Tess of the d'Urbervilles

LII

It was now broad day, and she started again, emerging cautiously upon
the highway. But there was no need for caution; not a soul was at hand,
and Tess went onward with fortitude, her recollection of the birds’
silent endurance of their night of agony impressing upon her the
relativity of sorrows and the tolerable nature of her own, if she could
once rise high enough to despise opinion. But that she could not do so
long as it was held by Clare.

She reached Chalk-Newton, and breakfasted at an inn, where several
young men were troublesomely complimentary to her good looks. Somehow
she felt hopeful, for was it not possible that her husband also might
say these same things to her even yet? She was bound to take care of
herself on the chance of it, and keep off these casual lovers. To this
end Tess resolved to run no further risks from her appearance. As soon
as she got out of the village she entered a thicket and took from her
basket one of the oldest field-gowns, which she had never put on even
at the dairy—never since she had worked among the stubble at Marlott.
She also, by a felicitous thought, took a handkerchief from her bundle
and tied it round her face under her bonnet, covering her chin and half
her cheeks and temples, as if she were suffering from toothache. Then
with her little scissors, by the aid of a pocket looking-glass, she
mercilessly nipped her eyebrows off, and thus insured against
aggressive admiration, she went on her uneven way.

“What a mommet of a maid!” said the next man who met her to a
companion.

Tears came into her eyes for very pity of herself as she heard him.

“But I don’t care!” she said. “O no—I don’t care! I’ll always be ugly
now, because Angel is not here, and I have nobody to take care of me.
My husband that was is gone away, and never will love me any more; but
I love him just the same, and hate all other men, and like to make ’em
think scornfully of me!”

Thus Tess walks on; a figure which is part of the landscape; a
fieldwoman pure and simple, in winter guise; a gray serge cape, a red
woollen cravat, a stuff skirt covered by a whitey-brown rough wrapper,
and buff-leather gloves. Every thread of that old attire has become
faded and thin under the stroke of raindrops, the burn of sunbeams, and
the stress of winds. There is no sign of young passion in her now—

The maiden’s mouth is cold
. . . . .
Fold over simple fold
Binding her head.

Inside this exterior, over which the eye might have roved as over a
thing scarcely percipient, almost inorganic, there was the record of a
pulsing life which had learnt too well, for its years, of the dust and
ashes of things, of the cruelty of lust and the fragility of love.

Next day the weather was bad, but she trudged on, the honesty,
directness, and impartiality of elemental enmity disconcerting her but
little. Her object being a winter’s occupation and a winter’s home,
there was no time to lose. Her experience of short hirings had been
such that she was determined to accept no more.

Thus she went forward from farm to farm in the direction of the place
whence Marian had written to her, which she determined to make use of
as a last shift only, its rumoured stringencies being the reverse of
tempting. First she inquired for the lighter kinds of employment, and,
as acceptance in any variety of these grew hopeless, applied next for
the less light, till, beginning with the dairy and poultry tendance
that she liked best, she ended with the heavy and course pursuits which
she liked least—work on arable land: work of such roughness, indeed, as
she would never have deliberately voluteered for.

Towards the second evening she reached the irregular chalk table-land
or plateau, bosomed with semi-globular tumuli—as if Cybele the
Many-breasted were supinely extended there—which stretched between the
valley of her birth and the valley of her love.

Here the air was dry and cold, and the long cart-roads were blown white
and dusty within a few hours after rain. There were few trees, or none,
those that would have grown in the hedges being mercilessly plashed
down with the quickset by the tenant-farmers, the natural enemies of
tree, bush, and brake. In the middle distance ahead of her she could
see the summits of Bulbarrow and of Nettlecombe Tout, and they seemed
friendly. They had a low and unassuming aspect from this upland, though
as approached on the other side from Blackmoor in her childhood they
were as lofty bastions against the sky. Southerly, at many miles’
distance, and over the hills and ridges coastward, she could discern a
surface like polished steel: it was the English Channel at a point far
out towards France.

Before her, in a slight depression, were the remains of a village. She
had, in fact, reached Flintcomb-Ash, the place of Marian’s sojourn.
There seemed to be no help for it; hither she was doomed to come. The
stubborn soil around her showed plainly enough that the kind of labour
in demand here was of the roughest kind; but it was time to rest from
searching, and she resolved to stay, particularly as it began to rain.
At the entrance to the village was a cottage whose gable jutted into
the road, and before applying for a lodging she stood under its
shelter, and watched the evening close in.

“Who would think I was Mrs Angel Clare!” she said.

The wall felt warm to her back and shoulders, and she found that
immediately within the gable was the cottage fireplace, the heat of
which came through the bricks. She warmed her hands upon them, and also
put her cheek—red and moist with the drizzle—against their comforting
surface. The wall seemed to be the only friend she had. She had so
little wish to leave it that she could have stayed there all night.

Tess could hear the occupants of the cottage—gathered together after
their day’s labour—talking to each other within, and the rattle of
their supper-plates was also audible. But in the village-street she had
seen no soul as yet. The solitude was at last broken by the approach of
one feminine figure, who, though the evening was cold, wore the print
gown and the tilt-bonnet of summer time. Tess instinctively thought it
might be Marian, and when she came near enough to be distinguishable in
the gloom, surely enough it was she. Marian was even stouter and redder
in the face than formerly, and decidedly shabbier in attire. At any
previous period of her existence Tess would hardly have cared to renew
the acquaintance in such conditions; but her loneliness was excessive,
and she responded readily to Marian’s greeting.

Marian was quite respectful in her inquiries, but seemed much moved by
the fact that Tess should still continue in no better condition than at
first; though she had dimly heard of the separation.

“Tess—Mrs Clare—the dear wife of dear he! And is it really so bad as
this, my child? Why is your cwomely face tied up in such a way? Anybody
been beating ’ee? Not he?”

“No, no, no! I merely did it not to be clipsed or colled, Marian.”

She pulled off in disgust a bandage which could suggest such wild
thoughts.

“And you’ve got no collar on” (Tess had been accustomed to wear a
little white collar at the dairy).

“I know it, Marian.”

“You’ve lost it travelling.”

“I’ve not lost it. The truth is, I don’t care anything about my looks;
and so I didn’t put it on.”

“And you don’t wear your wedding-ring?”

“Yes, I do; but not in public. I wear it round my neck on a ribbon. I
don’t wish people to think who I am by marriage, or that I am married
at all; it would be so awkward while I lead my present life.”

Marian paused.

“But you be a gentleman’s wife; and it seems hardly fair that you
should live like this!”

“O yes it is, quite fair; though I am very unhappy.”

“Well, well. He married you—and you can be unhappy!”

“Wives are unhappy sometimes; from no fault of their husbands—from
their own.”

“You’ve no faults, deary; that I’m sure of. And he’s none. So it must
be something outside ye both.”

“Marian, dear Marian, will you do me a good turn without asking
questions? My husband has gone abroad, and somehow I have overrun my
allowance, so that I have to fall back upon my old work for a time. Do
not call me Mrs Clare, but Tess, as before. Do they want a hand here?”

“O yes; they’ll take one always, because few care to come. ’Tis a
starve-acre place. Corn and swedes are all they grow. Though I be here
myself, I feel ’tis a pity for such as you to come.”

“But you used to be as good a dairywoman as I.”

“Yes; but I’ve got out o’ that since I took to drink. Lord, that’s the
only comfort I’ve got now! If you engage, you’ll be set swede-hacking.
That’s what I be doing; but you won’t like it.”

“O—anything! Will you speak for me?”

“You will do better by speaking for yourself.”

“Very well. Now, Marian, remember—nothing about him if I get the
place. I don’t wish to bring his name down to the dirt.”

Marian, who was really a trustworthy girl though of coarser grain than
Tess, promised anything she asked.

“This is pay-night,” she said, “and if you were to come with me you
would know at once. I be real sorry that you are not happy; but ’tis
because he’s away, I know. You couldn’t be unhappy if he were here,
even if he gie’d ye no money—even if he used you like a drudge.”

“That’s true; I could not!”

They walked on together and soon reached the farmhouse, which was
almost sublime in its dreariness. There was not a tree within sight;
there was not, at this season, a green pasture—nothing but fallow and
turnips everywhere, in large fields divided by hedges plashed to
unrelieved levels.

Tess waited outside the door of the farmhouse till the group of
workfolk had received their wages, and then Marian introduced her. The
farmer himself, it appeared, was not at home, but his wife, who
represented him this evening, made no objection to hiring Tess, on her
agreeing to remain till Old Lady-Day. Female field-labour was seldom
offered now, and its cheapness made it profitable for tasks which women
could perform as readily as men.

Having signed the agreement, there was nothing more for Tess to do at
present than to get a lodging, and she found one in the house at whose
gable-wall she had warmed herself. It was a poor subsistence that she
had ensured, but it would afford a shelter for the winter at any rate.

That night she wrote to inform her parents of her new address, in case
a letter should arrive at Marlott from her husband. But she did not
tell them of the sorriness of her situation: it might have brought
reproach upon him.