Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman
is done we do not complain, particularly if she suits you for the
business you have chosen to follow instead of the ministry of the
Gospel.... Yet I wish I could have seen her first, Angel, or have known
a little more about her. We sent her no present of our own, not knowing
what would best give her pleasure, but you must suppose it only
delayed. Angel, there is no irritation in my mind or your father’s
against you for this marriage; but we have thought it much better to
reserve our liking for your wife till we could see her. And now you
have not brought her. It seems strange. What has happened?”
He replied that it had been thought best by them that she should go to
her parents’ home for the present, whilst he came there.
“I don’t mind telling you, dear mother,” he said, “that I always meant
to keep her away from this house till I should feel she could come with
credit to you. But this idea of Brazil is quite a recent one. If I do
go it will be unadvisable for me to take her on this my first journey.
She will remain at her mother’s till I come back.”
“And I shall not see her before you start?”
He was afraid they would not. His original plan had been, as he had
said, to refrain from bringing her there for some little while—not to
wound their prejudices—feelings—in any way; and for other reasons he
had adhered to it. He would have to visit home in the course of a year,
if he went out at once; and it would be possible for them to see her
before he started a second time—with her.
A hastily prepared supper was brought in, and Clare made further
exposition of his plans. His mother’s disappointment at not seeing the
bride still remained with her. Clare’s late enthusiasm for Tess had
infected her through her maternal sympathies, till she had almost
fancied that a good thing could come out of Nazareth—a charming woman
out of Talbothays Dairy. She watched her son as he ate.
“Cannot you describe her? I am sure she is very pretty, Angel.”
“Of that there can be no question!” he said, with a zest which covered
its bitterness.
“And that she is pure and virtuous goes without question?”
“Pure and virtuous, of course, she is.”
“I can see her quite distinctly. You said the other day that she was
fine in figure; roundly built; had deep red lips like Cupid’s bow; dark
eyelashes and brows, an immense rope of hair like a ship’s cable; and
large eyes violety-bluey-blackish.”
“I did, mother.”
“I quite see her. And living in such seclusion she naturally had scarce
ever seen any young man from the world without till she saw you.”
“Scarcely.”
“You were her first love?”
“Of course.”
“There are worse wives than these simple, rosy-mouthed, robust girls of
the farm. Certainly I could have wished—well, since my son is to be an
agriculturist, it is perhaps but proper that his wife should have been
accustomed to an outdoor life.”
His father was less inquisitive; but when the time came for the chapter
from the Bible which was always read before evening prayers, the Vicar
observed to Mrs Clare—
“I think, since Angel has come, that it will be more appropriate to
read the thirty-first of Proverbs than the chapter which we should have
had in the usual course of our reading?”
“Yes, certainly,” said Mrs Clare. “The words of King Lemuel” (she could
cite chapter and verse as well as her husband). “My dear son, your
father has decided to read us the chapter in Proverbs in praise of a
virtuous wife. We shall not need to be reminded to apply the words to
the absent one. May Heaven shield her in all her ways!”
A lump rose in Clare’s throat. The portable lectern was taken out from
the corner and set in the middle of the fireplace, the two old servants
came in, and Angel’s father began to read at the tenth verse of the
aforesaid chapter—
“Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. She
riseth while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household. She
girdeth her loins with strength and strengtheneth her arms. She
perceiveth that her merchandise is good; her candle goeth not out by
night. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not
the bread of idleness. Her children arise up and call her blessed; her
husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously,
but thou excellest them all.”
When prayers were over, his mother said—
“I could not help thinking how very aptly that chapter your dear father
read applied, in some of its particulars, to the woman you have chosen.
The perfect woman, you see, was a working woman; not an idler; not a
fine lady; but one who used her hands and her head and her heart for
the good of others. ‘Her children arise up and call her blessed; her
husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously,
but she excelleth them all.’ Well, I wish I could have seen her, Angel.
Since she is pure and chaste, she would have been refined enough for
me.”
Clare could bear this no longer. His eyes were full of tears, which
seemed like drops of molten lead. He bade a quick good night to these
sincere and simple souls whom he loved so well; who knew neither the
world, the flesh, nor the devil in their own hearts, only as something
vague and external to themselves. He went to his own chamber.
His mother followed him, and tapped at his door. Clare opened it to
discover her standing without, with anxious eyes.
“Angel,” she asked, “is there something wrong that you go away so soon?
I am quite sure you are not yourself.”
“I am not, quite, mother,” said he.
“About her? Now, my son, I know it is that—I know it is about her! Have
you quarrelled in these three weeks?”
“We have not exactly quarrelled,” he said. “But we have had a
difference—”
“Angel—is she a young woman whose history will bear investigation?”
With a mother’s instinct Mrs Clare had put her finger on the kind of
trouble that would cause such a disquiet as seemed to agitate her son.
“She is spotless!” he replied; and felt that if it had sent him to
eternal hell there and then he would have told that lie.
“Then never mind the rest. After all, there are few purer things in
nature then an unsullied country maid. Any crudeness of manner which
may offend your more educated sense at first, will, I am sure,
disappear under the influence or your companionship and tuition.”
Such terrible sarcasm of blind magnanimity brought home to Clare the
secondary perception that he had utterly wrecked his career by this
marriage, which had not been among his early thoughts after the
disclosure. True, on his own account he cared very little about his
career; but he had wished to make it at least a respectable one on
account of his parents and brothers. And now as he looked into the
candle its flame dumbly expressed to him that it was made to shine on
sensible people, and that it abhorred lighting the face of a dupe and a
failure.
When his agitation had cooled he would be at moments incensed with his
poor wife for causing a situation in which he was obliged to practise
deception on his parents. He almost talked to her in his anger, as if
she had been in the room. And then her cooing voice, plaintive in
expostulation, disturbed the darkness, the velvet touch of her lips
passed over his brow, and he could distinguish in the air the warmth of
her breath.
This night the woman of his belittling deprecations was thinking how
great and good her husband was. But over them both there hung a deeper
shade than the shade which Angel Clare perceived, namely, the shade of
his own limitations. With all his attempted independence of judgement
this advanced and well-meaning young man, a sample product of the last
five-and-twenty years, was yet the slave to custom and conventionality
when surprised back into his early teachings. No prophet had told him,
and he was not prophet enough to tell himself, that essentially this
young wife of his was as deserving of the praise of King Lemuel as any
other woman endowed with the same dislike of evil, her moral value
having to be reckoned not by achievement but by tendency. Moreover, the
figure near at hand suffers on such occasion, because it shows up its
sorriness without shade; while vague figures afar off are honoured, in
that their distance makes artistic virtues of their stains. In
considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot
that the defective can be more than the entire.
XL
At breakfast Brazil was the topic, and all endeavoured to take a
hopeful view of Clare’s proposed experiment with that country’s soil,
notwithstanding the discouraging reports of some farm-labourers who had
emigrated thither and returned home within the twelve months. After
breakfast Clare went into the little town to wind up such trifling
matters as he was concerned with there, and to get from the local bank
all the money he possessed. On his way back he encountered Miss Mercy
Chant by the church, from whose walls she seemed to be a sort of
emanation. She was carrying an armful of Bibles for her class, and such
was her view of life that events which produced heartache in others
wrought beatific smiles upon her—an enviable result, although, in the
opinion of Angel, it was obtained by a curiously unnatural sacrifice of
humanity to mysticism.
She had learnt that he was about to leave England, and observed what an
excellent and promising scheme it seemed to be.
“Yes; it is a likely scheme enough in a commercial sense, no doubt,” he
replied. “But, my dear Mercy, it snaps the continuity of existence.
Perhaps a cloister would be preferable.”
“A cloister! O, Angel Clare!”
“Well?”
“Why, you wicked man, a cloister implies a monk, and a monk Roman
Catholicism.”
“And Roman Catholicism sin, and sin damnation. Thou art in a parlous
state, Angel Clare.”
“_I_ glory in my Protestantism!” she said severely.
Then Clare, thrown by sheer misery into one of the demoniacal moods in
which a man does despite to his true principles, called her close to
him, and fiendishly whispered in her ear the most heterodox ideas he
could think of. His momentary laughter at the horror which appeared on
her fair face ceased when it merged in pain and anxiety for his
welfare.
“Dear Mercy,” he said, “you must forgive me. I think I am going crazy!”
She thought that he was; and thus the interview ended, and Clare
re-entered the Vicarage. With the local banker he deposited the jewels
till happier days should arise. He also paid into the bank thirty
pounds—to be sent to Tess in a few months, as she might require; and
wrote to her at her parents’ home in Blackmoor Vale to inform her of
what he had done. This amount, with the sum he had already placed in
her hands—about fifty pounds—he hoped would be amply sufficient for her
wants just at present, particularly as in an emergency she had been
directed to apply to his father.
He deemed it best not to put his parents into communication with her by
informing them of her address; and, being unaware of what had really
happened to estrange the two, neither his father nor his mother
suggested that he should do so. During the day he left the parsonage,
for what he had to complete he wished to get done quickly.
As the last duty before leaving this part of England it was necessary
for him to call at the Wellbridge farmhouse, in which he had spent with
Tess the first three days of their marriage, the trifle of rent having
to be paid, the key given up of the rooms they had occupied, and two or
three small articles fetched away that they had left behind. It was
under this roof that the deepest shadow ever thrown upon his life had
stretched its gloom over him. Yet when he had unlocked the door of the
sitting-room and looked into it, the memory which returned first upon