Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman
speaking to Angel on the point.
“Have ye forgot ’em, Mr Clare? The banns, I mean.”
“No, I have not forgot ’em,” says Clare.
As soon as he caught Tess alone he assured her:
“Don’t let them tease you about the banns. A licence will be quieter
for us, and I have decided on a licence without consulting you. So if
you go to church on Sunday morning you will not hear your own name, if
you wished to.”
“I didn’t wish to hear it, dearest,” she said proudly.
But to know that things were in train was an immense relief to Tess
notwithstanding, who had well-nigh feared that somebody would stand up
and forbid the banns on the ground of her history. How events were
favouring her!
“I don’t quite feel easy,” she said to herself. “All this good fortune
may be scourged out of me afterwards by a lot of ill. That’s how Heaven
mostly does. I wish I could have had common banns!”
But everything went smoothly. She wondered whether he would like her to
be married in her present best white frock, or if she ought to buy a
new one. The question was set at rest by his forethought, disclosed by
the arrival of some large packages addressed to her. Inside them she
found a whole stock of clothing, from bonnet to shoes, including a
perfect morning costume, such as would well suit the simple wedding
they planned. He entered the house shortly after the arrival of the
packages, and heard her upstairs undoing them.
A minute later she came down with a flush on her face and tears in her
eyes.
“How thoughtful you’ve been!” she murmured, her cheek upon his
shoulder. “Even to the gloves and handkerchief! My own love—how good,
how kind!”
“No, no, Tess; just an order to a tradeswoman in London—nothing more.”
And to divert her from thinking too highly of him, he told her to go
upstairs, and take her time, and see if it all fitted; and, if not, to
get the village sempstress to make a few alterations.
She did return upstairs, and put on the gown. Alone, she stood for a
moment before the glass looking at the effect of her silk attire; and
then there came into her head her mother’s ballad of the mystic robe—
That never would become that wife
That had once done amiss,
which Mrs Durbeyfield had used to sing to her as a child, so blithely
and so archly, her foot on the cradle, which she rocked to the tune.
Suppose this robe should betray her by changing colour, as her robe had
betrayed Queen Guinevere. Since she had been at the dairy she had not
once thought of the lines till now.
XXXIII
Angel felt that he would like to spend a day with her before the
wedding, somewhere away from the dairy, as a last jaunt in her company
while there were yet mere lover and mistress; a romantic day, in
circumstances that would never be repeated; with that other and greater
day beaming close ahead of them. During the preceding week, therefore,
he suggested making a few purchases in the nearest town, and they
started together.
Clare’s life at the dairy had been that of a recluse in respect the
world of his own class. For months he had never gone near a town, and,
requiring no vehicle, had never kept one, hiring the dairyman’s cob or
gig if he rode or drove. They went in the gig that day.
And then for the first time in their lives they shopped as partners in
one concern. It was Christmas Eve, with its loads a holly and
mistletoe, and the town was very full of strangers who had come in from
all parts of the country on account of the day. Tess paid the penalty
of walking about with happiness superadded to beauty on her countenance
by being much stared at as she moved amid them on his arm.
In the evening they returned to the inn at which they had put up, and
Tess waited in the entry while Angel went to see the horse and gig
brought to the door. The general sitting-room was full of guests, who
were continually going in and out. As the door opened and shut each
time for the passage of these, the light within the parlour fell full
upon Tess’s face. Two men came out and passed by her among the rest.
One of them had stared her up and down in surprise, and she fancied he
was a Trantridge man, though that village lay so many miles off that
Trantridge folk were rarities here.
“A comely maid that,” said the other.
“True, comely enough. But unless I make a great mistake—” And he
negatived the remainder of the definition forthwith.
Clare had just returned from the stable-yard, and, confronting the man
on the threshold, heard the words, and saw the shrinking of Tess. The
insult to her stung him to the quick, and before he had considered
anything at all he struck the man on the chin with the full force of
his fist, sending him staggering backwards into the passage.
The man recovered himself, and seemed inclined to come on, and Clare,
stepping outside the door, put himself in a posture of defence. But his
opponent began to think better of the matter. He looked anew at Tess as
he passed her, and said to Clare—
“I beg pardon, sir; ’twas a complete mistake. I thought she was another
woman, forty miles from here.”
Clare, feeling then that he had been too hasty, and that he was,
moreover, to blame for leaving her standing in an inn-passage, did what
he usually did in such cases, gave the man five shillings to plaster
the blow; and thus they parted, bidding each other a pacific good
night. As soon as Clare had taken the reins from the ostler, and the
young couple had driven off, the two men went in the other direction.
“And was it a mistake?” said the second one.
“Not a bit of it. But I didn’t want to hurt the gentleman’s
feelings—not I.”
In the meantime the lovers were driving onward.
“Could we put off our wedding till a little later?” Tess asked in a dry
dull voice. “I mean if we wished?”
“No, my love. Calm yourself. Do you mean that the fellow may have time
to summon me for assault?” he asked good-humouredly.
“No—I only meant—if it should have to be put off.”
What she meant was not very clear, and he directed her to dismiss such
fancies from her mind, which she obediently did as well as she could.
But she was grave, very grave, all the way home; till she thought, “We
shall go away, a very long distance, hundreds of miles from these
parts, and such as this can never happen again, and no ghost of the
past reach there.”
They parted tenderly that night on the landing, and Clare ascended to
his attic. Tess sat up getting on with some little requisites, lest the
few remaining days should not afford sufficient time. While she sat she
heard a noise in Angel’s room overhead, a sound of thumping and
struggling. Everybody else in the house was asleep, and in her anxiety
lest Clare should be ill she ran up and knocked at his door, and asked
him what was the matter.
“Oh, nothing, dear,” he said from within. “I am so sorry I disturbed
you! But the reason is rather an amusing one: I fell asleep and dreamt
that I was fighting that fellow again who insulted you, and the noise
you heard was my pummelling away with my fists at my portmanteau, which
I pulled out to-day for packing. I am occasionally liable to these
freaks in my sleep. Go to bed and think of it no more.”
This was the last drachm required to turn the scale of her indecision.
Declare the past to him by word of mouth she could not; but there was
another way. She sat down and wrote on the four pages of a note-sheet a
succinct narrative of those events of three or four years ago, put it
into an envelope, and directed it to Clare. Then, lest the flesh should
again be weak, she crept upstairs without any shoes and slipped the
note under his door.
Her night was a broken one, as it well might be, and she listened for
the first faint noise overhead. It came, as usual; he descended, as
usual. She descended. He met her at the bottom of the stairs and kissed
her. Surely it was as warmly as ever!
He looked a little disturbed and worn, she thought. But he said not a
word to her about her revelation, even when they were alone. Could he
have had it? Unless he began the subject she felt that she could say
nothing. So the day passed, and it was evident that whatever he thought
he meant to keep to himself. Yet he was frank and affectionate as
before. Could it be that her doubts were childish? that he forgave her;
that he loved her for what she was, just as she was, and smiled at her
disquiet as at a foolish nightmare? Had he really received her note?
She glanced into his room, and could see nothing of it. It might be
that he forgave her. But even if he had not received it she had a
sudden enthusiastic trust that he surely would forgive her.
Every morning and night he was the same, and thus New Year’s Eve
broke—the wedding day.
The lovers did not rise at milking-time, having through the whole of
this last week of their sojourn at the dairy been accorded something of
the position of guests, Tess being honoured with a room of her own.
When they arrived downstairs at breakfast-time they were surprised to
see what effects had been produced in the large kitchen for their glory
since they had last beheld it. At some unnatural hour of the morning
the dairyman had caused the yawning chimney-corner to be whitened, and
the brick hearth reddened, and a blazing yellow damask blower to be
hung across the arch in place of the old grimy blue cotton one with a
black sprig pattern which had formerly done duty there. This renovated
aspect of what was the focus indeed of the room on a full winter
morning threw a smiling demeanour over the whole apartment.
“I was determined to do summat in honour o’t”, said the dairyman. “And
as you wouldn’t hear of my gieing a rattling good randy wi’ fiddles and
bass-viols complete, as we should ha’ done in old times, this was all I
could think o’ as a noiseless thing.”
Tess’s friends lived so far off that none could conveniently have been
present at the ceremony, even had any been asked; but as a fact nobody
was invited from Marlott. As for Angel’s family, he had written and
duly informed them of the time, and assured them that he would be glad
to see one at least of them there for the day if he would like to come.
His brothers had not replied at all, seeming to be indignant with him;
while his father and mother had written a rather sad letter, deploring
his precipitancy in rushing into marriage, but making the best of the
matter by saying that, though a dairywoman was the last daughter-in-law
they could have expected, their son had arrived at an age which he
might be supposed to be the best judge.
This coolness in his relations distressed Clare less than it would have
done had he been without the grand card with which he meant to surprise
them ere long. To produce Tess, fresh from the dairy, as a d’Urberville
and a lady, he had felt to be temerarious and risky; hence he had
concealed her lineage till such time as, familiarized with worldly ways
by a few months’ travel and reading with him, he could take her on a
visit to his parents and impart the knowledge while triumphantly
producing her as worthy of such an ancient line. It was a pretty
lover’s dream, if no more. Perhaps Tess’s lineage had more value for
himself than for anybody in the world beside.
Her perception that Angel’s bearing towards her still remained in no
whit altered by her own communication rendered Tess guiltily doubtful
if he could have received it. She rose from breakfast before he had
finished, and hastened upstairs. It had occurred to her to look once
more into the queer gaunt room which had been Clare’s den, or rather
eyrie, for so long, and climbing the ladder she stood at the open door
of the apartment, regarding and pondering. She stooped to the threshold
of the doorway, where she had pushed in the note two or three days