

a lion rampant.”

“And so mother said we ought to make ourselves beknown to you—as we’ve

lost our horse by a bad accident, and are the oldest branch o’ the

family.”

“Very kind of your mother, I’m sure. And I, for one, don’t regret her

step.” Alec looked at Tess as he spoke, in a way that made her blush a

little. “And so, my pretty girl, you’ve come on a friendly visit to us,

as relations?”

“I suppose I have,” faltered Tess, looking uncomfortable again.

“Well—there’s no harm in it. Where do you live? What are you?”

She gave him brief particulars; and responding to further inquiries

told him that she was intending to go back by the same carrier who had

brought her.

“It is a long while before he returns past Trantridge Cross. Supposing

we walk round the grounds to pass the time, my pretty Coz?”

Tess wished to abridge her visit as much as possible; but the young man

was pressing, and she consented to accompany him. He conducted her

about the lawns, and flower-beds, and conservatories; and thence to the

fruit-garden and greenhouses, where he asked her if she liked

strawberries.

“Yes,” said Tess, “when they come.”

“They are already here.” D’Urberville began gathering specimens of the

fruit for her, handing them back to her as he stooped; and, presently,

selecting a specially fine product of the “British Queen” variety, he

stood up and held it by the stem to her mouth.

“No—no!” she said quickly, putting her fingers between his hand and her

lips. “I would rather take it in my own hand.”

“Nonsense!” he insisted; and in a slight distress she parted her lips

and took it in.

They had spent some time wandering desultorily thus, Tess eating in a

half-pleased, half-reluctant state whatever d’Urberville offered her.

When she could consume no more of the strawberries he filled her little

basket with them; and then the two passed round to the rose-trees,

whence he gathered blossoms and gave her to put in her bosom. She

obeyed like one in a dream, and when she could affix no more he himself

tucked a bud or two into her hat, and heaped her basket with others in

the prodigality of his bounty. At last, looking at his watch, he said,

“Now, by the time you have had something to eat, it will be time for

you to leave, if you want to catch the carrier to Shaston. Come here,

and I’ll see what grub I can find.”

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

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

put before her himself. It was evidently the gentleman’s wish not to be

disturbed in this pleasant _tête-à-tête_ by the servantry.

“Do you mind my smoking?” he asked.

“Oh, not at all, sir.”

He watched her pretty and unconscious munching through the skeins of

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

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

the blue narcotic haze was potentially the “tragic mischief” of her

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

young life. She had an attribute which amounted to a disadvantage just

now; and it was this that caused Alec d’Urberville’s eyes to rivet

themselves upon her. It was a luxuriance of aspect, a fulness of

growth, which made her appear more of a woman than she really was. She

had inherited the feature from her mother without the quality it

denoted. It had troubled her mind occasionally, till her companions had

said that it was a fault which time would cure.

She soon had finished her lunch. “Now I am going home, sir,” she said,

rising.

“And what do they call you?” he asked, as he accompanied her along the

drive till they were out of sight of the house.

“Tess Durbeyfield, down at Marlott.”

“And you say your people have lost their horse?”

“I—killed him!” she answered, her eyes filling with tears as she gave

particulars of Prince’s death. “And I don’t know what to do for father

on account of it!”

“I must think if I cannot do something. My mother must find a berth for

you. But, Tess, no nonsense about ‘d’Urberville’;—‘Durbeyfield’ only,

you know—quite another name.”

“I wish for no better, sir,” said she with something of dignity.

For a moment—only for a moment—when they were in the turning of the

drive, between the tall rhododendrons and conifers, before the lodge

became visible, he inclined his face towards her as if—but, no: he

thought better of it, and let her go.

Thus the thing began. Had she perceived this meeting’s import she might

have asked why she was doomed to be seen and coveted that day by the

wrong man, and not by some other man, the right and desired one in all

respects—as nearly as humanity can supply the right and desired; yet to

him who amongst her acquaintance might have approximated to this kind,

she was but a transient impression, half forgotten.

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call

seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the

hour for loving. Nature does not often say “See!” to her poor creature

at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply “Here!” to a

body’s cry of “Where?” till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome,

outworn game. We may wonder whether at the acme and summit of the human

progress these anachronisms will be corrected by a finer intuition, a

closer interaction of the social machinery than that which now jolts us

round and along; but such completeness is not to be prophesied, or even

conceived as possible. Enough that in the present case, as in millions,

it was not the two halves of a perfect whole that confronted each other

at the perfect moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently

about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness till the late time came.

Out of which maladroit delay sprang anxieties, disappointments, shocks,

catastrophes, and passing-strange destinies.

When d’Urberville got back to the tent he sat down astride on a chair,

reflecting, with a pleased gleam in his face. Then he broke into a loud

laugh.

“Well, I’m damned! What a funny thing! Ha-ha-ha! And what a crumby

girl!”

VI

Tess went down the hill to Trantridge Cross, and inattentively waited

to take her seat in the van returning from Chaseborough to Shaston. She

did not know what the other occupants said to her as she entered,

though she answered them; and when they had started anew she rode along

with an inward and not an outward eye.

One among her fellow-travellers addressed her more pointedly than any

had spoken before: “Why, you be quite a posy! And such roses in early

June!”

Then she became aware of the spectacle she presented to their surprised

vision: roses at her breasts; roses in her hat; roses and strawberries

in her basket to the brim. She blushed, and said confusedly that the

flowers had been given to her. When the passengers were not looking she

stealthily removed the more prominent blooms from her hat and placed

them in the basket, where she covered them with her handkerchief. Then

she fell to reflecting again, and in looking downwards a thorn of the

rose remaining in her breast accidentally pricked her chin. Like all

the cottagers in Blackmoor Vale, Tess was steeped in fancies and

prefigurative superstitions; she thought this an ill omen—the first she

had noticed that day.

The van travelled only so far as Shaston, and there were several miles

of pedestrian descent from that mountain-town into the vale to Marlott.

Her mother had advised her to stay here for the night, at the house of

a cottage-woman they knew, if she should feel too tired to come on; and

this Tess did, not descending to her home till the following afternoon.

When she entered the house she perceived in a moment from her mother’s

triumphant manner that something had occurred in the interim.

“Oh yes; I know all about it! I told ’ee it would be all right, and now

’tis proved!”

“Since I’ve been away? What has?” said Tess rather wearily.

Her mother surveyed the girl up and down with arch approval, and went

on banteringly: “So you’ve brought ’em round!”

“How do you know, mother?”

“I’ve had a letter.”

Tess then remembered that there would have been time for this.

“They say—Mrs d’Urberville says—that she wants you to look after a

little fowl-farm which is her hobby. But this is only her artful way of

getting ’ee there without raising your hopes. She’s going to own ’ee as

kin—that’s the meaning o’t.”

“But I didn’t see her.”

“You zid somebody, I suppose?”

“I saw her son.”

“And did he own ’ee?”

“Well—he called me Coz.”

“An’ I knew it! Jacky—he called her Coz!” cried Joan to her husband.

“Well, he spoke to his mother, of course, and she do want ’ee there.”

“But I don’t know that I am apt at tending fowls,” said the dubious

Tess.

“Then I don’t know who is apt. You’ve be’n born in the business, and

brought up in it. They that be born in a business always know more

about it than any ’prentice. Besides, that’s only just a show of

something for you to do, that you midn’t feel beholden.”

“I don’t altogether think I ought to go,” said Tess thoughtfully. “Who

wrote the letter? Will you let me look at it?”

“Mrs d’Urberville wrote it. Here it is.”

The letter was in the third person, and briefly informed Mrs

Durbeyfield that her daughter’s services would be useful to that lady

in the management of her poultry-farm, that a comfortable room would be

provided for her if she could come, and that the wages would be on a

liberal scale if they liked her.

“Oh—that’s all!” said Tess.

“You couldn’t expect her to throw her arms round ’ee, an’ to kiss and

to coll ’ee all at once.”

Tess looked out of the window.

“I would rather stay here with father and you,” she said.

“But why?”

“I’d rather not tell you why, mother; indeed, I don’t quite know why.”

A week afterwards she came in one evening from an unavailing search for

some light occupation in the immediate neighbourhood. Her idea had been

to get together sufficient money during the summer to purchase another

horse. Hardly had she crossed the threshold before one of the children

danced across the room, saying, “The gentleman’s been here!”

Her mother hastened to explain, smiles breaking from every inch of her

person. Mrs d’Urberville’s son had called on horseback, having been

riding by chance in the direction of Marlott. He had wished to know,

finally, in the name of his mother, if Tess could really come to manage

the old lady’s fowl-farm or not; the lad who had hitherto superintended

the birds having proved untrustworthy. “Mr d’Urberville says you must

be a good girl if you are at all as you appear; he knows you must be

worth your weight in gold. He is very much interested in ’ee—truth to

tell.”

Tess seemed for the moment really pleased to hear that she had won such

high opinion from a stranger when, in her own esteem, she had sunk so

low.

“It is very good of him to think that,” she murmured; “and if I was

quite sure how it would be living there, I would go any-when.”

“He is a mighty handsome man!”

“I don’t think so,” said Tess coldly.

“Well, there’s your chance, whether or no; and I’m sure he wears a

beautiful diamond ring!”

“Yes,” said little Abraham, brightly, from the window-bench; “and I

seed it! and it did twinkle when he put his hand up to his mistarshers.

Mother, why did our grand relation keep on putting his hand up to his

mistarshers?”

“Hark at that child!” cried Mrs Durbeyfield, with parenthetic

admiration.

“Perhaps to show his diamond ring,” murmured Sir John, dreamily, from

his chair.

“I’ll think it over,” said Tess, leaving the room.

“Well, she’s made a conquest o’ the younger branch of us, straight

off,” continued the matron to her husband, “and she’s a fool if she

don’t follow it up.”

“I don’t quite like my children going away from home,” said the

haggler. “As the head of the family, the rest ought to come to me.”

“But do let her go, Jacky,” coaxed his poor witless wife. “He’s struck

wi’ her—you can see that. He called her Coz! He’ll marry her, most

likely, and make a lady of her; and then she’ll be what her forefathers

was.”

John Durbeyfield had more conceit than energy or health, and this

supposition was pleasant to him.

“Well, perhaps that’s what young Mr d’Urberville means,” he admitted;

“and sure enough he mid have serious thoughts about improving his blood

by linking on to the old line. Tess, the little rogue! And have she

really paid ’em a visit to such an end as this?”

Meanwhile Tess was walking thoughtfully among the gooseberry-bushes in

the garden, and over Prince’s grave. When she came in her mother

pursued her advantage.

“Well, what be you going to do?” she asked.

“I wish I had seen Mrs d’Urberville,” said Tess.

“I think you mid as well settle it. Then you’ll see her soon enough.”

Her father coughed in his chair.

“I don’t know what to say!” answered the girl restlessly. “It is for

you to decide. I killed the old horse, and I suppose I ought to do

something to get ye a new one. But—but—I don’t quite like Mr

d’Urberville being there!”

The children, who had made use of this idea of Tess being taken up by

their wealthy kinsfolk (which they imagined the other family to be) as

a species of dolorifuge after the death of the horse, began to cry at

Tess’s reluctance, and teased and reproached her for hesitating.

“Tess won’t go-o-o and be made a la-a-dy of!—no, she says she

wo-o-on’t!” they wailed, with square mouths. “And we shan’t have a nice

new horse, and lots o’ golden money to buy fairlings! And Tess won’t

look pretty in her best cloze no mo-o-ore!”

Her mother chimed in to the same tune: a certain way she had of making

her labours in the house seem heavier than they were by prolonging them

indefinitely, also weighed in the argument. Her father alone preserved

an attitude of neutrality.

“I will go,” said Tess at last.

Her mother could not repress her consciousness of the nuptial vision

conjured up by the girl’s consent.

“That’s right! For such a pretty maid as ’tis, this is a fine chance!”

Tess smiled crossly.

“I hope it is a chance for earning money. It is no other kind of

chance. You had better say nothing of that silly sort about parish.”

Mrs Durbeyfield did not promise. She was not quite sure that she did

not feel proud enough, after the visitor’s remarks, to say a good deal.

Thus it was arranged; and the young girl wrote, agreeing to be ready to

set out on any day on which she might be required. She was duly

informed that Mrs d’Urberville was glad of her decision, and that a

spring-cart should be sent to meet her and her luggage at the top of

the Vale on the day after the morrow, when she must hold herself

prepared to start. Mrs d’Urberville’s handwriting seemed rather

masculine.

“A cart?” murmured Joan Durbeyfield doubtingly. “It might have been a

carriage for her own kin!”

Having at last taken her course Tess was less restless and abstracted,

going about her business with some self-assurance in the thought of

acquiring another horse for her father by an occupation which would not

be onerous. She had hoped to be a teacher at the school, but the fates

seemed to decide otherwise. Being mentally older than her mother she

did not regard Mrs Durbeyfield’s matrimonial hopes for her in a serious

aspect for a moment. The light-minded woman had been discovering good

matches for her daughter almost from the year of her birth.

VII

On the morning appointed for her departure Tess was awake before

dawn—at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute,

save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction

that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving

silence as if equally convinced that he is mistaken. She remained

upstairs packing till breakfast-time, and then came down in her

ordinary week-day clothes, her Sunday apparel being carefully folded in

her box.

Her mother expostulated. “You will never set out to see your folks

without dressing up more the dand than that?”

“But I am going to work!” said Tess.

“Well, yes,” said Mrs Durbeyfield; and in a private tone, “at first

there mid be a little pretence o’t.... But I think it will be wiser of

’ee to put your best side outward,” she added.

“Very well; I suppose you know best,” replied Tess with calm

abandonment.

And to please her parent the girl put herself quite in Joan’s hands,

saying serenely—“Do what you like with me, mother.”

Mrs Durbeyfield was only too delighted at this tractability. First she

fetched a great basin, and washed Tess’s hair with such thoroughness

that when dried and brushed it looked twice as much as at other times.

She tied it with a broader pink ribbon than usual. Then she put upon

her the white frock that Tess had worn at the club-walking, the airy

fulness of which, supplementing her enlarged _coiffure_, imparted to

her developing figure an amplitude which belied her age, and might

cause her to be estimated as a woman when she was not much more than a

child.

“I declare there’s a hole in my stocking-heel!” said Tess.

“Never mind holes in your stockings—they don’t speak! When I was a

maid, so long as I had a pretty bonnet the devil might ha’ found me in

heels.”

Her mother’s pride in the girl’s appearance led her to step back, like

a painter from his easel, and survey her work as a whole.

“You must zee yourself!” she cried. “It is much better than you was

t’other day.”

As the looking-glass was only large enough to reflect a very small

portion of Tess’s person at one time, Mrs Durbeyfield hung a black

cloak outside the casement, and so made a large reflector of the panes,

as it is the wont of bedecking cottagers to do. After this she went

downstairs to her husband, who was sitting in the lower room.

“I’ll tell ’ee what ’tis, Durbeyfield,” said she exultingly; “he’ll

never have the heart not to love her. But whatever you do, don’t zay

too much to Tess of his fancy for her, and this chance she has got. She

is such an odd maid that it mid zet her against him, or against going

there, even now. If all goes well, I shall certainly be for making some

return to pa’son at Stagfoot Lane for telling us—dear, good man!”

However, as the moment for the girl’s setting out drew nigh, when the

first excitement of the dressing had passed off, a slight misgiving

found place in Joan Durbeyfield’s mind. It prompted the matron to say

that she would walk a little way—as far as to the point where the

acclivity from the valley began its first steep ascent to the outer

world. At the top Tess was going to be met with the spring-cart sent by

the Stoke-d’Urbervilles, and her box had already been wheeled ahead

towards this summit by a lad with trucks, to be in readiness.

Seeing their mother put on her bonnet, the younger children clamoured

to go with her.

“I do want to walk a little-ways wi’ Sissy, now she’s going to marry

our gentleman-cousin, and wear fine cloze!”

“Now,” said Tess, flushing and turning quickly, “I’ll hear no more o’

that! Mother, how could you ever put such stuff into their heads?”

“Going to work, my dears, for our rich relation, and help get enough

money for a new horse,” said Mrs Durbeyfield pacifically.

“Goodbye, father,” said Tess, with a lumpy throat.

“Goodbye, my maid,” said Sir John, raising his head from his breast as

he suspended his nap, induced by a slight excess this morning in honour

of the occasion. “Well, I hope my young friend will like such a comely

sample of his own blood. And tell’n, Tess, that being sunk, quite, from

our former grandeur, I’ll sell him the title—yes, sell it—and at no

onreasonable figure.”

“Not for less than a thousand pound!” cried Lady Durbeyfield.

“Tell’n—I’ll take a thousand pound. Well, I’ll take less, when I come

to think o’t. He’ll adorn it better than a poor lammicken feller like

myself can. Tell’n he shall hae it for a hundred. But I won’t stand

upon trifles—tell’n he shall hae it for fifty—for twenty pound! Yes,

twenty pound—that’s the lowest. Dammy, family honour is family honour,

and I won’t take a penny less!”

Tess’s eyes were too full and her voice too choked to utter the

sentiments that were in her. She turned quickly, and went out.

So the girls and their mother all walked together, a child on each side

of Tess, holding her hand and looking at her meditatively from time to

time, as at one who was about to do great things; her mother just

behind with the smallest; the group forming a picture of honest beauty

flanked by innocence, and backed by simple-souled vanity. They followed

the way till they reached the beginning of the ascent, on the crest of

which the vehicle from Trantridge was to receive her, this limit having

been fixed to save the horse the labour of the last slope. Far away

behind the first hills the cliff-like dwellings of Shaston broke the

line of the ridge. Nobody was visible in the elevated road which

skirted the ascent save the lad whom they had sent on before them,

sitting on the handle of the barrow that contained all Tess’s worldly

possessions.

“Bide here a bit, and the cart will soon come, no doubt,” said Mrs

Durbeyfield. “Yes, I see it yonder!”

It had come—appearing suddenly from behind the forehead of the nearest

upland, and stopping beside the boy with the barrow. Her mother and the

children thereupon decided to go no farther, and bidding them a hasty

goodbye, Tess bent her steps up the hill.

They saw her white shape draw near to the spring-cart, on which her box

was already placed. But before she had quite reached it another vehicle

shot out from a clump of trees on the summit, came round the bend of

the road there, passed the luggage-cart, and halted beside Tess, who

looked up as if in great surprise.

Her mother perceived, for the first time, that the second vehicle was

not a humble conveyance like the first, but a spick-and-span gig or

dog-cart, highly varnished and equipped. The driver was a young man of

three- or four-and-twenty, with a cigar between his teeth; wearing a

dandy cap, drab jacket, breeches of the same hue, white neckcloth,

stick-up collar, and brown driving-gloves—in short, he was the

handsome, horsey young buck who had visited Joan a week or two before

to get her answer about Tess.

Mrs Durbeyfield clapped her hands like a child. Then she looked down,

then stared again. Could she be deceived as to the meaning of this?

“Is dat the gentleman-kinsman who’ll make Sissy a lady?” asked the

youngest child.

Meanwhile the muslined form of Tess could be seen standing still,

undecided, beside this turn-out, whose owner was talking to her. Her

seeming indecision was, in fact, more than indecision: it was

misgiving. She would have preferred the humble cart. The young man

dismounted, and appeared to urge her to ascend. She turned her face

down the hill to her relatives, and regarded the little group.

Something seemed to quicken her to a determination; possibly the

thought that she had killed Prince. She suddenly stepped up; he mounted

beside her, and immediately whipped on the horse. In a moment they had

passed the slow cart with the box, and disappeared behind the shoulder

of the hill.

Directly Tess was out of sight, and the interest of the matter as a

drama was at an end, the little ones’ eyes filled with tears. The

youngest child said, “I wish poor, poor Tess wasn’t gone away to be a

lady!” and, lowering the corners of his lips, burst out crying. The new

point of view was infectious, and the next child did likewise, and then

the next, till the whole three of them wailed loud.

There were tears also in Joan Durbeyfield’s eyes as she turned to go

home. But by the time she had got back to the village she was passively

trusting to the favour of accident. However, in bed that night she

sighed, and her husband asked her what was the matter.

“Oh, I don’t know exactly,” she said. “I was thinking that perhaps it

would ha’ been better if Tess had not gone.”

“Oughtn’t ye to have thought of that before?”

“Well, ’tis a chance for the maid—Still, if ’twere the doing again, I

wouldn’t let her go till I had found out whether the gentleman is

really a good-hearted young man and choice over her as his kinswoman.”

“Yes, you ought, perhaps, to ha’ done that,” snored Sir John.

Joan Durbeyfield always managed to find consolation somewhere: “Well,

as one of the genuine stock, she ought to make her way with ’en, if she

plays her trump card aright. And if he don’t marry her afore he will

after. For that he’s all afire wi’ love for her any eye can see.”

“What’s her trump card? Her d’Urberville blood, you mean?”

“No, stupid; her face—as ’twas mine.”

VIII

Having mounted beside her, Alec d’Urberville drove rapidly along the

crest of the first hill, chatting compliments to Tess as they went, the

cart with her box being left far behind. Rising still, an immense

landscape stretched around them on every side; behind, the green valley

of her birth, before, a gray country of which she knew nothing except

from her first brief visit to Trantridge. Thus they reached the verge

of an incline down which the road stretched in a long straight descent

of nearly a mile.

Ever since the accident with her father’s horse Tess Durbeyfield,

courageous as she naturally was, had been exceedingly timid on wheels;

the least irregularity of motion startled her. She began to get uneasy

at a certain recklessness in her conductor’s driving.

“You will go down slow, sir, I suppose?” she said with attempted

unconcern.

D’Urberville looked round upon her, nipped his cigar with the tips of

his large white centre-teeth, and allowed his lips to smile slowly of

themselves.

“Why, Tess,” he answered, after another whiff or two, “it isn’t a brave

bouncing girl like you who asks that? Why, I always go down at full

gallop. There’s nothing like it for raising your spirits.”

“But perhaps you need not now?”

“Ah,” he said, shaking his head, “there are two to be reckoned with. It

is not me alone. Tib has to be considered, and she has a very queer

temper.”

“Who?”

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

then. Didn’t you notice it?”

“Don’t try to frighten me, sir,” said Tess stiffly.

“Well, I don’t. If any living man can manage this horse I can: I won’t

say any living man can do it—but if such has the power, I am he.”

“Why do you have such a horse?”

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

chap; and just after I bought her she nearly killed me. And then, take

my word for it, I nearly killed her. But she’s touchy still, very

touchy; and one’s life is hardly safe behind her sometimes.”

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

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

knew so well the reckless performance expected of her that she hardly

required a hint from behind.

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

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

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

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

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

over the hedge, and flinty sparks from the horse’s hoofs outshone the

daylight. The aspect of the straight road enlarged with their advance,

the two banks dividing like a splitting stick; one rushing past at each

shoulder.

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

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

but she clutched d’Urberville’s rein-arm.

“Don’t touch my arm! We shall be thrown out if you do! Hold on round my

waist!”

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

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

fire.

“Tess—fie! that’s temper!” said d’Urberville.

“’Tis truth.”

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

you feel yourself out of danger.”

She had not considered what she had been doing; whether he were man or

woman, stick or stone, in her involuntary hold on him. Recovering her

reserve, she sat without replying, and thus they reached the summit of

another declivity.

“Now then, again!” said d’Urberville.

“No, no!” said Tess. “Show more sense, do, please.”

“But when people find themselves on one of the highest points in the

county, they must get down again,” he retorted.

He loosened rein, and away they went a second time. D’Urberville turned

his face to her as they rocked, and said, in playful raillery: “Now

then, put your arms round my waist again, as you did before, my

Beauty.”

“Never!” said Tess independently, holding on as well as she could

without touching him.

“Let me put one little kiss on those holmberry lips, Tess, or even on

that warmed cheek, and I’ll stop—on my honour, I will!”

Tess, surprised beyond measure, slid farther back still on her seat, at

which he urged the horse anew, and rocked her the more.

“Will nothing else do?” she cried at length, in desperation, her large

eyes staring at him like those of a wild animal. This dressing her up

so prettily by her mother had apparently been to lamentable purpose.

“Nothing, dear Tess,” he replied.

“Oh, I don’t know—very well; I don’t mind!” she panted miserably.

He drew rein, and as they slowed he was on the point of imprinting the

desired salute, when, as if hardly yet aware of her own modesty, she

dodged aside. His arms being occupied with the reins there was left him

no power to prevent her manœuvre.

“Now, damn it—I’ll break both our necks!” swore her capriciously

passionate companion. “So you can go from your word like that, you

young witch, can you?”

“Very well,” said Tess, “I’ll not move since you be so determined! But

I—thought you would be kind to me, and protect me, as my kinsman!”

“Kinsman be hanged! Now!”

“But I don’t want anybody to kiss me, sir!” she implored, a big tear

beginning to roll down her face, and the corners of her mouth trembling

in her attempts not to cry. “And I wouldn’t ha’ come if I had known!”

He was inexorable, and she sat still, and d’Urberville gave her the

kiss of mastery. No sooner had he done so than she flushed with shame,

took out her handkerchief, and wiped the spot on her cheek that had

been touched by his lips. His ardour was nettled at the sight, for the

act on her part had been unconsciously done.

“You are mighty sensitive for a cottage girl!” said the young man.

Tess made no reply to this remark, of which, indeed, she did not quite

comprehend the drift, unheeding the snub she had administered by her

instinctive rub upon her cheek. She had, in fact, undone the kiss, as

far as such a thing was physically possible. With a dim sense that he

was vexed she looked steadily ahead as they trotted on near Melbury

Down and Wingreen, till she saw, to her consternation, that there was

yet another descent to be undergone.

“You shall be made sorry for that!” he resumed, his injured tone still

remaining, as he flourished the whip anew. “Unless, that is, you agree

willingly to let me do it again, and no handkerchief.”

She sighed. “Very well, sir!” she said. “Oh—let me get my hat!”

At the moment of speaking her hat had blown off into the road, their

present speed on the upland being by no means slow. D’Urberville pulled

up, and said he would get it for her, but Tess was down on the other

side.

She turned back and picked up the article.

“You look prettier with it off, upon my soul, if that’s possible,” he

said, contemplating her over the back of the vehicle. “Now then, up

again! What’s the matter?”

The hat was in place and tied, but Tess had not stepped forward.

“No, sir,” she said, revealing the red and ivory of her mouth as her

eye lit in defiant triumph; “not again, if I know it!”

“What—you won’t get up beside me?”

“No; I shall walk.”

“’Tis five or six miles yet to Trantridge.”

“I don’t care if ’tis dozens. Besides, the cart is behind.”

“You artful hussy! Now, tell me—didn’t you make that hat blow off on

purpose? I’ll swear you did!”

Her strategic silence confirmed his suspicion.

Then d’Urberville cursed and swore at her, and called her everything he

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

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

But he could not do this short of injuring her.

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

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

scrambled. “I don’t like ’ee at all! I hate and detest you! I’ll go

back to mother, I will!”

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

heartily.

“Well, I like you all the better,” he said. “Come, let there be peace.

I’ll never do it any more against your will. My life upon it now!”

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

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

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

to time d’Urberville exhibited a sort of fierce distress at the sight

of the tramping he had driven her to undertake by his misdemeanour. She

might in truth have safely trusted him now; but he had forfeited her

confidence for the time, and she kept on the ground progressing

thoughtfully, as if wondering whether it would be wiser to return home.

Her resolve, however, had been taken, and it seemed vacillating even to

childishness to abandon it now, unless for graver reasons. How could

she face her parents, get back her box, and disconcert the whole scheme

for the rehabilitation of her family on such sentimental grounds?

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

a snug nook to the right the poultry-farm and cottage of Tess’s

destination.

IX