Tess of the d'Urbervilles

LIV

In a quarter of an hour Clare was leaving the house, whence his mother
watched his thin figure as it disappeared into the street. He had
declined to borrow his father’s old mare, well knowing of its necessity
to the household. He went to the inn, where he hired a trap, and could
hardly wait during the harnessing. In a very few minutes after, he was
driving up the hill out of the town which, three or four months earlier
in the year, Tess had descended with such hopes and ascended with such
shattered purposes.

Benvill Lane soon stretched before him, its hedges and trees purple
with buds; but he was looking at other things, and only recalled
himself to the scene sufficiently to enable him to keep the way. In
something less than an hour-and-a-half he had skirted the south of the
King’s Hintock estates and ascended to the untoward solitude of
Cross-in-Hand, the unholy stone whereon Tess had been compelled by Alec
d’Urberville, in his whim of reformation, to swear the strange oath
that she would never wilfully tempt him again. The pale and blasted
nettle-stems of the preceding year even now lingered nakedly in the
banks, young green nettles of the present spring growing from their
roots.

Thence he went along the verge of the upland overhanging the other
Hintocks, and, turning to the right, plunged into the bracing
calcareous region of Flintcomb-Ash, the address from which she had
written to him in one of the letters, and which he supposed to be the
place of sojourn referred to by her mother. Here, of course, he did not
find her; and what added to his depression was the discovery that no
“Mrs Clare” had ever been heard of by the cottagers or by the farmer
himself, though Tess was remembered well enough by her Christian name.
His name she had obviously never used during their separation, and her
dignified sense of their total severance was shown not much less by
this abstention than by the hardships she had chosen to undergo (of
which he now learnt for the first time) rather than apply to his father
for more funds.

From this place they told him Tess Durbeyfield had gone, without due
notice, to the home of her parents on the other side of Blackmoor, and
it therefore became necessary to find Mrs Durbeyfield. She had told him
she was not now at Marlott, but had been curiously reticent as to her
actual address, and the only course was to go to Marlott and inquire
for it. The farmer who had been so churlish with Tess was quite
smooth-tongued to Clare, and lent him a horse and man to drive him
towards Marlott, the gig he had arrived in being sent back to
Emminster; for the limit of a day’s journey with that horse was
reached.

Clare would not accept the loan of the farmer’s vehicle for a further
distance than to the outskirts of the Vale, and, sending it back with
the man who had driven him, he put up at an inn, and next day entered
on foot the region wherein was the spot of his dear Tess’s birth. It
was as yet too early in the year for much colour to appear in the
gardens and foliage; the so-called spring was but winter overlaid with
a thin coat of greenness, and it was of a parcel with his expectations.

The house in which Tess had passed the years of her childhood was now
inhabited by another family who had never known her. The new residents
were in the garden, taking as much interest in their own doings as if
the homestead had never passed its primal time in conjunction with the
histories of others, beside which the histories of these were but as a
tale told by an idiot. They walked about the garden paths with thoughts
of their own concerns entirely uppermost, bringing their actions at
every moment in jarring collision with the dim ghosts behind them,
talking as though the time when Tess lived there were not one whit
intenser in story than now. Even the spring birds sang over their heads
as if they thought there was nobody missing in particular.

On inquiry of these precious innocents, to whom even the name of their
predecessors was a failing memory, Clare learned that John Durbeyfield
was dead; that his widow and children had left Marlott, declaring that
they were going to live at Kingsbere, but instead of doing so had gone
on to another place they mentioned. By this time Clare abhorred the
house for ceasing to contain Tess, and hastened away from its hated
presence without once looking back.

His way was by the field in which he had first beheld her at the dance.
It was as bad as the house—even worse. He passed on through the
churchyard, where, amongst the new headstones, he saw one of a somewhat
superior design to the rest. The inscription ran thus:

In memory of John Durbeyfield, rightly d’Urberville, of the once
powerful family of that Name, and Direct Descendant through an
illustrious Line from Sir Pagan d’Urberville, one of the Knights of
the Conqueror. Died March 10th, 18—

How are the Mighty Fallen.

Some man, apparently the sexton, had observed Clare standing there, and
drew nigh. “Ah, sir, now that’s a man who didn’t want to lie here, but
wished to be carried to Kingsbere, where his ancestors be.”

“And why didn’t they respect his wish?”

“Oh—no money. Bless your soul, sir, why—there, I wouldn’t wish to say
it everywhere, but—even this headstone, for all the flourish wrote upon
en, is not paid for.”

“Ah, who put it up?”

The man told the name of a mason in the village, and, on leaving the
churchyard, Clare called at the mason’s house. He found that the
statement was true, and paid the bill. This done, he turned in the
direction of the migrants.

The distance was too long for a walk, but Clare felt such a strong
desire for isolation that at first he would neither hire a conveyance
nor go to a circuitous line of railway by which he might eventually
reach the place. At Shaston, however, he found he must hire; but the
way was such that he did not enter Joan’s place till about seven
o’clock in the evening, having traversed a distance of over twenty
miles since leaving Marlott.

The village being small he had little difficulty in finding Mrs
Durbeyfield’s tenement, which was a house in a walled garden, remote
from the main road, where she had stowed away her clumsy old furniture
as best she could. It was plain that for some reason or other she had
not wished him to visit her, and he felt his call to be somewhat of an
intrusion. She came to the door herself, and the light from the evening
sky fell upon her face.

This was the first time that Clare had ever met her, but he was too
preoccupied to observe more than that she was still a handsome woman,
in the garb of a respectable widow. He was obliged to explain that he
was Tess’s husband, and his object in coming there, and he did it
awkwardly enough. “I want to see her at once,” he added. “You said you
would write to me again, but you have not done so.”

“Because she’ve not come home,” said Joan.

“Do you know if she is well?”

“I don’t. But you ought to, sir,” said she.

“I admit it. Where is she staying?”

From the beginning of the interview Joan had disclosed her
embarrassment by keeping her hand to the side of her cheek.

“I—don’t know exactly where she is staying,” she answered. “She
was—but—”

“Where was she?”

“Well, she is not there now.”

In her evasiveness she paused again, and the younger children had by
this time crept to the door, where, pulling at his mother’s skirts, the
youngest murmured—

“Is this the gentleman who is going to marry Tess?”

“He has married her,” Joan whispered. “Go inside.”

Clare saw her efforts for reticence, and asked—

“Do you think Tess would wish me to try and find her? If not, of
course—”

“I don’t think she would.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am sure she wouldn’t.”

He was turning away; and then he thought of Tess’s tender letter.

“I am sure she would!” he retorted passionately. “I know her better
than you do.”

“That’s very likely, sir; for I have never really known her.”

“Please tell me her address, Mrs Durbeyfield, in kindness to a lonely
wretched man!” Tess’s mother again restlessly swept her cheek with her
vertical hand, and seeing that he suffered, she at last said, is a low
voice—

“She is at Sandbourne.”

“Ah—where there? Sandbourne has become a large place, they say.”

“I don’t know more particularly than I have said—Sandbourne. For
myself, I was never there.”

It was apparent that Joan spoke the truth in this, and he pressed her
no further.

“Are you in want of anything?” he said gently.

“No, sir,” she replied. “We are fairly well provided for.”

Without entering the house Clare turned away. There was a station three
miles ahead, and paying off his coachman, he walked thither. The last
train to Sandbourne left shortly after, and it bore Clare on its
wheels.