finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_3_part_9.txt
Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 33
chapter 33
{"name": "Chapter 33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-4-chapters-25-34", "summary": "Angel wishes to spend a day with Tess away from the dairy before the wedding, thus they spend a day in the nearest town on Christmas Eve. While in town, others remark that she is a comely maid, although a Trantridge man thinks that he recognizes her. He thinks that she was once a woman of ill repute. That night, Angel has a dream that he fought with the man who insulted Tess. This is the last thing required for Tess to turn the scale of her indecision. Tess writes on four pages a succinct narrative of those events of years before and slips it under his door. The next morning, Angel meets her at the bottom of the stairs and kisses her as warmly as ever. Tess feels that her doubts were childish and he may have forgiven her. On the wedding day, Tess finds in Angel's room the note under the carpet, unopened and never seen. Tess attempts to tell Angel once more, but she does not. On the way to the church, Tess believes that she has seen the carriage before. Angel tells Tess the legend of the d'Urberville Coach, the superstition of the county that a certain d'Urberville who committed a dreadful crime in his family coach. Supposedly, members of the d'Urberville family see the coach at certain times, but Angel refuses to tell Tess when. Tess marries Angel, but feels that she is somewhat more truly Mrs. Alexander d'Urberville. When she finds herself alone, Tess prays. Although she tries to pray to God, she in fact prays to Angel. As the two leave Talbothays, Tess advises Angel to kiss her three roommates one more time. On their way out of Talbothays, they see an afternoon crow.", "analysis": "Tess averts the disaster that her reputation provides twice in this chapter. For the first time since leaving Marlott, Tess confronts her past when a Trantridge man recognizes her and believes her to be a woman with a tarnished reputation. Although Angel defends her, he does so without conceiving that the man's accusations against Tess may contain any truth. Tess averts a second disaster when Angel seems to respond favorably to the letter that Tess writes to him. Angel behaves as if nothing has troubled him the next morning after he has supposedly read the letter, and says nothing of its subject; his reaction, as Hardy foreshadows and eventually explains by the end of the chapter, stems from having not read the letter at all. The realization that Angel has not read the letter concerning Tess's past serves as a turning point. The anxiety and guilt that Tess has felt in previous chapters has been internalized. After this point on the wedding day, Hardy gives this anxiety physical manifestation through several symbols of foreboding. The appearance of an afternoon crow is a conventional sign foreshadowing ill omens, while Tess's vision of the d'Urberville coach foreshadows tragedy particular to her ancestors. This further bolsters the theme of Tess's inability to escape her d'Urberville past. Although now married to Angel Clare, Tess Durbeyfield cannot fully repudiate her ancestry and personal history"}


Angel felt that he would like to spend a day with her before the
wedding, somewhere away from the dairy, as a last jaunt in her
company while there were yet mere lover and mistress; a romantic day,
in circumstances that would never be repeated; with that other and
greater day beaming close ahead of them.  During the preceding week,
therefore, he suggested making a few purchases in the nearest town,
and they started together.

Clare's life at the dairy had been that of a recluse in respect the
world of his own class.  For months he had never gone near a town,
and, requiring no vehicle, had never kept one, hiring the dairyman's
cob or gig if he rode or drove.  They went in the gig that day.

And then for the first time in their lives they shopped as partners
in one concern.  It was Christmas Eve, with its loads a holly and
mistletoe, and the town was very full of strangers who had come in
from all parts of the country on account of the day.  Tess paid the
penalty of walking about with happiness superadded to beauty on her
countenance by being much stared at as she moved amid them on his
arm.

In the evening they returned to the inn at which they had put up, and
Tess waited in the entry while Angel went to see the horse and gig
brought to the door.  The general sitting-room was full of guests,
who were continually going in and out.  As the door opened and shut
each time for the passage of these, the light within the parlour fell
full upon Tess's face.  Two men came out and passed by her among the
rest.  One of them had stared her up and down in surprise, and she
fancied he was a Trantridge man, though that village lay so many
miles off that Trantridge folk were rarities here.

"A comely maid that," said the other.

"True, comely enough.  But unless I make a great mistake--"  And he
negatived the remainder of the definition forthwith.

Clare had just returned from the stable-yard, and, confronting the
man on the threshold, heard the words, and saw the shrinking of
Tess.  The insult to her stung him to the quick, and before he had
considered anything at all he struck the man on the chin with the
full force of his fist, sending him staggering backwards into the
passage.

The man recovered himself, and seemed inclined to come on, and Clare,
stepping outside the door, put himself in a posture of defence.  But
his opponent began to think better of the matter.  He looked anew at
Tess as he passed her, and said to Clare--

"I beg pardon, sir; 'twas a complete mistake.  I thought she was
another woman, forty miles from here."

Clare, feeling then that he had been too hasty, and that he was,
moreover, to blame for leaving her standing in an inn-passage, did
what he usually did in such cases, gave the man five shillings to
plaster the blow; and thus they parted, bidding each other a pacific
good night.  As soon as Clare had taken the reins from the ostler,
and the young couple had driven off, the two men went in the other
direction.

"And was it a mistake?" said the second one.

"Not a bit of it.  But I didn't want to hurt the gentleman's
feelings--not I."

In the meantime the lovers were driving onward.

"Could we put off our wedding till a little later?" Tess asked in a
dry dull voice.  "I mean if we wished?"

"No, my love.  Calm yourself.  Do you mean that the fellow may have
time to summon me for assault?" he asked good-humouredly.

"No--I only meant--if it should have to be put off."

What she meant was not very clear, and he directed her to dismiss
such fancies from her mind, which she obediently did as well as she
could.  But she was grave, very grave, all the way home; till she
thought, "We shall go away, a very long distance, hundreds of miles
from these parts, and such as this can never happen again, and no
ghost of the past reach there."

They parted tenderly that night on the landing, and Clare ascended to
his attic.  Tess sat up getting on with some little requisites, lest
the few remaining days should not afford sufficient time.  While she
sat she heard a noise in Angel's room overhead, a sound of thumping
and struggling.  Everybody else in the house was asleep, and in her
anxiety lest Clare should be ill she ran up and knocked at his door,
and asked him what was the matter.

"Oh, nothing, dear," he said from within.  "I am so sorry I disturbed
you!  But the reason is rather an amusing one: I fell asleep and
dreamt that I was fighting that fellow again who insulted you,
and the noise you heard was my pummelling away with my fists at
my portmanteau, which I pulled out to-day for packing.  I am
occasionally liable to these freaks in my sleep. Go to bed and
think of it no more."

This was the last drachm required to turn the scale of her
indecision.  Declare the past to him by word of mouth she could not;
but there was another way.  She sat down and wrote on the four pages
of a note-sheet a succinct narrative of those events of three or four
years ago, put it into an envelope, and directed it to Clare.  Then,
lest the flesh should again be weak, she crept upstairs without any
shoes and slipped the note under his door.

Her night was a broken one, as it well might be, and she listened for
the first faint noise overhead.  It came, as usual; he descended, as
usual.  She descended.  He met her at the bottom of the stairs and
kissed her. Surely it was as warmly as ever!

He looked a little disturbed and worn, she thought.  But he said not
a word to her about her revelation, even when they were alone.  Could
he have had it?  Unless he began the subject she felt that she could
say nothing.  So the day passed, and it was evident that whatever
he thought he meant to keep to himself.  Yet he was frank and
affectionate as before.  Could it be that her doubts were childish?
that he forgave her; that he loved her for what she was, just as she
was, and smiled at her disquiet as at a foolish nightmare?  Had he
really received her note?  She glanced into his room, and could see
nothing of it.  It might be that he forgave her.  But even if he had
not received it she had a sudden enthusiastic trust that he surely
would forgive her.

Every morning and night he was the same, and thus New Year's Eve
broke--the wedding day.

The lovers did not rise at milking-time, having through the whole of
this last week of their sojourn at the dairy been accorded something
of the position of guests, Tess being honoured with a room of her
own.  When they arrived downstairs at breakfast-time they were
surprised to see what effects had been produced in the large
kitchen for their glory since they had last beheld it.  At some
unnatural hour of the morning the dairyman had caused the yawning
chimney-corner to be whitened, and the brick hearth reddened, and a
blazing yellow damask blower to be hung across the arch in place of
the old grimy blue cotton one with a black sprig pattern which had
formerly done duty there.  This renovated aspect of what was the
focus indeed of the room on a full winter morning threw a smiling
demeanour over the whole apartment.

"I was determined to do summat in honour o't", said the dairyman.
"And as you wouldn't hear of my gieing a rattling good randy wi'
fiddles and bass-viols complete, as we should ha' done in old times,
this was all I could think o' as a noiseless thing."

Tess's friends lived so far off that none could conveniently have
been present at the ceremony, even had any been asked; but as a fact
nobody was invited from Marlott.  As for Angel's family, he had
written and duly informed them of the time, and assured them that he
would be glad to see one at least of them there for the day if he
would like to come.  His brothers had not replied at all, seeming
to be indignant with him; while his father and mother had written
a rather sad letter, deploring his precipitancy in rushing into
marriage, but making the best of the matter by saying that, though
a dairywoman was the last daughter-in-law they could have expected,
their son had arrived at an age which he might be supposed to be the
best judge.

This coolness in his relations distressed Clare less than it would
have done had he been without the grand card with which he meant to
surprise them ere long.  To produce Tess, fresh from the dairy, as
a d'Urberville and a lady, he had felt to be temerarious and risky;
hence he had concealed her lineage till such time as, familiarized
with worldly ways by a few months' travel and reading with him, he
could take her on a visit to his parents and impart the knowledge
while triumphantly producing her as worthy of such an ancient line.
It was a pretty lover's dream, if no more.  Perhaps Tess's lineage
had more value for himself than for anybody in the world beside.

Her perception that Angel's bearing towards her still remained in no
whit altered by her own communication rendered Tess guiltily doubtful
if he could have received it.  She rose from breakfast before he had
finished, and hastened upstairs.  It had occurred to her to look once
more into the queer gaunt room which had been Clare's den, or rather
eyrie, for so long, and climbing the ladder she stood at the open
door of the apartment, regarding and pondering.  She stooped to the
threshold of the doorway, where she had pushed in the note two or
three days earlier in such excitement.  The carpet reached close to
the sill, and under the edge of the carpet she discerned the faint
white margin of the envelope containing her letter to him, which he
obviously had never seen, owing to her having in her haste thrust it
beneath the carpet as well as beneath the door.

With a feeling of faintness she withdrew the letter. There it
was--sealed up, just as it had left her hands.  The mountain had
not yet been removed.  She could not let him read it now, the house
being in full bustle of preparation; and descending to her own room
she destroyed the letter there.

She was so pale when he saw her again that he felt quite anxious.
The incident of the misplaced letter she had jumped at as if it
prevented a confession; but she knew in her conscience that it need
not; there was still time.  Yet everything was in a stir; there
was coming and going; all had to dress, the dairyman and Mrs Crick
having been asked to accompany them as witnesses; and reflection or
deliberate talk was well-nigh impossible.  The only minute Tess could
get to be alone with Clare was when they met upon the landing.

"I am so anxious to talk to you--I want to confess all my faults and
blunders!" she said with attempted lightness.

"No, no--we can't have faults talked of--you must be deemed perfect
to-day at least, my Sweet!" he cried.  "We shall have plenty of time,
hereafter, I hope, to talk over our failings.  I will confess mine at
the same time."

"But it would be better for me to do it now, I think, so that you
could not say--"

"Well, my quixotic one, you shall tell me anything--say, as soon as
we are settled in our lodging; not now.  I, too, will tell you my
faults then.  But do not let us spoil the day with them; they will
be excellent matter for a dull time."

"Then you don't wish me to, dearest?"

"I do not, Tessy, really."

The hurry of dressing and starting left no time for more than this.
Those words of his seemed to reassure her on further reflection.
She was whirled onward through the next couple of critical hours by
the mastering tide of her devotion to him, which closed up further
meditation.  Her one desire, so long resisted, to make herself his,
to call him her lord, her own--then, if necessary, to die--had
at last lifted her up from her plodding reflective pathway.  In
dressing, she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured
idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its
brightness.

The church was a long way off, and they were obliged to drive,
particularly as it was winter.  A closed carriage was ordered from
a roadside inn, a vehicle which had been kept there ever since the
old days of post-chaise travelling.  It had stout wheel-spokes, and
heavy felloes a great curved bed, immense straps and springs, and a
pole like a battering-ram.  The postilion was a venerable "boy" of
sixty--a martyr to rheumatic gout, the result of excessive exposure
in youth, counter-acted by strong liquors--who had stood at inn-doors
doing nothing for the whole five-and-twenty years that had elapsed
since he had no longer been required to ride professionally, as if
expecting the old times to come back again.  He had a permanent
running wound on the outside of his right leg, originated by the
constant bruisings of aristocratic carriage-poles during the many
years that he had been in regular employ at the King's Arms,
Casterbridge.

Inside this cumbrous and creaking structure, and behind this decayed
conductor, the _partie carree_ took their seats--the bride and
bridegroom and Mr and Mrs Crick.  Angel would have liked one at least
of his brothers to be present as groomsman, but their silence after
his gentle hint to that effect by letter had signified that they did
not care to come.  They disapproved of the marriage, and could not be
expected to countenance it.  Perhaps it was as well that they could
not be present. They were not worldly young fellows, but fraternizing
with dairy-folk would have struck unpleasantly upon their biased
niceness, apart from their views of the match.

Upheld by the momentum of the time, Tess knew nothing of this, did
not see anything, did not know the road they were taking to the
church.  She knew that Angel was close to her; all the rest was
a luminous mist.  She was a sort of celestial person, who owed
her being to poetry--one of those classical divinities Clare was
accustomed to talk to her about when they took their walks together.

The marriage being by licence there were only a dozen or so of people
in the church; had there been a thousand they would have produced
no more effect upon her.  They were at stellar distances from her
present world.  In the ecstatic solemnity with which she swore her
faith to him the ordinary sensibilities of sex seemed a flippancy.
At a pause in the service, while they were kneeling together, she
unconsciously inclined herself towards him, so that her shoulder
touched his arm; she had been frightened by a passing thought, and
the movement had been automatic, to assure herself that he was really
there, and to fortify her belief that his fidelity would be proof
against all things.

Clare knew that she loved him--every curve of her form showed that--
but he did not know at that time the full depth of her devotion, its
single-mindedness, its meekness; what long-suffering it guaranteed,
what honesty, what endurance, what good faith.

As they came out of church the ringers swung the bells off their
rests, and a modest peal of three notes broke forth--that limited
amount of expression having been deemed sufficient by the church
builders for the joys of such a small parish.  Passing by the tower
with her husband on the path to the gate she could feel the vibrant
air humming round them from the louvred belfry in the circle of
sound, and it matched the highly-charged mental atmosphere in which
she was living.

This condition of mind, wherein she felt glorified by an irradiation
not her own, like the angel whom St John saw in the sun, lasted till
the sound of the church bells had died away, and the emotions of the
wedding-service had calmed down.  Her eyes could dwell upon details
more clearly now, and Mr and Mrs Crick having directed their own gig
to be sent for them, to leave the carriage to the young couple, she
observed the build and character of that conveyance for the first
time.  Sitting in silence she regarded it long.

"I fancy you seem oppressed, Tessy," said Clare.

"Yes," she answered, putting her hand to her brow.  "I tremble at
many things.  It is all so serious, Angel.  Among other things I seem
to have seen this carriage before, to be very well acquainted with
it.  It is very odd--I must have seen it in a dream."

"Oh--you have heard the legend of the d'Urberville Coach--that
well-known superstition of this county about your family when they
were very popular here; and this lumbering old thing reminds you of
it."

"I have never heard of it to my knowledge," said she.  "What is the
legend--may I know it?"

"Well--I would rather not tell it in detail just now.  A certain
d'Urberville of the sixteenth or seventeenth century committed a
dreadful crime in his family coach; and since that time members of
the family see or hear the old coach whenever--But I'll tell you
another day--it is rather gloomy.  Evidently some dim knowledge of
it has been brought back to your mind by the sight of this venerable
caravan."

"I don't remember hearing it before," she murmured.  "Is it when we
are going to die, Angel, that members of my family see it, or is it
when we have committed a crime?"

"Now, Tess!"

He silenced her by a kiss.

By the time they reached home she was contrite and spiritless.  She
was Mrs Angel Clare, indeed, but had she any moral right to the name?
Was she not more truly Mrs Alexander d'Urberville?  Could intensity
of love justify what might be considered in upright souls as culpable
reticence?  She knew not what was expected of women in such cases;
and she had no counsellor.

However, when she found herself alone in her room for a few
minutes--the last day this on which she was ever to enter it--she
knelt down and prayed.  She tried to pray to God, but it was her
husband who really had her supplication.  Her idolatry of this man
was such that she herself almost feared it to be ill-omened.  She was
conscious of the notion expressed by Friar Laurence: "These violent
delights have violent ends."  It might be too desperate for human
conditions--too rank, to wild, too deadly.

"O my love, why do I love you so!" she whispered there alone; "for
she you love is not my real self, but one in my image; the one I
might have been!"

Afternoon came, and with it the hour for departure. They had decided
to fulfil the plan of going for a few days to the lodgings in the old
farmhouse near Wellbridge Mill, at which he meant to reside during
his investigation of flour processes.  At two o'clock there was
nothing left to do but to start.  All the servantry of the dairy were
standing in the red-brick entry to see them go out, the dairyman and
his wife following to the door.  Tess saw her three chamber-mates
in a row against the wall, pensively inclining their heads.  She
had much questioned if they would appear at the parting moment; but
there they were, stoical and staunch to the last.  She knew why the
delicate Retty looked so fragile, and Izz so tragically sorrowful,
and Marian so blank; and she forgot her own dogging shadow for a
moment in contemplating theirs.

She impulsively whispered to him--

"Will you kiss 'em all, once, poor things, for the first and last
time?"

Clare had not the least objection to such a farewell formality--which
was all that it was to him--and as he passed them he kissed them in
succession where they stood, saying "Goodbye" to each as he did so.
When they reached the door Tess femininely glanced back to discern
the effect of that kiss of charity; there was no triumph in her
glance, as there might have been.  If there had it would have
disappeared when she saw how moved the girls all were.  The kiss had
obviously done harm by awakening feelings they were trying to subdue.

Of all this Clare was unconscious.  Passing on to the wicket-gate he
shook hands with the dairyman and his wife, and expressed his last
thanks to them for their attentions; after which there was a moment
of silence before they had moved off.  It was interrupted by the
crowing of a cock.  The white one with the rose comb had come and
settled on the palings in front of the house, within a few yards of
them, and his notes thrilled their ears through, dwindling away like
echoes down a valley of rocks.

"Oh?" said Mrs Crick.  "An afternoon crow!"

Two men were standing by the yard gate, holding it open.

"That's bad," one murmured to the other, not thinking that the words
could be heard by the group at the door-wicket.

The cock crew again--straight towards Clare.

"Well!" said the dairyman.

"I don't like to hear him!" said Tess to her husband.  "Tell the man
to drive on.  Goodbye, goodbye!"

The cock crew again.

"Hoosh!  Just you be off, sir, or I'll twist your neck!" said the
dairyman with some irritation, turning to the bird and driving him
away.  And to his wife as they went indoors: "Now, to think o' that
just to-day!  I've not heard his crow of an afternoon all the year
afore."

"It only means a change in the weather," said she; "not what you
think: 'tis impossible!"



Chapter 33
Angel wishes to spend a day with Tess away from the dairy before the wedding, thus they spend a day in the nearest town on Christmas Eve. While in town, others remark that she is a comely maid, although a Trantridge man thinks that he recognizes her. He thinks that she was once a woman of ill repute. That night, Angel has a dream that he fought with the man who insulted Tess. This is the last thing required for Tess to turn the scale of her indecision. Tess writes on four pages a succinct narrative of those events of years before and slips it under his door. The next morning, Angel meets her at the bottom of the stairs and kisses her as warmly as ever. Tess feels that her doubts were childish and he may have forgiven her. On the wedding day, Tess finds in Angel's room the note under the carpet, unopened and never seen. Tess attempts to tell Angel once more, but she does not. On the way to the church, Tess believes that she has seen the carriage before. Angel tells Tess the legend of the d'Urberville Coach, the superstition of the county that a certain d'Urberville who committed a dreadful crime in his family coach. Supposedly, members of the d'Urberville family see the coach at certain times, but Angel refuses to tell Tess when. Tess marries Angel, but feels that she is somewhat more truly Mrs. Alexander d'Urberville. When she finds herself alone, Tess prays. Although she tries to pray to God, she in fact prays to Angel. As the two leave Talbothays, Tess advises Angel to kiss her three roommates one more time. On their way out of Talbothays, they see an afternoon crow.
Tess averts the disaster that her reputation provides twice in this chapter. For the first time since leaving Marlott, Tess confronts her past when a Trantridge man recognizes her and believes her to be a woman with a tarnished reputation. Although Angel defends her, he does so without conceiving that the man's accusations against Tess may contain any truth. Tess averts a second disaster when Angel seems to respond favorably to the letter that Tess writes to him. Angel behaves as if nothing has troubled him the next morning after he has supposedly read the letter, and says nothing of its subject; his reaction, as Hardy foreshadows and eventually explains by the end of the chapter, stems from having not read the letter at all. The realization that Angel has not read the letter concerning Tess's past serves as a turning point. The anxiety and guilt that Tess has felt in previous chapters has been internalized. After this point on the wedding day, Hardy gives this anxiety physical manifestation through several symbols of foreboding. The appearance of an afternoon crow is a conventional sign foreshadowing ill omens, while Tess's vision of the d'Urberville coach foreshadows tragedy particular to her ancestors. This further bolsters the theme of Tess's inability to escape her d'Urberville past. Although now married to Angel Clare, Tess Durbeyfield cannot fully repudiate her ancestry and personal history