finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_6_part_0.txt
Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapters 16-17
chapters 16 - 17
{"name": "Chapters 16 - 17", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD26.asp", "summary": "Tess proceeds to the Talbothay Farm. On this bright May day, she is in high spirits and hopeful for her future. On the way she passes by the tomb of her ancestors, but she does not let that spoil her mood. Instead, she sings ballads to herself, and her expression changes with her improving spirits. When she spies the valley of the dairies, she is encouraged by the view; it is much lovelier than the valley of Marlott. The air is sweet, the rivers are clear, and birds sing sweetly, giving Tess even greater hopes for her future. The distant mooing of the cows reminds her that she is close to her destination.", "analysis": "Notes The courage with which women bear hardship is pointed out in this chapter. They live through humiliations, regain their spirits, and move ahead with life. Since Tess is still young, she is able to recover from the sorrows of her past. When Tess leaves home for the second time, it is two and a half years after her return from Trantridge, and she is a changed person. She is no longer a naive girl, but a responsible and mature woman. As she moves away from her village, her state of mind changes; the further she travels from Marlott, the more optimistic she becomes. The soft wind soothes her spirit, and the sunshine gives her hope. The whole world begins to appear bright and cheerful. This new image of Tess is a welcome change from her melancholy and despondency. CHAPTER 17 Summary At Talbothay's, Tess is welcomed by Richard Crick, the owner of the farm. He is skeptical about her abilities due to her delicate frame, but she quickly proves herself. After her long travels, she refuses to rest and immediately joins in the milking. In the first days of her stay at Talbothay's, Tess easily slips into her role as a milkmaid and feels that she has \"laid a new foundation for her future.\" On her first day of work, Tess spies the handsome Angel Clare, who is a trainee at the farm. Although the son of a clergyman, he has chosen farming as his vocation. Tess learns at the dairy house that he is a much sought after bachelor, whom the milkmaids admire greatly. Tess remembers him from the May Day dance several years ago, but she is relieved to find that he does not recognize her; she is worried about someone finding out about her past. Notes In this chapter, Angel Clare, seen only briefly before at the May Day Dance, is developed as a character. Working as a trainee on the farm, he is looked upon as a gentleman and everyone addressed him as \"sir\". His father is a respected clergyman in Emminster, and all of his brothers have become parsons. In addition, all the milkmaids swoon over his good looks and fantasize about his falling in love with them. In this chapter, Tess shows how she has changed. She is again in control of her emotions. Although she finds Angel Clare attractive, she thinks that he is unapproachable and keeps her distance. In contrast to the other milkmaids, she is cautious and prudent. She is also thankful that he does not remember her from the May Day Dance four years ago. Tess hopes that she can remain anonymous so that no one will find out about her past."}


On a thyme-scented, bird-hatching morning in May, between two and
three years after the return from Trantridge--silent, reconstructive
years for Tess Durbeyfield--she left her home for the second time.

Having packed up her luggage so that it could be sent to her later,
she started in a hired trap for the little town of Stourcastle,
through which it was necessary to pass on her journey, now in a
direction almost opposite to that of her first adventuring.  On the
curve of the nearest hill she looked back regretfully at Marlott and
her father's house, although she had been so anxious to get away.

Her kindred dwelling there would probably continue their daily
lives as heretofore, with no great diminution of pleasure in their
consciousness, although she would be far off, and they deprived of
her smile.  In a few days the children would engage in their games as
merrily as ever, without the sense of any gap left by her departure.
This leaving of the younger children she had decided to be for the
best; were she to remain they would probably gain less good by her
precepts than harm by her example.

She went through Stourcastle without pausing and onward to a junction
of highways, where she could await a carrier's van that ran to the
south-west; for the railways which engirdled this interior tract of
country had never yet struck across it.  While waiting, however,
there came along a farmer in his spring cart, driving approximately
in the direction that she wished to pursue.  Though he was a stranger
to her she accepted his offer of a seat beside him, ignoring that
its motive was a mere tribute to her countenance.  He was going to
Weatherbury, and by accompanying him thither she could walk the
remainder of the distance instead of travelling in the van by way of
Casterbridge.

Tess did not stop at Weatherbury, after this long drive, further than
to make a slight nondescript meal at noon at a cottage to which the
farmer recommended her.  Thence she started on foot, basket in hand,
to reach the wide upland of heath dividing this district from the
low-lying meads of a further valley in which the dairy stood that was
the aim and end of her day's pilgrimage.

Tess had never before visited this part of the country, and yet she
felt akin to the landscape.  Not so very far to the left of her she
could discern a dark patch in the scenery, which inquiry confirmed
her in supposing to be trees marking the environs of Kingsbere--in
the church of which parish the bones of her ancestors--her useless
ancestors--lay entombed.

She had no admiration for them now; she almost hated them for the
dance they had led her; not a thing of all that had been theirs did
she retain but the old seal and spoon.  "Pooh--I have as much of
mother as father in me!" she said.  "All my prettiness comes from
her, and she was only a dairymaid."

The journey over the intervening uplands and lowlands of Egdon,
when she reached them, was a more troublesome walk than she had
anticipated, the distance being actually but a few miles.  It was
two hours, owing to sundry wrong turnings, ere she found herself
on a summit commanding the long-sought-for vale, the Valley of the
Great Dairies, the valley in which milk and butter grew to rankness,
and were produced more profusely, if less delicately, than at her
home--the verdant plain so well watered by the river Var or Froom.

It was intrinsically different from the Vale of Little Dairies,
Blackmoor Vale, which, save during her disastrous sojourn at
Trantridge, she had exclusively known till now.  The world was drawn
to a larger pattern here.  The enclosures numbered fifty acres
instead of ten, the farmsteads were more extended, the groups of
cattle formed tribes hereabout; there only families.  These myriads
of cows stretching under her eyes from the far east to the far west
outnumbered any she had ever seen at one glance before. The green
lea was speckled as thickly with them as a canvas by Van Alsloot
or Sallaert with burghers.  The ripe hue of the red and dun kine
absorbed the evening sunlight, which the white-coated animals
returned to the eye in rays almost dazzling, even at the distant
elevation on which she stood.

The bird's-eye perspective before her was not so luxuriantly
beautiful, perhaps, as that other one which she knew so well; yet it
was more cheering.  It lacked the intensely blue atmosphere of the
rival vale, and its heavy soils and scents; the new air was clear,
bracing, ethereal.  The river itself, which nourished the grass
and cows of these renowned dairies, flowed not like the streams in
Blackmoor.  Those were slow, silent, often turbid; flowing over
beds of mud into which the incautious wader might sink and vanish
unawares.  The Froom waters were clear as the pure River of Life
shown to the Evangelist, rapid as the shadow of a cloud, with
pebbly shallows that prattled to the sky all day long.  There the
water-flower was the lily; the crow-foot here.

Either the change in the quality of the air from heavy to light, or
the sense of being amid new scenes where there were no invidious eyes
upon her, sent up her spirits wonderfully.  Her hopes mingled with
the sunshine in an ideal photosphere which surrounded her as she
bounded along against the soft south wind.  She heard a pleasant
voice in every breeze, and in every bird's note seemed to lurk a
joy.

Her face had latterly changed with changing states of mind,
continually fluctuating between beauty and ordinariness, according as
the thoughts were gay or grave.  One day she was pink and flawless;
another pale and tragical.  When she was pink she was feeling less
than when pale; her more perfect beauty accorded with her less
elevated mood; her more intense mood with her less perfect beauty.
It was her best face physically that was now set against the south
wind.

The irresistible, universal, automatic tendency to find sweet
pleasure somewhere, which pervades all life, from the meanest to the
highest, had at length mastered Tess.  Being even now only a young
woman of twenty, one who mentally and sentimentally had not finished
growing, it was impossible that any event should have left upon her
an impression that was not in time capable of transmutation.

And thus her spirits, and her thankfulness, and her hopes, rose
higher and higher.  She tried several ballads, but found them
inadequate; till, recollecting the psalter that her eyes had so often
wandered over of a Sunday morning before she had eaten of the tree
of knowledge, she chanted: "O ye Sun and Moon ... O ye Stars ... ye
Green Things upon the Earth ... ye Fowls of the Air ... Beasts and
Cattle ... Children of Men ... bless ye the Lord, praise Him and
magnify Him for ever!"

She suddenly stopped and murmured: "But perhaps I don't quite know
the Lord as yet."

And probably the half-unconscious rhapsody was a Fetishistic
utterance in a Monotheistic setting; women whose chief companions
are the forms and forces of outdoor Nature retain in their souls far
more of the Pagan fantasy of their remote forefathers than of the
systematized religion taught their race at later date.  However, Tess
found at least approximate expression for her feelings in the old
_Benedicite_ that she had lisped from infancy; and it was enough.
Such high contentment with such a slight initial performance as that
of having started towards a means of independent living was a part of
the Durbeyfield temperament.  Tess really wished to walk uprightly,
while her father did nothing of the kind; but she resembled him in
being content with immediate and small achievements, and in having no
mind for laborious effort towards such petty social advancement as
could alone be effected by a family so heavily handicapped as the
once powerful d'Urbervilles were now.

There was, it might be said, the energy of her mother's unexpended
family, as well as the natural energy of Tess's years, rekindled
after the experience which had so overwhelmed her for the time. Let
the truth be told--women do as a rule live through such humiliations,
and regain their spirits, and again look about them with an
interested eye.  While there's life there's hope is a conviction not
so entirely unknown to the "betrayed" as some amiable theorists would
have us believe.

Tess Durbeyfield, then, in good heart, and full of zest for life,
descended the Egdon slopes lower and lower towards the dairy of her
pilgrimage.

The marked difference, in the final particular, between the rival
vales now showed itself.  The secret of Blackmoor was best discovered
from the heights around; to read aright the valley before her it was
necessary to descend into its midst.  When Tess had accomplished this
feat she found herself to be standing on a carpeted level, which
stretched to the east and west as far as the eye could reach.

The river had stolen from the higher tracts and brought in particles
to the vale all this horizontal land; and now, exhausted, aged, and
attenuated, lay serpentining along through the midst of its former
spoils.

Not quite sure of her direction, Tess stood still upon the hemmed
expanse of verdant flatness, like a fly on a billiard-table of
indefinite length, and of no more consequence to the surroundings
than that fly.  The sole effect of her presence upon the placid
valley so far had been to excite the mind of a solitary heron, which,
after descending to the ground not far from her path, stood with neck
erect, looking at her.

Suddenly there arose from all parts of the lowland a prolonged and
repeated call--"Waow! waow! waow!"

From the furthest east to the furthest west the cries spread as if by
contagion, accompanied in some cases by the barking of a dog.  It was
not the expression of the valley's consciousness that beautiful Tess
had arrived, but the ordinary announcement of milking-time--half-past
four o'clock, when the dairymen set about getting in the cows.

The red and white herd nearest at hand, which had been phlegmatically
waiting for the call, now trooped towards the steading in the
background, their great bags of milk swinging under them as they
walked.  Tess followed slowly in their rear, and entered the barton
by the open gate through which they had entered before her.  Long
thatched sheds stretched round the enclosure, their slopes encrusted
with vivid green moss, and their eaves supported by wooden posts
rubbed to a glossy smoothness by the flanks of infinite cows
and calves of bygone years, now passed to an oblivion almost
inconceivable in its profundity.  Between the post were ranged
the milchers, each exhibiting herself at the present moment to a
whimsical eye in the rear as a circle on two stalks, down the centre
of which a switch moved pendulum-wise; while the sun, lowering itself
behind this patient row, threw their shadows accurately inwards upon
the wall.  Thus it threw shadows of these obscure and homely figures
every evening with as much care over each contour as if it had been
the profile of a court beauty on a palace wall; copied them as
diligently as it had copied Olympian shapes on marble _facades_ long
ago, or the outline of Alexander, Caesar, and the Pharaohs.

They were the less restful cows that were stalled.  Those that would
stand still of their own will were milked in the middle of the yard,
where many of such better behaved ones stood waiting now--all prime
milchers, such as were seldom seen out of this valley, and not always
within it; nourished by the succulent feed which the water-meads
supplied at this prime season of the year.  Those of them that were
spotted with white reflected the sunshine in dazzling brilliancy,
and the polished brass knobs of their horns glittered with something
of military display.  Their large-veined udders hung ponderous as
sandbags, the teats sticking out like the legs of a gipsy's crock;
and as each animal lingered for her turn to arrive the milk oozed
forth and fell in drops to the ground.




The dairymaids and men had flocked down from their cottages and out
of the dairy-house with the arrival of the cows from the meads; the
maids walking in pattens, not on account of the weather, but to keep
their shoes above the mulch of the barton.  Each girl sat down on
her three-legged stool, her face sideways, her right cheek resting
against the cow, and looked musingly along the animal's flank at Tess
as she approached.  The male milkers, with hat-brims turned down,
resting flat on their foreheads and gazing on the ground, did not
observe her.

One of these was a sturdy middle-aged man--whose long white "pinner"
was somewhat finer and cleaner than the wraps of the others, and
whose jacket underneath had a presentable marketing aspect--the
master-dairyman, of whom she was in quest, his double character as
a working milker and butter maker here during six days, and on the
seventh as a man in shining broad-cloth in his family pew at church,
being so marked as to have inspired a rhyme:


             Dairyman Dick
             All the week:--
     On Sundays Mister Richard Crick.


Seeing Tess standing at gaze he went across to her.

The majority of dairymen have a cross manner at milking time, but it
happened that Mr Crick was glad to get a new hand--for the days were
busy ones now--and he received her warmly; inquiring for her mother
and the rest of the family--(though this as a matter of form merely,
for in reality he had not been aware of Mrs Durbeyfield's existence
till apprised of the fact by a brief business-letter about Tess).

"Oh--ay, as a lad I knowed your part o' the country very well," he
said terminatively.  "Though I've never been there since.  And a aged
woman of ninety that use to live nigh here, but is dead and gone long
ago, told me that a family of some such name as yours in Blackmoor
Vale came originally from these parts, and that 'twere a old ancient
race that had all but perished off the earth--though the new
generations didn't know it.  But, Lord, I took no notice of the old
woman's ramblings, not I."

"Oh no--it is nothing," said Tess.

Then the talk was of business only.

"You can milk 'em clean, my maidy? I don't want my cows going azew at
this time o' year."

She reassured him on that point, and he surveyed her up and down.
She had been staying indoors a good deal, and her complexion had
grown delicate.

"Quite sure you can stand it?  'Tis comfortable enough here for rough
folk; but we don't live in a cowcumber frame."

She declared that she could stand it, and her zest and willingness
seemed to win him over.

"Well, I suppose you'll want a dish o' tay, or victuals of some sort,
hey?  Not yet?  Well, do as ye like about it.  But faith, if 'twas I,
I should be as dry as a kex wi' travelling so far."

"I'll begin milking now, to get my hand in," said Tess.

She drank a little milk as temporary refreshment--to the
surprise--indeed, slight contempt--of Dairyman Crick, to whose mind
it had apparently never occurred that milk was good as a beverage.

"Oh, if ye can swaller that, be it so," he said indifferently, while
holding up the pail that she sipped from.  "'Tis what I hain't
touched for years--not I.  Rot the stuff; it would lie in my innerds
like lead.  You can try your hand upon she," he pursued, nodding to
the nearest cow.  "Not but what she do milk rather hard.  We've hard
ones and we've easy ones, like other folks.  However, you'll find out
that soon enough."

When Tess had changed her bonnet for a hood, and was really on her
stool under the cow, and the milk was squirting from her fists
into the pail, she appeared to feel that she really had laid a new
foundation for her future.  The conviction bred serenity, her pulse
slowed, and she was able to look about her.

The milkers formed quite a little battalion of men and maids, the
men operating on the hard-teated animals, the maids on the kindlier
natures.  It was a large dairy.  There were nearly a hundred
milchers under Crick's management, all told; and of the herd the
master-dairyman milked six or eight with his own hands, unless away
from home.  These were the cows that milked hardest of all; for his
journey-milkmen being more or less casually hired, he would not
entrust this half-dozen to their treatment, lest, from indifference,
they should not milk them fully; nor to the maids, lest they should
fail in the same way for lack of finger-grip; with the result that in
course of time the cows would "go azew"--that is, dry up.  It was not
the loss for the moment that made slack milking so serious, but that
with the decline of demand there came decline, and ultimately
cessation, of supply.

After Tess had settled down to her cow there was for a time no talk
in the barton, and not a sound interfered with the purr of the
milk-jets into the numerous pails, except a momentary exclamation
to one or other of the beasts requesting her to turn round or stand
still. The only movements were those of the milkers' hands up and
down, and the swing of the cows' tails.  Thus they all worked on,
encompassed by the vast flat mead which extended to either slope
of the valley--a level landscape compounded of old landscapes long
forgotten, and, no doubt, differing in character very greatly from
the landscape they composed now.

"To my thinking," said the dairyman, rising suddenly from a cow
he had just finished off, snatching up his three-legged stool in
one hand and the pail in the other, and moving on to the next
hard-yielder in his vicinity, "to my thinking, the cows don't gie
down their milk to-day as usual.  Upon my life, if Winker do begin
keeping back like this, she'll not be worth going under by
midsummer."

"'Tis because there's a new hand come among us," said Jonathan Kail.
"I've noticed such things afore."

"To be sure.  It may be so.  I didn't think o't."

"I've been told that it goes up into their horns at such times," said
a dairymaid.

"Well, as to going up into their horns," replied Dairyman Crick
dubiously, as though even witchcraft might be limited by anatomical
possibilities, "I couldn't say; I certainly could not.  But as nott
cows will keep it back as well as the horned ones, I don't quite
agree to it.  Do ye know that riddle about the nott cows, Jonathan?
Why do nott cows give less milk in a year than horned?"

"I don't!" interposed the milkmaid, "Why do they?"

"Because there bain't so many of 'em," said the dairyman.
"Howsomever, these gam'sters do certainly keep back their milk
to-day.  Folks, we must lift up a stave or two--that's the only cure
for't."

Songs were often resorted to in dairies hereabout as an enticement
to the cows when they showed signs of withholding their usual yield;
and the band of milkers at this request burst into melody--in purely
business-like tones, it is true, and with no great spontaneity; the
result, according to their own belief, being a decided improvement
during the song's continuance.  When they had gone through fourteen
or fifteen verses of a cheerful ballad about a murderer who was
afraid to go to bed in the dark because he saw certain brimstone
flames around him, one of the male milkers said--

"I wish singing on the stoop didn't use up so much of a man's wind!
You should get your harp, sir; not but what a fiddle is best."

Tess, who had given ear to this, thought the words were addressed to
the dairyman, but she was wrong.  A reply, in the shape of "Why?"
came as it were out of the belly of a dun cow in the stalls; it had
been spoken by a milker behind the animal, whom she had not hitherto
perceived.

"Oh yes; there's nothing like a fiddle," said the dairyman. "Though
I do think that bulls are more moved by a tune than cows--at least
that's my experience.  Once there was an old aged man over at
Mellstock--William Dewy by name--one of the family that used to do
a good deal of business as tranters over there--Jonathan, do ye
mind?--I knowed the man by sight as well as I know my own brother, in
a manner of speaking.  Well, this man was a coming home along from a
wedding, where he had been playing his fiddle, one fine moonlight
night, and for shortness' sake he took a cut across Forty-acres, a
field lying that way, where a bull was out to grass.  The bull seed
William, and took after him, horns aground, begad; and though William
runned his best, and hadn't MUCH drink in him (considering 'twas a
wedding, and the folks well off), he found he'd never reach the fence
and get over in time to save himself.  Well, as a last thought, he
pulled out his fiddle as he runned, and struck up a jig, turning to
the bull, and backing towards the corner.  The bull softened down,
and stood still, looking hard at William Dewy, who fiddled on and on;
till a sort of a smile stole over the bull's face.  But no sooner
did William stop his playing and turn to get over hedge than the
bull would stop his smiling and lower his horns towards the seat of
William's breeches.  Well, William had to turn about and play on,
willy-nilly; and 'twas only three o'clock in the world, and 'a knowed
that nobody would come that way for hours, and he so leery and tired
that 'a didn't know what to do.  When he had scraped till about four
o'clock he felt that he verily would have to give over soon, and he
said to himself, 'There's only this last tune between me and eternal
welfare! Heaven save me, or I'm a done man.'  Well, then he called to
mind how he'd seen the cattle kneel o' Christmas Eves in the dead o'
night.  It was not Christmas Eve then, but it came into his head to
play a trick upon the bull.  So he broke into the 'Tivity Hymm, just
as at Christmas carol-singing; when, lo and behold, down went the
bull on his bended knees, in his ignorance, just as if 'twere the
true 'Tivity night and hour.  As soon as his horned friend were down,
William turned, clinked off like a long-dog, and jumped safe over
hedge, before the praying bull had got on his feet again to take
after him.  William used to say that he'd seen a man look a fool
a good many times, but never such a fool as that bull looked when
he found his pious feelings had been played upon, and 'twas not
Christmas Eve. ...  Yes, William Dewy, that was the man's name; and
I can tell you to a foot where's he a-lying in Mellstock Churchyard
at this very moment--just between the second yew-tree and the north
aisle."

"It's a curious story; it carries us back to medieval times, when
faith was a living thing!"

The remark, singular for a dairy-yard, was murmured by the voice
behind the dun cow; but as nobody understood the reference, no notice
was taken, except that the narrator seemed to think it might imply
scepticism as to his tale.

"Well, 'tis quite true, sir, whether or no.  I knowed the man well."

"Oh yes; I have no doubt of it," said the person behind the dun cow.

Tess's attention was thus attracted to the dairyman's interlocutor,
of whom she could see but the merest patch, owing to his burying his
head so persistently in the flank of the milcher.  She could not
understand why he should be addressed as "sir" even by the dairyman
himself.  But no explanation was discernible; he remained under the
cow long enough to have milked three, uttering a private ejaculation
now and then, as if he could not get on.

"Take it gentle, sir; take it gentle," said the dairyman.  "'Tis
knack, not strength, that does it."

"So I find," said the other, standing up at last and stretching his
arms.  "I think I have finished her, however, though she made my
fingers ache."

Tess could then see him at full length.  He wore the ordinary white
pinner and leather leggings of a dairy-farmer when milking, and his
boots were clogged with the mulch of the yard; but this was all his
local livery.  Beneath it was something educated, reserved, subtle,
sad, differing.

But the details of his aspect were temporarily thrust aside by
the discovery that he was one whom she had seen before.  Such
vicissitudes had Tess passed through since that time that for a
moment she could not remember where she had met him; and then it
flashed upon her that he was the pedestrian who had joined in the
club-dance at Marlott--the passing stranger who had come she knew
not whence, had danced with others but not with her, and slightingly
left her, and gone on his way with his friends.

The flood of memories brought back by this revival of an incident
anterior to her troubles produced a momentary dismay lest,
recognizing her also, he should by some means discover her story.
But it passed away when she found no sign of remembrance in him.  She
saw by degrees that since their first and only encounter his mobile
face had grown more thoughtful, and had acquired a young man's
shapely moustache and beard--the latter of the palest straw colour
where it began upon his cheeks, and deepening to a warm brown farther
from its root.  Under his linen milking-pinner he wore a dark
velveteen jacket, cord breeches and gaiters, and a starched white
shirt.  Without the milking-gear nobody could have guessed what
he was.  He might with equal probability have been an eccentric
landowner or a gentlemanly ploughman.  That he was but a novice at
dairy work she had realized in a moment, from the time he had spent
upon the milking of one cow.

Meanwhile many of the milkmaids had said to one another of the
newcomer, "How pretty she is!" with something of real generosity and
admiration, though with a half hope that the auditors would qualify
the assertion--which, strictly speaking, they might have done,
prettiness being an inexact definition of what struck the eye in
Tess.  When the milking was finished for the evening they straggled
indoors, where Mrs Crick, the dairyman's wife--who was too
respectable to go out milking herself, and wore a hot stuff gown in
warm weather because the dairymaids wore prints--was giving an eye
to the leads and things.

Only two or three of the maids, Tess learnt, slept in the dairy-house
besides herself, most of the helpers going to their homes.  She saw
nothing at supper-time of the superior milker who had commented on
the story, and asked no questions about him, the remainder of the
evening being occupied in arranging her place in the bed-chamber.
It was a large room over the milk-house, some thirty feet long; the
sleeping-cots of the other three indoor milkmaids being in the same
apartment.  They were blooming young women, and, except one, rather
older than herself.  By bedtime Tess was thoroughly tired, and fell
asleep immediately.

But one of the girls, who occupied an adjoining bed, was more wakeful
than Tess, and would insist upon relating to the latter various
particulars of the homestead into which she had just entered.  The
girl's whispered words mingled with the shades, and, to Tess's drowsy
mind, they seemed to be generated by the darkness in which they
floated.

"Mr Angel Clare--he that is learning milking, and that plays
the harp--never says much to us.  He is a pa'son's son, and is
too much taken up wi' his own thoughts to notice girls.  He is
the dairyman's pupil--learning farming in all its branches.  He
has learnt sheep-farming at another place, and he's now mastering
dairy-work....  Yes, he is quite the gentleman-born.  His father is
the Reverent Mr Clare at Emminster--a good many miles from here."

"Oh--I have heard of him," said her companion, now awake.  "A very
earnest clergyman, is he not?"

"Yes--that he is--the earnestest man in all Wessex, they say--the
last of the old Low Church sort, they tell me--for all about here be
what they call High.  All his sons, except our Mr Clare, be made
pa'sons too."

Tess had not at this hour the curiosity to ask why the present Mr
Clare was not made a parson like his brethren, and gradually fell
asleep again, the words of her informant coming to her along with the
smell of the cheeses in the adjoining cheeseloft, and the measured
dripping of the whey from the wrings downstairs.



Chapters 16 - 17
Tess proceeds to the Talbothay Farm. On this bright May day, she is in high spirits and hopeful for her future. On the way she passes by the tomb of her ancestors, but she does not let that spoil her mood. Instead, she sings ballads to herself, and her expression changes with her improving spirits. When she spies the valley of the dairies, she is encouraged by the view; it is much lovelier than the valley of Marlott. The air is sweet, the rivers are clear, and birds sing sweetly, giving Tess even greater hopes for her future. The distant mooing of the cows reminds her that she is close to her destination.
Notes The courage with which women bear hardship is pointed out in this chapter. They live through humiliations, regain their spirits, and move ahead with life. Since Tess is still young, she is able to recover from the sorrows of her past. When Tess leaves home for the second time, it is two and a half years after her return from Trantridge, and she is a changed person. She is no longer a naive girl, but a responsible and mature woman. As she moves away from her village, her state of mind changes; the further she travels from Marlott, the more optimistic she becomes. The soft wind soothes her spirit, and the sunshine gives her hope. The whole world begins to appear bright and cheerful. This new image of Tess is a welcome change from her melancholy and despondency. CHAPTER 17 Summary At Talbothay's, Tess is welcomed by Richard Crick, the owner of the farm. He is skeptical about her abilities due to her delicate frame, but she quickly proves herself. After her long travels, she refuses to rest and immediately joins in the milking. In the first days of her stay at Talbothay's, Tess easily slips into her role as a milkmaid and feels that she has "laid a new foundation for her future." On her first day of work, Tess spies the handsome Angel Clare, who is a trainee at the farm. Although the son of a clergyman, he has chosen farming as his vocation. Tess learns at the dairy house that he is a much sought after bachelor, whom the milkmaids admire greatly. Tess remembers him from the May Day dance several years ago, but she is relieved to find that he does not recognize her; she is worried about someone finding out about her past. Notes In this chapter, Angel Clare, seen only briefly before at the May Day Dance, is developed as a character. Working as a trainee on the farm, he is looked upon as a gentleman and everyone addressed him as "sir". His father is a respected clergyman in Emminster, and all of his brothers have become parsons. In addition, all the milkmaids swoon over his good looks and fantasize about his falling in love with them. In this chapter, Tess shows how she has changed. She is again in control of her emotions. Although she finds Angel Clare attractive, she thinks that he is unapproachable and keeps her distance. In contrast to the other milkmaids, she is cautious and prudent. She is also thankful that he does not remember her from the May Day Dance four years ago. Tess hopes that she can remain anonymous so that no one will find out about her past.