finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_1_part_3.txt
Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter iii
chapter iii
{"name": "Chapter III", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11", "summary": "At home, Tess learns of her newly discovered noble lineage from her mother, Joan Durbeyfield. Mr. Durbeyfield is drinking at Rolliver's, a nearby home where locals drink illegally in an upstairs bedroom. Tess is outraged because her father must leave at midnight to transport beehives to the Casterbridge market. Under the pretext of retrieving her husband, Joan takes a break from her never-ending housework and Tess puts the younger children to bed. But, \"since her mother's leaving simply meant one more to fetch,\" Tess sends her younger brother Abraham to fetch their parents. However, he too also becomes ensnared in the pub and Tess must leave the house to bring them all home", "analysis": ""}


As for Tess Durbeyfield, she did not so easily dislodge the incident
from her consideration.  She had no spirit to dance again for a long
time, though she might have had plenty of partners; but ah! they did
not speak so nicely as the strange young man had done.  It was not
till the rays of the sun had absorbed the young stranger's retreating
figure on the hill that she shook off her temporary sadness and
answered her would-be partner in the affirmative.

She remained with her comrades till dusk, and participated with a
certain zest in the dancing; though, being heart-whole as yet, she
enjoyed treading a measure purely for its own sake; little divining
when she saw "the soft torments, the bitter sweets, the pleasing
pains, and the agreeable distresses" of those girls who had been
wooed and won, what she herself was capable of in that kind.  The
struggles and wrangles of the lads for her hand in a jig were an
amusement to her--no more; and when they became fierce she rebuked
them.

She might have stayed even later, but the incident of her father's
odd appearance and manner returned upon the girl's mind to make her
anxious, and wondering what had become of him she dropped away from
the dancers and bent her steps towards the end of the village at
which the parental cottage lay.

While yet many score yards off, other rhythmic sounds than those she
had quitted became audible to her; sounds that she knew well--so
well.  They were a regular series of thumpings from the interior of
the house, occasioned by the violent rocking of a cradle upon a stone
floor, to which movement a feminine voice kept time by singing, in a
vigorous gallopade, the favourite ditty of "The Spotted Cow"--


   I saw her lie do'-own in yon'-der green gro'-ove;
        Come, love!' and I'll tell' you where!'


The cradle-rocking and the song would cease simultaneously for a
moment, and an exclamation at highest vocal pitch would take the
place of the melody.

"God bless thy diment eyes!  And thy waxen cheeks!  And thy cherry
mouth!  And thy Cubit's thighs!  And every bit o' thy blessed body!"

After this invocation the rocking and the singing would recommence,
and the "Spotted Cow" proceed as before.  So matters stood when Tess
opened the door and paused upon the mat within it, surveying the
scene.

The interior, in spite of the melody, struck upon the girl's senses
with an unspeakable dreariness.  From the holiday gaieties of the
field--the white gowns, the nosegays, the willow-wands, the whirling
movements on the green, the flash of gentle sentiment towards the
stranger--to the yellow melancholy of this one-candled spectacle,
what a step!  Besides the jar of contrast there came to her a chill
self-reproach that she had not returned sooner, to help her mother
in these domesticities, instead of indulging herself out-of-doors.

There stood her mother amid the group of children, as Tess had left
her, hanging over the Monday washing-tub, which had now, as always,
lingered on to the end of the week.  Out of that tub had come the day
before--Tess felt it with a dreadful sting of remorse--the very white
frock upon her back which she had so carelessly greened about the
skirt on the damping grass--which had been wrung up and ironed by her
mother's own hands.

As usual, Mrs Durbeyfield was balanced on one foot beside the tub,
the other being engaged in the aforesaid business of rocking her
youngest child.  The cradle-rockers had done hard duty for so many
years, under the weight of so many children, on that flagstone floor,
that they were worn nearly flat, in consequence of which a huge jerk
accompanied each swing of the cot, flinging the baby from side to
side like a weaver's shuttle, as Mrs Durbeyfield, excited by her
song, trod the rocker with all the spring that was left in her after
a long day's seething in the suds.

Nick-knock, nick-knock, went the cradle; the candle-flame stretched
itself tall, and began jigging up and down; the water dribbled from
the matron's elbows, and the song galloped on to the end of the
verse, Mrs Durbeyfield regarding her daughter the while.  Even now,
when burdened with a young family, Joan Durbeyfield was a passionate
lover of tune.  No ditty floated into Blackmoor Vale from the outer
world but Tess's mother caught up its notation in a week.

There still faintly beamed from the woman's features something of
the freshness, and even the prettiness, of her youth; rendering it
probable that the personal charms which Tess could boast of were in
main part her mother's gift, and therefore unknightly, unhistorical.

"I'll rock the cradle for 'ee, mother," said the daughter gently.
"Or I'll take off my best frock and help you wring up?  I thought you
had finished long ago."

Her mother bore Tess no ill-will for leaving the housework to her
single-handed efforts for so long; indeed, Joan seldom upbraided
her thereon at any time, feeling but slightly the lack of Tess's
assistance whilst her instinctive plan for relieving herself of her
labours lay in postponing them.  To-night, however, she was even in a
blither mood than usual.  There was a dreaminess, a pre-occupation,
an exaltation, in the maternal look which the girl could not
understand.

"Well, I'm glad you've come," her mother said, as soon as the last
note had passed out of her.  "I want to go and fetch your father;
but what's more'n that, I want to tell 'ee what have happened.  Y'll
be fess enough, my poppet, when th'st know!"  (Mrs Durbeyfield
habitually spoke the dialect; her daughter, who had passed the Sixth
Standard in the National School under a London-trained mistress,
spoke two languages: the dialect at home, more or less; ordinary
English abroad and to persons of quality.)

"Since I've been away?" Tess asked.

"Ay!"

"Had it anything to do with father's making such a mommet of himself
in thik carriage this afternoon?  Why did 'er?  I felt inclined to
sink into the ground with shame!"

"That wer all a part of the larry!  We've been found to be the
greatest gentlefolk in the whole county--reaching all back long
before Oliver Grumble's time--to the days of the Pagan Turks--with
monuments, and vaults, and crests, and 'scutcheons, and the Lord
knows what all.  In Saint Charles's days we was made Knights o' the
Royal Oak, our real name being d'Urberville! ...  Don't that make
your bosom plim?  'Twas on this account that your father rode home
in the vlee; not because he'd been drinking, as people supposed."

"I'm glad of that.  Will it do us any good, mother?"

"O yes!  'Tis thoughted that great things may come o't.  No doubt a
mampus of volk of our own rank will be down here in their carriages
as soon as 'tis known.  Your father learnt it on his way hwome
from Shaston, and he has been telling me the whole pedigree of the
matter."

"Where is father now?" asked Tess suddenly.

Her mother gave irrelevant information by way of answer: "He called
to see the doctor to-day in Shaston.  It is not consumption at all,
it seems.  It is fat round his heart, 'a says.  There, it is like
this."  Joan Durbeyfield, as she spoke, curved a sodden thumb
and forefinger to the shape of the letter C, and used the other
forefinger as a pointer.  "'At the present moment,' he says to your
father, 'your heart is enclosed all round there, and all round
there; this space is still open,' 'a says.  'As soon as it do
meet, so,'"--Mrs Durbeyfield closed her fingers into a circle
complete--"'off you will go like a shadder, Mr Durbeyfield,' 'a says.
'You mid last ten years; you mid go off in ten months, or ten days.'"

Tess looked alarmed.  Her father possibly to go behind the eternal
cloud so soon, notwithstanding this sudden greatness!

"But where IS father?" she asked again.

Her mother put on a deprecating look.  "Now don't you be bursting out
angry!  The poor man--he felt so rafted after his uplifting by the
pa'son's news--that he went up to Rolliver's half an hour ago.  He do
want to get up his strength for his journey to-morrow with that load
of beehives, which must be delivered, family or no.  He'll have to
start shortly after twelve to-night, as the distance is so long."

"Get up his strength!" said Tess impetuously, the tears welling to
her eyes.  "O my God!  Go to a public-house to get up his strength!
And you as well agreed as he, mother!"

Her rebuke and her mood seemed to fill the whole room, and to impart
a cowed look to the furniture, and candle, and children playing
about, and to her mother's face.

"No," said the latter touchily, "I be not agreed.  I have been
waiting for 'ee to bide and keep house while I go fetch him."

"I'll go."

"O no, Tess.  You see, it would be no use."

Tess did not expostulate.  She knew what her mother's objection
meant.  Mrs Durbeyfield's jacket and bonnet were already hanging
slily upon a chair by her side, in readiness for this contemplated
jaunt, the reason for which the matron deplored more than its
necessity.

"And take the _Compleat Fortune-Teller_ to the outhouse," Joan
continued, rapidly wiping her hands, and donning the garments.

The _Compleat Fortune-Teller_ was an old thick volume, which lay on a
table at her elbow, so worn by pocketing that the margins had reached
the edge of the type.  Tess took it up, and her mother started.

This going to hunt up her shiftless husband at the inn was one of
Mrs Durbeyfield's still extant enjoyments in the muck and muddle of
rearing children.  To discover him at Rolliver's, to sit there for
an hour or two by his side and dismiss all thought and care of the
children during the interval, made her happy.  A sort of halo, an
occidental glow, came over life then.  Troubles and other realities
took on themselves a metaphysical impalpability, sinking to mere
mental phenomena for serene contemplation, and no longer stood as
pressing concretions which chafed body and soul.  The youngsters,
not immediately within sight, seemed rather bright and desirable
appurtenances than otherwise; the incidents of daily life were not
without humorousness and jollity in their aspect there.  She felt a
little as she had used to feel when she sat by her now wedded husband
in the same spot during his wooing, shutting her eyes to his defects
of character, and regarding him only in his ideal presentation as
lover.

Tess, being left alone with the younger children, went first to the
outhouse with the fortune-telling book, and stuffed it into the
thatch.  A curious fetishistic fear of this grimy volume on the part
of her mother prevented her ever allowing it to stay in the house all
night, and hither it was brought back whenever it had been consulted.
Between the mother, with her fast-perishing lumber of superstitions,
folk-lore, dialect, and orally transmitted ballads, and the daughter,
with her trained National teachings and Standard knowledge under an
infinitely Revised Code, there was a gap of two hundred years as
ordinarily understood.  When they were together the Jacobean and the
Victorian ages were juxtaposed.

Returning along the garden path Tess mused on what the mother could
have wished to ascertain from the book on this particular day.  She
guessed the recent ancestral discovery to bear upon it, but did not
divine that it solely concerned herself.  Dismissing this, however,
she busied herself with sprinkling the linen dried during the
day-time, in company with her nine-year-old brother Abraham, and her
sister Eliza-Louisa of twelve and a half, called "'Liza-Lu," the
youngest ones being put to bed.  There was an interval of four years
and more between Tess and the next of the family, the two who had
filled the gap having died in their infancy, and this lent her a
deputy-maternal attitude when she was alone with her juniors.  Next
in juvenility to Abraham came two more girls, Hope and Modesty; then
a boy of three, and then the baby, who had just completed his first
year.

All these young souls were passengers in the Durbeyfield
ship--entirely dependent on the judgement of the two Durbeyfield
adults for their pleasures, their necessities, their health, even
their existence.  If the heads of the Durbeyfield household chose
to sail into difficulty, disaster, starvation, disease, degradation,
death, thither were these half-dozen little captives under hatches
compelled to sail with them--six helpless creatures, who had never
been asked if they wished for life on any terms, much less if they
wished for it on such hard conditions as were involved in being of
the shiftless house of Durbeyfield.  Some people would like to know
whence the poet whose philosophy is in these days deemed as profound
and trustworthy as his song is breezy and pure, gets his authority
for speaking of "Nature's holy plan."

It grew later, and neither father nor mother reappeared.  Tess looked
out of the door, and took a mental journey through Marlott.  The
village was shutting its eyes.  Candles and lamps were being put
out everywhere: she could inwardly behold the extinguisher and the
extended hand.

Her mother's fetching simply meant one more to fetch.  Tess began to
perceive that a man in indifferent health, who proposed to start on a
journey before one in the morning, ought not to be at an inn at this
late hour celebrating his ancient blood.

"Abraham," she said to her little brother, "do you put on your
hat--you bain't afraid?--and go up to Rolliver's, and see what has
gone wi' father and mother."

The boy jumped promptly from his seat, and opened the door, and the
night swallowed him up.  Half an hour passed yet again; neither man,
woman, nor child returned.  Abraham, like his parents, seemed to have
been limed and caught by the ensnaring inn.

"I must go myself," she said.

'Liza-Lu then went to bed, and Tess, locking them all in, started on
her way up the dark and crooked lane or street not made for hasty
progress; a street laid out before inches of land had value, and when
one-handed clocks sufficiently subdivided the day.



Chapter III
At home, Tess learns of her newly discovered noble lineage from her mother, Joan Durbeyfield. Mr. Durbeyfield is drinking at Rolliver's, a nearby home where locals drink illegally in an upstairs bedroom. Tess is outraged because her father must leave at midnight to transport beehives to the Casterbridge market. Under the pretext of retrieving her husband, Joan takes a break from her never-ending housework and Tess puts the younger children to bed. But, "since her mother's leaving simply meant one more to fetch," Tess sends her younger brother Abraham to fetch their parents. However, he too also becomes ensnared in the pub and Tess must leave the house to bring them all home