finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_10_part_0.txt
Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapters 42-44
chapters 42-44
{"name": "Chapters 42-44", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219151046/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary-and-analysis/phase-the-fifth-the-woman-pays-chapters-4244", "summary": "To ward off the men who might find her attractive, Tess puts on a handkerchief as though she has a toothache and clips her eyebrows. She arrives at Flintcomb-Ash to find Marian already at work. Marian calls the farm a \"starve-acre place,\" not like the lush dairy at Talbothays. The work is digging rutabagas, harvesting corn, and making the thatch for roofs. It is indeed difficult work for men and women alike. Tess agrees to work until April 6, also know as \"Old Lady-Day.\" The two friends work in the rain and snow at the farm. Marian writes to Izz Huett, who later comes to Flintcomb-Ash for work as well. One day, when it is too cold to dig swedes, the ladies are sent by the farmer to make roof thatching in a nearby farm. Also working there are Dark Car and the Queen of Diamonds, both former employees of the d'Urbervilles at The Slopes. These \"two Amazionian sisters\" do not remember Tess from their previous encounter. Tess meets her employer, the farmer, the same man who had insulted her in town in Chapter 33 and who appears again in a second chance encounter in Chapter 41. He is mean and vengeful toward Tess, telling her, \"But we'll see which is master here.\" He urges the girls to work harder, and Tess stays behind to finish her work with Izz and Marian. Tess is overcome by exhaustion and faints. As she recovers on a haystack, she overhears Izz tell the story of Angel asking her to accompany him to Brazil. Tess decides to contact Angel's parents to ask about Angel. The next Sunday, Tess sets out for Emminster, a 30-mile roundtrip walk for her. A year has passed since her marriage to Angel, and she is determined to make her plight known to her in-laws and to see if they have heard from Angel. She removes her walking boots, stashes them in a nearby bush and puts on her dress boots to impress her in-laws. Angel's brothers discover Tess' boots, not knowing she is nearby, and takes them back to the Clare's vicarage. Tess loses her nerve to see the Clares and returns to Flintcomb-Ash dejected and depressed. On the way back to the farm, Tess encounters Alec d'Urberville, now an evangelical \"fire and brimstone\" street preacher.", "analysis": "The contrast between Flintcomb-Ash and Talbothays is clear. Flintcomb-Ash is described as \"sublime in its dreariness.\" Conversely, Talbothays is portrayed as ideal and beautiful, \"the verdant plain so well watered by the river Var or Froom.\" Flintcomb has Farmer Groby, a mean-spirited man who demands that his workers work even harder. Mr. Crick gets results from his workers with humor and aplomb, even regaling them with his humorous tales, as evidenced by the William Dewy tale from Chapter 17 and the Jack Dollop tales from Chapters 21 and 29. The indifference that Angel's brothers show towards Tess is not altogether surprising based on what we already know of them. However, it is Tess' first encounter with her brothers-in-law, and she hears for herself their contempt for her marriage to Angel and for Angel himself -- \"His ill-considered marriage seems to have completed that estrangement from me which was begun by his extraordinary opinions.\" The brothers, both ministers themselves, have little regard for those in desperate situations, reserving their charity to those they deem worthy to receive it. Mercy Chant, whose name implies sympathy and kindness, adds her own insensitive opinion when Tess' boots are discovered in some bushes, viewing them as belonging to \"ome impostor who wished to come into town barefoot, perhaps, and so excite our sympathies.\" Thus, all three -- Mercy, Cuthbert, and Felix --  display a lack of compassion that Tess could use at that moment. Hardy further emphasizes the uncharitable nature of these three in his descriptions: Hardy describes the brothers as \"starched and ironed\"; he describes Mercy as \"a trifle guindee and prudish.\" The word guindee in French means \"stiff\" or \"formal.\" This episode recalls earlier episodes in which action or inaction rest on a single turn of fate. By encountering her brothers-in-law first, Tess is exposed to unkind and uncharitable notions about herself and her marriage to Angel. Hardy says \"it was somewhat unfortunate that she had encountered the sons and not the father, who, despite his narrowness, was far less starched and ironed than they, and had to the full the gift of charity.\" If Tess had met her father and mother-in-law first, the outcome might have been different. In these chapters, Tess also is reunited with Alec d'Urberville, who is in the guise of a street corner minister. Alec claims to have repented of his former sins, recanting his past excesses, taking up the teachings of Reverend Clare and the lessons of St. Paul. Nevertheless, as is made clear in the following chapters, Alec is a hollow cleric. Even though he himself condemns the faithless in his sermons, he will leave his ministry to pursue Tess. Glossary mommet  a term of abuse or contempt. \"dust and ashes\" Job 42:6. Cybele the Many-breasted Phrygian fertility goddess who, in the form of a mother with many breasts, symbolizes nature. \"clipsed or colled\"  embraced. swede-hacking a swede is a Swedish turnip, or rutabaga. Old Lady Day April 6, date used to set the beginning or ending of employment. copy-holders people who hold land by copyhold. wroppers  wrappers. \"early Italian conception of the two Marys\"` because of their weepings and pensive looks, they resemble painted representations from the Renaissance of Mary, the mother of Christ, and Mary Magdalen after the death of Jesus. \"like the moves of a chess player\" death is sometimes represented as a chess player. reed-drawing preparing straw to be used as thatching material. \"white pillar of a cloud\" from Exodus 13:21. percipience a perceiving, esp. keenly or readily. premonitory giving previous warning or notice. thirtover  thwart-over, meaning perverse. guindee stiff, stilted, formal . prudish like or characteristic of a prude; too modest or proper. impressibility the state of being impressed or impressionable. contravene to go against; oppose; conflict with; violate; to disagree with in argument; contradict. habiliments clothing; dress; attire. supervened came or happened as something extraneous or unexpected; to take place; ensued. \"Publicans and Sinners . . . Scribes and Pharisees\" they were biased in favor of those who had fallen. publican in Britain, any owner or proprietor of a pub. Antinomian a believer in the Christian doctrine that faith alone, not obedience to the moral law, is necessary for salvation. \"O foolish Galatians . . . \" from Galatians 3:1."}


It was now broad day, and she started again, emerging cautiously upon
the highway.  But there was no need for caution; not a soul was at
hand, and Tess went onward with fortitude, her recollection of the
birds' silent endurance of their night of agony impressing upon her
the relativity of sorrows and the tolerable nature of her own, if she
could once rise high enough to despise opinion.  But that she could
not do so long as it was held by Clare.

She reached Chalk-Newton, and breakfasted at an inn, where several
young men were troublesomely complimentary to her good looks.
Somehow she felt hopeful, for was it not possible that her husband
also might say these same things to her even yet?  She was bound to
take care of herself on the chance of it, and keep off these casual
lovers.  To this end Tess resolved to run no further risks from her
appearance.  As soon as she got out of the village she entered a
thicket and took from her basket one of the oldest field-gowns, which
she had never put on even at the dairy--never since she had worked
among the stubble at Marlott.  She also, by a felicitous thought,
took a handkerchief from her bundle and tied it round her face under
her bonnet, covering her chin and half her cheeks and temples, as if
she were suffering from toothache. Then with her little scissors,
by the aid of a pocket looking-glass, she mercilessly nipped her
eyebrows off, and thus insured against aggressive admiration, she
went on her uneven way.

"What a mommet of a maid!" said the next man who met her to a
companion.

Tears came into her eyes for very pity of herself as she heard him.

"But I don't care!" she said.  "O no--I don't care!  I'll always be
ugly now, because Angel is not here, and I have nobody to take care
of me.  My husband that was is gone away, and never will love me any
more; but I love him just the same, and hate all other men, and like
to make 'em think scornfully of me!"

Thus Tess walks on; a figure which is part of the landscape; a
fieldwoman pure and simple, in winter guise; a gray serge cape, a
red woollen cravat, a stuff skirt covered by a whitey-brown rough
wrapper, and buff-leather gloves.  Every thread of that old attire
has become faded and thin under the stroke of raindrops, the burn of
sunbeams, and the stress of winds.  There is no sign of young passion
in her now--


     The maiden's mouth is cold
     . . .
     Fold over simple fold
     Binding her head.


Inside this exterior, over which the eye might have roved as over a
thing scarcely percipient, almost inorganic, there was the record of
a pulsing life which had learnt too well, for its years, of the dust
and ashes of things, of the cruelty of lust and the fragility of
love.

Next day the weather was bad, but she trudged on, the honesty,
directness, and impartiality of elemental enmity disconcerting her
but little.  Her object being a winter's occupation and a winter's
home, there was no time to lose.  Her experience of short hirings
had been such that she was determined to accept no more.

Thus she went forward from farm to farm in the direction of the place
whence Marian had written to her, which she determined to make use of
as a last shift only, its rumoured stringencies being the reverse of
tempting.  First she inquired for the lighter kinds of employment,
and, as acceptance in any variety of these grew hopeless, applied
next for the less light, till, beginning with the dairy and poultry
tendance that she liked best, she ended with the heavy and course
pursuits which she liked least--work on arable land: work of such
roughness, indeed, as she would never have deliberately voluteered
for.

Towards the second evening she reached the irregular chalk table-land
or plateau, bosomed with semi-globular tumuli--as if Cybele the
Many-breasted were supinely extended there--which stretched between
the valley of her birth and the valley of her love.

Here the air was dry and cold, and the long cart-roads were blown
white and dusty within a few hours after rain.  There were few trees,
or none, those that would have grown in the hedges being mercilessly
plashed down with the quickset by the tenant-farmers, the natural
enemies of tree, bush, and brake.  In the middle distance ahead of
her she could see the summits of Bulbarrow and of Nettlecombe Tout,
and they seemed friendly.  They had a low and unassuming aspect from
this upland, though as approached on the other side from Blackmoor
in her childhood they were as lofty bastions against the sky.
Southerly, at many miles' distance, and over the hills and ridges
coastward, she could discern a surface like polished steel: it was
the English Channel at a point far out towards France.

Before her, in a slight depression, were the remains of a village.
She had, in fact, reached Flintcomb-Ash, the place of Marian's
sojourn.  There seemed to be no help for it; hither she was doomed to
come.  The stubborn soil around her showed plainly enough that the
kind of labour in demand here was of the roughest kind; but it was
time to rest from searching, and she resolved to stay, particularly
as it began to rain.  At the entrance to the village was a cottage
whose gable jutted into the road, and before applying for a lodging
she stood under its shelter, and watched the evening close in.

"Who would think I was Mrs Angel Clare!" she said.

The wall felt warm to her back and shoulders, and she found that
immediately within the gable was the cottage fireplace, the heat of
which came through the bricks.  She warmed her hands upon them, and
also put her cheek--red and moist with the drizzle--against their
comforting surface.  The wall seemed to be the only friend she had.
She had so little wish to leave it that she could have stayed there
all night.

Tess could hear the occupants of the cottage--gathered together after
their day's labour--talking to each other within, and the rattle of
their supper-plates was also audible.  But in the village-street she
had seen no soul as yet.  The solitude was at last broken by the
approach of one feminine figure, who, though the evening was cold,
wore the print gown and the tilt-bonnet of summer time.  Tess
instinctively thought it might be Marian, and when she came near
enough to be distinguishable in the gloom, surely enough it was
she.  Marian was even stouter and redder in the face than formerly,
and decidedly shabbier in attire.  At any previous period of her
existence Tess would hardly have cared to renew the acquaintance in
such conditions; but her loneliness was excessive, and she responded
readily to Marian's greeting.

Marian was quite respectful in her inquiries, but seemed much moved
by the fact that Tess should still continue in no better condition
than at first; though she had dimly heard of the separation.

"Tess--Mrs Clare--the dear wife of dear he!  And is it really so bad
as this, my child?  Why is your cwomely face tied up in such a way?
Anybody been beating 'ee?  Not HE?"

"No, no, no!  I merely did it not to be clipsed or colled, Marian."

She pulled off in disgust a bandage which could suggest such wild
thoughts.

"And you've got no collar on" (Tess had been accustomed to wear a
little white collar at the dairy).

"I know it, Marian."

"You've lost it travelling."

"I've not lost it.  The truth is, I don't care anything about my
looks; and so I didn't put it on."

"And you don't wear your wedding-ring?"

"Yes, I do; but not in public.  I wear it round my neck on a ribbon.
I don't wish people to think who I am by marriage, or that I am
married at all; it would be so awkward while I lead my present life."

Marian paused.

"But you BE a gentleman's wife; and it seems hardly fair that you
should live like this!"

"O yes it is, quite fair; though I am very unhappy."

"Well, well.  HE married you--and you can be unhappy!"

"Wives are unhappy sometimes; from no fault of their husbands--from
their own."

"You've no faults, deary; that I'm sure of.  And he's none.  So it
must be something outside ye both."

"Marian, dear Marian, will you do me a good turn without asking
questions?  My husband has gone abroad, and somehow I have overrun my
allowance, so that I have to fall back upon my old work for a time.
Do not call me Mrs Clare, but Tess, as before.  Do they want a hand
here?"

"O yes; they'll take one always, because few care to come.  'Tis a
starve-acre place.  Corn and swedes are all they grow.  Though I be
here myself, I feel 'tis a pity for such as you to come."

"But you used to be as good a dairywoman as I."

"Yes; but I've got out o' that since I took to drink.  Lord, that's
the only comfort I've got now!  If you engage, you'll be set
swede-hacking.  That's what I be doing; but you won't like it."

"O--anything!  Will you speak for me?"

"You will do better by speaking for yourself."

"Very well.  Now, Marian, remember--nothing about HIM if I get the
place.  I don't wish to bring his name down to the dirt."

Marian, who was really a trustworthy girl though of coarser grain
than Tess, promised anything she asked.

"This is pay-night," she said, "and if you were to come with me you
would know at once.  I be real sorry that you are not happy; but 'tis
because he's away, I know.  You couldn't be unhappy if he were here,
even if he gie'd ye no money--even if he used you like a drudge."

"That's true; I could not!"

They walked on together and soon reached the farmhouse, which was
almost sublime in its dreariness. There was not a tree within sight;
there was not, at this season, a green pasture--nothing but fallow
and turnips everywhere, in large fields divided by hedges plashed to
unrelieved levels.

Tess waited outside the door of the farmhouse till the group of
workfolk had received their wages, and then Marian introduced her.
The farmer himself, it appeared, was not at home, but his wife, who
represented him this evening, made no objection to hiring Tess, on
her agreeing to remain till Old Lady-Day.  Female field-labour was
seldom offered now, and its cheapness made it profitable for tasks
which women could perform as readily as men.

Having signed the agreement, there was nothing more for Tess to do
at present than to get a lodging, and she found one in the house at
whose gable-wall she had warmed herself.  It was a poor subsistence
that she had ensured, but it would afford a shelter for the winter
at any rate.

That night she wrote to inform her parents of her new address, in
case a letter should arrive at Marlott from her husband.  But she
did not tell them of the sorriness of her situation: it might have
brought reproach upon him.




There was no exaggeration in Marian's definition of Flintcomb-Ash
farm as a starve-acre place.  The single fat thing on the soil was
Marian herself; and she was an importation.  Of the three classes of
village, the village cared for by its lord, the village cared for by
itself, and the village uncared for either by itself or by its lord
(in other words, the village of a resident squires's tenantry, the
village of free- or copy-holders, and the absentee-owner's village,
farmed with the land) this place, Flintcomb-Ash, was the third.

But Tess set to work.  Patience, that blending of moral courage with
physical timidity, was now no longer a minor feature in Mrs Angel
Clare; and it sustained her.

The swede-field in which she and her companion were set hacking was
a stretch of a hundred odd acres in one patch, on the highest ground
of the farm, rising above stony lanchets or lynchets--the outcrop of
siliceous veins in the chalk formation, composed of myriads of loose
white flints in bulbous, cusped, and phallic shapes.  The upper half
of each turnip had been eaten off by the live-stock, and it was the
business of the two women to grub up the lower or earthy half of the
root with a hooked fork called a hacker, that it might be eaten also.
Every leaf of the vegetable having already been consumed, the whole
field was in colour a desolate drab; it was a complexion without
features, as if a face, from chin to brow, should be only an expanse
of skin.  The sky wore, in another colour, the same likeness; a white
vacuity of countenance with the lineaments gone.  So these two upper
and nether visages confronted each other all day long, the white face
looking down on the brown face, and the brown face looking up at the
white face, without anything standing between them but the two girls
crawling over the surface of the former like flies.

Nobody came near them, and their movements showed a mechanical
regularity; their forms standing enshrouded in Hessian "wroppers"--
sleeved brown pinafores, tied behind to the bottom, to keep their
gowns from blowing about--scant skirts revealing boots that reached
high up the ankles, and yellow sheepskin gloves with gauntlets.  The
pensive character which the curtained hood lent to their bent heads
would have reminded the observer of some early Italian conception of
the two Marys.

They worked on hour after hour, unconscious of the forlorn aspect
they bore in the landscape, not thinking of the justice or injustice
of their lot.  Even in such a position as theirs it was possible
to exist in a dream.  In the afternoon the rain came on again, and
Marian said that they need not work any more.  But if they did not
work they would not be paid; so they worked on.  It was so high a
situation, this field, that the rain had no occasion to fall, but
raced along horizontally upon the yelling wind, sticking into them
like glass splinters till they were wet through.  Tess had not
known till now what was really meant by that.  There are degrees of
dampness, and a very little is called being wet through in common
talk.  But to stand working slowly in a field, and feel the creep of
rain-water, first in legs and shoulders, then on hips and head, then
at back, front, and sides, and yet to work on till the leaden light
diminishes and marks that the sun is down, demands a distinct modicum
of stoicism, even of valour.

Yet they did not feel the wetness so much as might be supposed.  They
were both young, and they were talking of the time when they lived
and loved together at Talbothays Dairy, that happy green tract of
land where summer had been liberal in her gifts; in substance to
all, emotionally to these.  Tess would fain not have conversed with
Marian of the man who was legally, if not actually, her husband;
but the irresistible fascination of the subject betrayed her into
reciprocating Marian's remarks.  And thus, as has been said, though
the damp curtains of their bonnets flapped smartly into their faces,
and their wrappers clung about them to wearisomeness, they lived all
this afternoon in memories of green, sunny, romantic Talbothays.

"You can see a gleam of a hill within a few miles o' Froom Valley
from here when 'tis fine," said Marian.

"Ah!  Can you?" said Tess, awake to the new value of this locality.

So the two forces were at work here as everywhere, the inherent will
to enjoy, and the circumstantial will against enjoyment.  Marian's
will had a method of assisting itself by taking from her pocket as
the afternoon wore on a pint bottle corked with white rag, from which
she invited Tess to drink.  Tess's unassisted power of dreaming,
however, being enough for her sublimation at present, she declined
except the merest sip, and then Marian took a pull from the spirits.

"I've got used to it," she said, "and can't leave it off now.  'Tis
my only comfort--You see I lost him: you didn't; and you can do
without it perhaps."

Tess thought her loss as great as Marian's, but upheld by the dignity
of being Angel's wife, in the letter at least, she accepted Marian's
differentiation.

Amid this scene Tess slaved in the morning frosts and in
the afternoon rains.  When it was not swede-grubbing it was
swede-trimming, in which process they sliced off the earth and the
fibres with a bill-hook before storing the roots for future use.  At
this occupation they could shelter themselves by a thatched hurdle if
it rained; but if it was frosty even their thick leather gloves could
not prevent the frozen masses they handled from biting their fingers.
Still Tess hoped.  She had a conviction that sooner or later the
magnanimity which she persisted in reckoning as a chief ingredient
of Clare's character would lead him to rejoin her.

Marian, primed to a humorous mood, would discover the queer-shaped
flints aforesaid, and shriek with laughter, Tess remaining severely
obtuse.  They often looked across the country to where the Var or
Froom was know to stretch, even though they might not be able to see
it; and, fixing their eyes on the cloaking gray mist, imagined the
old times they had spent out there.

"Ah," said Marian, "how I should like another or two of our old set
to come here!  Then we could bring up Talbothays every day here
afield, and talk of he, and of what nice times we had there, and o'
the old things we used to know, and make it all come back a'most, in
seeming!"  Marian's eyes softened, and her voice grew vague as the
visions returned.  "I'll write to Izz Huett," she said.  "She's
biding at home doing nothing now, I know, and I'll tell her we be
here, and ask her to come; and perhaps Retty is well enough now."

Tess had nothing to say against the proposal, and the next she heard
of this plan for importing old Talbothays' joys was two or three days
later, when Marian informed her that Izz had replied to her inquiry,
and had promised to come if she could.

There had not been such a winter for years.  It came on in stealthy
and measured glides, like the moves of a chess-player.  One morning
the few lonely trees and the thorns of the hedgerows appeared as if
they had put off a vegetable for an animal integument.  Every twig
was covered with a white nap as of fur grown from the rind during the
night, giving it four times its usual stoutness; the whole bush or
tree forming a staring sketch in white lines on the mournful gray
of the sky and horizon.  Cobwebs revealed their presence on sheds
and walls where none had ever been observed till brought out into
visibility by the crystallizing atmosphere, hanging like loops of
white worsted from salient points of the out-houses, posts, and
gates.

After this season of congealed dampness came a spell of dry frost,
when strange birds from behind the North Pole began to arrive
silently on the upland of Flintcomb-Ash; gaunt spectral creatures
with tragical eyes--eyes which had witnessed scenes of cataclysmal
horror in inaccessible polar regions of a magnitude such as no human
being had ever conceived, in curdling temperatures that no man could
endure; which had beheld the crash of icebergs and the slide of
snow-hills by the shooting light of the Aurora; been half blinded
by the whirl of colossal storms and terraqueous distortions; and
retained the expression of feature that such scenes had engendered.
These nameless birds came quite near to Tess and Marian, but of
all they had seen which humanity would never see, they brought no
account.  The traveller's ambition to tell was not theirs, and, with
dumb impassivity, they dismissed experiences which they did not
value for the immediate incidents of this homely upland--the trivial
movements of the two girls in disturbing the clods with their hackers
so as to uncover something or other that these visitants relished as
food.

Then one day a peculiar quality invaded the air of this open country.
There came a moisture which was not of rain, and a cold which was not
of frost.  It chilled the eyeballs of the twain, made their brows
ache, penetrated to their skeletons, affecting the surface of the
body less than its core.  They knew that it meant snow, and in the
night the snow came.  Tess, who continued to live at the cottage with
the warm gable that cheered any lonely pedestrian who paused beside
it, awoke in the night, and heard above the thatch noises which
seemed to signify that the roof had turned itself into a gymnasium
of all the winds.  When she lit her lamp to get up in the morning
she found that the snow had blown through a chink in the casement,
forming a white cone of the finest powder against the inside, and had
also come down the chimney, so that it lay sole-deep upon the floor,
on which her shoes left tracks when she moved about.  Without, the
storm drove so fast as to create a snow-mist in the kitchen; but as
yet it was too dark out-of-doors to see anything.

Tess knew that it was impossible to go on with the swedes; and by
the time she had finished breakfast beside the solitary little lamp,
Marian arrived to tell her that they were to join the rest of the
women at reed-drawing in the barn till the weather changed.  As soon,
therefore, as the uniform cloak of darkness without began to turn
to a disordered medley of grays, they blew out the lamp, wrapped
themselves up in their thickest pinners, tied their woollen cravats
round their necks and across their chests, and started for the barn.
The snow had followed the birds from the polar basin as a white
pillar of a cloud, and individual flakes could not be seen.  The
blast smelt of icebergs, arctic seas, whales, and white bears,
carrying the snow so that it licked the land but did not deepen on
it.  They trudged onwards with slanted bodies through the flossy
fields, keeping as well as they could in the shelter of hedges,
which, however, acted as strainers rather than screens.  The air,
afflicted to pallor with the hoary multitudes that infested it,
twisted and spun them eccentrically, suggesting an achromatic chaos
of things.  But both the young women were fairly cheerful; such
weather on a dry upland is not in itself dispiriting.

"Ha-ha! the cunning northern birds knew this was coming," said
Marian.  "Depend upon't, they keep just in front o't all the way from
the North Star.  Your husband, my dear, is, I make no doubt, having
scorching weather all this time.  Lord, if he could only see his
pretty wife now!  Not that this weather hurts your beauty at all--in
fact, it rather does it good."

"You mustn't talk about him to me, Marian," said Tess severely.

"Well, but--surely you care for'n!  Do you?"

Instead of answering, Tess, with tears in her eyes, impulsively faced
in the direction in which she imagined South America to lie, and,
putting up her lips, blew out a passionate kiss upon the snowy wind.

"Well, well, I know you do.  But 'pon my body, it is a rum life for
a married couple!  There--I won't say another word!  Well, as for
the weather, it won't hurt us in the wheat-barn; but reed-drawing is
fearful hard work--worse than swede-hacking.  I can stand it because
I'm stout; but you be slimmer than I.  I can't think why maister
should have set 'ee at it."

They reached the wheat-barn and entered it.  One end of the long
structure was full of corn; the middle was where the reed-drawing was
carried on, and there had already been placed in the reed-press the
evening before as many sheaves of wheat as would be sufficient for
the women to draw from during the day.

"Why, here's Izz!" said Marian.

Izz it was, and she came forward.  She had walked all the way from
her mother's home on the previous afternoon, and, not deeming the
distance so great, had been belated, arriving, however, just before
the snow began, and sleeping at the alehouse.  The farmer had agreed
with her mother at market to take her on if she came to-day, and she
had been afraid to disappoint him by delay.

In addition to Tess, Marian, and Izz, there were two women from a
neighbouring village; two Amazonian sisters, whom Tess with a start
remembered as Dark Car, the Queen of Spades, and her junior, the
Queen of Diamonds--those who had tried to fight with her in the
midnight quarrel at Trantridge.  They showed no recognition of her,
and possibly had none, for they had been under the influence of
liquor on that occasion, and were only temporary sojourners there
as here.  They did all kinds of men's work by preference, including
well-sinking, hedging, ditching, and excavating, without any sense of
fatigue.  Noted reed-drawers were they too, and looked round upon the
other three with some superciliousness.

Putting on their gloves, all set to work in a row in front of the
press, an erection formed of two posts connected by a cross-beam,
under which the sheaves to be drawn from were laid ears outward, the
beam being pegged down by pins in the uprights, and lowered as the
sheaves diminished.

The day hardened in colour, the light coming in at the barndoors
upwards from the snow instead of downwards from the sky.  The girls
pulled handful after handful from the press; but by reason of the
presence of the strange women, who were recounting scandals, Marian
and Izz could not at first talk of old times as they wished to do.
Presently they heard the muffled tread of a horse, and the farmer
rode up to the barndoor.  When he had dismounted he came close to
Tess, and remained looking musingly at the side of her face.  She had
not turned at first, but his fixed attitude led her to look round,
when she perceived that her employer was the native of Trantridge
from whom she had taken flight on the high-road because of his
allusion to her history.

He waited till she had carried the drawn bundles to the pile outside,
when he said, "So you be the young woman who took my civility in such
ill part?  Be drowned if I didn't think you might be as soon as I
heard of your being hired!  Well, you thought you had got the better
of me the first time at the inn with your fancy-man, and the second
time on the road, when you bolted; but now I think I've got the
better you."  He concluded with a hard laugh.

Tess, between the Amazons and the farmer, like a bird caught in a
clap-net, returned no answer, continuing to pull the straw.  She
could read character sufficiently well to know by this time that she
had nothing to fear from her employer's gallantry; it was rather the
tyranny induced by his mortification at Clare's treatment of him.
Upon the whole she preferred that sentiment in man and felt brave
enough to endure it.

"You thought I was in love with 'ee I suppose?  Some women are such
fools, to take every look as serious earnest.  But there's nothing
like a winter afield for taking that nonsense out o' young wenches'
heads; and you've signed and agreed till Lady-Day.  Now, are you
going to beg my pardon?"

"I think you ought to beg mine."

"Very well--as you like.  But we'll see which is master here.  Be
they all the sheaves you've done to-day?"

"Yes, sir."

"'Tis a very poor show.  Just see what they've done over there"
(pointing to the two stalwart women).  "The rest, too, have done
better than you."

"They've all practised it before, and I have not.  And I thought it
made no difference to you as it is task work, and we are only paid
for what we do."

"Oh, but it does.  I want the barn cleared."

"I am going to work all the afternoon instead of leaving at two as
the others will do."

He looked sullenly at her and went away.  Tess felt that she could
not have come to a much worse place; but anything was better than
gallantry.  When two o'clock arrived the professional reed-drawers
tossed off the last half-pint in their flagon, put down their hooks,
tied their last sheaves, and went away.  Marian and Izz would have
done likewise, but on hearing that Tess meant to stay, to make up
by longer hours for her lack of skill, they would not leave her.
Looking out at the snow, which still fell, Marian exclaimed, "Now,
we've got it all to ourselves."  And so at last the conversation
turned to their old experiences at the dairy; and, of course, the
incidents of their affection for Angel Clare.

"Izz and Marian," said Mrs Angel Clare, with a dignity which was
extremely touching, seeing how very little of a wife she was: "I
can't join in talk with you now, as I used to do, about Mr Clare; you
will see that I cannot; because, although he is gone away from me for
the present, he is my husband."

Izz was by nature the sauciest and most caustic of all the four girls
who had loved Clare.  "He was a very splendid lover, no doubt," she
said; "but I don't think he is a too fond husband to go away from you
so soon."

"He had to go--he was obliged to go, to see about the land over
there!" pleaded Tess.

"He might have tided 'ee over the winter."

"Ah--that's owing to an accident--a misunderstanding; and we won't
argue it," Tess answered, with tearfulness in her words.  "Perhaps
there's a good deal to be said for him!  He did not go away, like
some husbands, without telling me; and I can always find out where
he is."

After this they continued for some long time in a reverie, as they
went on seizing the ears of corn, drawing out the straw, gathering
it under their arms, and cutting off the ears with their bill-hooks,
nothing sounding in the barn but the swish of the straw and the
crunch of the hook.  Then Tess suddenly flagged, and sank down upon
the heap of wheat-ears at her feet.

"I knew you wouldn't be able to stand it!" cried Marian.  "It wants
harder flesh than yours for this work."

Just then the farmer entered.  "Oh, that's how you get on when I am
away," he said to her.

"But it is my own loss," she pleaded.  "Not yours."

"I want it finished," he said doggedly, as he crossed the barn and
went out at the other door.

"Don't 'ee mind him, there's a dear," said Marian.  "I've worked here
before.  Now you go and lie down there, and Izz and I will make up
your number."

"I don't like to let you do that.  I'm taller than you, too."

However, she was so overcome that she consented to lie down awhile,
and reclined on a heap of pull-tails--the refuse after the straight
straw had been drawn--thrown up at the further side of the barn.  Her
succumbing had been as largely owning to agitation at the re-opening
the subject of her separation from her husband as to the hard work.
She lay in a state of percipience without volition, and the rustle of
the straw and the cutting of the ears by the others had the weight of
bodily touches.

She could hear from her corner, in addition to these noises, the
murmur of their voices.  She felt certain that they were continuing
the subject already broached, but their voices were so low that she
could not catch the words.  At last Tess grew more and more anxious
to know what they were saying, and, persuading herself that she felt
better, she got up and resumed work.

Then Izz Huett broke down.  She had walked more than a dozen miles
the previous evening, had gone to bed at midnight, and had risen
again at five o'clock.  Marian alone, thanks to her bottle of liquor
and her stoutness of build, stood the strain upon back and arms
without suffering.  Tess urged Izz to leave off, agreeing, as she
felt better, to finish the day without her, and make equal division
of the number of sheaves.

Izz accepted the offer gratefully, and disappeared through the great
door into the snowy track to her lodging.  Marian, as was the case
every afternoon at this time on account of the bottle, began to feel
in a romantic vein.

"I should not have thought it of him--never!" she said in a dreamy
tone.  "And I loved him so!  I didn't mind his having YOU.  But this
about Izz is too bad!"

Tess, in her start at the words, narrowly missed cutting off a finger
with the bill-hook.

"Is it about my husband?" she stammered.

"Well, yes.  Izz said, 'Don't 'ee tell her'; but I am sure I can't
help it!  It was what he wanted Izz to do.  He wanted her to go off
to Brazil with him."

Tess's face faded as white as the scene without, and its curves
straightened.  "And did Izz refuse to go?" she asked.

"I don't know.  Anyhow he changed his mind."

"Pooh--then he didn't mean it!  'Twas just a man's jest!"

"Yes he did; for he drove her a good-ways towards the station."

"He didn't take her!"

They pulled on in silence till Tess, without any premonitory
symptoms, burst out crying.

"There!" said Marian.  "Now I wish I hadn't told 'ee!"

"No.  It is a very good thing that you have done!  I have been living
on in a thirtover, lackaday way, and have not seen what it may lead
to!  I ought to have sent him a letter oftener.  He said I could not
go to him, but he didn't say I was not to write as often as I liked.
I won't dally like this any longer!  I have been very wrong and
neglectful in leaving everything to be done by him!"

The dim light in the barn grew dimmer, and they could see to work no
longer.  When Tess had reached home that evening, and had entered
into the privacy of her little white-washed chamber, she began
impetuously writing a letter to Clare.  But falling into doubt, she
could not finish it.  Afterwards she took the ring from the ribbon on
which she wore it next her heart, and retained it on her finger all
night, as if to fortify herself in the sensation that she was really
the wife of this elusive lover of hers, who could propose that Izz
should go with him abroad, so shortly after he had left her.  Knowing
that, how could she write entreaties to him, or show that she cared
for him any more?




By the disclosure in the barn her thoughts were led anew in the
direction which they had taken more than once of late--to the distant
Emminster Vicarage.  It was through her husband's parents that she
had been charged to send a letter to Clare if she desired; and to
write to them direct if in difficulty.  But that sense of her having
morally no claim upon him had always led Tess to suspend her impulse
to send these notes; and to the family at the Vicarage, therefore,
as to her own parents since her marriage, she was virtually
non-existent.  This self-effacement in both directions had been quite
in consonance with her independent character of desiring nothing
by way of favour or pity to which she was not entitled on a fair
consideration of her deserts.  She had set herself to stand or fall
by her qualities, and to waive such merely technical claims upon a
strange family as had been established for her by the flimsy fact of
a member of that family, in a season of impulse, writing his name in
a church-book beside hers.

But now that she was stung to a fever by Izz's tale, there was a
limit to her powers of renunciation.  Why had her husband not written
to her?  He had distinctly implied that he would at least let her
know of the locality to which he had journeyed; but he had not sent a
line to notify his address.  Was he really indifferent?  But was he
ill?  Was it for her to make some advance?  Surely she might summon
the courage of solicitude, call at the Vicarage for intelligence, and
express her grief at his silence.  If Angel's father were the good
man she had heard him represented to be, he would be able to enter
into her heart-starved situation.  Her social hardships she could
conceal.

To leave the farm on a week-day was not in her power; Sunday was
the only possible opportunity.  Flintcomb-Ash being in the middle
of the cretaceous tableland over which no railway had climbed as
yet, it would be necessary to walk.  And the distance being fifteen
miles each way she would have to allow herself a long day for the
undertaking by rising early.

A fortnight later, when the snow had gone, and had been followed by
a hard black frost, she took advantage of the state of the roads to
try the experiment.  At four o'clock that Sunday morning she came
downstairs and stepped out into the starlight.  The weather was still
favourable, the ground ringing under her feet like an anvil.

Marian and Izz were much interested in her excursion, knowing that
the journey concerned her husband.  Their lodgings were in a cottage
a little further along the lane, but they came and assisted Tess
in her departure, and argued that she should dress up in her very
prettiest guise to captivate the hearts of her parents-in-law; though
she, knowing of the austere and Calvinistic tenets of old Mr Clare,
was indifferent, and even doubtful.  A year had now elapsed since
her sad marriage, but she had preserved sufficient draperies from
the wreck of her then full wardrobe to clothe her very charmingly as
a simple country girl with no pretensions to recent fashion; a soft
gray woollen gown, with white crape quilling against the pink skin of
her face and neck, and a black velvet jacket and hat.

"'Tis a thousand pities your husband can't see 'ee now--you do look
a real beauty!" said Izz Huett, regarding Tess as she stood on
the threshold between the steely starlight without and the yellow
candlelight within.  Izz spoke with a magnanimous abandonment of
herself to the situation; she could not be--no woman with a heart
bigger than a hazel-nut could be--antagonistic to Tess in her
presence, the influence which she exercised over those of her own sex
being of a warmth and strength quite unusual, curiously overpowering
the less worthy feminine feelings of spite and rivalry.

With a final tug and touch here, and a slight brush there, they let
her go; and she was absorbed into the pearly air of the fore-dawn.
They heard her footsteps tap along the hard road as she stepped out
to her full pace.  Even Izz hoped she would win, and, though without
any particular respect for her own virtue, felt glad that she had
been prevented wronging her friend when momentarily tempted by Clare.

It was a year ago, all but a day, that Clare had married Tess, and
only a few days less than a year that he had been absent from her.
Still, to start on a brisk walk, and on such an errand as hers, on a
dry clear wintry morning, through the rarefied air of these chalky
hogs'-backs, was not depressing; and there is no doubt that her dream
at starting was to win the heart of her mother-in-law, tell her whole
history to that lady, enlist her on her side, and so gain back the
truant.

In time she reached the edge of the vast escarpment below which
stretched the loamy Vale of Blackmoor, now lying misty and still
in the dawn.  Instead of the colourless air of the uplands, the
atmosphere down there was a deep blue.  Instead of the great
enclosures of a hundred acres in which she was now accustomed to
toil, there were little fields below her of less than half-a-dozen
acres, so numerous that they looked from this height like the meshes
of a net.  Here the landscape was whitey-brown; down there, as in
Froom Valley, it was always green.  Yet it was in that vale that her
sorrow had taken shape, and she did not love it as formerly.  Beauty
to her, as to all who have felt, lay not in the thing, but in what
the thing symbolized.

Keeping the Vale on her right, she steered steadily westward; passing
above the Hintocks, crossing at right-angles the high-road from
Sherton-Abbas to Casterbridge, and skirting Dogbury Hill and
High-Stoy, with the dell between them called "The Devil's Kitchen".
Still following the elevated way she reached Cross-in-Hand, where
the stone pillar stands desolate and silent, to mark the site of a
miracle, or murder, or both.  Three miles further she cut across the
straight and deserted Roman road called Long-Ash Lane; leaving which
as soon as she reached it she dipped down a hill by a transverse lane
into the small town or village of Evershead, being now about halfway
over the distance.  She made a halt here, and breakfasted a second
time, heartily enough--not at the Sow-and-Acorn, for she avoided
inns, but at a cottage by the church.

The second half of her journey was through a more gentle country, by
way of Benvill Lane.  But as the mileage lessened between her and the
spot of her pilgrimage, so did Tess's confidence decrease, and her
enterprise loom out more formidably.  She saw her purpose in such
staring lines, and the landscape so faintly, that she was sometimes
in danger of losing her way.  However, about noon she paused by a
gate on the edge of the basin in which Emminster and its Vicarage
lay.

The square tower, beneath which she knew that at that moment the
Vicar and his congregation were gathered, had a severe look in
her eyes.  She wished that she had somehow contrived to come on a
week-day.  Such a good man might be prejudiced against a woman who
had chosen Sunday, never realizing the necessities of her case.
But it was incumbent upon her to go on now.  She took off the thick
boots in which she had walked thus far, put on her pretty thin ones
of patent leather, and, stuffing the former into the hedge by the
gatepost where she might readily find them again, descended the hill;
the freshness of colour she had derived from the keen air thinning
away in spite of her as she drew near the parsonage.

Tess hoped for some accident that might favour her, but nothing
favoured her.  The shrubs on the Vicarage lawn rustled uncomfortably
in the frosty breeze; she could not feel by any stretch of
imagination, dressed to her highest as she was, that the house was
the residence of near relations; and yet nothing essential, in nature
or emotion, divided her from them: in pains, pleasures, thoughts,
birth, death, and after-death, they were the same.

She nerved herself by an effort, entered the swing-gate, and rang
the door-bell.  The thing was done; there could be no retreat.  No;
the thing was not done.  Nobody answered to her ringing.  The effort
had to be risen to and made again.  She rang a second time, and the
agitation of the act, coupled with her weariness after the fifteen
miles' walk, led her to support herself while she waited by resting
her hand on her hip and her elbow against the wall of the porch. The
wind was so nipping that the ivy-leaves had become wizened and gray,
each tapping incessantly upon its neighbour with a disquieting stir
of her nerves.  A piece of blood-stained paper, caught up from some
meat-buyer's dust-heap, beat up and down the road without the gate;
too flimsy to rest, too heavy to fly away; and a few straws kept it
company.

The second peal had been louder, and still nobody came.  Then she
walked out of the porch, opened the gate, and passed through.  And
though she looked dubiously at the house-front as if inclined to
return, it was with a breath of relied that she closed the gate.  A
feeling haunted her that she might have been recognized (though how
she could not tell), and orders been given not to admit her.

Tess went as far as the corner.  She had done all she could do; but
determined not to escape present trepidation at the expense of future
distress, she walked back again quite past the house, looking up at
all the windows.

Ah--the explanation was that they were all at church, every one.  She
remembered her husband saying that his father always insisted upon
the household, servants included, going to morning-service, and,
as a consequence, eating cold food when they came home.  It was,
therefore, only necessary to wait till the service was over.  She
would not make herself conspicuous by waiting on the spot, and she
started to get past the church into the lane.  But as she reached the
churchyard-gate the people began pouring out, and Tess found herself
in the midst of them.

The Emminster congregation looked at her as only a congregation of
small country-townsfolk walking home at its leisure can look at a
woman out of the common whom it perceives to be a stranger.  She
quickened her pace, and ascended the road by which she had come,
to find a retreat between its hedges till the Vicar's family should
have lunched, and it might be convenient for them to receive her.
She soon distanced the churchgoers, except two youngish men, who,
linked arm-in-arm, were beating up behind her at a quick step.

As they drew nearer she could hear their voices engaged in earnest
discourse, and, with the natural quickness of a woman in her
situation, did not fail to recognize in those noises the quality
of her husband's tones.  The pedestrians were his two brothers.
Forgetting all her plans, Tess's one dread was lest they should
overtake her now, in her disorganized condition, before she was
prepared to confront them; for though she felt that they could not
identify her, she instinctively dreaded their scrutiny.  The more
briskly they walked, the more briskly walked she.  They were plainly
bent upon taking a short quick stroll before going indoors to lunch
or dinner, to restore warmth to limbs chilled with sitting through a
long service.

Only one person had preceded Tess up the hill--a ladylike young
woman, somewhat interesting, though, perhaps, a trifle _guindee_
and prudish.  Tess had nearly overtaken her when the speed of her
brothers-in-law brought them so nearly behind her back that she could
hear every word of their conversation.  They said nothing, however,
which particularly interested her till, observing the young lady
still further in front, one of them remarked, "There is Mercy Chant.
Let us overtake her."

Tess knew the name.  It was the woman who had been destined for
Angel's life-companion by his and her parents, and whom he probably
would have married but for her intrusive self.  She would have known
as much without previous information if she had waited a moment, for
one of the brothers proceeded to say: "Ah! poor Angel, poor Angel!
I never see that nice girl without more and more regretting his
precipitancy in throwing himself away upon a dairymaid, or whatever
she may be.  It is a queer business, apparently.  Whether she has
joined him yet or not I don't know; but she had not done so some
months ago when I heard from him."

"I can't say.  He never tells me anything nowadays.  His
ill-considered marriage seems to have completed that estrangement
from me which was begun by his extraordinary opinions."

Tess beat up the long hill still faster; but she could not outwalk
them without exciting notice.  At last they outsped her altogether,
and passed her by.  The young lady still further ahead heard their
footsteps and turned.  Then there was a greeting and a shaking of
hands, and the three went on together.

They soon reached the summit of the hill, and, evidently intending
this point to be the limit of their promenade, slackened pace and
turned all three aside to the gate whereat Tess had paused an hour
before that time to reconnoitre the town before descending into it.
During their discourse one of the clerical brothers probed the hedge
carefully with his umbrella, and dragged something to light.

"Here's a pair of old boots," he said.  "Thrown away, I suppose, by
some tramp or other."

"Some imposter who wished to come into the town barefoot, perhaps,
and so excite our sympathies," said Miss Chant.  "Yes, it must have
been, for they are excellent walking-boots--by no means worn out.
What a wicked thing to do!  I'll carry them home for some poor
person."

Cuthbert Clare, who had been the one to find them, picked them up for
her with the crook of his stick; and Tess's boots were appropriated.

She, who had heard this, walked past under the screen of her woollen
veil till, presently looking back, she perceived that the church
party had left the gate with her boots and retreated down the hill.

Thereupon our heroine resumed her walk.  Tears, blinding tears, were
running down her face.  She knew that it was all sentiment, all
baseless impressibility, which had caused her to read the scene as
her own condemnation; nevertheless she could not get over it; she
could not contravene in her own defenceless person all those untoward
omens.  It was impossible to think of returning to the Vicarage.
Angel's wife felt almost as if she had been hounded up that hill like
a scorned thing by those--to her--superfine clerics.  Innocently
as the slight had been inflicted, it was somewhat unfortunate that
she had encountered the sons and not the father, who, despite his
narrowness, was far less starched and ironed than they, and had to
the full the gift of charity.  As she again thought of her dusty
boots she almost pitied those habiliments for the quizzing to which
they had been subjected, and felt how hopeless life was for their
owner.

"Ah!" she said, still sighing in pity of herself, "THEY didn't know
that I wore those over the roughest part of the road to save these
pretty ones HE bought for me--no--they did not know it!  And they
didn't think that HE chose the colour o' my pretty frock--no--how
could they?  If they had known perhaps they would not have cared,
for they don't care much for him, poor thing!"

Then she grieved for the beloved man whose conventional standard of
judgement had caused her all these latter sorrows; and she went her
way without knowing that the greatest misfortune of her life was this
feminine loss of courage at the last and critical moment through her
estimating her father-in-law by his sons.  Her present condition was
precisely one which would have enlisted the sympathies of old Mr and
Mrs Clare.  Their hearts went out of them at a bound towards extreme
cases, when the subtle mental troubles of the less desperate among
mankind failed to win their interest or regard.  In jumping at
Publicans and Sinners they would forget that a word might be said for
the worries of Scribes and Pharisees; and this defect or limitation
might have recommended their own daughter-in-law to them at this
moment as a fairly choice sort of lost person for their love.

Thereupon she began to plod back along the road by which she had come
not altogether full of hope, but full of a conviction that a crisis
in her life was approaching.  No crisis, apparently, had supervened;
and there was nothing left for her to do but to continue upon that
starve-acre farm till she could again summon courage to face the
Vicarage.  She did, indeed, take sufficient interest in herself to
throw up her veil on this return journey, as if to let the world see
that she could at least exhibit a face such as Mercy Chant could
not show.  But it was done with a sorry shake of the head. "It is
nothing--it is nothing!" she said.  "Nobody loves it; nobody sees it.
Who cares about the looks of a castaway like me!"

Her journey back was rather a meander than a march.  It had no
sprightliness, no purpose; only a tendency.  Along the tedious length
of Benvill Lane she began to grow tired, and she leant upon gates and
paused by milestones.

She did not enter any house till, at the seventh or eighth mile, she
descended the steep long hill below which lay the village or townlet
of Evershead, where in the morning she had breakfasted with such
contrasting expectations.  The cottage by the church, in which she
again sat down, was almost the first at that end of the village, and
while the woman fetched her some milk from the pantry, Tess, looking
down the street, perceived that the place seemed quite deserted.

"The people are gone to afternoon service, I suppose?" she said.

"No, my dear," said the old woman.  "'Tis too soon for that; the
bells hain't strook out yet.  They be all gone to hear the preaching
in yonder barn.  A ranter preaches there between the services--an
excellent, fiery, Christian man, they say.  But, Lord, I don't go to
hear'n!  What comes in the regular way over the pulpit is hot enough
for I."

Tess soon went onward into the village, her footsteps echoing against
the houses as though it were a place of the dead.  Nearing the
central part, her echoes were intruded on by other sounds; and seeing
the barn not far off the road, she guessed these to be the utterances
of the preacher.

His voice became so distinct in the still clear air that she could
soon catch his sentences, though she was on the closed side of
the barn.  The sermon, as might be expected, was of the extremest
antinomian type; on justification by faith, as expounded in the
theology of St Paul.  This fixed idea of the rhapsodist was delivered
with animated enthusiasm, in a manner entirely declamatory, for he
had plainly no skill as a dialectician.  Although Tess had not heard
the beginning of the address, she learnt what the text had been from
its constant iteration--


   "O foolish galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye
   should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ
   hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?"


Tess was all the more interested, as she stood listening behind, in
finding that the preacher's doctrine was a vehement form of the view
of Angel's father, and her interest intensified when the speaker
began to detail his own spiritual experiences of how he had come by
those views.  He had, he said, been the greatest of sinners.  He had
scoffed; he had wantonly associated with the reckless and the lewd.
But a day of awakening had come, and, in a human sense, it had been
brought about mainly by the influence of a certain clergyman, whom he
had at first grossly insulted; but whose parting words had sunk into
his heart, and had remained there, till by the grace of Heaven they
had worked this change in him, and made him what they saw him.

But more startling to Tess than the doctrine had been the voice,
which, impossible as it seemed, was precisely that of Alec
d'Urberville.  Her face fixed in painful suspense, she came round
to the front of the barn, and passed before it.  The low winter sun
beamed directly upon the great double-doored entrance on this side;
one of the doors being open, so that the rays stretched far in over
the threshing-floor to the preacher and his audience, all snugly
sheltered from the northern breeze.  The listeners were entirely
villagers, among them being the man whom she had seen carrying the
red paint-pot on a former memorable occasion.  But her attention
was given to the central figure, who stood upon some sacks of corn,
facing the people and the door.  The three o'clock sun shone full
upon him, and the strange enervating conviction that her seducer
confronted her, which had been gaining ground in Tess ever since she
had heard his words distinctly, was at last established as a fact
indeed.


END OF PHASE THE FIFTH





Phase the Sixth: The Convert



Chapters 42-44
To ward off the men who might find her attractive, Tess puts on a handkerchief as though she has a toothache and clips her eyebrows. She arrives at Flintcomb-Ash to find Marian already at work. Marian calls the farm a "starve-acre place," not like the lush dairy at Talbothays. The work is digging rutabagas, harvesting corn, and making the thatch for roofs. It is indeed difficult work for men and women alike. Tess agrees to work until April 6, also know as "Old Lady-Day." The two friends work in the rain and snow at the farm. Marian writes to Izz Huett, who later comes to Flintcomb-Ash for work as well. One day, when it is too cold to dig swedes, the ladies are sent by the farmer to make roof thatching in a nearby farm. Also working there are Dark Car and the Queen of Diamonds, both former employees of the d'Urbervilles at The Slopes. These "two Amazionian sisters" do not remember Tess from their previous encounter. Tess meets her employer, the farmer, the same man who had insulted her in town in Chapter 33 and who appears again in a second chance encounter in Chapter 41. He is mean and vengeful toward Tess, telling her, "But we'll see which is master here." He urges the girls to work harder, and Tess stays behind to finish her work with Izz and Marian. Tess is overcome by exhaustion and faints. As she recovers on a haystack, she overhears Izz tell the story of Angel asking her to accompany him to Brazil. Tess decides to contact Angel's parents to ask about Angel. The next Sunday, Tess sets out for Emminster, a 30-mile roundtrip walk for her. A year has passed since her marriage to Angel, and she is determined to make her plight known to her in-laws and to see if they have heard from Angel. She removes her walking boots, stashes them in a nearby bush and puts on her dress boots to impress her in-laws. Angel's brothers discover Tess' boots, not knowing she is nearby, and takes them back to the Clare's vicarage. Tess loses her nerve to see the Clares and returns to Flintcomb-Ash dejected and depressed. On the way back to the farm, Tess encounters Alec d'Urberville, now an evangelical "fire and brimstone" street preacher.
The contrast between Flintcomb-Ash and Talbothays is clear. Flintcomb-Ash is described as "sublime in its dreariness." Conversely, Talbothays is portrayed as ideal and beautiful, "the verdant plain so well watered by the river Var or Froom." Flintcomb has Farmer Groby, a mean-spirited man who demands that his workers work even harder. Mr. Crick gets results from his workers with humor and aplomb, even regaling them with his humorous tales, as evidenced by the William Dewy tale from Chapter 17 and the Jack Dollop tales from Chapters 21 and 29. The indifference that Angel's brothers show towards Tess is not altogether surprising based on what we already know of them. However, it is Tess' first encounter with her brothers-in-law, and she hears for herself their contempt for her marriage to Angel and for Angel himself -- "His ill-considered marriage seems to have completed that estrangement from me which was begun by his extraordinary opinions." The brothers, both ministers themselves, have little regard for those in desperate situations, reserving their charity to those they deem worthy to receive it. Mercy Chant, whose name implies sympathy and kindness, adds her own insensitive opinion when Tess' boots are discovered in some bushes, viewing them as belonging to "ome impostor who wished to come into town barefoot, perhaps, and so excite our sympathies." Thus, all three -- Mercy, Cuthbert, and Felix --  display a lack of compassion that Tess could use at that moment. Hardy further emphasizes the uncharitable nature of these three in his descriptions: Hardy describes the brothers as "starched and ironed"; he describes Mercy as "a trifle guindee and prudish." The word guindee in French means "stiff" or "formal." This episode recalls earlier episodes in which action or inaction rest on a single turn of fate. By encountering her brothers-in-law first, Tess is exposed to unkind and uncharitable notions about herself and her marriage to Angel. Hardy says "it was somewhat unfortunate that she had encountered the sons and not the father, who, despite his narrowness, was far less starched and ironed than they, and had to the full the gift of charity." If Tess had met her father and mother-in-law first, the outcome might have been different. In these chapters, Tess also is reunited with Alec d'Urberville, who is in the guise of a street corner minister. Alec claims to have repented of his former sins, recanting his past excesses, taking up the teachings of Reverend Clare and the lessons of St. Paul. Nevertheless, as is made clear in the following chapters, Alec is a hollow cleric. Even though he himself condemns the faithless in his sermons, he will leave his ministry to pursue Tess. Glossary mommet  a term of abuse or contempt. "dust and ashes" Job 42:6. Cybele the Many-breasted Phrygian fertility goddess who, in the form of a mother with many breasts, symbolizes nature. "clipsed or colled"  embraced. swede-hacking a swede is a Swedish turnip, or rutabaga. Old Lady Day April 6, date used to set the beginning or ending of employment. copy-holders people who hold land by copyhold. wroppers  wrappers. "early Italian conception of the two Marys"` because of their weepings and pensive looks, they resemble painted representations from the Renaissance of Mary, the mother of Christ, and Mary Magdalen after the death of Jesus. "like the moves of a chess player" death is sometimes represented as a chess player. reed-drawing preparing straw to be used as thatching material. "white pillar of a cloud" from Exodus 13:21. percipience a perceiving, esp. keenly or readily. premonitory giving previous warning or notice. thirtover  thwart-over, meaning perverse. guindee stiff, stilted, formal . prudish like or characteristic of a prude; too modest or proper. impressibility the state of being impressed or impressionable. contravene to go against; oppose; conflict with; violate; to disagree with in argument; contradict. habiliments clothing; dress; attire. supervened came or happened as something extraneous or unexpected; to take place; ensued. "Publicans and Sinners . . . Scribes and Pharisees" they were biased in favor of those who had fallen. publican in Britain, any owner or proprietor of a pub. Antinomian a believer in the Christian doctrine that faith alone, not obedience to the moral law, is necessary for salvation. "O foolish Galatians . . . " from Galatians 3:1.