finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_13_part_0.txt
Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapters 53-56
chapters 53-56
{"name": "Chapters 53-56", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219151046/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary-and-analysis/phase-the-seventh-fulfilment-chapters-5356", "summary": "Angel's parents await his arrival from Brazil anxiously. He returns looking older and thinner from his journey to Brazil. He reads Tess' letters, immediately writing to her mother, Joan, to see if she is well and living at home. Joan's curt, short letter tells him she is not at home and Joan does not know Tess' whereabouts. Further, Angel finds that Tess had not visited his parents nor had she asked for any money in his absence. Angel makes plans to leave at once to find Tess when he reads the letter from Marian and Izz. Angel first goes to Flintcomb-Ash and Marlott to locate Tess. Instead, he finds John's grave and pays the sexton, or churchyard caretaker, for the balance owed on John's tombstone. He finds that the family is in Kingsbere and sets out for the Durbeyfield house. There, he finds Joan and asks her about Tess only to find she is now living in the fashionable seaside resort of Sandbourne. Angel treks to Sandbourne, arriving late at night, too late to find any information. The next morning, Angel finds Tess at an inn called The Herons, from information provided by a mailman. He goes to the inn and asks for Tess, where she is now known as Teresa d'Urberville. Tess has been living with Alec, and the pair has traveled to the resort for relaxation. Angel sees Tess, only to be told that she cannot go with him, that Alec has won her. Repeatedly, Tess tells Angel, \"It is too late.\" She sends Angel away, urging him not to return, as she now belongs to Alec. Angel leaves the inn, wandering the streets aimlessly. Tess returns to her room to confront Alec. The innkeeper, Mrs. Brooks, watches the d'Urbervilles through a keyhole and from her office below their room. Tess realizes Alec's deception, blaming him for lying to her about Angel's future return so that he could once more have her. In her fury, Tess stabs Alec through the heart with a carving knife. She leaves the inn immediately to find Angel. In the interim, news of the murder moves quickly through the resort.", "analysis": "Joan's letter to Angel gives a hint that all is not well with Tess. The letter is short and terse, informing Angel that Joan has no idea where Tess has gone. He hurries to Flintcomb-Ash, Marlott, and Kingsbere to look for Tess. Joan recognizes Angel and is somewhat reticent to tell him all that she knows about Tess. Perhaps with the family's recent troubles in Marlott, she is keenly aware that the neighbors may judge her as harshly as did the people of Marlott. Angel asks, \"Do you think Tess would wish me to try and find her?\" Joan replies, \"I don't think she would.\" Angel feels that Tess would want to see him again, even under these circumstances. Joan's remark that she cannot understand her daughter is especially telling, \"That's very likely, sir; for I have never really known her.\" One cannot but help to see Tess as a mystery, too. Hardy's point is that even though we know people all of our lives, we oftentimes really do not \"know\" a person, no matter how hard we try. It is also a mother's exasperated response about how a daughter can grow up before her eyes and still be foreign to her. The scene at The Herons in Sandbourne between Tess and Angel is plausible because she is now living with Alec and has forsaken her husband. The outcome of the conversation between Tess and Angel is expected. However, the events in Chapter 56 are extraordinary and not expected. Tess kills her \"master\" with a carving knife to get away from him and to rid herself of the person who turned her life upside down. She rages when she discovers Alec's deception and manipulation of her. When the deed is done, like a Greek tragedy, the action is off-stage. The only hint of Alec's murder is his blood staining the ceiling of the room below his -- \"The oblong white ceiling, with this scarlet blot in the midst, had the appearance of a gigantic ace of hearts.\" Tess' choice of stabbing Alec in the heart is noteworthy because the heart is the seat of emotion, and stabbing him in the heart kills the emotional side of their relationship; thus Tess has no \"emotional strings\" attached to Alec any longer. She is truly free from his influence, but at a tremendous price. Glossary Crivelli's dead Christus probably the Pieta by the fifteenth-century Italian painter, Carlo Crivelli , in the National Gallery in London. \"which alters when it alteration finds\" from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. Faustina wife of Roman Emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius, she was reputed to be unfaithful. Cornelia wife of Scipio Africanus the Younger , who devoted herself to raising her twelve children and refused offers of marriage after she was widowed . Lucretia or Lucrece, wife of Collantius, known for her virtue, who killed herself after being raped by Lucius Tarquinius. Phryne Athenian courtesan who was the model and lover of Praxiteles, the sculptor. \"one deserving to be stoned\" from John 8:3-11, instead of encouraging stoning, Jesus forgives a woman brought to him as an adulteress by the Scribes and Pharisees. \"wife of Uriah\" Bathsheba, whom King David committed adultery with and then married after sending Uriah to his death on battle, from 2 Samuel 11. \"tale told by an idiot\" from Macbeth 5.5.26-27. \"How are the mighty fallen\" from 2 Samuel 1:19. \"prophet's gourd\" from Jonah 4:5-10, a gourd springs up overnight to give shade to Jonah. Ixionian wheel in Greek mythology, Ixion's eternal punishment was to be bound to a revolving wheel of fire."}


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."




In a quarter of an hour Clare was leaving the house, whence his
mother watched his thin figure as it disappeared into the street.
He had declined to borrow his father's old mare, well knowing of
its necessity to the household.  He went to the inn, where he hired
a trap, and could hardly wait during the harnessing.  In a very few
minutes after, he was driving up the hill out of the town which,
three or four months earlier in the year, Tess had descended with
such hopes and ascended with such shattered purposes.

Benvill Lane soon stretched before him, its hedges and trees purple
with buds; but he was looking at other things, and only recalled
himself to the scene sufficiently to enable him to keep the way.  In
something less than an hour-and-a-half he had skirted the south of
the King's Hintock estates and ascended to the untoward solitude of
Cross-in-Hand, the unholy stone whereon Tess had been compelled by
Alec d'Urberville, in his whim of reformation, to swear the strange
oath that she would never wilfully tempt him again.  The pale and
blasted nettle-stems of the preceding year even now lingered nakedly
in the banks, young green nettles of the present spring growing from
their roots.

Thence he went along the verge of the upland overhanging the other
Hintocks, and, turning to the right, plunged into the bracing
calcareous region of Flintcomb-Ash, the address from which she had
written to him in one of the letters, and which he supposed to be
the place of sojourn referred to by her mother.  Here, of course, he
did not find her; and what added to his depression was the discovery
that no "Mrs Clare" had ever been heard of by the cottagers or by
the farmer himself, though Tess was remembered well enough by her
Christian name.  His name she had obviously never used during their
separation, and her dignified sense of their total severance was
shown not much less by this abstention than by the hardships she had
chosen to undergo (of which he now learnt for the first time) rather
than apply to his father for more funds.

From this place they told him Tess Durbeyfield had gone, without due
notice, to the home of her parents on the other side of Blackmoor,
and it therefore became necessary to find Mrs Durbeyfield.  She had
told him she was not now at Marlott, but had been curiously reticent
as to her actual address, and the only course was to go to Marlott
and inquire for it.  The farmer who had been so churlish with Tess
was quite smooth-tongued to Clare, and lent him a horse and man to
drive him towards Marlott, the gig he had arrived in being sent back
to Emminster; for the limit of a day's journey with that horse was
reached.

Clare would not accept the loan of the farmer's vehicle for a further
distance than to the outskirts of the Vale, and, sending it back with
the man who had driven him, he put up at an inn, and next day entered
on foot the region wherein was the spot of his dear Tess's birth.
It was as yet too early in the year for much colour to appear in the
gardens and foliage; the so-called spring was but winter overlaid
with a thin coat of greenness, and it was of a parcel with his
expectations.

The house in which Tess had passed the years of her childhood was
now inhabited by another family who had never known her.  The new
residents were in the garden, taking as much interest in their own
doings as if the homestead had never passed its primal time in
conjunction with the histories of others, beside which the histories
of these were but as a tale told by an idiot.  They walked about the
garden paths with thoughts of their own concerns entirely uppermost,
bringing their actions at every moment in jarring collision with the
dim ghosts behind them, talking as though the time when Tess lived
there were not one whit intenser in story than now.  Even the spring
birds sang over their heads as if they thought there was nobody
missing in particular.

On inquiry of these precious innocents, to whom even the name of
their predecessors was a failing memory, Clare learned that John
Durbeyfield was dead; that his widow and children had left Marlott,
declaring that they were going to live at Kingsbere, but instead of
doing so had gone on to another place they mentioned.  By this time
Clare abhorred the house for ceasing to contain Tess, and hastened
away from its hated presence without once looking back.

His way was by the field in which he had first beheld her at the
dance.  It was as bad as the house--even worse.  He passed on through
the churchyard, where, amongst the new headstones, he saw one of a
somewhat superior design to the rest.  The inscription ran thus:


  In memory of John Durbeyfield, rightly d'Urberville, of
  the once powerful family of that Name, and Direct
  Descendant through an illustrious Line from Sir Pagan
  d'Urberville, one of the Knights of the Conqueror.  Died
  March 10th, 18--

                HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN.


Some man, apparently the sexton, had observed Clare standing there,
and drew nigh.  "Ah, sir, now that's a man who didn't want to lie
here, but wished to be carried to Kingsbere, where his ancestors be."

"And why didn't they respect his wish?"

"Oh--no money.  Bless your soul, sir, why--there, I wouldn't wish to
say it everywhere, but--even this headstone, for all the flourish
wrote upon en, is not paid for."

"Ah, who put it up?"

The man told the name of a mason in the village, and, on leaving the
churchyard, Clare called at the mason's house.  He found that the
statement was true, and paid the bill.  This done, he turned in the
direction of the migrants.

The distance was too long for a walk, but Clare felt such a strong
desire for isolation that at first he would neither hire a conveyance
nor go to a circuitous line of railway by which he might eventually
reach the place.  At Shaston, however, he found he must hire; but
the way was such that he did not enter Joan's place till about seven
o'clock in the evening, having traversed a distance of over twenty
miles since leaving Marlott.

The village being small he had little difficulty in finding Mrs
Durbeyfield's tenement, which was a house in a walled garden,
remote from the main road, where she had stowed away her clumsy old
furniture as best she could.  It was plain that for some reason or
other she had not wished him to visit her, and he felt his call to
be somewhat of an intrusion.  She came to the door herself, and the
light from the evening sky fell upon her face.

This was the first time that Clare had ever met her, but he was too
preoccupied to observe more than that she was still a handsome woman,
in the garb of a respectable widow.  He was obliged to explain that
he was Tess's husband, and his object in coming there, and he did it
awkwardly enough.  "I want to see her at once," he added.  "You said
you would write to me again, but you have not done so."

"Because she've not come home," said Joan.

"Do you know if she is well?"

"I don't.  But you ought to, sir," said she.

"I admit it.  Where is she staying?"

From the beginning of the interview Joan had disclosed her
embarrassment by keeping her hand to the side of her cheek.

"I--don't know exactly where she is staying," she answered. "She
was--but--"

"Where was she?"

"Well, she is not there now."

In her evasiveness she paused again, and the younger children had by
this time crept to the door, where, pulling at his mother's skirts,
the youngest murmured--

"Is this the gentleman who is going to marry Tess?"

"He has married her," Joan whispered.  "Go inside."

Clare saw her efforts for reticence, and asked--

"Do you think Tess would wish me to try and find her?  If not, of
course--"

"I don't think she would."

"Are you sure?"

"I am sure she wouldn't."

He was turning away; and then he thought of Tess's tender letter.

"I am sure she would!" he retorted passionately.  "I know her better
than you do."

"That's very likely, sir; for I have never really known her."

"Please tell me her address, Mrs Durbeyfield, in kindness to a lonely
wretched man!"  Tess's mother again restlessly swept her cheek with
her vertical hand, and seeing that he suffered, she at last said, is
a low voice--

"She is at Sandbourne."

"Ah--where there?  Sandbourne has become a large place, they say."

"I don't know more particularly than I have said--Sandbourne.  For
myself, I was never there."

It was apparent that Joan spoke the truth in this, and he pressed her
no further.

"Are you in want of anything?" he said gently.

"No, sir," she replied.  "We are fairly well provided for."

Without entering the house Clare turned away.  There was a station
three miles ahead, and paying off his coachman, he walked thither.
The last train to Sandbourne left shortly after, and it bore Clare
on its wheels.




At eleven o'clock that night, having secured a bed at one of the
hotels and telegraphed his address to his father immediately on his
arrival, he walked out into the streets of Sandbourne.  It was too
late to call on or inquire for any one, and he reluctantly postponed
his purpose till the morning.  But he could not retire to rest just
yet.

This fashionable watering-place, with its eastern and its western
stations, its piers, its groves of pines, its promenades, and its
covered gardens, was, to Angel Clare, like a fairy place suddenly
created by the stroke of a wand, and allowed to get a little dusty.
An outlying eastern tract of the enormous Egdon Waste was close at
hand, yet on the very verge of that tawny piece of antiquity such a
glittering novelty as this pleasure city had chosen to spring up.
Within the space of a mile from its outskirts every irregularity
of the soil was prehistoric, every channel an undisturbed British
trackway; not a sod having been turned there since the days of the
Caesars.  Yet the exotic had grown here, suddenly as the prophet's
gourd; and had drawn hither Tess.

By the midnight lamps he went up and down the winding way of this new
world in an old one, and could discern between the trees and against
the stars the lofty roofs, chimneys, gazebos, and towers of the
numerous fanciful residences of which the place was composed. It
was a city of detached mansions; a Mediterranean lounging-place on
the English Channel; and as seen now by night it seemed even more
imposing than it was.

The sea was near at hand, but not intrusive; it murmured, and he
thought it was the pines; the pines murmured in precisely the same
tones, and he thought they were the sea.

Where could Tess possibly be, a cottage-girl, his young wife, amidst
all this wealth and fashion?  The more he pondered, the more was he
puzzled.  Were there any cows to milk here?  There certainly were
no fields to till. She was most probably engaged to do something in
one of these large houses; and he sauntered along, looking at the
chamber-windows and their lights going out one by one, and wondered
which of them might be hers.

Conjecture was useless, and just after twelve o'clock he entered
and went to bed.   Before putting out his light he re-read Tess's
impassioned letter.  Sleep, however, he could not--so near her, yet
so far from her--and he continually lifted the window-blind and
regarded the backs of the opposite houses, and wondered behind which
of the sashes she reposed at that moment.

He might almost as well have sat up all night.  In the morning he
arose at seven, and shortly after went out, taking the direction of
the chief post-office.  At the door he met an intelligent postman
coming out with letters for the morning delivery.

"Do you know the address of a Mrs Clare?" asked Angel.  The postman
shook his head.

Then, remembering that she would have been likely to continue the use
of her maiden name, Clare said--

"Of a Miss Durbeyfield?"

"Durbeyfield?"

This also was strange to the postman addressed.

"There's visitors coming and going every day, as you know, sir," he
said; "and without the name of the house 'tis impossible to find
'em."

One of his comrades hastening out at that moment, the name was
repeated to him.

"I know no name of Durbeyfield; but there is the name of d'Urberville
at The Herons," said the second.

"That's it!" cried Clare, pleased to think that she had reverted to
the real pronunciation.  "What place is The Herons?"

"A stylish lodging-house.  'Tis all lodging-houses here, bless 'ee."

Clare received directions how to find the house, and hastened
thither, arriving with the milkman.  The Herons, though an ordinary
villa, stood in its own grounds, and was certainly the last place
in which one would have expected to find lodgings, so private was
its appearance.  If poor Tess was a servant here, as he feared, she
would go to the back-door to that milkman, and he was inclined to go
thither also.  However, in his doubts he turned to the front, and
rang.

The hour being early, the landlady herself opened the door.  Clare
inquired for Teresa d'Urberville or Durbeyfield.

"Mrs d'Urberville?"

"Yes."

Tess, then, passed as a married woman, and he felt glad, even though
she had not adopted his name.

"Will you kindly tell her that a relative is anxious to see her?"

"It is rather early.  What name shall I give, sir?"

"Angel."

"Mr Angel?"

"No; Angel.  It is my Christian name.  She'll understand."

"I'll see if she is awake."

He was shown into the front room--the dining-room--and looked out
through the spring curtains at the little lawn, and the rhododendrons
and other shrubs upon it.  Obviously her position was by no means so
bad as he had feared, and it crossed his mind that she must somehow
have claimed and sold the jewels to attain it.  He did not blame her
for one moment.  Soon his sharpened ear detected footsteps upon the
stairs, at which his heart thumped so painfully that he could hardly
stand firm.  "Dear me! what will she think of me, so altered as I
am!" he said to himself; and the door opened.

Tess appeared on the threshold--not at all as he had expected to
see her--bewilderingly otherwise, indeed.  Her great natural beauty
was, if not heightened, rendered more obvious by her attire.  She
was loosely wrapped in a cashmere dressing-gown of gray-white,
embroidered in half-mourning tints, and she wore slippers of the same
hue.  Her neck rose out of a frill of down, and her well-remembered
cable of dark-brown hair was partially coiled up in a mass at the
back of her head and partly hanging on her shoulder--the evident
result of haste.

He had held out his arms, but they had fallen again to his side;
for she had not come forward, remaining still in the opening of the
doorway.  Mere yellow skeleton that he was now, he felt the contrast
between them, and thought his appearance distasteful to her.

"Tess!" he said huskily, "can you forgive me for going away?  Can't
you--come to me?  How do you get to be--like this?"

"It is too late," said she, her voice sounding hard through the room,
her eyes shining unnaturally.

"I did not think rightly of you--I did not see you as you were!" he
continued to plead.  "I have learnt to since, dearest Tessy mine!"

"Too late, too late!" she said, waving her hand in the impatience of
a person whose tortures cause every instant to seem an hour.  "Don't
come close to me, Angel!  No--you must not.  Keep away."

"But don't you love me, my dear wife, because I have been so pulled
down by illness?  You are not so fickle--I am come on purpose for
you--my mother and father will welcome you now!"

"Yes--O, yes, yes!  But I say, I say it is too late."

She seemed to feel like a fugitive in a dream, who tries to move
away, but cannot.  "Don't you know all--don't you know it?  Yet how
do you come here if you do not know?"

"I inquired here and there, and I found the way."

"I waited and waited for you," she went on, her tones suddenly
resuming their old fluty pathos.  "But you did not come!  And I wrote
to you, and you did not come! He kept on saying you would never come
any more, and that I was a foolish woman.  He was very kind to me,
and to mother, and to all of us after father's death. He--"

"I don't understand."

"He has won me back to him."

Clare looked at her keenly, then, gathering her meaning, flagged
like one plague-stricken, and his glance sank; it fell on her hands,
which, once rosy, were now white and more delicate.

She continued--

"He is upstairs.  I hate him now, because he told me a lie--that you
would not come again; and you HAVE come!  These clothes are what he's
put upon me: I didn't care what he did wi' me!  But--will you go
away, Angel, please, and never come any more?"

They stood fixed, their baffled hearts looking out of their eyes with
a joylessness pitiful to see.  Both seemed to implore something to
shelter them from reality.

"Ah--it is my fault!" said Clare.

But he could not get on.  Speech was as inexpressive as silence.  But
he had a vague consciousness of one thing, though it was not clear
to him till later; that his original Tess had spiritually ceased to
recognize the body before him as hers--allowing it to drift, like a
corpse upon the current, in a direction dissociated from its living
will.

A few instants passed, and he found that Tess was gone.  His face
grew colder and more shrunken as he stood concentrated on the moment,
and a minute or two after, he found himself in the street, walking
along he did not know whither.




Mrs Brooks, the lady who was the householder at The Herons and owner
of all the handsome furniture, was not a person of an unusually
curious turn of mind. She was too deeply materialized, poor woman,
by her long and enforced bondage to that arithmetical demon
Profit-and-Loss, to retain much curiousity for its own sake, and
apart from possible lodgers' pockets.  Nevertheless, the visit of
Angel Clare to her well-paying tenants, Mr and Mrs d'Urberville, as
she deemed them, was sufficiently exceptional in point of time and
manner to reinvigorate the feminine proclivity which had been stifled
down as useless save in its bearings to the letting trade.

Tess had spoken to her husband from the doorway, without entering
the dining-room, and Mrs Brooks, who stood within the partly-closed
door of her own sitting-room at the back of the passage, could
hear fragments of the conversation--if conversation it could be
called--between those two wretched souls.  She heard Tess re-ascend
the stairs to the first floor, and the departure of Clare, and the
closing of the front door behind him.  Then the door of the room
above was shut, and Mrs Brooks knew that Tess had re-entered her
apartment.  As the young lady was not fully dressed, Mrs Brooks knew
that she would not emerge again for some time.

She accordingly ascended the stairs softly, and stood at the door of
the front room--a drawing-room, connected with the room immediately
behind it (which was a bedroom) by folding-doors in the common
manner.  This first floor, containing Mrs Brooks's best apartments,
had been taken by the week by the d'Urbervilles.  The back room was
now in silence; but from the drawing-room there came sounds.

All that she could at first distinguish of them was one syllable,
continually repeated in a low note of moaning, as if it came from a
soul bound to some Ixionian wheel--

"O--O--O!"

Then a silence, then a heavy sigh, and again--

"O--O--O!"

The landlady looked through the keyhole.  Only a small space of the
room inside was visible, but within that space came a corner of the
breakfast table, which was already spread for the meal, and also a
chair beside.  Over the seat of the chair Tess's face was bowed, her
posture being a kneeling one in front of it; her hands were clasped
over her head, the skirts of her dressing-gown and the embroidery of
her night-gown flowed upon the floor behind her, and her stockingless
feet, from which the slippers had fallen, protruded upon the carpet.
It was from her lips that came the murmur of unspeakable despair.

Then a man's voice from the adjoining bedroom--

"What's the matter?"

She did not answer, but went on, in a tone which was a soliloquy
rather than an exclamation, and a dirge rather than a soliloquy.
Mrs Brooks could only catch a portion:

"And then my dear, dear husband came home to me ... and I did not
know it! ...  And you had used your cruel persuasion upon me ... you
did not stop using it--no--you did not stop! My little sisters and
brothers and my mother's needs--they were the things you moved me
by ... and you said my husband would never come back--never; and you
taunted me, and said what a simpleton I was to expect him! ...  And
at last I believed you and gave way! ...  And then he came back!
Now he is gone.  Gone a second time, and I have lost him now
for ever ... and he will not love me the littlest bit ever any
more--only hate me! ... O yes, I have lost him now--again because
of--you!"  In writhing, with her head on the chair, she turned her
face towards the door, and Mrs Brooks could see the pain upon it,
and that her lips were bleeding from the clench of her teeth upon
them, and that the long lashes of her closed eyes stuck in wet tags
to her cheeks.  She continued: "And he is dying--he looks as if he
is dying! ...  And my sin will kill him and not kill me! ...  O, you
have torn my life all to pieces ... made me be what I prayed you in
pity not to make me be again! ...  My own true husband will never,
never--O God--I can't bear this!--I cannot!"

There were more and sharper words from the man; then a sudden rustle;
she had sprung to her feet.  Mrs Brooks, thinking that the speaker
was coming to rush out of the door, hastily retreated down the
stairs.

She need not have done so, however, for the door of the sitting-room
was not opened.  But Mrs Brooks felt it unsafe to watch on the
landing again, and entered her own parlour below.

She could hear nothing through the floor, although she listened
intently, and thereupon went to the kitchen to finish her interrupted
breakfast.  Coming up presently to the front room on the ground floor
she took up some sewing, waiting for her lodgers to ring that she
might take away the breakfast, which she meant to do herself, to
discover what was the matter if possible.  Overhead, as she sat, she
could now hear the floorboards slightly creak, as if some one were
walking about, and presently the movement was explained by the rustle
of garments against the banisters, the opening and the closing of
the front door, and the form of Tess passing to the gate on her way
into the street.  She was fully dressed now in the walking costume
of a well-to-do young lady in which she had arrived, with the sole
addition that over her hat and black feathers a veil was drawn.

Mrs Brooks had not been able to catch any word of farewell, temporary
or otherwise, between her tenants at the door above.  They might have
quarrelled, or Mr d'Urberville might still be asleep, for he was not
an early riser.

She went into the back room, which was more especially her own
apartment, and continued her sewing there.  The lady lodger did not
return, nor did the gentleman ring his bell.  Mrs Brooks pondered on
the delay, and on what probable relation the visitor who had called
so early bore to the couple upstairs.  In reflecting she leant back
in her chair.

As she did so her eyes glanced casually over the ceiling till they
were arrested by a spot in the middle of its white surface which she
had never noticed there before.  It was about the size of a wafer
when she first observed it, but it speedily grew as large as the palm
of her hand, and then she could perceive that it was red.  The oblong
white ceiling, with this scarlet blot in the midst, had the
appearance of a gigantic ace of hearts.

Mrs Brooks had strange qualms of misgiving.  She got upon the table,
and touched the spot in the ceiling with her fingers. It was damp,
and she fancied that it was a blood stain.

Descending from the table, she left the parlour, and went upstairs,
intending to enter the room overhead, which was the bedchamber at
the back of the drawing-room.  But, nerveless woman as she had now
become, she could not bring herself to attempt the handle.  She
listened.  The dead silence within was broken only by a regular beat.

Drip, drip, drip.

Mrs Brooks hastened downstairs, opened the front door, and ran into
the street.  A man she knew, one of the workmen employed at an
adjoining villa, was passing by, and she begged him to come in and go
upstairs with her; she feared something had happened to one of her
lodgers.  The workman assented, and followed her to the landing.

She opened the door of the drawing-room, and stood back for him
to pass in, entering herself behind him.  The room was empty; the
breakfast--a substantial repast of coffee, eggs, and a cold ham--lay
spread upon the table untouched, as when she had taken it up,
excepting that the carving-knife was missing.  She asked the man to
go through the folding-doors into the adjoining room.

He opened the doors, entered a step or two, and came back almost
instantly with a rigid face.  "My good God, the gentleman in bed is
dead!  I think he has been hurt with a knife--a lot of blood had run
down upon the floor!"

The alarm was soon given, and the house which had lately been so
quiet resounded with the tramp of many footsteps, a surgeon among the
rest.  The wound was small, but the point of the blade had touched
the heart of the victim, who lay on his back, pale, fixed, dead, as
if he had scarcely moved after the infliction of the blow.  In a
quarter of an hour the news that a gentleman who was a temporary
visitor to the town had been stabbed in his bed, spread through every
street and villa of the popular watering-place.



Chapters 53-56
Angel's parents await his arrival from Brazil anxiously. He returns looking older and thinner from his journey to Brazil. He reads Tess' letters, immediately writing to her mother, Joan, to see if she is well and living at home. Joan's curt, short letter tells him she is not at home and Joan does not know Tess' whereabouts. Further, Angel finds that Tess had not visited his parents nor had she asked for any money in his absence. Angel makes plans to leave at once to find Tess when he reads the letter from Marian and Izz. Angel first goes to Flintcomb-Ash and Marlott to locate Tess. Instead, he finds John's grave and pays the sexton, or churchyard caretaker, for the balance owed on John's tombstone. He finds that the family is in Kingsbere and sets out for the Durbeyfield house. There, he finds Joan and asks her about Tess only to find she is now living in the fashionable seaside resort of Sandbourne. Angel treks to Sandbourne, arriving late at night, too late to find any information. The next morning, Angel finds Tess at an inn called The Herons, from information provided by a mailman. He goes to the inn and asks for Tess, where she is now known as Teresa d'Urberville. Tess has been living with Alec, and the pair has traveled to the resort for relaxation. Angel sees Tess, only to be told that she cannot go with him, that Alec has won her. Repeatedly, Tess tells Angel, "It is too late." She sends Angel away, urging him not to return, as she now belongs to Alec. Angel leaves the inn, wandering the streets aimlessly. Tess returns to her room to confront Alec. The innkeeper, Mrs. Brooks, watches the d'Urbervilles through a keyhole and from her office below their room. Tess realizes Alec's deception, blaming him for lying to her about Angel's future return so that he could once more have her. In her fury, Tess stabs Alec through the heart with a carving knife. She leaves the inn immediately to find Angel. In the interim, news of the murder moves quickly through the resort.
Joan's letter to Angel gives a hint that all is not well with Tess. The letter is short and terse, informing Angel that Joan has no idea where Tess has gone. He hurries to Flintcomb-Ash, Marlott, and Kingsbere to look for Tess. Joan recognizes Angel and is somewhat reticent to tell him all that she knows about Tess. Perhaps with the family's recent troubles in Marlott, she is keenly aware that the neighbors may judge her as harshly as did the people of Marlott. Angel asks, "Do you think Tess would wish me to try and find her?" Joan replies, "I don't think she would." Angel feels that Tess would want to see him again, even under these circumstances. Joan's remark that she cannot understand her daughter is especially telling, "That's very likely, sir; for I have never really known her." One cannot but help to see Tess as a mystery, too. Hardy's point is that even though we know people all of our lives, we oftentimes really do not "know" a person, no matter how hard we try. It is also a mother's exasperated response about how a daughter can grow up before her eyes and still be foreign to her. The scene at The Herons in Sandbourne between Tess and Angel is plausible because she is now living with Alec and has forsaken her husband. The outcome of the conversation between Tess and Angel is expected. However, the events in Chapter 56 are extraordinary and not expected. Tess kills her "master" with a carving knife to get away from him and to rid herself of the person who turned her life upside down. She rages when she discovers Alec's deception and manipulation of her. When the deed is done, like a Greek tragedy, the action is off-stage. The only hint of Alec's murder is his blood staining the ceiling of the room below his -- "The oblong white ceiling, with this scarlet blot in the midst, had the appearance of a gigantic ace of hearts." Tess' choice of stabbing Alec in the heart is noteworthy because the heart is the seat of emotion, and stabbing him in the heart kills the emotional side of their relationship; thus Tess has no "emotional strings" attached to Alec any longer. She is truly free from his influence, but at a tremendous price. Glossary Crivelli's dead Christus probably the Pieta by the fifteenth-century Italian painter, Carlo Crivelli , in the National Gallery in London. "which alters when it alteration finds" from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. Faustina wife of Roman Emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius, she was reputed to be unfaithful. Cornelia wife of Scipio Africanus the Younger , who devoted herself to raising her twelve children and refused offers of marriage after she was widowed . Lucretia or Lucrece, wife of Collantius, known for her virtue, who killed herself after being raped by Lucius Tarquinius. Phryne Athenian courtesan who was the model and lover of Praxiteles, the sculptor. "one deserving to be stoned" from John 8:3-11, instead of encouraging stoning, Jesus forgives a woman brought to him as an adulteress by the Scribes and Pharisees. "wife of Uriah" Bathsheba, whom King David committed adultery with and then married after sending Uriah to his death on battle, from 2 Samuel 11. "tale told by an idiot" from Macbeth 5.5.26-27. "How are the mighty fallen" from 2 Samuel 1:19. "prophet's gourd" from Jonah 4:5-10, a gourd springs up overnight to give shade to Jonah. Ixionian wheel in Greek mythology, Ixion's eternal punishment was to be bound to a revolving wheel of fire.