Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman
if you couldn’t get a ribbon more than you earn.”
Her lip lifted slightly, though there was little scorn, as a rule, in
her large and impulsive nature.
“I have said I will not take anything more from you, and I will not—I
cannot! I _should_ be your creature to go on doing that, and I won’t!”
“One would think you were a princess from your manner, in addition to a
true and original d’Urberville—ha! ha! Well, Tess, dear, I can say no
more. I suppose I am a bad fellow—a damn bad fellow. I was born bad,
and I have lived bad, and I shall die bad in all probability. But, upon
my lost soul, I won’t be bad towards you again, Tess. And if certain
circumstances should arise—you understand—in which you are in the least
need, the least difficulty, send me one line, and you shall have by
return whatever you require. I may not be at Trantridge—I am going to
London for a time—I can’t stand the old woman. But all letters will be
forwarded.”
She said that she did not wish him to drive her further, and they
stopped just under the clump of trees. D’Urberville alighted, and
lifted her down bodily in his arms, afterwards placing her articles on
the ground beside her. She bowed to him slightly, her eye just
lingering in his; and then she turned to take the parcels for
departure.
Alec d’Urberville removed his cigar, bent towards her, and said—
“You are not going to turn away like that, dear! Come!”
“If you wish,” she answered indifferently. “See how you’ve mastered
me!”
She thereupon turned round and lifted her face to his, and remained
like a marble term while he imprinted a kiss upon her cheek—half
perfunctorily, half as if zest had not yet quite died out. Her eyes
vaguely rested upon the remotest trees in the lane while the kiss was
given, as though she were nearly unconscious of what he did.
“Now the other side, for old acquaintance’ sake.”
She turned her head in the same passive way, as one might turn at the
request of a sketcher or hairdresser, and he kissed the other side, his
lips touching cheeks that were damp and smoothly chill as the skin of
the mushrooms in the fields around.
“You don’t give me your mouth and kiss me back. You never willingly do
that—you’ll never love me, I fear.”
“I have said so, often. It is true. I have never really and truly loved
you, and I think I never can.” She added mournfully, “Perhaps, of all
things, a lie on this thing would do the most good to me now; but I
have honour enough left, little as ’tis, not to tell that lie. If I did
love you, I may have the best o’ causes for letting you know it. But I
don’t.”
He emitted a laboured breath, as if the scene were getting rather
oppressive to his heart, or to his conscience, or to his gentility.
“Well, you are absurdly melancholy, Tess. I have no reason for
flattering you now, and I can say plainly that you need not be so sad.
You can hold your own for beauty against any woman of these parts,
gentle or simple; I say it to you as a practical man and well-wisher.
If you are wise you will show it to the world more than you do before
it fades... And yet, Tess, will you come back to me! Upon my soul, I
don’t like to let you go like this!”
“Never, never! I made up my mind as soon as I saw—what I ought to have
seen sooner; and I won’t come.”
“Then good morning, my four months’ cousin—good-bye!”
He leapt up lightly, arranged the reins, and was gone between the tall
red-berried hedges.
Tess did not look after him, but slowly wound along the crooked lane.
It was still early, and though the sun’s lower limb was just free of
the hill, his rays, ungenial and peering, addressed the eye rather than
the touch as yet. There was not a human soul near. Sad October and her
sadder self seemed the only two existences haunting that lane.
As she walked, however, some footsteps approached behind her, the
footsteps of a man; and owing to the briskness of his advance he was
close at her heels and had said “Good morning” before she had been long
aware of his propinquity. He appeared to be an artisan of some sort,
and carried a tin pot of red paint in his hand. He asked in a
business-like manner if he should take her basket, which she permitted
him to do, walking beside him.
“It is early to be astir this Sabbath morn!” he said cheerfully.
“Yes,” said Tess.
“When most people are at rest from their week’s work.”
She also assented to this.
“Though I do more real work to-day than all the week besides.”
“Do you?”
“All the week I work for the glory of man, and on Sunday for the glory
of God. That’s more real than the other—hey? I have a little to do here
at this stile.” The man turned, as he spoke, to an opening at the
roadside leading into a pasture. “If you’ll wait a moment,” he added,
“I shall not be long.”
As he had her basket she could not well do otherwise; and she waited,
observing him. He set down her basket and the tin pot, and stirring the
paint with the brush that was in it began painting large square letters
on the middle board of the three composing the stile, placing a comma
after each word, as if to give pause while that word was driven well
home to the reader’s heart—
THY, DAMNATION, SLUMBERETH, NOT.
2 Pet. ii. 3.
Against the peaceful landscape, the pale, decaying tints of the copses,
the blue air of the horizon, and the lichened stile-boards, these
staring vermilion words shone forth. They seemed to shout themselves
out and make the atmosphere ring. Some people might have cried “Alas,
poor Theology!” at the hideous defacement—the last grotesque phase of a
creed which had served mankind well in its time. But the words entered
Tess with accusatory horror. It was as if this man had known her recent
history; yet he was a total stranger.
Having finished his text he picked up her basket, and she mechanically
resumed her walk beside him.
“Do you believe what you paint?” she asked in low tones.
“Believe that tex? Do I believe in my own existence!”
“But,” said she tremulously, “suppose your sin was not of your own
seeking?”
He shook his head.
“I cannot split hairs on that burning query,” he said. “I have walked
hundreds of miles this past summer, painting these texes on every wall,
gate, and stile the length and breadth of this district. I leave their
application to the hearts of the people who read ’em.”
“I think they are horrible,” said Tess. “Crushing! Killing!”
“That’s what they are meant to be!” he replied in a trade voice. “But
you should read my hottest ones—them I kips for slums and seaports.
They’d make ye wriggle! Not but what this is a very good tex for rural
districts.... Ah—there’s a nice bit of blank wall up by that barn
standing to waste. I must put one there—one that it will be good for
dangerous young females like yerself to heed. Will ye wait, missy?”
“No,” said she; and taking her basket Tess trudged on. A little way
forward she turned her head. The old gray wall began to advertise a
similar fiery lettering to the first, with a strange and unwonted mien,
as if distressed at duties it had never before been called upon to
perform. It was with a sudden flush that she read and realized what was
to be the inscription he was now halfway through—
THOU, SHALT, NOT, COMMIT—
Her cheerful friend saw her looking, stopped his brush, and shouted—
“If you want to ask for edification on these things of moment, there’s
a very earnest good man going to preach a charity-sermon to-day in the
parish you are going to—Mr Clare of Emminster. I’m not of his
persuasion now, but he’s a good man, and he’ll expound as well as any
parson I know. ’Twas he began the work in me.”
But Tess did not answer; she throbbingly resumed her walk, her eyes
fixed on the ground. “Pooh—I don’t believe God said such things!” she
murmured contemptuously when her flush had died away.
A plume of smoke soared up suddenly from her father’s chimney, the
sight of which made her heart ache. The aspect of the interior, when
she reached it, made her heart ache more. Her mother, who had just come
downstairs, turned to greet her from the fireplace, where she was
kindling barked-oak twigs under the breakfast kettle. The young
children were still above, as was also her father, it being Sunday
morning, when he felt justified in lying an additional half-hour.
“Well!—my dear Tess!” exclaimed her surprised mother, jumping up and
kissing the girl. “How be ye? I didn’t see you till you was in upon me!
Have you come home to be married?”
“No, I have not come for that, mother.”
“Then for a holiday?”
“Yes—for a holiday; for a long holiday,” said Tess.
“What, isn’t your cousin going to do the handsome thing?”
“He’s not my cousin, and he’s not going to marry me.”
Her mother eyed her narrowly.
“Come, you have not told me all,” she said.
Then Tess went up to her mother, put her face upon Joan’s neck, and
told.
“And yet th’st not got him to marry ’ee!” reiterated her mother. “Any
woman would have done it but you, after that!”
“Perhaps any woman would except me.”
“It would have been something like a story to come back with, if you
had!” continued Mrs Durbeyfield, ready to burst into tears of vexation.
“After all the talk about you and him which has reached us here, who
would have expected it to end like this! Why didn’t ye think of doing
some good for your family instead o’ thinking only of yourself? See how
I’ve got to teave and slave, and your poor weak father with his heart
clogged like a dripping-pan. I did hope for something to come out o’
this! To see what a pretty pair you and he made that day when you drove
away together four months ago! See what he has given us—all, as we
thought, because we were his kin. But if he’s not, it must have been
done because of his love for ’ee. And yet you’ve not got him to marry!”
Get Alec d’Urberville in the mind to marry her! He marry _her_! On
matrimony he had never once said a word. And what if he had? How a
convulsive snatching at social salvation might have impelled her to
answer him she could not say. But her poor foolish mother little knew
her present feeling towards this man. Perhaps it was unusual in the
circumstances, unlucky, unaccountable; but there it was; and this, as
she had said, was what made her detest herself. She had never wholly
cared for him; she did not at all care for him now. She had dreaded
him, winced before him, succumbed to adroit advantages he took of her
helplessness; then, temporarily blinded by his ardent manners, had been
stirred to confused surrender awhile: had suddenly despised and
disliked him, and had run away. That was all. Hate him she did not
quite; but he was dust and ashes to her, and even for her name’s sake
she scarcely wished to marry him.
“You ought to have been more careful if you didn’t mean to get him to
make you his wife!”
“O mother, my mother!” cried the agonized girl, turning passionately
upon her parent as if her poor heart would break. “How could I be
expected to know? I was a child when I left this house four months ago.
Why didn’t you tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why didn’t you
warn me? Ladies know what to fend hands against, because they read
novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance o’
learning in that way, and you did not help me!”
Her mother was subdued.
“I thought if I spoke of his fond feelings and what they might lead to,
you would be hontish wi’ him and lose your chance,” she murmured,
wiping her eyes with her apron. “Well, we must make the best of it, I
suppose. ’Tis nater, after all, and what do please God!”
XIII
The event of Tess Durbeyfield’s return from the manor of her bogus
kinsfolk was rumoured abroad, if rumour be not too large a word for a
space of a square mile. In the afternoon several young girls of