Tess of the d'Urbervilles

he twain cantered along for some time without speech, Tess as she
clung to him still panting in her triumph, yet in other respects
dubious. She had perceived that the horse was not the spirited one he
sometimes rose, and felt no alarm on that score, though her seat was
precarious enough despite her tight hold of him. She begged him to slow
the animal to a walk, which Alec accordingly did.

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

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

“And are you?”

She did not reply.

“Tess, why do you always dislike my kissing you?”

“I suppose—because I don’t love you.”

“You are quite sure?”

“I am angry with you sometimes!”

“Ah, I half feared as much.” Nevertheless, Alec did not object to that
confession. He knew that anything was better then frigidity. “Why
haven’t you told me when I have made you angry?”

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

“I haven’t offended you often by love-making?”

“You have sometimes.”

“How many times?”

“You know as well as I—too many times.”

“Every time I have tried?”

She was silent, and the horse ambled along for a considerable distance,
till a faint luminous fog, which had hung in the hollows all the
evening, became general and enveloped them. It seemed to hold the
moonlight in suspension, rendering it more pervasive than in clear air.
Whether on this account, or from absent-mindedness, or from sleepiness,
she did not perceive that they had long ago passed the point at which
the lane to Trantridge branched from the highway, and that her
conductor had not taken the Trantridge track.

She was inexpressibly weary. She had risen at five o’clock every
morning of that week, had been on foot the whole of each day, and on
this evening had in addition walked the three miles to Chaseborough,
waited three hours for her neighbours without eating or drinking, her
impatience to start them preventing either; she had then walked a mile
of the way home, and had undergone the excitement of the quarrel, till,
with the slow progress of their steed, it was now nearly one o’clock.
Only once, however, was she overcome by actual drowsiness. In that
moment of oblivion her head sank gently against him.

D’Urberville stopped the horse, withdrew his feet from the stirrups,
turned sideways on the saddle, and enclosed her waist with his arm to
support her.

This immediately put her on the defensive, and with one of those sudden
impulses of reprisal to which she was liable she gave him a little push
from her. In his ticklish position he nearly lost his balance and only
just avoided rolling over into the road, the horse, though a powerful
one, being fortunately the quietest he rode.

“That is devilish unkind!” he said. “I mean no harm—only to keep you
from falling.”

She pondered suspiciously, till, thinking that this might after all be
true, she relented, and said quite humbly, “I beg your pardon, sir.”

“I won’t pardon you unless you show some confidence in me. Good God!”
he burst out, “what am I, to be repulsed so by a mere chit like you?
For near three mortal months have you trifled with my feelings, eluded
me, and snubbed me; and I won’t stand it!”

“I’ll leave you to-morrow, sir.”

“No, you will not leave me to-morrow! Will you, I ask once more, show
your belief in me by letting me clasp you with my arm? Come, between us
two and nobody else, now. We know each other well; and you know that I
love you, and think you the prettiest girl in the world, which you are.
Mayn’t I treat you as a lover?”

She drew a quick pettish breath of objection, writhing uneasily on her
seat, looked far ahead, and murmured, “I don’t know—I wish—how can I
say yes or no when—”

He settled the matter by clasping his arm round her as he desired, and
Tess expressed no further negative. Thus they sidled slowly onward till
it struck her they had been advancing for an unconscionable time—far
longer than was usually occupied by the short journey from
Chaseborough, even at this walking pace, and that they were no longer
on hard road, but in a mere trackway.

“Why, where be we?” she exclaimed.

“Passing by a wood.”

“A wood—what wood? Surely we are quite out of the road?”

“A bit of The Chase—the oldest wood in England. It is a lovely night,
and why should we not prolong our ride a little?”

“How could you be so treacherous!” said Tess, between archness and real
dismay, and getting rid of his arm by pulling open his fingers one by
one, though at the risk of slipping off herself. “Just when I’ve been
putting such trust in you, and obliging you to please you, because I
thought I had wronged you by that push! Please set me down, and let me
walk home.”

“You cannot walk home, darling, even if the air were clear. We are
miles away from Trantridge, if I must tell you, and in this growing fog
you might wander for hours among these trees.”

“Never mind that,” she coaxed. “Put me down, I beg you. I don’t mind
where it is; only let me get down, sir, please!”

“Very well, then, I will—on one condition. Having brought you here to
this out-of-the-way place, I feel myself responsible for your
safe-conduct home, whatever you may yourself feel about it. As to your
getting to Trantridge without assistance, it is quite impossible; for,
to tell the truth, dear, owing to this fog, which so disguises
everything, I don’t quite know where we are myself. Now, if you will
promise to wait beside the horse while I walk through the bushes till I
come to some road or house, and ascertain exactly our whereabouts, I’ll
deposit you here willingly. When I come back I’ll give you full
directions, and if you insist upon walking you may; or you may ride—at
your pleasure.”

She accepted these terms, and slid off on the near side, though not
till he had stolen a cursory kiss. He sprang down on the other side.

“I suppose I must hold the horse?” said she.

“Oh no; it’s not necessary,” replied Alec, patting the panting
creature. “He’s had enough of it for to-night.”

He turned the horse’s head into the bushes, hitched him on to a bough,
and made a sort of couch or nest for her in the deep mass of dead
leaves.

“Now, you sit there,” he said. “The leaves have not got damp as yet.
Just give an eye to the horse—it will be quite sufficient.”

He took a few steps away from her, but, returning, said, “By the bye,
Tess, your father has a new cob to-day. Somebody gave it to him.”

“Somebody? You!”

D’Urberville nodded.

“O how very good of you that is!” she exclaimed, with a painful sense
of the awkwardness of having to thank him just then.

“And the children have some toys.”

“I didn’t know—you ever sent them anything!” she murmured, much moved.
“I almost wish you had not—yes, I almost wish it!”

“Why, dear?”

“It—hampers me so.”

“Tessy—don’t you love me ever so little now?”

“I’m grateful,” she reluctantly admitted. “But I fear I do not—” The
sudden vision of his passion for herself as a factor in this result so
distressed her that, beginning with one slow tear, and then following
with another, she wept outright.

“Don’t cry, dear, dear one! Now sit down here, and wait till I come.”
She passively sat down amid the leaves he had heaped, and shivered
slightly. “Are you cold?” he asked.

“Not very—a little.”

He touched her with his fingers, which sank into her as into down. “You
have only that puffy muslin dress on—how’s that?”

“It’s my best summer one. ’Twas very warm when I started, and I didn’t
know I was going to ride, and that it would be night.”

“Nights grow chilly in September. Let me see.” He pulled off a light
overcoat that he had worn, and put it round her tenderly. “That’s
it—now you’ll feel warmer,” he continued. “Now, my pretty, rest there;
I shall soon be back again.”

Having buttoned the overcoat round her shoulders he plunged into the
webs of vapour which by this time formed veils between the trees. She
could hear the rustling of the branches as he ascended the adjoining
slope, till his movements were no louder than the hopping of a bird,
and finally died away. With the setting of the moon the pale light
lessened, and Tess became invisible as she fell into reverie upon the
leaves where he had left her.

In the meantime Alec d’Urberville had pushed on up the slope to clear
his genuine doubt as to the quarter of The Chase they were in. He had,
in fact, ridden quite at random for over an hour, taking any turning
that came to hand in order to prolong companionship with her, and
giving far more attention to Tess’s moonlit person than to any wayside
object. A little rest for the jaded animal being desirable, he did not
hasten his search for landmarks. A clamber over the hill into the
adjoining vale brought him to the fence of a highway whose contours he
recognized, which settled the question of their whereabouts.
D’Urberville thereupon turned back; but by this time the moon had quite
gone down, and partly on account of the fog The Chase was wrapped in
thick darkness, although morning was not far off. He was obliged to
advance with outstretched hands to avoid contact with the boughs, and
discovered that to hit the exact spot from which he had started was at
first entirely beyond him. Roaming up and down, round and round, he at
length heard a slight movement of the horse close at hand; and the
sleeve of his overcoat unexpectedly caught his foot.

“Tess!” said d’Urberville.

There was no answer. The obscurity was now so great that he could see
absolutely nothing but a pale nebulousness at his feet, which
represented the white muslin figure he had left upon the dead leaves.
Everything else was blackness alike. D’Urberville stooped; and heard a
gentle regular breathing. He knelt and bent lower, till her breath
warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers.
She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears.

Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Above them rose the
primaeval yews and oaks of The Chase, in which there poised gentle
roosting birds in their last nap; and about them stole the hopping
rabbits and hares. But, might some say, where was Tess’s guardian
angel? where was the providence of her simple faith? Perhaps, like that
other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking, or he
was pursuing, or he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and not to be
awaked.

Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as
gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been
traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often
the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the
wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have
failed to explain to our sense of order. One may, indeed, admit the
possibility of a retribution lurking in the present catastrophe.
Doubtless some of Tess d’Urberville’s mailed ancestors rollicking home
from a fray had dealt the same measure even more ruthlessly towards
peasant girls of their time. But though to visit the sins of the
fathers upon the children may be a morality good enough for divinities,
it is scorned by average human nature; and it therefore does not mend
the matter.

As Tess’s own people down in those retreats are never tired of saying
among each other in their fatalistic way: “It was to be.” There lay the
pity of it. An immeasurable social chasm was to divide our heroine’s
personality thereafter from that previous self of hers who stepped from
her mother’s door to try her fortune at Trantridge poultry-farm.

End of Phase the First

Phase the Second:

Maiden No More