finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_47_part_0.txt
Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 48
chapter 48
{"name": "Phase VI: \"The Convert,\" Chapter Forty-Eight", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-48", "summary": "Later that afternoon, Tess notices that Alec has come back. When he sees her look up, he waves and blows her a kiss to show her there are no hard feelings about the slap. The farmer says that they'll finish the field even if they have to work into the night--there's a full moon, so they'll have light to work by. All the workers are already exhausted. Tess is the only one of the women who is working on top of the machine itself, and the vibration of it shakes her from head to toe. At one point, the farmer comes up and tells Tess that she can go join her friend if she likes, but Tess knows that Alec must have had something to do with this, and so she refuses, and continues to work. After they're finished, Alec offers to walk her home. He says he's sorry she had to work so hard--most farms don't make women stand on the machine, since it's too back-breaking. Tess is thankful for his kindness, but has a hard time telling when he's being nice, and when he's trying to put her off her guard. He asks about her family, and says that he saw them recently. He went to them to ask where she was working. She feels so sorry for her little brothers and sisters that she's tempted to give in to him, and he knows it. She tells him not to bring them up, and that she doesn't want to accept anything from him, either for herself or for him. That night, Tess writes another letter to Angel, begging him to come to her, or to ask her to come to him. She doesn't give any details, but she says that she's being pressed and harassed to do what she doesn't want to do.", "analysis": ""}


In the afternoon the farmer made it known that the rick was to be
finished that night, since there was a moon by which they could see
to work, and the man with the engine was engaged for another farm on
the morrow.  Hence the twanging and humming and rustling proceeded
with even less intermission than usual.

It was not till "nammet"-time, about three o-clock, that Tess raised
her eyes and gave a momentary glance round.  She felt but little
surprise at seeing that Alec d'Urberville had come back, and was
standing under the hedge by the gate.  He had seen her lift her
eyes, and waved his hand urbanely to her, while he blew her a kiss.
It meant that their quarrel was over.  Tess looked down again, and
carefully abstained from gazing in that direction.

Thus the afternoon dragged on.  The wheat-rick shrank lower, and the
straw-rick grew higher, and the corn-sacks were carted away.  At six
o'clock the wheat-rick was about shoulder-high from the ground.  But
the unthreshed sheaves remaining untouched seemed countless still,
notwithstanding the enormous numbers that had been gulped down by
the insatiable swallower, fed by the man and Tess, through whose two
young hands the greater part of them had passed.  And the immense
stack of straw where in the morning there had been nothing, appeared
as the faeces of the same buzzing red glutton.  From the west sky
a wrathful shine--all that wild March could afford in the way of
sunset--had burst forth after the cloudy day, flooding the tired and
sticky faces of the threshers, and dyeing them with a coppery light,
as also the flapping garments of the women, which clung to them like
dull flames.

A panting ache ran through the rick.  The man who fed was weary, and
Tess could see that the red nape of his neck was encrusted with dirt
and husks.  She still stood at her post, her flushed and perspiring
face coated with the corndust, and her white bonnet embrowned by it.
She was the only woman whose place was upon the machine so as to be
shaken bodily by its spinning, and the decrease of the stack now
separated her from Marian and Izz, and prevented their changing
duties with her as they had done.  The incessant quivering, in
which every fibre of her frame participated, had thrown her into a
stupefied reverie in which her arms worked on independently of her
consciousness.  She hardly knew where she was, and did not hear Izz
Huett tell her from below that her hair was tumbling down.

By degrees the freshest among them began to grow cadaverous and
saucer-eyed.  Whenever Tess lifted her head she beheld always the
great upgrown straw-stack, with the men in shirt-sleeves upon it,
against the gray north sky; in front of it the long red elevator
like a Jacob's ladder, on which a perpetual stream of threshed straw
ascended, a yellow river running uphill, and spouting out on the top
of the rick.

She knew that Alec d'Urberville was still on the scene, observing
her from some point or other, though she could not say where.  There
was an excuse for his remaining, for when the threshed rick drew
near its final sheaves a little ratting was always done, and men
unconnected with the threshing sometimes dropped in for that
performance--sporting characters of all descriptions, gents with
terriers and facetious pipes, roughs with sticks and stones.

But there was another hour's work before the layer of live rats at
the base of the stack would be reached; and as the evening light in
the direction of the Giant's Hill by Abbot's-Cernel dissolved away,
the white-faced moon of the season arose from the horizon that lay
towards Middleton Abbey and Shottsford on the other side.  For the
last hour or two Marian had felt uneasy about Tess, whom she could
not get near enough to speak to, the other women having kept up their
strength by drinking ale, and Tess having done without it through
traditionary dread, owing to its results at her home in childhood.
But Tess still kept going: if she could not fill her part she would
have to leave; and this contingency, which she would have regarded
with equanimity and even with relief a month or two earlier, had
become a terror since d'Urberville had begun to hover round her.

The sheaf-pitchers and feeders had now worked the rick so low that
people on the ground could talk to them.  To Tess's surprise Farmer
Groby came up on the machine to her, and said that if she desired to
join her friend he did not wish her to keep on any longer, and would
send somebody else to take her place.  The "friend" was d'Urberville,
she knew, and also that this concession had been granted in obedience
to the request of that friend, or enemy.  She shook her head and
toiled on.

The time for the rat-catching arrived at last, and the hunt began.
The creatures had crept downwards with the subsidence of the rick
till they were all together at the bottom, and being now uncovered
from their last refuge, they ran across the open ground in all
directions, a loud shriek from the by-this-time half-tipsy Marian
informing her companions that one of the rats had invaded her
person--a terror which the rest of the women had guarded against by
various schemes of skirt-tucking and self-elevation.  The rat was
at last dislodged, and, amid the barking of dogs, masculine shouts,
feminine screams, oaths, stampings, and confusion as of Pandemonium,
Tess untied her last sheaf; the drum slowed, the whizzing ceased,
and she stepped from the machine to the ground.

Her lover, who had only looked on at the rat-catching, was promptly
at her side.

"What--after all--my insulting slap, too!" said she in an
underbreath.  She was so utterly exhausted that she had not strength
to speak louder.

"I should indeed be foolish to feel offended at anything you say or
do," he answered, in the seductive voice of the Trantridge time.
"How the little limbs tremble!  You are as weak as a bled calf, you
know you are; and yet you need have done nothing since I arrived.
How could you be so obstinate?  However, I have told the farmer that
he has no right to employ women at steam-threshing.  It is not proper
work for them; and on all the better class of farms it has been given
up, as he knows very well.  I will walk with you as far as your
home."

"O yes," she answered with a jaded gait.  "Walk wi' me if you will!
I do bear in mind that you came to marry me before you knew o' my
state.  Perhaps--perhaps you are a little better and kinder than I
have been thinking you were.  Whatever is meant as kindness I am
grateful for; whatever is meant in any other way I am angered at.
I cannot sense your meaning sometimes."

"If I cannot legitimize our former relations at least I can assist
you.  And I will do it with much more regard for your feelings than
I formerly showed.  My religious mania, or whatever it was, is over.
But I retain a little good nature; I hope I do.  Now, Tess, by
all that's tender and strong between man and woman, trust me!  I
have enough and more than enough to put you out of anxiety, both
for yourself and your parents and sisters.  I can make them all
comfortable if you will only show confidence in me."

"Have you seen 'em lately?" she quickly inquired.

"Yes.  They didn't know where you were.  It was only by chance that I
found you here."

The cold moon looked aslant upon Tess's fagged face between the twigs
of the garden-hedge as she paused outside the cottage which was her
temporary home, d'Urberville pausing beside her.

"Don't mention my little brothers and sisters--don't make me break
down quite!" she said.  "If you want to help them--God knows they
need it--do it without telling me.  But no, no!" she cried.  "I will
take nothing from you, either for them or for me!"

He did not accompany her further, since, as she lived with the
household, all was public indoors.  No sooner had she herself
entered, laved herself in a washing-tub, and shared supper with the
family than she fell into thought, and withdrawing to the table under
the wall, by the light of her own little lamp wrote in a passionate
mood--


   MY OWN HUSBAND,--

   Let me call you so--I must--even if it makes you angry to
   think of such an unworthy wife as I.  I must cry to you
   in my trouble--I have no one else!  I am so exposed to
   temptation, Angel.  I fear to say who it is, and I do not
   like to write about it at all.  But I cling to you in a way
   you cannot think!  Can you not come to me now, at once,
   before anything terrible happens?  O, I know you cannot,
   because you are so far away!  I think I must die if you do
   not come soon, or tell me to come to you.  The punishment
   you have measured out to me is deserved--I do know that--
   well deserved--and you are right and just to be angry with
   me.  But, Angel, please, please, not to be just--only a
   little kind to me, even if I do not deserve it, and come to
   me!  If you would come, I could die in your arms!  I would
   be well content to do that if so be you had forgiven me!

   Angel, I live entirely for you.  I love you too much to
   blame you for going away, and I know it was necessary you
   should find a farm.  Do not think I shall say a word of
   sting or bitterness.  Only come back to me.  I am desolate
   without you, my darling, O, so desolate! I do not mind
   having to work: but if you will send me one little line,
   and say, "I am coming soon," I will bide on, Angel--O, so
   cheerfully!

   It has been so much my religion ever since we were married
   to be faithful to you in every thought and look, that even
   when a man speaks a compliment to me before I am aware, it
   seems wronging you.  Have you never felt one little bit of
   what you used to feel when we were at the dairy?  If you
   have, how can you keep away from me?  I am the same women,
   Angel, as you fell in love with; yes, the very same!--not
   the one you disliked but never saw.  What was the past to me
   as soon as I met you?  It was a dead thing altogether.  I
   became another woman, filled full of new life from you.  How
   could I be the early one?  Why do you not see this?  Dear,
   if you would only be a little more conceited, and believe
   in yourself so far as to see that you were strong enough to
   work this change in me, you would perhaps be in a mind to
   come to me, your poor wife.

   How silly I was in my happiness when I thought I could trust
   you always to love me!  I ought to have known that such as
   that was not for poor me.  But I am sick at heart, not only
   for old times, but for the present.  Think--think how it do
   hurt my heart not to see you ever--ever!  Ah, if I could
   only make your dear heart ache one little minute of each day
   as mine does every day and all day long, it might lead you
   to show pity to your poor lonely one.

   People still say that I am rather pretty, Angel (handsome is
   the word they use, since I wish to be truthful).  Perhaps I
   am what they say.  But I do not value my good looks; I only
   like to have them because they belong to you, my dear, and
   that there may be at least one thing about me worth your
   having.  So much have I felt this, that when I met with
   annoyance on account of the same, I tied up my face in a
   bandage as long as people would believe in it.  O Angel, I
   tell you all this not from vanity--you will certainly know
   I do not--but only that you may come to me!

   If you really cannot come to me, will you let me come to
   you?  I am, as I say, worried, pressed to do what I will
   not do.  It cannot be that I shall yield one inch, yet I am
   in terror as to what an accident might lead to, and I so
   defenceless on account of my first error. I cannot say more
   about this--it makes me too miserable.  But if I break down
   by falling into some fearful snare, my last state will be
   worse than my first.  O God, I cannot think of it!  Let me
   come at once, or at once come to me!

   I would be content, ay, glad, to live with you as your
   servant, if I may not as your wife; so that I could only be
   near you, and get glimpses of you, and think of you as mine.

   The daylight has nothing to show me, since you are not here,
   and I don't like to see the rooks and starlings in the
   field, because I grieve and grieve to miss you who used to
   see them with me.  I long for only one thing in heaven or
   earth or under the earth, to meet you, my own dear!  Come
   to me--come to me, and save me from what threatens me!--

   Your faithful heartbroken

   TESS



Phase VI: "The Convert," Chapter Forty-Eight
Later that afternoon, Tess notices that Alec has come back. When he sees her look up, he waves and blows her a kiss to show her there are no hard feelings about the slap. The farmer says that they'll finish the field even if they have to work into the night--there's a full moon, so they'll have light to work by. All the workers are already exhausted. Tess is the only one of the women who is working on top of the machine itself, and the vibration of it shakes her from head to toe. At one point, the farmer comes up and tells Tess that she can go join her friend if she likes, but Tess knows that Alec must have had something to do with this, and so she refuses, and continues to work. After they're finished, Alec offers to walk her home. He says he's sorry she had to work so hard--most farms don't make women stand on the machine, since it's too back-breaking. Tess is thankful for his kindness, but has a hard time telling when he's being nice, and when he's trying to put her off her guard. He asks about her family, and says that he saw them recently. He went to them to ask where she was working. She feels so sorry for her little brothers and sisters that she's tempted to give in to him, and he knows it. She tells him not to bring them up, and that she doesn't want to accept anything from him, either for herself or for him. That night, Tess writes another letter to Angel, begging him to come to her, or to ask her to come to him. She doesn't give any details, but she says that she's being pressed and harassed to do what she doesn't want to do.