Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman
animal. I used to be quite up in that scene of Milton’s when I was
theological. Some of it goes—
‘Empress, the way is ready, and not long,
Beyond a row of myrtles....
... If thou accept
My conduct, I can bring thee thither soon.’
‘Lead then,’ said Eve.
“And so on. My dear Tess, I am only putting this to you as a thing that
you might have supposed or said quite untruly, because you think so
badly of me.”
“I never said you were Satan, or thought it. I don’t think of you in
that way at all. My thoughts of you are quite cold, except when you
affront me. What, did you come digging here entirely because of me?”
“Entirely. To see you; nothing more. The smockfrock, which I saw
hanging for sale as I came along, was an afterthought, that I mightn’t
be noticed. I come to protest against your working like this.”
“But I like doing it—it is for my father.”
“Your engagement at the other place is ended?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you going to next? To join your dear husband?”
She could not bear the humiliating reminder.
“O—I don’t know!” she said bitterly. “I have no husband!”
“It is quite true—in the sense you mean. But you have a friend, and I
have determined that you shall be comfortable in spite of yourself.
When you get down to your house you will see what I have sent there for
you.”
“O, Alec, I wish you wouldn’t give me anything at all! I cannot take it
from you! I don’t like—it is not right!”
“It _is_ right!” he cried lightly. “I am not going to see a woman whom
I feel so tenderly for as I do for you in trouble without trying to
help her.”
“But I am very well off! I am only in trouble about—about—not about
living at all!”
She turned, and desperately resumed her digging, tears dripping upon
the fork-handle and upon the clods.
“About the children—your brothers and sisters,” he resumed. “I’ve been
thinking of them.”
Tess’s heart quivered—he was touching her in a weak place. He had
divined her chief anxiety. Since returning home her soul had gone out
to those children with an affection that was passionate.
“If your mother does not recover, somebody ought to do something for
them; since your father will not be able to do much, I suppose?”
“He can with my assistance. He must!”
“And with mine.”
“No, sir!”
“How damned foolish this is!” burst out d’Urberville. “Why, he thinks
we are the same family; and will be quite satisfied!”
“He don’t. I’ve undeceived him.”
“The more fool you!”
D’Urberville in anger retreated from her to the hedge, where he pulled
off the long smockfrock which had disguised him; and rolling it up and
pushing it into the couch-fire, went away.
Tess could not get on with her digging after this; she felt restless;
she wondered if he had gone back to her father’s house; and taking the
fork in her hand proceeded homewards.
Some twenty yards from the house she was met by one of her sisters.
“O, Tessy—what do you think! ’Liza-Lu is a-crying, and there’s a lot of
folk in the house, and mother is a good deal better, but they think
father is dead!”
The child realized the grandeur of the news; but not as yet its
sadness, and stood looking at Tess with round-eyed importance till,
beholding the effect produced upon her, she said—
“What, Tess, shan’t we talk to father never no more?”
“But father was only a little bit ill!” exclaimed Tess distractedly.
’Liza-Lu came up.
“He dropped down just now, and the doctor who was there for mother said
there was no chance for him, because his heart was growed in.”
Yes; the Durbeyfield couple had changed places; the dying one was out
of danger, and the indisposed one was dead. The news meant even more
than it sounded. Her father’s life had a value apart from his personal
achievements, or perhaps it would not have had much. It was the last of
the three lives for whose duration the house and premises were held
under a lease; and it had long been coveted by the tenant-farmer for
his regular labourers, who were stinted in cottage accommodation.
Moreover, “liviers” were disapproved of in villages almost as much as
little freeholders, because of their independence of manner, and when a
lease determined it was never renewed.
Thus the Durbeyfields, once d’Urbervilles, saw descending upon them the
destiny which, no doubt, when they were among the Olympians of the
county, they had caused to descend many a time, and severely enough,
upon the heads of such landless ones as they themselves were now. So do
flux and reflux—the rhythm of change—alternate and persist in
everything under the sky.
LI
At length it was the eve of Old Lady-Day, and the agricultural world
was in a fever of mobility such as only occurs at that particular date
of the year. It is a day of fulfilment; agreements for outdoor service
during the ensuing year, entered into at Candlemas, are to be now
carried out. The labourers—or “work-folk”, as they used to call
themselves immemorially till the other word was introduced from
without—who wish to remain no longer in old places are removing to the
new farms.
These annual migrations from farm to farm were on the increase here.
When Tess’s mother was a child the majority of the field-folk about
Marlott had remained all their lives on one farm, which had been the
home also of their fathers and grandfathers; but latterly the desire
for yearly removal had risen to a high pitch. With the younger families
it was a pleasant excitement which might possibly be an advantage. The
Egypt of one family was the Land of Promise to the family who saw it
from a distance, till by residence there it became in turn their Egypt
also; and so they changed and changed.
However, all the mutations so increasingly discernible in village life
did not originate entirely in the agricultural unrest. A depopulation
was also going on. The village had formerly contained, side by side
with the argicultural labourers, an interesting and better-informed
class, ranking distinctly above the former—the class to which Tess’s
father and mother had belonged—and including the carpenter, the smith,
the shoemaker, the huckster, together with nondescript workers other
than farm-labourers; a set of people who owed a certain stability of
aim and conduct to the fact of their being lifeholders like Tess’s
father, or copyholders, or occasionally, small freeholders. But as the
long holdings fell in, they were seldom again let to similar tenants,
and were mostly pulled down, if not absolutely required by the farmer
for his hands. Cottagers who were not directly employed on the land
were looked upon with disfavour, and the banishment of some starved the
trade of others, who were thus obliged to follow. These families, who
had formed the backbone of the village life in the past, who were the
depositaries of the village traditions, had to seek refuge in the large
centres; the process, humorously designated by statisticians as “the
tendency of the rural population towards the large towns”, being really
the tendency of water to flow uphill when forced by machinery.
The cottage accommodation at Marlott having been in this manner
considerably curtailed by demolitions, every house which remained
standing was required by the agriculturist for his work-people. Ever
since the occurrence of the event which had cast such a shadow over
Tess’s life, the Durbeyfield family (whose descent was not credited)
had been tacitly looked on as one which would have to go when their
lease ended, if only in the interests of morality. It was, indeed,
quite true that the household had not been shining examples either of
temperance, soberness, or chastity. The father, and even the mother,
had got drunk at times, the younger children seldom had gone to church,
and the eldest daughter had made queer unions. By some means the
village had to be kept pure. So on this, the first Lady-Day on which
the Durbeyfields were expellable, the house, being roomy, was required
for a carter with a large family; and Widow Joan, her daughters Tess
and ’Liza-Lu, the boy Abraham, and the younger children had to go
elsewhere.
On the evening preceding their removal it was getting dark betimes by
reason of a drizzling rain which blurred the sky. As it was the last
night they would spend in the village which had been their home and
birthplace, Mrs Durbeyfield, ’Liza-Lu, and Abraham had gone out to bid
some friends goodbye, and Tess was keeping house till they should
return.
She was kneeling in the window-bench, her face close to the casement,
where an outer pane of rain-water was sliding down the inner pane of
glass. Her eyes rested on the web of a spider, probably starved long
ago, which had been mistakenly placed in a corner where no flies ever
came, and shivered in the slight draught through the casement. Tess was
reflecting on the position of the household, in which she perceived her
own evil influence. Had she not come home, her mother and the children
might probably have been allowed to stay on as weekly tenants. But she
had been observed almost immediately on her return by some people of
scrupulous character and great influence: they had seen her idling in
the churchyard, restoring as well as she could with a little trowel a
baby’s obliterated grave. By this means they had found that she was
living here again; her mother was scolded for “harbouring” her; sharp
retorts had ensued from Joan, who had independently offered to leave at
once; she had been taken at her word; and here was the result.
“I ought never to have come home,” said Tess to herself, bitterly.
She was so intent upon these thoughts that she hardly at first took
note of a man in a white mackintosh whom she saw riding down the
street. Possibly it was owing to her face being near to the pane that
he saw her so quickly, and directed his horse so close to the
cottage-front that his hoofs were almost upon the narrow border for
plants growing under the wall. It was not till he touched the window
with his riding-crop that she observed him. The rain had nearly ceased,
and she opened the casement in obedience to his gesture.
“Didn’t you see me?” asked d’Urberville.
“I was not attending,” she said. “I heard you, I believe, though I
fancied it was a carriage and horses. I was in a sort of dream.”
“Ah! you heard the d’Urberville Coach, perhaps. You know the legend, I
suppose?”
“No. My—somebody was going to tell it me once, but didn’t.”
“If you are a genuine d’Urberville I ought not to tell you either, I
suppose. As for me, I’m a sham one, so it doesn’t matter. It is rather
dismal. It is that this sound of a non-existent coach can only be heard
by one of d’Urberville blood, and it is held to be of ill-omen to the
one who hears it. It has to do with a murder, committed by one of the
family, centuries ago.”
“Now you have begun it, finish it.”
“Very well. One of the family is said to have abducted some beautiful
woman, who tried to escape from the coach in which he was carrying her
off, and in the struggle he killed her—or she killed him—I forget
which. Such is one version of the tale... I see that your tubs and
buckets are packed. Going away, aren’t you?”
“Yes, to-morrow—Old Lady Day.”
“I heard you were, but could hardly believe it; it seems so sudden. Why
is it?”
“Father’s was the last life on the property, and when that dropped we
had no further right to stay. Though we might, perhaps, have stayed as
weekly tenants—if it had not been for me.”
“What about you?”
“I am not a—proper woman.”
D’Urberville’s face flushed.
“What a blasted shame! Miserable snobs! May their dirty souls be burnt
to cinders!” he exclaimed in tones of ironic resentment. “That’s why
you are going, is it? Turned out?”
“We are not turned out exactly; but as they said we should have to go