finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_52_part_0.txt
Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 53
chapter 53
{"name": "Phase VII: \"Fulfillment,\" Chapter Fifty-Three", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-53", "summary": "Angel arrives at his parents' house after his long trip. Mrs. Clare is shocked to see how frail and scrawny he is after his illness. The first thing he asks is whether any letters have come from Tess. They've held her most recent letter, the angry one, and he reads it and almost despairs of ever making things up with her. He tells his parents about her being a D'Urberville, and then goes to bed. He writes to Mrs. Durbeyfield at Marlott to tell them of his return, but Mrs. Durbeyfield writes back saying that they no longer live in Marlott, that Tess isn't living with her, and that she doesn't want to say where Tess is now living. Angel figures they're all just mad at him, and doesn't worry too much about it. Angel waits to hear again from Mrs. Durbeyfield, figuring that she'd write again once she'd had a chance to tell Tess that he was back. But no note comes. Then a letter that had been forwarded to him in Brazil, but which was returned, reaches him. It's the one in which Tess begs him to hurry back, because she's being pressed to do what she doesn't want to. Angel immediately sets out to find her, especially when he sees the note sent by Marian and Izz.", "analysis": ""}


It was evening at Emminster Vicarage.  The two customary candles were
burning under their green shades in the Vicar's study, but he had not
been sitting there.  Occasionally he came in, stirred the small fire
which sufficed for the increasing mildness of the spring, and went
out again; sometimes pausing at the front door, going on to the
drawing-room, then returning again to the front door.

It faced westward, and though gloom prevailed inside, there was still
light enough without to see with distinctness.  Mrs Clare, who had
been sitting in the drawing-room, followed him hither.

"Plenty of time yet," said the Vicar.  "He doesn't reach Chalk-Newton
till six, even if the train should be punctual, and ten miles of
country-road, five of them in Crimmercrock Lane, are not jogged over
in a hurry by our old horse."

"But he has done it in an hour with us, my dear."

"Years ago."

Thus they passed the minutes, each well knowing that this was only
waste of breath, the one essential being simply to wait.

At length there was a slight noise in the lane, and the old
pony-chaise appeared indeed outside the railings.  They saw alight
therefrom a form which they affected to recognize, but would actually
have passed by in the street without identifying had he not got out
of their carriage at the particular moment when a particular person
was due.

Mrs Clare rushed through the dark passage to the door, and her
husband came more slowly after her.

The new arrival, who was just about to enter, saw their anxious faces
in the doorway and the gleam of the west in their spectacles because
they confronted the last rays of day; but they could only see his
shape against the light.

"O, my boy, my boy--home again at last!" cried Mrs Clare, who cared
no more at that moment for the stains of heterodoxy which had caused
all this separation than for the dust upon his clothes.  What woman,
indeed, among the most faithful adherents of the truth, believes the
promises and threats of the Word in the sense in which she believes
in her own children, or would not throw her theology to the wind if
weighed against their happiness?  As soon as they reached the room
where the candles were lighted she looked at his face.

"O, it is not Angel--not my son--the Angel who went away!" she cried
in all the irony of sorrow, as she turned herself aside.

His father, too, was shocked to see him, so reduced was that figure
from its former contours by worry and the bad season that Clare had
experienced, in the climate to which he had so rashly hurried in his
first aversion to the mockery of events at home.  You could see the
skeleton behind the man, and almost the ghost behind the skeleton.
He matched Crivelli's dead _Christus_.  His sunken eye-pits were of
morbid hue, and the light in his eyes had waned.  The angular hollows
and lines of his aged ancestors had succeeded to their reign in his
face twenty years before their time.

"I was ill over there, you know," he said.  "I am all right now."

As if, however, to falsify this assertion, his legs seemed to give
way, and he suddenly sat down to save himself from falling.  It was
only a slight attack of faintness, resulting from the tedious day's
journey, and the excitement of arrival.

"Has any letter come for me lately?" he asked.  "I received the
last you sent on by the merest chance, and after considerable delay
through being inland; or I might have come sooner."

"It was from your wife, we supposed?"

"It was."

Only one other had recently come.  They had not sent it on to him,
knowing he would start for home so soon.

He hastily opened the letter produced, and was much disturbed to read
in Tess's handwriting the sentiments expressed in her last hurried
scrawl to him.


   O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do
   not deserve it.  I have thought it all over carefully,
   and I can never, never forgive you!  You know that I
   did not intend to wrong you--why have you so wronged
   me?  You are cruel, cruel indeed!  I will try to forget
   you.  It is all injustice I have received at your
   hands!
                                  T.

"It is quite true!" said Angel, throwing down the letter.  "Perhaps
she will never be reconciled to me!"

"Don't, Angel, be so anxious about a mere child of the soil!" said
his mother.

"Child of the soil!  Well, we all are children of the soil.  I wish
she were so in the sense you mean; but let me now explain to you what
I have never explained before, that her father is a descendant in the
male line of one of the oldest Norman houses, like a good many others
who lead obscure agricultural lives in our villages, and are dubbed
'sons of the soil.'"

He soon retired to bed; and the next morning, feeling exceedingly
unwell, he remained in his room pondering.  The circumstances amid
which he had left Tess were such that though, while on the south of
the Equator and just in receipt of her loving epistle, it had seemed
the easiest thing in the world to rush back into her arms the moment
he chose to forgive her, now that he had arrived it was not so easy
as it had seemed.  She was passionate, and her present letter,
showing that her estimate of him had changed under his delay--too
justly changed, he sadly owned,--made him ask himself if it would
be wise to confront her unannounced in the presence of her parents.
Supposing that her love had indeed turned to dislike during the last
weeks of separation, a sudden meeting might lead to bitter words.

Clare therefore thought it would be best to prepare Tess and her
family by sending a line to Marlott announcing his return, and his
hope that she was still living with them there, as he had arranged
for her to do when he left England.  He despatched the inquiry that
very day, and before the week was out there came a short reply from
Mrs Durbeyfield which did not remove his embarrassment, for it bore
no address, though to his surprise it was not written from Marlott.


   SIR,

   J write these few lines to say that my Daughter is away
   from me at present, and J am not sure when she will
   return, but J will let you know as Soon as she do.
   J do not feel at liberty to tell you Where she is
   temperly biding.  J should say that me and my Family
   have left Marlott for some Time.--

   Yours,

   J. DURBEYFIELD


It was such a relief to Clare to learn that Tess was at least
apparently well that her mother's stiff reticence as to her
whereabouts did not long distress him.  They were all angry with him,
evidently.  He would wait till Mrs Durbeyfield could inform him of
Tess's return, which her letter implied to be soon.  He deserved no
more.  His had been a love "which alters when it alteration finds".
He had undergone some strange experiences in his absence; he had seen
the virtual Faustina in the literal Cornelia, a spiritual Lucretia in
a corporeal Phryne; he had thought of the woman taken and set in the
midst as one deserving to be stoned, and of the wife of Uriah being
made a queen; and he had asked himself why he had not judged Tess
constructively rather than biographically, by the will rather than
by the deed?

A day or two passed while he waited at his father's house for the
promised second note from Joan Durbeyfield, and indirectly to recover
a little more strength.  The strength showed signs of coming back,
but there was no sign of Joan's letter.  Then he hunted up the
old letter sent on to him in Brazil, which Tess had written from
Flintcomb-Ash, and re-read it.  The sentences touched him now as
much as when he had first perused them.


   ... I must cry to you in my trouble--I have no one
   else! ...  I think I must die if you do not come
   soon, or tell me to come to you... please, please,
   not to be just--only a little kind 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! ... if you will send me one little line, and say,
   "I am coming soon," I will bide on, Angel--O, so
   cheerfully! ... 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. ...  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. ...  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!


Clare determined that he would no longer believe in her more recent
and severer regard of him, but would go and find her immediately.  He
asked his father if she had applied for any money during his absence.
His father returned a negative, and then for the first time it
occurred to Angel that her pride had stood in her way, and that she
had suffered privation.  From his remarks his parents now gathered
the real reason of the separation; and their Christianity was such
that, reprobates being their especial care, the tenderness towards
Tess which her blood, her simplicity, even her poverty, had not
engendered, was instantly excited by her sin.

Whilst he was hastily packing together a few articles for his journey
he glanced over a poor plain missive also lately come to hand--the
one from Marian and Izz Huett, beginning--

"Honour'd Sir, Look to your Wife if you do love her as much as she do
love you," and signed, "From Two Well-Wishers."



Phase VII: "Fulfillment," Chapter Fifty-Three
Angel arrives at his parents' house after his long trip. Mrs. Clare is shocked to see how frail and scrawny he is after his illness. The first thing he asks is whether any letters have come from Tess. They've held her most recent letter, the angry one, and he reads it and almost despairs of ever making things up with her. He tells his parents about her being a D'Urberville, and then goes to bed. He writes to Mrs. Durbeyfield at Marlott to tell them of his return, but Mrs. Durbeyfield writes back saying that they no longer live in Marlott, that Tess isn't living with her, and that she doesn't want to say where Tess is now living. Angel figures they're all just mad at him, and doesn't worry too much about it. Angel waits to hear again from Mrs. Durbeyfield, figuring that she'd write again once she'd had a chance to tell Tess that he was back. But no note comes. Then a letter that had been forwarded to him in Brazil, but which was returned, reaches him. It's the one in which Tess begs him to hurry back, because she's being pressed to do what she doesn't want to. Angel immediately sets out to find her, especially when he sees the note sent by Marian and Izz.