Tess of the d'Urbervilles

he community of fowls to which Tess had been appointed as supervisor,
purveyor, nurse, surgeon, and friend made its headquarters in an old
thatched cottage standing in an enclosure that had once been a garden,
but was now a trampled and sanded square. The house was overrun with
ivy, its chimney being enlarged by the boughs of the parasite to the
aspect of a ruined tower. The lower rooms were entirely given over to
the birds, who walked about them with a proprietary air, as though the
place had been built by themselves, and not by certain dusty
copyholders who now lay east and west in the churchyard. The
descendants of these bygone owners felt it almost as a slight to their
family when the house which had so much of their affection, had cost so
much of their forefathers’ money, and had been in their possession for
several generations before the d’Urbervilles came and built here, was
indifferently turned into a fowl-house by Mrs Stoke-d’Urberville as
soon as the property fell into hand according to law. “’Twas good
enough for Christians in grandfather’s time,” they said.

The rooms wherein dozens of infants had wailed at their nursing now
resounded with the tapping of nascent chicks. Distracted hens in coops
occupied spots where formerly stood chairs supporting sedate
agriculturists. The chimney-corner and once-blazing hearth was now
filled with inverted beehives, in which the hens laid their eggs; while
out of doors the plots that each succeeding householder had carefully
shaped with his spade were torn by the cocks in wildest fashion.

The garden in which the cottage stood was surrounded by a wall, and
could only be entered through a door.

When Tess had occupied herself about an hour the next morning in
altering and improving the arrangements, according to her skilled ideas
as the daughter of a professed poulterer, the door in the wall opened
and a servant in white cap and apron entered. She had come from the
manor-house.

“Mrs d’Urberville wants the fowls as usual,” she said; but perceiving
that Tess did not quite understand, she explained, “Mis’ess is a old
lady, and blind.”

“Blind!” said Tess.

Almost before her misgiving at the news could find time to shape itself
she took, under her companion’s direction, two of the most beautiful of
the Hamburghs in her arms, and followed the maid-servant, who had
likewise taken two, to the adjacent mansion, which, though ornate and
imposing, showed traces everywhere on this side that some occupant of
its chambers could bend to the love of dumb creatures—feathers floating
within view of the front, and hen-coops standing on the grass.

In a sitting-room on the ground-floor, ensconced in an armchair with
her back to the light, was the owner and mistress of the estate, a
white-haired woman of not more than sixty, or even less, wearing a
large cap. She had the mobile face frequent in those whose sight has
decayed by stages, has been laboriously striven after, and reluctantly
let go, rather than the stagnant mien apparent in persons long
sightless or born blind. Tess walked up to this lady with her feathered
charges—one sitting on each arm.

“Ah, you are the young woman come to look after my birds?” said Mrs
d’Urberville, recognizing a new footstep. “I hope you will be kind to
them. My bailiff tells me you are quite the proper person. Well, where
are they? Ah, this is Strut! But he is hardly so lively to-day, is he?
He is alarmed at being handled by a stranger, I suppose. And Phena
too—yes, they are a little frightened—aren’t you, dears? But they will
soon get used to you.”

While the old lady had been speaking Tess and the other maid, in
obedience to her gestures, had placed the fowls severally in her lap,
and she had felt them over from head to tail, examining their beaks,
their combs, the manes of the cocks, their wings, and their claws. Her
touch enabled her to recognize them in a moment, and to discover if a
single feather were crippled or draggled. She handled their crops, and
knew what they had eaten, and if too little or too much; her face
enacting a vivid pantomime of the criticisms passing in her mind.

The birds that the two girls had brought in were duly returned to the
yard, and the process was repeated till all the pet cocks and hens had
been submitted to the old woman—Hamburghs, Bantams, Cochins, Brahmas,
Dorkings, and such other sorts as were in fashion just then—her
perception of each visitor being seldom at fault as she received the
bird upon her knees.

It reminded Tess of a Confirmation, in which Mrs d’Urberville was the
bishop, the fowls the young people presented, and herself and the
maid-servant the parson and curate of the parish bringing them up. At
the end of the ceremony Mrs d’Urberville abruptly asked Tess, wrinkling
and twitching her face into undulations, “Can you whistle?”

“Whistle, Ma’am?”

“Yes, whistle tunes.”

Tess could whistle like most other country-girls, though the
accomplishment was one which she did not care to profess in genteel
company. However, she blandly admitted that such was the fact.

“Then you will have to practise it every day. I had a lad who did it
very well, but he has left. I want you to whistle to my bullfinches; as
I cannot see them, I like to hear them, and we teach ’em airs that way.
Tell her where the cages are, Elizabeth. You must begin to-morrow, or
they will go back in their piping. They have been neglected these
several days.”

“Mr d’Urberville whistled to ’em this morning, ma’am,” said Elizabeth.

“He! Pooh!”

The old lady’s face creased into furrows of repugnance, and she made no
further reply.

Thus the reception of Tess by her fancied kinswoman terminated, and the
birds were taken back to their quarters. The girl’s surprise at Mrs
d’Urberville’s manner was not great; for since seeing the size of the
house she had expected no more. But she was far from being aware that
the old lady had never heard a word of the so-called kinship. She
gathered that no great affection flowed between the blind woman and her
son. But in that, too, she was mistaken. Mrs d’Urberville was not the
first mother compelled to love her offspring resentfully, and to be
bitterly fond.

In spite of the unpleasant initiation of the day before, Tess inclined
to the freedom and novelty of her new position in the morning when the
sun shone, now that she was once installed there; and she was curious
to test her powers in the unexpected direction asked of her, so as to
ascertain her chance of retaining her post. As soon as she was alone
within the walled garden she sat herself down on a coop, and seriously
screwed up her mouth for the long-neglected practice. She found her
former ability to have degenerated to the production of a hollow rush
of wind through the lips, and no clear note at all.

She remained fruitlessly blowing and blowing, wondering how she could
have so grown out of the art which had come by nature, till she became
aware of a movement among the ivy-boughs which cloaked the garden-wall
no less then the cottage. Looking that way she beheld a form springing
from the coping to the plot. It was Alec d’Urberville, whom she had not
set eyes on since he had conducted her the day before to the door of
the gardener’s cottage where she had lodgings.

“Upon my honour!” cried he, “there was never before such a beautiful
thing in Nature or Art as you look, ‘Cousin’ Tess (‘Cousin’ had a faint
ring of mockery). I have been watching you from over the wall—sitting
like Im-patience on a monument, and pouting up that pretty red mouth
to whistling shape, and whooing and whooing, and privately swearing,
and never being able to produce a note. Why, you are quite cross
because you can’t do it.”

“I may be cross, but I didn’t swear.”

“Ah! I understand why you are trying—those bullies! My mother wants you
to carry on their musical education. How selfish of her! As if
attending to these curst cocks and hens here were not enough work for
any girl. I would flatly refuse, if I were you.”

“But she wants me particularly to do it, and to be ready by to-morrow
morning.”

“Does she? Well then—I’ll give you a lesson or two.”

“Oh no, you won’t!” said Tess, withdrawing towards the door.

“Nonsense; I don’t want to touch you. See—I’ll stand on this side of
the wire-netting, and you can keep on the other; so you may feel quite
safe. Now, look here; you screw up your lips too harshly. There
’tis—so.”

He suited the action to the word, and whistled a line of “Take, O take
those lips away.” But the allusion was lost upon Tess.

“Now try,” said d’Urberville.

She attempted to look reserved; her face put on a sculptural severity.
But he persisted in his demand, and at last, to get rid of him, she did
put up her lips as directed for producing a clear note; laughing
distressfully, however, and then blushing with vexation that she had
laughed.

He encouraged her with “Try again!”

Tess was quite serious, painfully serious by this time; and she
tried—ultimately and unexpectedly emitting a real round sound. The
momentary pleasure of success got the better of her; her eyes enlarged,
and she involuntarily smiled in his face.

“That’s it! Now I have started you—you’ll go on beautifully. There—I
said I would not come near you; and, in spite of such temptation as
never before fell to mortal man, I’ll keep my word.... Tess, do you
think my mother a queer old soul?”

“I don’t know much of her yet, sir.”

“You’ll find her so; she must be, to make you learn to whistle to her
bullfinches. I am rather out of her books just now, but you will be
quite in favour if you treat her live-stock well. Good morning. If you
meet with any difficulties and want help here, don’t go to the bailiff,
come to me.”

It was in the economy of this régime that Tess Durbeyfield had
undertaken to fill a place. Her first day’s experiences were fairly
typical of those which followed through many succeeding days. A
familiarity with Alec d’Urberville’s presence—which that young man
carefully cultivated in her by playful dialogue, and by jestingly
calling her his cousin when they were alone—removed much of her
original shyness of him, without, however, implanting any feeling which
could engender shyness of a new and tenderer kind. But she was more
pliable under his hands than a mere companionship would have made her,
owing to her unavoidable dependence upon his mother, and, through that
lady’s comparative helplessness, upon him.

She soon found that whistling to the bullfinches in Mrs d’Urberville’s
room was no such onerous business when she had regained the art, for
she had caught from her musical mother numerous airs that suited those
songsters admirably. A far more satisfactory time than when she
practised in the garden was this whistling by the cages each morning.
Unrestrained by the young man’s presence she threw up her mouth, put
her lips near the bars, and piped away in easeful grace to the
attentive listeners.

Mrs d’Urberville slept in a large four-post bedstead hung with heavy
damask curtains, and the bullfinches occupied the same apartment, where
they flitted about freely at certain hours, and made little white spots
on the furniture and upholstery. Once while Tess was at the window
where the cages were ranged, giving her lesson as usual, she thought
she heard a rustling behind the bed. The old lady was not present, and
turning round the girl had an impression that the toes of a pair of
boots were visible below the fringe of the curtains. Thereupon her
whistling became so disjointed that the listener, if such there were,
must have discovered her suspicion of his presence. She searched the
curtains every morning after that, but never found anybody within them.
Alec d’Urberville had evidently thought better of his freak to terrify
her by an ambush of that kind.