Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman
safe-conduct home, whatever you may yourself feel about it. As to your
getting to Trantridge without assistance, it is quite impossible; for,
to tell the truth, dear, owing to this fog, which so disguises
everything, I don’t quite know where we are myself. Now, if you will
promise to wait beside the horse while I walk through the bushes till I
come to some road or house, and ascertain exactly our whereabouts, I’ll
deposit you here willingly. When I come back I’ll give you full
directions, and if you insist upon walking you may; or you may ride—at
your pleasure.”
She accepted these terms, and slid off on the near side, though not
till he had stolen a cursory kiss. He sprang down on the other side.
“I suppose I must hold the horse?” said she.
“Oh no; it’s not necessary,” replied Alec, patting the panting
creature. “He’s had enough of it for to-night.”
He turned the horse’s head into the bushes, hitched him on to a bough,
and made a sort of couch or nest for her in the deep mass of dead
leaves.
“Now, you sit there,” he said. “The leaves have not got damp as yet.
Just give an eye to the horse—it will be quite sufficient.”
He took a few steps away from her, but, returning, said, “By the bye,
Tess, your father has a new cob to-day. Somebody gave it to him.”
“Somebody? You!”
D’Urberville nodded.
“O how very good of you that is!” she exclaimed, with a painful sense
of the awkwardness of having to thank him just then.
“And the children have some toys.”
“I didn’t know—you ever sent them anything!” she murmured, much moved.
“I almost wish you had not—yes, I almost wish it!”
“Why, dear?”
“It—hampers me so.”
“Tessy—don’t you love me ever so little now?”
“I’m grateful,” she reluctantly admitted. “But I fear I do not—” The
sudden vision of his passion for herself as a factor in this result so
distressed her that, beginning with one slow tear, and then following
with another, she wept outright.
“Don’t cry, dear, dear one! Now sit down here, and wait till I come.”
She passively sat down amid the leaves he had heaped, and shivered
slightly. “Are you cold?” he asked.
“Not very—a little.”
He touched her with his fingers, which sank into her as into down. “You
have only that puffy muslin dress on—how’s that?”
“It’s my best summer one. ’Twas very warm when I started, and I didn’t
know I was going to ride, and that it would be night.”
“Nights grow chilly in September. Let me see.” He pulled off a light
overcoat that he had worn, and put it round her tenderly. “That’s
it—now you’ll feel warmer,” he continued. “Now, my pretty, rest there;
I shall soon be back again.”
Having buttoned the overcoat round her shoulders he plunged into the
webs of vapour which by this time formed veils between the trees. She
could hear the rustling of the branches as he ascended the adjoining
slope, till his movements were no louder than the hopping of a bird,
and finally died away. With the setting of the moon the pale light
lessened, and Tess became invisible as she fell into reverie upon the
leaves where he had left her.
In the meantime Alec d’Urberville had pushed on up the slope to clear
his genuine doubt as to the quarter of The Chase they were in. He had,
in fact, ridden quite at random for over an hour, taking any turning
that came to hand in order to prolong companionship with her, and
giving far more attention to Tess’s moonlit person than to any wayside
object. A little rest for the jaded animal being desirable, he did not
hasten his search for landmarks. A clamber over the hill into the
adjoining vale brought him to the fence of a highway whose contours he
recognized, which settled the question of their whereabouts.
D’Urberville thereupon turned back; but by this time the moon had quite
gone down, and partly on account of the fog The Chase was wrapped in
thick darkness, although morning was not far off. He was obliged to
advance with outstretched hands to avoid contact with the boughs, and
discovered that to hit the exact spot from which he had started was at
first entirely beyond him. Roaming up and down, round and round, he at
length heard a slight movement of the horse close at hand; and the
sleeve of his overcoat unexpectedly caught his foot.
“Tess!” said d’Urberville.
There was no answer. The obscurity was now so great that he could see
absolutely nothing but a pale nebulousness at his feet, which
represented the white muslin figure he had left upon the dead leaves.
Everything else was blackness alike. D’Urberville stooped; and heard a
gentle regular breathing. He knelt and bent lower, till her breath
warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers.
She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears.
Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Above them rose the
primaeval yews and oaks of The Chase, in which there poised gentle
roosting birds in their last nap; and about them stole the hopping
rabbits and hares. But, might some say, where was Tess’s guardian
angel? where was the providence of her simple faith? Perhaps, like that
other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking, or he
was pursuing, or he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and not to be
awaked.
Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as
gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been
traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often
the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the
wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have
failed to explain to our sense of order. One may, indeed, admit the
possibility of a retribution lurking in the present catastrophe.
Doubtless some of Tess d’Urberville’s mailed ancestors rollicking home
from a fray had dealt the same measure even more ruthlessly towards
peasant girls of their time. But though to visit the sins of the
fathers upon the children may be a morality good enough for divinities,
it is scorned by average human nature; and it therefore does not mend
the matter.
As Tess’s own people down in those retreats are never tired of saying
among each other in their fatalistic way: “It was to be.” There lay the
pity of it. An immeasurable social chasm was to divide our heroine’s
personality thereafter from that previous self of hers who stepped from
her mother’s door to try her fortune at Trantridge poultry-farm.
End of Phase the First
Phase the Second:
Maiden No More
XII
The basket was heavy and the bundle was large, but she lugged them
along like a person who did not find her especial burden in material
things. Occasionally she stopped to rest in a mechanical way by some
gate or post; and then, giving the baggage another hitch upon her full
round arm, went steadily on again.
It was a Sunday morning in late October, about four months after Tess
Durbeyfield’s arrival at Trantridge, and some few weeks subsequent to
the night ride in The Chase. The time was not long past daybreak, and
the yellow luminosity upon the horizon behind her back lighted the
ridge towards which her face was set—the barrier of the vale wherein
she had of late been a stranger—which she would have to climb over to
reach her birthplace. The ascent was gradual on this side, and the soil
and scenery differed much from those within Blakemore Vale. Even the
character and accent of the two peoples had shades of difference,
despite the amalgamating effects of a roundabout railway; so that,
though less than twenty miles from the place of her sojourn at
Trantridge, her native village had seemed a far-away spot. The
field-folk shut in there traded northward and westward, travelled,
courted, and married northward and westward, thought northward and
westward; those on this side mainly directed their energies and
attention to the east and south.
The incline was the same down which d’Urberville had driven her so
wildly on that day in June. Tess went up the remainder of its length
without stopping, and on reaching the edge of the escarpment gazed over
the familiar green world beyond, now half-veiled in mist. It was always
beautiful from here; it was terribly beautiful to Tess to-day, for
since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses
where the sweet birds sing, and her views of life had been totally
changed for her by the lesson. Verily another girl than the simple one
she had been at home was she who, bowed by thought, stood still here,
and turned to look behind her. She could not bear to look forward into
the Vale.
Ascending by the long white road that Tess herself had just laboured
up, she saw a two-wheeled vehicle, beside which walked a man, who held
up his hand to attract her attention.
She obeyed the signal to wait for him with unspeculative repose, and in
a few minutes man and horse stopped beside her.
“Why did you slip away by stealth like this?” said d’Urberville, with
upbraiding breathlessness; “on a Sunday morning, too, when people were
all in bed! I only discovered it by accident, and I have been driving
like the deuce to overtake you. Just look at the mare. Why go off like
this? You know that nobody wished to hinder your going. And how
unnecessary it has been for you to toil along on foot, and encumber
yourself with this heavy load! I have followed like a madman, simply to
drive you the rest of the distance, if you won’t come back.”
“I shan’t come back,” said she.
“I thought you wouldn’t—I said so! Well, then, put up your basket, and
let me help you on.”
She listlessly placed her basket and bundle within the dog-cart, and
stepped up, and they sat side by side. She had no fear of him now, and
in the cause of her confidence her sorrow lay.
D’Urberville mechanically lit a cigar, and the journey was continued
with broken unemotional conversation on the commonplace objects by the
wayside. He had quite forgotten his struggle to kiss her when, in the
early summer, they had driven in the opposite direction along the same
road. But she had not, and she sat now, like a puppet, replying to his
remarks in monosyllables. After some miles they came in view of the
clump of trees beyond which the village of Marlott stood. It was only
then that her still face showed the least emotion, a tear or two
beginning to trickle down.
“What are you crying for?” he coldly asked.
“I was only thinking that I was born over there,” murmured Tess.
“Well—we must all be born somewhere.”
“I wish I had never been born—there or anywhere else!”
“Pooh! Well, if you didn’t wish to come to Trantridge why did you
come?”
She did not reply.
“You didn’t come for love of me, that I’ll swear.”
“’Tis quite true. If I had gone for love o’ you, if I had ever
sincerely loved you, if I loved you still, I should not so loathe and
hate myself for my weakness as I do now!... My eyes were dazed by you
for a little, and that was all.”
He shrugged his shoulders. She resumed—
“I didn’t understand your meaning till it was too late.”
“That’s what every woman says.”
“How can you dare to use such words!” she cried, turning impetuously
upon him, her eyes flashing as the latent spirit (of which he was to
see more some day) awoke in her. “My God! I could knock you out of the
gig! Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says some
women may feel?”
“Very well,” he said, laughing; “I am sorry to wound you. I did wrong—I
admit it.” He dropped into some little bitterness as he continued:
“Only you needn’t be so everlastingly flinging it in my face. I am
ready to pay to the uttermost farthing. You know you need not work in
the fields or the dairies again. You know you may clothe yourself with
the best, instead of in the bald plain way you have lately affected, as