Tess of the d'Urbervilles

LI

At length it was the eve of Old Lady-Day, and the agricultural world
was in a fever of mobility such as only occurs at that particular date
of the year. It is a day of fulfilment; agreements for outdoor service
during the ensuing year, entered into at Candlemas, are to be now
carried out. The labourers—or “work-folk”, as they used to call
themselves immemorially till the other word was introduced from
without—who wish to remain no longer in old places are removing to the
new farms.

These annual migrations from farm to farm were on the increase here.
When Tess’s mother was a child the majority of the field-folk about
Marlott had remained all their lives on one farm, which had been the
home also of their fathers and grandfathers; but latterly the desire
for yearly removal had risen to a high pitch. With the younger families
it was a pleasant excitement which might possibly be an advantage. The
Egypt of one family was the Land of Promise to the family who saw it
from a distance, till by residence there it became in turn their Egypt
also; and so they changed and changed.

However, all the mutations so increasingly discernible in village life
did not originate entirely in the agricultural unrest. A depopulation
was also going on. The village had formerly contained, side by side
with the argicultural labourers, an interesting and better-informed
class, ranking distinctly above the former—the class to which Tess’s
father and mother had belonged—and including the carpenter, the smith,
the shoemaker, the huckster, together with nondescript workers other
than farm-labourers; a set of people who owed a certain stability of
aim and conduct to the fact of their being lifeholders like Tess’s
father, or copyholders, or occasionally, small freeholders. But as the
long holdings fell in, they were seldom again let to similar tenants,
and were mostly pulled down, if not absolutely required by the farmer
for his hands. Cottagers who were not directly employed on the land
were looked upon with disfavour, and the banishment of some starved the
trade of others, who were thus obliged to follow. These families, who
had formed the backbone of the village life in the past, who were the
depositaries of the village traditions, had to seek refuge in the large
centres; the process, humorously designated by statisticians as “the
tendency of the rural population towards the large towns”, being really
the tendency of water to flow uphill when forced by machinery.

The cottage accommodation at Marlott having been in this manner
considerably curtailed by demolitions, every house which remained
standing was required by the agriculturist for his work-people. Ever
since the occurrence of the event which had cast such a shadow over
Tess’s life, the Durbeyfield family (whose descent was not credited)
had been tacitly looked on as one which would have to go when their
lease ended, if only in the interests of morality. It was, indeed,
quite true that the household had not been shining examples either of
temperance, soberness, or chastity. The father, and even the mother,
had got drunk at times, the younger children seldom had gone to church,
and the eldest daughter had made queer unions. By some means the
village had to be kept pure. So on this, the first Lady-Day on which
the Durbeyfields were expellable, the house, being roomy, was required
for a carter with a large family; and Widow Joan, her daughters Tess
and ’Liza-Lu, the boy Abraham, and the younger children had to go
elsewhere.

On the evening preceding their removal it was getting dark betimes by
reason of a drizzling rain which blurred the sky. As it was the last
night they would spend in the village which had been their home and
birthplace, Mrs Durbeyfield, ’Liza-Lu, and Abraham had gone out to bid
some friends goodbye, and Tess was keeping house till they should
return.

She was kneeling in the window-bench, her face close to the casement,
where an outer pane of rain-water was sliding down the inner pane of
glass. Her eyes rested on the web of a spider, probably starved long
ago, which had been mistakenly placed in a corner where no flies ever
came, and shivered in the slight draught through the casement. Tess was
reflecting on the position of the household, in which she perceived her
own evil influence. Had she not come home, her mother and the children
might probably have been allowed to stay on as weekly tenants. But she
had been observed almost immediately on her return by some people of
scrupulous character and great influence: they had seen her idling in
the churchyard, restoring as well as she could with a little trowel a
baby’s obliterated grave. By this means they had found that she was
living here again; her mother was scolded for “harbouring” her; sharp
retorts had ensued from Joan, who had independently offered to leave at
once; she had been taken at her word; and here was the result.

“I ought never to have come home,” said Tess to herself, bitterly.

She was so intent upon these thoughts that she hardly at first took
note of a man in a white mackintosh whom she saw riding down the
street. Possibly it was owing to her face being near to the pane that
he saw her so quickly, and directed his horse so close to the
cottage-front that his hoofs were almost upon the narrow border for
plants growing under the wall. It was not till he touched the window
with his riding-crop that she observed him. The rain had nearly ceased,
and she opened the casement in obedience to his gesture.

“Didn’t you see me?” asked d’Urberville.

“I was not attending,” she said. “I heard you, I believe, though I
fancied it was a carriage and horses. I was in a sort of dream.”

“Ah! you heard the d’Urberville Coach, perhaps. You know the legend, I
suppose?”

“No. My—somebody was going to tell it me once, but didn’t.”

“If you are a genuine d’Urberville I ought not to tell you either, I
suppose. As for me, I’m a sham one, so it doesn’t matter. It is rather
dismal. It is that this sound of a non-existent coach can only be heard
by one of d’Urberville blood, and it is held to be of ill-omen to the
one who hears it. It has to do with a murder, committed by one of the
family, centuries ago.”

“Now you have begun it, finish it.”

“Very well. One of the family is said to have abducted some beautiful
woman, who tried to escape from the coach in which he was carrying her
off, and in the struggle he killed her—or she killed him—I forget
which. Such is one version of the tale... I see that your tubs and
buckets are packed. Going away, aren’t you?”

“Yes, to-morrow—Old Lady Day.”

“I heard you were, but could hardly believe it; it seems so sudden. Why
is it?”

“Father’s was the last life on the property, and when that dropped we
had no further right to stay. Though we might, perhaps, have stayed as
weekly tenants—if it had not been for me.”

“What about you?”

“I am not a—proper woman.”

D’Urberville’s face flushed.

“What a blasted shame! Miserable snobs! May their dirty souls be burnt
to cinders!” he exclaimed in tones of ironic resentment. “That’s why
you are going, is it? Turned out?”

“We are not turned out exactly; but as they said we should have to go
soon, it was best to go now everybody was moving, because there are
better chances.”

“Where are you going to?”

“Kingsbere. We have taken rooms there. Mother is so foolish about
father’s people that she will go there.”

“But your mother’s family are not fit for lodgings, and in a little
hole of a town like that. Now why not come to my garden-house at
Trantridge? There are hardly any poultry now, since my mother’s death;
but there’s the house, as you know it, and the garden. It can be
whitewashed in a day, and your mother can live there quite comfortably;
and I will put the children to a good school. Really I ought to do
something for you!”

“But we have already taken the rooms at Kingsbere!” she declared. “And
we can wait there—”

“Wait—what for? For that nice husband, no doubt. Now look here, Tess, I
know what men are, and, bearing in mind the grounds of your
separation, I am quite positive he will never make it up with you. Now,
though I have been your enemy, I am your friend, even if you won’t
believe it. Come to this cottage of mine. We’ll get up a regular colony
of fowls, and your mother can attend to them excellently; and the
children can go to school.”

Tess breathed more and more quickly, and at length she said—

“How do I know that you would do all this? Your views may change—and
then—we should be—my mother would be—homeless again.”

“O no—no. I would guarantee you against such as that in writing, if
necessary. Think it over.”

Tess shook her head. But d’Urberville persisted; she had seldom seen
him so determined; he would not take a negative.

“Please just tell your mother,” he said, in emphatic tones. “It is her
business to judge—not yours. I shall get the house swept out and
whitened to-morrow morning, and fires lit; and it will be dry by the
evening, so that you can come straight there. Now mind, I shall expect
you.”

Tess again shook her head, her throat swelling with complicated
emotion. She could not look up at d’Urberville.

“I owe you something for the past, you know,” he resumed. “And you
cured me, too, of that craze; so I am glad—”

“I would rather you had kept the craze, so that you had kept the
practice which went with it!”

“I am glad of this opportunity of repaying you a little. To-morrow I
shall expect to hear your mother’s goods unloading... Give me your hand
on it now—dear, beautiful Tess!”

With the last sentence he had dropped his voice to a murmur, and put
his hand in at the half-open casement. With stormy eyes she pulled the
stay-bar quickly, and, in doing so, caught his arm between the casement
and the stone mullion.

“Damnation—you are very cruel!” he said, snatching out his arm. “No,
no!—I know you didn’t do it on purpose. Well, I shall expect you, or
your mother and children at least.”

“I shall not come—I have plenty of money!” she cried.

“Where?”

“At my father-in-law’s, if I ask for it.”

“If you ask for it. But you won’t, Tess; I know you; you’ll never ask
for it—you’ll starve first!”

With these words he rode off. Just at the corner of the street he met
the man with the paint-pot, who asked him if he had deserted the
brethren.

“You go to the devil!” said d’Urberville.

Tess remained where she was a long while, till a sudden rebellious
sense of injustice caused the region of her eyes to swell with the rush
of hot tears thither. Her husband, Angel Clare himself, had, like
others, dealt out hard measure to her; surely he had! She had never
before admitted such a thought; but he had surely! Never in her
life—she could swear it from the bottom of her soul—had she ever
intended to do wrong; yet these hard judgements had come. Whatever her
sins, they were not sins of intention, but of inadvertence, and why
should she have been punished so persistently?

She passionately seized the first piece of paper that came to hand, and
scribbled the following lines:

O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do not deserve
it. I have thought it all over carefully, and I can never, never
forgive you! You know that I did not intend to wrong you—why have
you so wronged me? You are cruel, cruel indeed! I will try to
forget you. It is all injustice I have received at your hands!

T.

She watched till the postman passed by, ran out to him with her
epistle, and then again took her listless place inside the
window-panes.

It was just as well to write like that as to write tenderly. How could
he give way to entreaty? The facts had not changed: there was no new
event to alter his opinion.

It grew darker, the fire-light shining over the room. The two biggest
of the younger children had gone out with their mother; the four
smallest, their ages ranging from three-and-a-half years to eleven, all
in black frocks, were gathered round the hearth babbling their own
little subjects. Tess at length joined them, without lighting a candle.

“This is the last night that we shall sleep here, dears, in the house
where we were born,” she said quickly. “We ought to think of it,
oughtn’t we?”

They all became silent; with the impressibility of their age they were
ready to burst into tears at the picture of finality she had conjured
up, though all the day hitherto they had been rejoicing in the idea of
a new place. Tess changed the subject.

“Sing to me, dears,” she said.

“What shall we sing?”

“Anything you know; I don’t mind.”

There was a momentary pause; it was broken, first, in one little
tentative note; then a second voice strengthened it, and a third and a
fourth chimed in unison, with words they had learnt at the
Sunday-school—

Here we suffer grief and pain,
Here we meet to part again;
In Heaven we part no more.

The four sang on with the phlegmatic passivity of persons who had long
ago settled the question, and there being no mistake about it, felt
that further thought was not required. With features strained hard to
enunciate the syllables they continued to regard the centre of the
flickering fire, the notes of the youngest straying over into the
pauses of the rest.

Tess turned from them, and went to the window again. Darkness had now
fallen without, but she put her face to the pane as though to peer into
the gloom. It was really to hide her tears. If she could only believe
what the children were singing; if she were only sure, how different
all would now be; how confidently she would leave them to Providence
and their future kingdom! But, in default of that, it behoved her to do
something; to be their Providence; for to Tess, as to not a few
millions of others, there was ghastly satire in the poet’s lines—

Not in utter nakedness
But trailing clouds of glory do we come.

To her and her like, birth itself was an ordeal of degrading personal
compulsion, whose gratuitousness nothing in the result seemed to
justify, and at best could only palliate.

In the shades of the wet road she soon discerned her mother with tall
’Liza-Lu and Abraham. Mrs Durbeyfield’s pattens clicked up to the door,
and Tess opened it.

“I see the tracks of a horse outside the window,” said Joan. “Hev
somebody called?”

“No,” said Tess.

The children by the fire looked gravely at her, and one murmured—

“Why, Tess, the gentleman a-horseback!”

“He didn’t call,” said Tess. “He spoke to me in passing.”

“Who was the gentleman?” asked the mother. “Your husband?”

“No. He’ll never, never come,” answered Tess in stony hopelessness.

“Then who was it?”

“Oh, you needn’t ask. You’ve seen him before, and so have I.”

“Ah! What did he say?” said Joan curiously.

“I will tell you when we are settled in our lodging at Kingsbere
to-morrow—every word.”

It was not her husband, she had said. Yet a consciousness that in a
physical sense this man alone was her husband seemed to weigh on her
more and more.