Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman
be a good girl if you are at all as you appear; he knows you must be
worth your weight in gold. He is very much interested in ’ee—truth to
tell.”
Tess seemed for the moment really pleased to hear that she had won such
high opinion from a stranger when, in her own esteem, she had sunk so
low.
“It is very good of him to think that,” she murmured; “and if I was
quite sure how it would be living there, I would go any-when.”
“He is a mighty handsome man!”
“I don’t think so,” said Tess coldly.
“Well, there’s your chance, whether or no; and I’m sure he wears a
beautiful diamond ring!”
“Yes,” said little Abraham, brightly, from the window-bench; “and I
seed it! and it did twinkle when he put his hand up to his mistarshers.
Mother, why did our grand relation keep on putting his hand up to his
mistarshers?”
“Hark at that child!” cried Mrs Durbeyfield, with parenthetic
admiration.
“Perhaps to show his diamond ring,” murmured Sir John, dreamily, from
his chair.
“I’ll think it over,” said Tess, leaving the room.
“Well, she’s made a conquest o’ the younger branch of us, straight
off,” continued the matron to her husband, “and she’s a fool if she
don’t follow it up.”
“I don’t quite like my children going away from home,” said the
haggler. “As the head of the family, the rest ought to come to me.”
“But do let her go, Jacky,” coaxed his poor witless wife. “He’s struck
wi’ her—you can see that. He called her Coz! He’ll marry her, most
likely, and make a lady of her; and then she’ll be what her forefathers
was.”
John Durbeyfield had more conceit than energy or health, and this
supposition was pleasant to him.
“Well, perhaps that’s what young Mr d’Urberville means,” he admitted;
“and sure enough he mid have serious thoughts about improving his blood
by linking on to the old line. Tess, the little rogue! And have she
really paid ’em a visit to such an end as this?”
Meanwhile Tess was walking thoughtfully among the gooseberry-bushes in
the garden, and over Prince’s grave. When she came in her mother
pursued her advantage.
“Well, what be you going to do?” she asked.
“I wish I had seen Mrs d’Urberville,” said Tess.
“I think you mid as well settle it. Then you’ll see her soon enough.”
Her father coughed in his chair.
“I don’t know what to say!” answered the girl restlessly. “It is for
you to decide. I killed the old horse, and I suppose I ought to do
something to get ye a new one. But—but—I don’t quite like Mr
d’Urberville being there!”
The children, who had made use of this idea of Tess being taken up by
their wealthy kinsfolk (which they imagined the other family to be) as
a species of dolorifuge after the death of the horse, began to cry at
Tess’s reluctance, and teased and reproached her for hesitating.
“Tess won’t go-o-o and be made a la-a-dy of!—no, she says she
wo-o-on’t!” they wailed, with square mouths. “And we shan’t have a nice
new horse, and lots o’ golden money to buy fairlings! And Tess won’t
look pretty in her best cloze no mo-o-ore!”
Her mother chimed in to the same tune: a certain way she had of making
her labours in the house seem heavier than they were by prolonging them
indefinitely, also weighed in the argument. Her father alone preserved
an attitude of neutrality.
“I will go,” said Tess at last.
Her mother could not repress her consciousness of the nuptial vision
conjured up by the girl’s consent.
“That’s right! For such a pretty maid as ’tis, this is a fine chance!”
Tess smiled crossly.
“I hope it is a chance for earning money. It is no other kind of
chance. You had better say nothing of that silly sort about parish.”
Mrs Durbeyfield did not promise. She was not quite sure that she did
not feel proud enough, after the visitor’s remarks, to say a good deal.
Thus it was arranged; and the young girl wrote, agreeing to be ready to
set out on any day on which she might be required. She was duly
informed that Mrs d’Urberville was glad of her decision, and that a
spring-cart should be sent to meet her and her luggage at the top of
the Vale on the day after the morrow, when she must hold herself
prepared to start. Mrs d’Urberville’s handwriting seemed rather
masculine.
“A cart?” murmured Joan Durbeyfield doubtingly. “It might have been a
carriage for her own kin!”
Having at last taken her course Tess was less restless and abstracted,
going about her business with some self-assurance in the thought of
acquiring another horse for her father by an occupation which would not
be onerous. She had hoped to be a teacher at the school, but the fates
seemed to decide otherwise. Being mentally older than her mother she
did not regard Mrs Durbeyfield’s matrimonial hopes for her in a serious
aspect for a moment. The light-minded woman had been discovering good
matches for her daughter almost from the year of her birth.
VII
On the morning appointed for her departure Tess was awake before
dawn—at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute,
save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction
that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving
silence as if equally convinced that he is mistaken. She remained
upstairs packing till breakfast-time, and then came down in her
ordinary week-day clothes, her Sunday apparel being carefully folded in
her box.
Her mother expostulated. “You will never set out to see your folks
without dressing up more the dand than that?”
“But I am going to work!” said Tess.
“Well, yes,” said Mrs Durbeyfield; and in a private tone, “at first
there mid be a little pretence o’t.... But I think it will be wiser of
’ee to put your best side outward,” she added.
“Very well; I suppose you know best,” replied Tess with calm
abandonment.
And to please her parent the girl put herself quite in Joan’s hands,
saying serenely—“Do what you like with me, mother.”
Mrs Durbeyfield was only too delighted at this tractability. First she
fetched a great basin, and washed Tess’s hair with such thoroughness
that when dried and brushed it looked twice as much as at other times.
She tied it with a broader pink ribbon than usual. Then she put upon
her the white frock that Tess had worn at the club-walking, the airy
fulness of which, supplementing her enlarged _coiffure_, imparted to
her developing figure an amplitude which belied her age, and might
cause her to be estimated as a woman when she was not much more than a
child.
“I declare there’s a hole in my stocking-heel!” said Tess.
“Never mind holes in your stockings—they don’t speak! When I was a
maid, so long as I had a pretty bonnet the devil might ha’ found me in
heels.”
Her mother’s pride in the girl’s appearance led her to step back, like
a painter from his easel, and survey her work as a whole.
“You must zee yourself!” she cried. “It is much better than you was
t’other day.”
As the looking-glass was only large enough to reflect a very small
portion of Tess’s person at one time, Mrs Durbeyfield hung a black
cloak outside the casement, and so made a large reflector of the panes,
as it is the wont of bedecking cottagers to do. After this she went
downstairs to her husband, who was sitting in the lower room.
“I’ll tell ’ee what ’tis, Durbeyfield,” said she exultingly; “he’ll
never have the heart not to love her. But whatever you do, don’t zay
too much to Tess of his fancy for her, and this chance she has got. She
is such an odd maid that it mid zet her against him, or against going
there, even now. If all goes well, I shall certainly be for making some
return to pa’son at Stagfoot Lane for telling us—dear, good man!”
However, as the moment for the girl’s setting out drew nigh, when the
first excitement of the dressing had passed off, a slight misgiving
found place in Joan Durbeyfield’s mind. It prompted the matron to say
that she would walk a little way—as far as to the point where the
acclivity from the valley began its first steep ascent to the outer
world. At the top Tess was going to be met with the spring-cart sent by
the Stoke-d’Urbervilles, and her box had already been wheeled ahead
towards this summit by a lad with trucks, to be in readiness.
Seeing their mother put on her bonnet, the younger children clamoured
to go with her.
“I do want to walk a little-ways wi’ Sissy, now she’s going to marry
our gentleman-cousin, and wear fine cloze!”
“Now,” said Tess, flushing and turning quickly, “I’ll hear no more o’
that! Mother, how could you ever put such stuff into their heads?”
“Going to work, my dears, for our rich relation, and help get enough
money for a new horse,” said Mrs Durbeyfield pacifically.
“Goodbye, father,” said Tess, with a lumpy throat.
“Goodbye, my maid,” said Sir John, raising his head from his breast as
he suspended his nap, induced by a slight excess this morning in honour
of the occasion. “Well, I hope my young friend will like such a comely
sample of his own blood. And tell’n, Tess, that being sunk, quite, from
our former grandeur, I’ll sell him the title—yes, sell it—and at no
onreasonable figure.”
“Not for less than a thousand pound!” cried Lady Durbeyfield.
“Tell’n—I’ll take a thousand pound. Well, I’ll take less, when I come
to think o’t. He’ll adorn it better than a poor lammicken feller like
myself can. Tell’n he shall hae it for a hundred. But I won’t stand
upon trifles—tell’n he shall hae it for fifty—for twenty pound! Yes,
twenty pound—that’s the lowest. Dammy, family honour is family honour,
and I won’t take a penny less!”
Tess’s eyes were too full and her voice too choked to utter the
sentiments that were in her. She turned quickly, and went out.
So the girls and their mother all walked together, a child on each side
of Tess, holding her hand and looking at her meditatively from time to
time, as at one who was about to do great things; her mother just
behind with the smallest; the group forming a picture of honest beauty
flanked by innocence, and backed by simple-souled vanity. They followed
the way till they reached the beginning of the ascent, on the crest of
which the vehicle from Trantridge was to receive her, this limit having
been fixed to save the horse the labour of the last slope. Far away
behind the first hills the cliff-like dwellings of Shaston broke the
line of the ridge. Nobody was visible in the elevated road which
skirted the ascent save the lad whom they had sent on before them,
sitting on the handle of the barrow that contained all Tess’s worldly
possessions.
“Bide here a bit, and the cart will soon come, no doubt,” said Mrs
Durbeyfield. “Yes, I see it yonder!”
It had come—appearing suddenly from behind the forehead of the nearest
upland, and stopping beside the boy with the barrow. Her mother and the
children thereupon decided to go no farther, and bidding them a hasty
goodbye, Tess bent her steps up the hill.
They saw her white shape draw near to the spring-cart, on which her box
was already placed. But before she had quite reached it another vehicle
shot out from a clump of trees on the summit, came round the bend of
the road there, passed the luggage-cart, and halted beside Tess, who
looked up as if in great surprise.
Her mother perceived, for the first time, that the second vehicle was
not a humble conveyance like the first, but a spick-and-span gig or
dog-cart, highly varnished and equipped. The driver was a young man of
three- or four-and-twenty, with a cigar between his teeth; wearing a
dandy cap, drab jacket, breeches of the same hue, white neckcloth,
stick-up collar, and brown driving-gloves—in short, he was the
handsome, horsey young buck who had visited Joan a week or two before
to get her answer about Tess.
Mrs Durbeyfield clapped her hands like a child. Then she looked down,