Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman
He moodily reflected with his eyes on the ground.
“Married. Married!... Well, that being so,” he added, quite calmly,
tearing the licence slowly into halves and putting them in his pocket;
“that being prevented, I should like to do some good to you and your
husband, whoever he may be. There are many questions that I am tempted
to ask, but I will not do so, of course, in opposition to your wishes.
Though, if I could know your husband, I might more easily benefit him
and you. Is he on this farm?”
“No,” she murmured. “He is far away.”
“Far away? From _you_? What sort of husband can he be?”
“O, do not speak against him! It was through you! He found out—”
“Ah, is it so!... That’s sad, Tess!”
“Yes.”
“But to stay away from you—to leave you to work like this!”
“He does not leave me to work!” she cried, springing to the defence of
the absent one with all her fervour. “He don’t know it! It is by my own
arrangement.”
“Then, does he write?”
“I—I cannot tell you. There are things which are private to ourselves.”
“Of course that means that he does not. You are a deserted wife, my
fair Tess—”
In an impulse he turned suddenly to take her hand; the buff-glove was
on it, and he seized only the rough leather fingers which did not
express the life or shape of those within.
“You must not—you must not!” she cried fearfully, slipping her hand
from the glove as from a pocket, and leaving it in his grasp. “O, will
you go away—for the sake of me and my husband—go, in the name of your
own Christianity!”
“Yes, yes; I will,” he said abruptly, and thrusting the glove back to
her he turned to leave. Facing round, however, he said, “Tess, as God
is my judge, I meant no humbug in taking your hand!”
A pattering of hoofs on the soil of the field, which they had not
noticed in their preoccupation, ceased close behind them; and a voice
reached her ear:
“What the devil are you doing away from your work at this time o’ day?”
Farmer Groby had espied the two figures from the distance, and had
inquisitively ridden across, to learn what was their business in his
field.
“Don’t speak like that to her!” said d’Urberville, his face blackening
with something that was not Christianity.
“Indeed, Mister! And what mid Methodist pa’sons have to do with she?”
“Who is the fellow?” asked d’Urberville, turning to Tess.
She went close up to him.
“Go—I do beg you!” she said.
“What! And leave you to that tyrant? I can see in his face what a churl
he is.”
“He won’t hurt me. _He’s_ not in love with me. I can leave at
Lady-Day.”
“Well, I have no right but to obey, I suppose. But—well, goodbye!”
Her defender, whom she dreaded more than her assailant, having
reluctantly disappeared, the farmer continued his reprimand, which Tess
took with the greatest coolness, that sort of attack being independent
of sex. To have as a master this man of stone, who would have cuffed
her if he had dared, was almost a relief after her former experiences.
She silently walked back towards the summit of the field that was the
scene of her labour, so absorbed in the interview which had just taken
place that she was hardly aware that the nose of Groby’s horse almost
touched her shoulders.
“If so be you make an agreement to work for me till Lady-Day, I’ll see
that you carry it out,” he growled. “’Od rot the women—now ’tis one
thing, and then ’tis another. But I’ll put up with it no longer!”
Knowing very well that he did not harass the other women of the farm as
he harassed her out of spite for the flooring he had once received, she
did for one moment picture what might have been the result if she had
been free to accept the offer just made her of being the monied Alec’s
wife. It would have lifted her completely out of subjection, not only
to her present oppressive employer, but to a whole world who seemed to
despise her. “But no, no!” she said breathlessly; “I could not have
married him now! He is so unpleasant to me.”
That very night she began an appealing letter to Clare, concealing from
him her hardships, and assuring him of her undying affection. Any one
who had been in a position to read between the lines would have seen
that at the back of her great love was some monstrous fear—almost a
desperation—as to some secret contingencies which were not disclosed.
But again she did not finish her effusion; he had asked Izz to go with
him, and perhaps he did not care for her at all. She put the letter in
her box, and wondered if it would ever reach Angel’s hands.
After this her daily tasks were gone through heavily enough, and
brought on the day which was of great import to agriculturists—the day
of the Candlemas Fair. It was at this fair that new engagements were
entered into for the twelve months following the ensuing Lady-Day, and
those of the farming population who thought of changing their places
duly attended at the county-town where the fair was held. Nearly all
the labourers on Flintcomb-Ash farm intended flight, and early in the
morning there was a general exodus in the direction of the town, which
lay at a distance of from ten to a dozen miles over hilly country.
Though Tess also meant to leave at the quarter-day, she was one of the
few who did not go to the fair, having a vaguely-shaped hope that
something would happen to render another outdoor engagement
unnecessary.
It was a peaceful February day, of wonderful softness for the time, and
one would almost have thought that winter was over. She had hardly
finished her dinner when d’Urberville’s figure darkened the window of
the cottage wherein she was a lodger, which she had all to herself
to-day.
Tess jumped up, but her visitor had knocked at the door, and she could
hardly in reason run away. D’Urberville’s knock, his walk up to the
door, had some indescribable quality of difference from his air when
she last saw him. They seemed to be acts of which the doer was ashamed.
She thought that she would not open the door; but, as there was no
sense in that either, she arose, and having lifted the latch stepped
back quickly. He came in, saw her, and flung himself down into a chair
before speaking.
“Tess—I couldn’t help it!” he began desperately, as he wiped his heated
face, which had also a superimposed flush of excitement. “I felt that I
must call at least to ask how you are. I assure you I had not been
thinking of you at all till I saw you that Sunday; now I cannot get rid
of your image, try how I may! It is hard that a good woman should do
harm to a bad man; yet so it is. If you would only pray for me, Tess!”
The suppressed discontent of his manner was almost pitiable, and yet
Tess did not pity him.
“How can I pray for you,” she said, “when I am forbidden to believe
that the great Power who moves the world would alter His plans on my
account?”
“You really think that?”
“Yes. I have been cured of the presumption of thinking otherwise.”
“Cured? By whom?”
“By my husband, if I must tell.”
“Ah—your husband—your husband! How strange it seems! I remember you
hinted something of the sort the other day. What do you really believe
in these matters, Tess?” he asked. “You seem to have no
religion—perhaps owing to me.”
“But I have. Though I don’t believe in anything supernatural.”
D’Urberville looked at her with misgiving.
“Then do you think that the line I take is all wrong?”
“A good deal of it.”
“H’m—and yet I’ve felt so sure about it,” he said uneasily.
“I believe in the _spirit_ of the Sermon on the Mount, and so did my
dear husband.... But I don’t believe—”
Here she gave her negations.
“The fact is,” said d’Urberville drily, “whatever your dear husband
believed you accept, and whatever he rejected you reject, without the
least inquiry or reasoning on your own part. That’s just like you
women. Your mind is enslaved to his.”
“Ah, because he knew everything!” said she, with a triumphant
simplicity of faith in Angel Clare that the most perfect man could
hardly have deserved, much less her husband.
“Yes, but you should not take negative opinions wholesale from another
person like that. A pretty fellow he must be to teach you such
scepticism!”
“He never forced my judgement! He would never argue on the subject with
me! But I looked at it in this way; what he believed, after inquiring
deep into doctrines, was much more likely to be right than what I might
believe, who hadn’t looked into doctrines at all.”
“What used he to say? He must have said something?”
She reflected; and with her acute memory for the letter of Angel
Clare’s remarks, even when she did not comprehend their spirit, she
recalled a merciless polemical syllogism that she had heard him use
when, as it occasionally happened, he indulged in a species of thinking
aloud with her at his side. In delivering it she gave also Clare’s
accent and manner with reverential faithfulness.
“Say that again,” asked d’Urberville, who had listened with the
greatest attention.
She repeated the argument, and d’Urberville thoughtfully murmured the
words after her.
“Anything else?” he presently asked.
“He said at another time something like this”; and she gave another,
which might possibly have been paralleled in many a work of the
pedigree ranging from the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_ to Huxley’s
_Essays_.
“Ah—ha! How do you remember them?”
“I wanted to believe what he believed, though he didn’t wish me to; and
I managed to coax him to tell me a few of his thoughts. I can’t say I
quite understand that one; but I know it is right.”
“H’m. Fancy your being able to teach me what you don’t know yourself!”
He fell into thought.
“And so I threw in my spiritual lot with his,” she resumed. “I didn’t
wish it to be different. What’s good enough for him is good enough for
me.”
“Does he know that you are as big an infidel as he?”
“No—I never told him—if I am an infidel.”
“Well—you are better off to-day that I am, Tess, after all! You don’t
believe that you ought to preach my doctrine, and, therefore, do no
despite to your conscience in abstaining. I do believe I ought to
preach it, but, like the devils, I believe and tremble, for I suddenly
leave off preaching it, and give way to my passion for you.”
“How?”
“Why,” he said aridly; “I have come all the way here to see you to-day!
But I started from home to go to Casterbridge Fair, where I have
undertaken to preach the Word from a waggon at half-past two this
afternoon, and where all the brethren are expecting me this minute.
Here’s the announcement.”
He drew from his breast-pocket a poster whereon was printed the day,
hour, and place of meeting, at which he, d’Urberville, would preach the
Gospel as aforesaid.
“But how can you get there?” said Tess, looking at the clock.
“I cannot get there! I have come here.”
“What, you have really arranged to preach, and—”
“I have arranged to preach, and I shall not be there—by reason of my
burning desire to see a woman whom I once despised!—No, by my word and
truth, I never despised you; if I had I should not love you now! Why I
did not despise you was on account of your being unsmirched in spite of
all; you withdrew yourself from me so quickly and resolutely when you
saw the situation; you did not remain at my pleasure; so there was one
petticoat in the world for whom I had no contempt, and you are she. But
you may well despise me now! I thought I worshipped on the mountains,
but I find I still serve in the groves! Ha! ha!”
“O Alec d’Urberville! what does this mean? What have I done!”
“Done?” he said, with a soulless sneer in the word. “Nothing
intentionally. But you have been the means—the innocent means—of my
backsliding, as they call it. I ask myself, am I, indeed, one of those
‘servants of corruption’ who, ‘after they have escaped the pollutions