Tess of the d'Urbervilles

his penitential mood kept her from naming the wedding-day. The
beginning of November found its date still in abeyance, though he asked
her at the most tempting times. But Tess’s desire seemed to be for a
perpetual betrothal in which everything should remain as it was then.

The meads were changing now; but it was still warm enough in early
afternoons before milking to idle there awhile, and the state of
dairy-work at this time of year allowed a spare hour for idling.
Looking over the damp sod in the direction of the sun, a glistening
ripple of gossamer webs was visible to their eyes under the luminary,
like the track of moonlight on the sea. Gnats, knowing nothing of their
brief glorification, wandered across the shimmer of this pathway,
irradiated as if they bore fire within them, then passed out of its
line, and were quite extinct. In the presence of these things he would
remind her that the date was still the question.

Or he would ask her at night, when he accompanied her on some mission
invented by Mrs Crick to give him the opportunity. This was mostly a
journey to the farmhouse on the slopes above the vale, to inquire how
the advanced cows were getting on in the straw-barton to which they
were relegated. For it was a time of the year that brought great
changes to the world of kine. Batches of the animals were sent away
daily to this lying-in hospital, where they lived on straw till their
calves were born, after which event, and as soon as the calf could
walk, mother and offspring were driven back to the dairy. In the
interval which elapsed before the calves were sold there was, of
course, little milking to be done, but as soon as the calf had been
taken away the milkmaids would have to set to work as usual.

Returning from one of these dark walks they reached a great
gravel-cliff immediately over the levels, where they stood still and
listened. The water was now high in the streams, squirting through the
weirs, and tinkling under culverts; the smallest gullies were all full;
there was no taking short cuts anywhere, and foot-passengers were
compelled to follow the permanent ways. From the whole extent of the
invisible vale came a multitudinous intonation; it forced upon their
fancy that a great city lay below them, and that the murmur was the
vociferation of its populace.

“It seems like tens of thousands of them,” said Tess; “holding
public-meetings in their market-places, arguing, preaching,
quarrelling, sobbing, groaning, praying, and cursing.”

Clare was not particularly heeding.

“Did Crick speak to you to-day, dear, about his not wanting much
assistance during the winter months?”

“No.”

“The cows are going dry rapidly.”

“Yes. Six or seven went to the straw-barton yesterday, and three the
day before, making nearly twenty in the straw already. Ah—is it that
the farmer don’t want my help for the calving? O, I am not wanted here
any more! And I have tried so hard to—”

“Crick didn’t exactly say that he would no longer require you. But,
knowing what our relations were, he said in the most good-natured and
respectful manner possible that he supposed on my leaving at Christmas
I should take you with me, and on my asking what he would do without
you he merely observed that, as a matter of fact, it was a time of year
when he could do with a very little female help. I am afraid I was
sinner enough to feel rather glad that he was in this way forcing your
hand.”

“I don’t think you ought to have felt glad, Angel. Because ’tis always
mournful not to be wanted, even if at the same time ’tis convenient.”

“Well, it is convenient—you have admitted that.” He put his finger upon
her cheek. “Ah!” he said.

“What?”

“I feel the red rising up at her having been caught! But why should I
trifle so! We will not trifle—life is too serious.”

“It is. Perhaps I saw that before you did.”

She was seeing it then. To decline to marry him after all—in obedience
to her emotion of last night—and leave the dairy, meant to go to some
strange place, not a dairy; for milkmaids were not in request now
calving-time was coming on; to go to some arable farm where no divine
being like Angel Clare was. She hated the thought, and she hated more
the thought of going home.

“So that, seriously, dearest Tess,” he continued, “since you will
probably have to leave at Christmas, it is in every way desirable and
convenient that I should carry you off then as my property. Besides, if
you were not the most uncalculating girl in the world you would know
that we could not go on like this for ever.”

“I wish we could. That it would always be summer and autumn, and you
always courting me, and always thinking as much of me as you have done
through the past summer-time!”

“I always shall.”

“O, I know you will!” she cried, with a sudden fervour of faith in him.
“Angel, I will fix the day when I will become yours for always!”

Thus at last it was arranged between them, during that dark walk home,
amid the myriads of liquid voices on the right and left.

When they reached the dairy Mr and Mrs Crick were promptly told—with
injunctions of secrecy; for each of the lovers was desirous that the
marriage should be kept as private as possible. The dairyman, though he
had thought of dismissing her soon, now made a great concern about
losing her. What should he do about his skimming? Who would make the
ornamental butter-pats for the Anglebury and Sandbourne ladies? Mrs
Crick congratulated Tess on the shilly-shallying having at last come to
an end, and said that directly she set eyes on Tess she divined that
she was to be the chosen one of somebody who was no common outdoor man;
Tess had looked so superior as she walked across the barton on that
afternoon of her arrival; that she was of a good family she could have
sworn. In point of fact Mrs Crick did remember thinking that Tess was
graceful and good-looking as she approached; but the superiority might
have been a growth of the imagination aided by subsequent knowledge.

Tess was now carried along upon the wings of the hours, without the
sense of a will. The word had been given; the number of the day written
down. Her naturally bright intelligence had begun to admit the
fatalistic convictions common to field-folk and those who associate
more extensively with natural phenomena than with their
fellow-creatures; and she accordingly drifted into that passive
responsiveness to all things her lover suggested, characteristic of the
frame of mind.

But she wrote anew to her mother, ostensibly to notify the wedding-day;
really to again implore her advice. It was a gentleman who had chosen
her, which perhaps her mother had not sufficiently considered. A
post-nuptial explanation, which might be accepted with a light heart by
a rougher man, might not be received with the same feeling by him. But
this communication brought no reply from Mrs Durbeyfield.

Despite Angel Clare’s plausible representation to himself and to Tess
of the practical need for their immediate marriage, there was in truth
an element of precipitancy in the step, as became apparent at a later
date. He loved her dearly, though perhaps rather ideally and fancifully
than with the impassioned thoroughness of her feeling for him. He had
entertained no notion, when doomed as he had thought to an
unintellectual bucolic life, that such charms as he beheld in this
idyllic creature would be found behind the scenes. Unsophistication was
a thing to talk of; but he had not known how it really struck one until
he came here. Yet he was very far from seeing his future track clearly,
and it might be a year or two before he would be able to consider
himself fairly started in life. The secret lay in the tinge of
recklessness imparted to his career and character by the sense that he
had been made to miss his true destiny through the prejudices of his
family.

“Don’t you think ’twould have been better for us to wait till you were
quite settled in your midland farm?” she once asked timidly. (A midland
farm was the idea just then.)

“To tell the truth, my Tess, I don’t like you to be left anywhere away
from my protection and sympathy.”

The reason was a good one, so far as it went. His influence over her
had been so marked that she had caught his manner and habits, his
speech and phrases, his likings and his aversions. And to leave her in
farmland would be to let her slip back again out of accord with him. He
wished to have her under his charge for another reason. His parents had
naturally desired to see her once at least before he carried her off to
a distant settlement, English or colonial; and as no opinion of theirs
was to be allowed to change his intention, he judged that a couple of
months’ life with him in lodgings whilst seeking for an advantageous
opening would be of some social assistance to her at what she might
feel to be a trying ordeal—her presentation to his mother at the
Vicarage.

Next, he wished to see a little of the working of a flour-mill, having
an idea that he might combine the use of one with corn-growing. The
proprietor of a large old water-mill at Wellbridge—once the mill of an
Abbey—had offered him the inspection of his time-honoured mode of
procedure, and a hand in the operations for a few days, whenever he
should choose to come. Clare paid a visit to the place, some few miles
distant, one day at this time, to inquire particulars, and returned to
Talbothays in the evening. She found him determined to spend a short
time at the Wellbridge flour-mills. And what had determined him? Less
the opportunity of an insight into grinding and bolting than the casual
fact that lodgings were to be obtained in that very farmhouse which,
before its mutilation, had been the mansion of a branch of the
d’Urberville family. This was always how Clare settled practical
questions; by a sentiment which had nothing to do with them. They
decided to go immediately after the wedding, and remain for a
fortnight, instead of journeying to towns and inns.

“Then we will start off to examine some farms on the other side of
London that I have heard of,” he said, “and by March or April we will
pay a visit to my father and mother.”

Questions of procedure such as these arose and passed, and the day, the
incredible day, on which she was to become his, loomed large in the
near future. The thirty-first of December, New Year’s Eve, was the
date. His wife, she said to herself. Could it ever be? Their two selves
together, nothing to divide them, every incident shared by them; why
not? And yet why?

One Sunday morning Izz Huett returned from church, and spoke privately
to Tess.

“You was not called home this morning.”

“What?”

“It should ha’ been the first time of asking to-day,” she answered,
looking quietly at Tess. “You meant to be married New Year’s Eve,
deary?”

The other returned a quick affirmative.

“And there must be three times of asking. And now there be only two
Sundays left between.”

Tess felt her cheek paling; Izz was right; of course there must be
three. Perhaps he had forgotten! If so, there must be a week’s
postponement, and that was unlucky. How could she remind her lover? She
who had been so backward was suddenly fired with impatience and alarm
lest she should lose her dear prize.

A natural incident relieved her anxiety. Izz mentioned the omission of
the banns to Mrs Crick, and Mrs Crick assumed a matron’s privilege of
speaking to Angel on the point.

“Have ye forgot ’em, Mr Clare? The banns, I mean.”

“No, I have not forgot ’em,” says Clare.

As soon as he caught Tess alone he assured her:

“Don’t let them tease you about the banns. A licence will be quieter
for us, and I have decided on a licence without consulting you. So if
you go to church on Sunday morning you will not hear your own name, if
you wished to.”

“I didn’t wish to hear it, dearest,” she said proudly.

But to know that things were in train was an immense relief to Tess
notwithstanding, who had well-nigh feared that somebody would stand up
and forbid the banns on the ground of her history. How events were
favouring her!

“I don’t quite feel easy,” she said to herself. “All this good fortune
may be scourged out of me afterwards by a lot of ill. That’s how Heaven
mostly does. I wish I could have had common banns!”

But everything went smoothly. She wondered whether he would like her to
be married in her present best white frock, or if she ought to buy a
new one. The question was set at rest by his forethought, disclosed by
the arrival of some large packages addressed to her. Inside them she
found a whole stock of clothing, from bonnet to shoes, including a
perfect morning costume, such as would well suit the simple wedding
they planned. He entered the house shortly after the arrival of the
packages, and heard her upstairs undoing them.

A minute later she came down with a flush on her face and tears in her
eyes.

“How thoughtful you’ve been!” she murmured, her cheek upon his
shoulder. “Even to the gloves and handkerchief! My own love—how good,
how kind!”

“No, no, Tess; just an order to a tradeswoman in London—nothing more.”

And to divert her from thinking too highly of him, he told her to go
upstairs, and take her time, and see if it all fitted; and, if not, to
get the village sempstress to make a few alterations.

She did return upstairs, and put on the gown. Alone, she stood for a
moment before the glass looking at the effect of her silk attire; and
then there came into her head her mother’s ballad of the mystic robe—

That never would become that wife
That had once done amiss,

which Mrs Durbeyfield had used to sing to her as a child, so blithely
and so archly, her foot on the cradle, which she rocked to the tune.
Suppose this robe should betray her by changing colour, as her robe had
betrayed Queen Guinevere. Since she had been at the dairy she had not
once thought of the lines till now.