On the morning appointed for her departure Tess was awake before
dawn--at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still
mute, save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced
conviction that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest
preserving silence as if equally convinced that he is mistaken.  She
remained upstairs packing till breakfast-time, and then came down in
her ordinary week-day clothes, her Sunday apparel being carefully
folded in her box.

Her mother expostulated. "You will never set out to see your folks
without dressing up more the dand than that?"

"But I am going to work!" said Tess.

"Well, yes," said Mrs Durbeyfield; and in a private tone, "at first
there mid be a little pretence o't ...  But I think it will be wiser
of 'ee to put your best side outward," she added.

"Very well; I suppose you know best," replied Tess with calm
abandonment.

And to please her parent the girl put herself quite in Joan's hands,
saying serenely--"Do what you like with me, mother."

Mrs Durbeyfield was only too delighted at this tractability.
First she fetched a great basin, and washed Tess's hair with such
thoroughness that when dried and brushed it looked twice as much as
at other times.  She tied it with a broader pink ribbon than usual.
Then she put upon her the white frock that Tess had worn at the
club-walking, the airy fulness of which, supplementing her enlarged
_coiffure_, imparted to her developing figure an amplitude which
belied her age, and might cause her to be estimated as a woman when
she was not much more than a child.

"I declare there's a hole in my stocking-heel!" said Tess.

"Never mind holes in your stockings--they don't speak!  When I was a
maid, so long as I had a pretty bonnet the devil might ha' found me
in heels."

Her mother's pride in the girl's appearance led her to step back,
like a painter from his easel, and survey her work as a whole.

"You must zee yourself!" she cried.  "It is much better than you was
t'other day."

As the looking-glass was only large enough to reflect a very small
portion of Tess's person at one time, Mrs Durbeyfield hung a black
cloak outside the casement, and so made a large reflector of the
panes, as it is the wont of bedecking cottagers to do.  After this
she went downstairs to her husband, who was sitting in the lower
room.

"I'll tell 'ee what 'tis, Durbeyfield," said she exultingly; "he'll
never have the heart not to love her.  But whatever you do, don't zay
too much to Tess of his fancy for her, and this chance she has got.
She is such an odd maid that it mid zet her against him, or against
going there, even now.  If all goes well, I shall certainly be for
making some return to pa'son at Stagfoot Lane for telling us--dear,
good man!"

However, as the moment for the girl's setting out drew nigh, when the
first excitement of the dressing had passed off, a slight misgiving
found place in Joan Durbeyfield's mind.  It prompted the matron to
say that she would walk a little way--as far as to the point where
the acclivity from the valley began its first steep ascent to
the outer world.  At the top Tess was going to be met with the
spring-cart sent by the Stoke-d'Urbervilles, and her box had already
been wheeled ahead towards this summit by a lad with trucks, to be in
readiness.

Seeing their mother put on her bonnet, the younger children clamoured
to go with her.

"I do want to walk a little-ways wi' Sissy, now she's going to marry
our gentleman-cousin, and wear fine cloze!"

"Now," said Tess, flushing and turning quickly, "I'll hear no more o'
that!  Mother, how could you ever put such stuff into their heads?"

"Going to work, my dears, for our rich relation, and help get enough
money for a new horse," said Mrs Durbeyfield pacifically.

"Goodbye, father," said Tess, with a lumpy throat.

"Goodbye, my maid," said Sir John, raising his head from his breast
as he suspended his nap, induced by a slight excess this morning in
honour of the occasion.  "Well, I hope my young friend will like such
a comely sample of his own blood.  And tell'n, Tess, that being sunk,
quite, from our former grandeur, I'll sell him the title--yes, sell
it--and at no onreasonable figure."

"Not for less than a thousand pound!" cried Lady Durbeyfield.

"Tell'n--I'll take a thousand pound.  Well, I'll take less, when
I come to think o't.  He'll adorn it better than a poor lammicken
feller like myself can.  Tell'n he shall hae it for a hundred.  But
I won't stand upon trifles--tell'n he shall hae it for fifty--for
twenty pound!  Yes, twenty pound--that's the lowest.  Dammy, family
honour is family honour, and I won't take a penny less!"

Tess's eyes were too full and her voice too choked to utter the
sentiments that were in her.  She turned quickly, and went out.

So the girls and their mother all walked together, a child on each
side of Tess, holding her hand and looking at her meditatively from
time to time, as at one who was about to do great things; her mother
just behind with the smallest; the group forming a picture of honest
beauty flanked by innocence, and backed by simple-souled vanity.
They followed the way till they reached the beginning of the ascent,
on the crest of which the vehicle from Trantridge was to receive her,
this limit having been fixed to save the horse the labour of the last
slope.  Far away behind the first hills the cliff-like dwellings
of Shaston broke the line of the ridge. Nobody was visible in the
elevated road which skirted the ascent save the lad whom they had
sent on before them, sitting on the handle of the barrow that
contained all Tess's worldly possessions.

"Bide here a bit, and the cart will soon come, no doubt," said Mrs
Durbeyfield.  "Yes, I see it yonder!"

It had come--appearing suddenly from behind the forehead of the
nearest upland, and stopping beside the boy with the barrow.  Her
mother and the children thereupon decided to go no farther, and
bidding them a hasty goodbye, Tess bent her steps up the hill.

They saw her white shape draw near to the spring-cart, on which her
box was already placed.  But before she had quite reached it another
vehicle shot out from a clump of trees on the summit, came round the
bend of the road there, passed the luggage-cart, and halted beside
Tess, who looked up as if in great surprise.

Her mother perceived, for the first time, that the second vehicle was
not a humble conveyance like the first, but a spick-and-span gig or
dog-cart, highly varnished and equipped.  The driver was a young man
of three- or four-and-twenty, with a cigar between his teeth; wearing
a dandy cap, drab jacket, breeches of the same hue, white neckcloth,
stick-up collar, and brown driving-gloves--in short, he was the
handsome, horsey young buck who had visited Joan a week or two before
to get her answer about Tess.

Mrs Durbeyfield clapped her hands like a child.  Then she looked
down, then stared again.  Could she be deceived as to the meaning of
this?

"Is dat the gentleman-kinsman who'll make Sissy a lady?" asked the
youngest child.

Meanwhile the muslined form of Tess could be seen standing still,
undecided, beside this turn-out, whose owner was talking to her.
Her seeming indecision was, in fact, more than indecision: it was
misgiving.  She would have preferred the humble cart.  The young
man dismounted, and appeared to urge her to ascend.  She turned her
face down the hill to her relatives, and regarded the little group.
Something seemed to quicken her to a determination; possibly the
thought that she had killed Prince.  She suddenly stepped up; he
mounted beside her, and immediately whipped on the horse.  In a
moment they had passed the slow cart with the box, and disappeared
behind the shoulder of the hill.

Directly Tess was out of sight, and the interest of the matter as a
drama was at an end, the little ones' eyes filled with tears.  The
youngest child said, "I wish poor, poor Tess wasn't gone away to be a
lady!" and, lowering the corners of his lips, burst out crying.  The
new point of view was infectious, and the next child did likewise,
and then the next, till the whole three of them wailed loud.

There were tears also in Joan Durbeyfield's eyes as she turned to
go home.  But by the time she had got back to the village she was
passively trusting to the favour of accident.  However, in bed that
night she sighed, and her husband asked her what was the matter.

"Oh, I don't know exactly," she said.  "I was thinking that perhaps
it would ha' been better if Tess had not gone."

"Oughtn't ye to have thought of that before?"

"Well, 'tis a chance for the maid--Still, if 'twere the doing again,
I wouldn't let her go till I had found out whether the gentleman
is really a good-hearted young man and choice over her as his
kinswoman."

"Yes, you ought, perhaps, to ha' done that," snored Sir John.

Joan Durbeyfield always managed to find consolation somewhere: "Well,
as one of the genuine stock, she ought to make her way with 'en, if
she plays her trump card aright.  And if he don't marry her afore he
will after.  For that he's all afire wi' love for her any eye can
see."

"What's her trump card?  Her d'Urberville blood, you mean?"

"No, stupid; her face--as 'twas mine."

Tess is dejected about leaving Marlott. However, her mother scolds her and makes her wear the white dress she wore at the May Day dance. Joan is sure Alec d'Urberville will marry her beautiful daughter. Her father tells Tess that he would be willing to sell his title, Sir John, to d'Urberville, for one thousand pounds, and then lowers the price incrementally to fifty pounds. Alec arrives in a carriage to take Tess to her new job and Joan has a moment of fear--allowing Tess to leave might not be a good decision--but believes Tess will make out all right if she plays her trump card right


Having mounted beside her, Alec d'Urberville drove rapidly along
the crest of the first hill, chatting compliments to Tess as they
went, the cart with her box being left far behind.  Rising still, an
immense landscape stretched around them on every side; behind, the
green valley of her birth, before, a gray country of which she knew
nothing except from her first brief visit to Trantridge.  Thus they
reached the verge of an incline down which the road stretched in a
long straight descent of nearly a mile.

Ever since the accident with her father's horse Tess Durbeyfield,
courageous as she naturally was, had been exceedingly timid on
wheels; the least irregularity of motion startled her.  She began to
get uneasy at a certain recklessness in her conductor's driving.

"You will go down slow, sir, I suppose?" she said with attempted
unconcern.

D'Urberville looked round upon her, nipped his cigar with the tips of
his large white centre-teeth, and allowed his lips to smile slowly of
themselves.

"Why, Tess," he answered, after another whiff or two, "it isn't a
brave bouncing girl like you who asks that?  Why, I always go down at
full gallop.  There's nothing like it for raising your spirits."

"But perhaps you need not now?"

"Ah," he said, shaking his head, "there are two to be reckoned with.
It is not me alone.  Tib has to be considered, and she has a very
queer temper."

"Who?"

"Why, this mare.  I fancy she looked round at me in a very grim way
just then.  Didn't you notice it?"

"Don't try to frighten me, sir," said Tess stiffly.

"Well, I don't.  If any living man can manage this horse I can: I
won't say any living man can do it--but if such has the power, I am
he."

"Why do you have such a horse?"

"Ah, well may you ask it!  It was my fate, I suppose. Tib has killed
one chap; and just after I bought her she nearly killed me.  And
then, take my word for it, I nearly killed her.  But she's touchy
still, very touchy; and one's life is hardly safe behind her
sometimes."

They were just beginning to descend; and it was evident that the
horse, whether of her own will or of his (the latter being the more
likely), knew so well the reckless performance expected of her that
she hardly required a hint from behind.

Down, down, they sped, the wheels humming like a top, the dog-cart
rocking right and left, its axis acquiring a slightly oblique set
in relation to the line of progress; the figure of the horse rising
and falling in undulations before them.  Sometimes a wheel was off
the ground, it seemed, for many yards; sometimes a stone was sent
spinning over the hedge, and flinty sparks from the horse's hoofs
outshone the daylight.  The aspect of the straight road enlarged with
their advance, the two banks dividing like a splitting stick; one
rushing past at each shoulder.

The wind blew through Tess's white muslin to her very skin, and her
washed hair flew out behind.  She was determined to show no open
fear, but she clutched d'Urberville's rein-arm.

"Don't touch my arm!  We shall be thrown out if you do!  Hold on
round my waist!"

She grasped his waist, and so they reached the bottom.

"Safe, thank God, in spite of your fooling!" said she, her face on
fire.

"Tess--fie! that's temper!" said d'Urberville.

"'Tis truth."

"Well, you need not let go your hold of me so thanklessly the moment
you feel yourself our of danger."

She had not considered what she had been doing; whether he were man
or woman, stick or stone, in her involuntary hold on him.  Recovering
her reserve, she sat without replying, and thus they reached the
summit of another declivity.

"Now then, again!" said d'Urberville.

"No, no!" said Tess.  "Show more sense, do, please."

"But when people find themselves on one of the highest points in the
county, they must get down again," he retorted.

He loosened rein, and away they went a second time.  D'Urberville
turned his face to her as they rocked, and said, in playful raillery:
"Now then, put your arms round my waist again, as you did before, my
Beauty."

"Never!" said Tess independently, holding on as well as she could
without touching him.

"Let me put one little kiss on those holmberry lips, Tess, or even on
that warmed cheek, and I'll stop--on my honour, I will!"

Tess, surprised beyond measure, slid farther back still on her seat,
at which he urged the horse anew, and rocked her the more.

"Will nothing else do?" she cried at length, in desperation, her
large eyes staring at him like those of a wild animal.  This dressing
her up so prettily by her mother had apparently been to lamentable
purpose.

"Nothing, dear Tess," he replied.

"Oh, I don't know--very well; I don't mind!" she panted miserably.

He drew rein, and as they slowed he was on the point of imprinting
the desired salute, when, as if hardly yet aware of her own modesty,
she dodged aside.  His arms being occupied with the reins there was
left him no power to prevent her manoeuvre.

"Now, damn it--I'll break both our necks!" swore her capriciously
passionate companion.  "So you can go from your word like that, you
young witch, can you?"

"Very well," said Tess, "I'll not move since you be so determined!
But I--thought you would be kind to me, and protect me, as my
kinsman!"

"Kinsman be hanged!  Now!"

"But I don't want anybody to kiss me, sir!" she implored, a big
tear beginning to roll down her face, and the corners of her mouth
trembling in her attempts not to cry.  "And I wouldn't ha' come if
I had known!"

He was inexorable, and she sat still, and d'Urberville gave her the
kiss of mastery.  No sooner had he done so than she flushed with
shame, took out her handkerchief, and wiped the spot on her cheek
that had been touched by his lips.  His ardour was nettled at the
sight, for the act on her part had been unconsciously done.

"You are mighty sensitive for a cottage girl!" said the young man.

Tess made no reply to this remark, of which, indeed, she did not
quite comprehend the drift, unheeding the snub she had administered
by her instinctive rub upon her cheek.  She had, in fact, undone the
kiss, as far as such a thing was physically possible.  With a dim
sense that he was vexed she looked steadily ahead as they trotted on
near Melbury Down and Wingreen, till she saw, to her consternation,
that there was yet another descent to be undergone.

"You shall be made sorry for that!" he resumed, his injured tone
still remaining, as he flourished the whip anew.  "Unless, that is,
you agree willingly to let me do it again, and no handkerchief."

She sighed. "Very well, sir!" she said.  "Oh--let me get my hat!"

At the moment of speaking her hat had blown off into the road, their
present speed on the upland being by no means slow.  D'Urberville
pulled up, and said he would get it for her, but Tess was down on the
other side.

She turned back and picked up the article.

"You look prettier with it off, upon my soul, if that's possible," he
said, contemplating her over the back of the vehicle.  "Now then, up
again!  What's the matter?"

The hat was in place and tied, but Tess had not stepped forward.

"No, sir," she said, revealing the red and ivory of her mouth as her
eye lit in defiant triumph; "not again, if I know it!"

"What--you won't get up beside me?"

"No; I shall walk."

"'Tis five or six miles yet to Trantridge."

"I don't care if 'tis dozens.  Besides, the cart is behind."

"You artful hussy!  Now, tell me--didn't you make that hat blow off
on purpose?  I'll swear you did!"

Her strategic silence confirmed his suspicion.

Then d'Urberville cursed and swore at her, and called her everything
he could think of for the trick.  Turning the horse suddenly he tried
to drive back upon her, and so hem her in between the gig and the
hedge.  But he could not do this short of injuring her.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself for using such wicked words!"
cried Tess with spirit, from the top of the hedge into which she had
scrambled.  "I don't like 'ee at all!  I hate and detest you!  I'll
go back to mother, I will!"

D'Urberville's bad temper cleared up at sight of hers; and he laughed
heartily.

"Well, I like you all the better," he said.  "Come, let there be
peace.  I'll never do it any more against your will.  My life upon
it now!"

Still Tess could not be induced to remount.  She did not, however,
object to his keeping his gig alongside her; and in this manner, at
a slow pace, they advanced towards the village of Trantridge.  From
time to time d'Urberville exhibited a sort of fierce distress at
the sight of the tramping he had driven her to undertake by his
misdemeanour.  She might in truth have safely trusted him now; but he
had forfeited her confidence for the time, and she kept on the ground
progressing thoughtfully, as if wondering whether it would be wiser
to return home.  Her resolve, however, had been taken, and it seemed
vacillating even to childishness to abandon it now, unless for graver
reasons.  How could she face her parents, get back her box, and
disconcert the whole scheme for the rehabilitation of her family on
such sentimental grounds?

A few minutes later the chimneys of The Slopes appeared in view, and
in a snug nook to the right the poultry-farm and cottage of Tess'
destination.

On their way to Trantridge, Alec terrifies Tess by driving quickly down the steep hill. He orders her to hang on to his waist and assures her he will drive more slowly if she agrees to let him kiss her on the cheek. Since she has no other choice, she allows the kiss but quickly wipes her cheek. This infuriates him. He is forced to stop after she drops her hat, on purpose, and Tess jumps out and continues the journey on foot


The community of fowls to which Tess had been appointed as
supervisor, purveyor, nurse, surgeon, and friend made its
headquarters in an old thatched cottage standing in an enclosure that
had once been a garden, but was now a trampled and sanded square.
The house was overrun with ivy, its chimney being enlarged by the
boughs of the parasite to the aspect of a ruined tower.  The lower
rooms were entirely given over to the birds, who walked about them
with a proprietary air, as though the place had been built by
themselves, and not by certain dusty copyholders who now lay east
and west in the churchyard.  The descendants of these bygone owners
felt it almost as a slight to their family when the house which had
so much of their affection, had cost so much of their forefathers'
money, and had been in their possession for several generations
before the d'Urbervilles came and built here, was indifferently
turned into a fowl-house by Mrs Stoke-d'Urberville as soon as the
property fell into hand according to law.  "'Twas good enough for
Christians in grandfather's time," they said.

The rooms wherein dozens of infants had wailed at their nursing now
resounded with the tapping of nascent chicks.  Distracted hens in
coops occupied spots where formerly stood chairs supporting sedate
agriculturists.  The chimney-corner and once-blazing hearth was now
filled with inverted beehives, in which the hens laid their eggs;
while out of doors the plots that each succeeding householder had
carefully shaped with his spade were torn by the cocks in wildest
fashion.

The garden in which the cottage stood was surrounded by a wall, and
could only be entered through a door.

When Tess had occupied herself about an hour the next morning in
altering and improving the arrangements, according to her skilled
ideas as the daughter of a professed poulterer, the door in the wall
opened and a servant in white cap and apron entered.  She had come
from the manor-house.

"Mrs d'Urberville wants the fowls as usual," she said; but perceiving
that Tess did not quite understand, she explained, "Mis'ess is a old
lady, and blind."

"Blind!" said Tess.

Almost before her misgiving at the news could find time to shape
itself she took, under her companion's direction, two of the
most beautiful of the Hamburghs in her arms, and followed the
maid-servant, who had likewise taken two, to the adjacent mansion,
which, though ornate and imposing, showed traces everywhere on this
side that some occupant of its chambers could bend to the love of
dumb creatures--feathers floating within view of the front, and
hen-coops standing on the grass.

In a sitting-room on the ground-floor, ensconced in an armchair with
her back to the light, was the owner and mistress of the estate, a
white-haired woman of not more than sixty, or even less, wearing a
large cap.  She had the mobile face frequent in those whose sight
has decayed by stages, has been laboriously striven after, and
reluctantly let go, rather than the stagnant mien apparent in persons
long sightless or born blind.  Tess walked up to this lady with her
feathered charges--one sitting on each arm.

"Ah, you are the young woman come to look after my birds?" said Mrs
d'Urberville, recognizing a new footstep.  "I hope you will be kind
to them.  My bailiff tells me you are quite the proper person.
Well, where are they?  Ah, this is Strut!  But he is hardly so
lively to-day, is he?  He is alarmed at being handled by a stranger,
I suppose. And Phena too--yes, they are a little frightened--aren't
you, dears? But they will soon get used to you."

While the old lady had been speaking Tess and the other maid, in
obedience to her gestures, had placed the fowls severally in her lap,
and she had felt them over from head to tail, examining their beaks,
their combs, the manes of the cocks, their wings, and their claws.
Her touch enabled her to recognize them in a moment, and to discover
if a single feather were crippled or draggled.  She handled their
crops, and knew what they had eaten, and if too little or too much;
her face enacting a vivid pantomime of the criticisms passing in her
mind.

The birds that the two girls had brought in were duly returned to the
yard, and the process was repeated till all the pet cocks and hens
had been submitted to the old woman--Hamburghs, Bantams, Cochins,
Brahmas, Dorkings, and such other sorts as were in fashion just
then--her perception of each visitor being seldom at fault as she
received the bird upon her knees.

It reminded Tess of a Confirmation, in which Mrs d'Urberville was the
bishop, the fowls the young people presented, and herself and the
maid-servant the parson and curate of the parish bringing them up.
At the end of the ceremony Mrs d'Urberville abruptly asked Tess,
wrinkling and twitching her face into undulations, "Can you whistle?"

"Whistle, Ma'am?"

"Yes, whistle tunes."

Tess could whistle like most other country-girls, though the
accomplishment was one which she did not care to profess in genteel
company.  However, she blandly admitted that such was the fact.

"Then you will have to practise it every day.  I had a lad who did it
very well, but he has left.  I want you to whistle to my bullfinches;
as I cannot see them, I like to hear them, and we teach 'em airs
that way.  Tell her where the cages are, Elizabeth.  You must begin
to-morrow, or they will go back in their piping. They have been
neglected these several days."

"Mr d'Urberville whistled to 'em this morning, ma'am," said
Elizabeth.

"He!  Pooh!"

The old lady's face creased into furrows of repugnance, and she made
no further reply.

Thus the reception of Tess by her fancied kinswoman terminated, and
the birds were taken back to their quarters.  The girl's surprise at
Mrs d'Urberville's manner was not great; for since seeing the size of
the house she had expected no more.  But she was far from being aware
that the old lady had never heard a word of the so-called kinship.
She gathered that no great affection flowed between the blind woman
and her son.  But in that, too, she was mistaken.  Mrs d'Urberville
was not the first mother compelled to love her offspring resentfully,
and to be bitterly fond.

In spite of the unpleasant initiation of the day before, Tess
inclined to the freedom and novelty of her new position in the
morning when the sun shone, now that she was once installed there;
and she was curious to test her powers in the unexpected direction
asked of her, so as to ascertain her chance of retaining her post.
As soon as she was alone within the walled garden she sat herself
down on a coop, and seriously screwed up her mouth for the
long-neglected practice.  She found her former ability to have
degenerated to the production of a hollow rush of wind through the
lips, and no clear note at all.

She remained fruitlessly blowing and blowing, wondering how she
could have so grown out of the art which had come by nature, till
she became aware of a movement among the ivy-boughs which cloaked
the garden-wall no less then the cottage.  Looking that way she
beheld a form springing from the coping to the plot.  It was Alec
d'Urberville, whom she had not set eyes on since he had conducted
her the day before to the door of the gardener's cottage where she
had lodgings.

"Upon my honour!" cried he, "there was never before such a beautiful
thing in Nature or Art as you look, 'Cousin' Tess ('Cousin' had a
faint ring of mockery).  I have been watching you from over the
wall--sitting like IM-patience on a monument, and pouting up that
pretty red mouth to whistling shape, and whooing and whooing, and
privately swearing, and never being able to produce a note.  Why,
you are quite cross because you can't do it."

"I may be cross, but I didn't swear."

"Ah!  I understand why you are trying--those bullies!  My mother
wants you to carry on their musical education.  How selfish of her!
As if attending to these curst cocks and hens here were not enough
work for any girl.  I would flatly refuse, if I were you."

"But she wants me particularly to do it, and to be ready by to-morrow
morning."

"Does she?  Well then--I'll give you a lesson or two."

"Oh no, you won't!" said Tess, withdrawing towards the door.

"Nonsense; I don't want to touch you.  See--I'll stand on this side
of the wire-netting, and you can keep on the other; so you may feel
quite safe.  Now, look here; you screw up your lips too harshly.
There 'tis--so."

He suited the action to the word, and whistled a line of "Take, O
take those lips away."  But the allusion was lost upon Tess.

"Now try," said d'Urberville.

She attempted to look reserved; her face put on a sculptural
severity.  But he persisted in his demand, and at last, to get rid of
him, she did put up her lips as directed for producing a clear note;
laughing distressfully, however, and then blushing with vexation that
she had laughed.

He encouraged her with "Try again!"

Tess was quite serious, painfully serious by this time; and she
tried--ultimately and unexpectedly emitting a real round sound.
The momentary pleasure of success got the better of her; her eyes
enlarged, and she involuntarily smiled in his face.

"That's it!  Now I have started you--you'll go on beautifully.
There--I said I would not come near you; and, in spite of such
temptation as never before fell to mortal man, I'll keep my
word...  Tess, do you think my mother a queer old soul?"

"I don't know much of her yet, sir."

"You'll find her so; she must be, to make you learn to whistle to her
bullfinches.  I am rather out of her books just now, but you will be
quite in favour if you treat her live-stock well.  Good morning.  If
you meet with any difficulties and want help here, don't go to the
bailiff, come to me."

It was in the economy of this _regime_ that Tess Durbeyfield had
undertaken to fill a place.  Her first day's experiences were fairly
typical of those which followed through many succeeding days.  A
familiarity with Alec d'Urberville's presence--which that young man
carefully cultivated in her by playful dialogue, and by jestingly
calling her his cousin when they were alone--removed much of her
original shyness of him, without, however, implanting any feeling
which could engender shyness of a new and tenderer kind.  But she was
more pliable under his hands than a mere companionship would have
made her, owing to her unavoidable dependence upon his mother, and,
through that lady's comparative helplessness, upon him.

She soon found that whistling to the bullfinches in Mrs
d'Urberville's room was no such onerous business when she had
regained the art, for she had caught from her musical mother numerous
airs that suited those songsters admirably.  A far more satisfactory
time than when she practised in the garden was this whistling by the
cages each morning.  Unrestrained by the young man's presence she
threw up her mouth, put her lips near the bars, and piped away in
easeful grace to the attentive listeners.

Mrs d'Urberville slept in a large four-post bedstead hung with heavy
damask curtains, and the bullfinches occupied the same apartment,
where they flitted about freely at certain hours, and made little
white spots on the furniture and upholstery.  Once while Tess was at
the window where the cages were ranged, giving her lesson as usual,
she thought she heard a rustling behind the bed.  The old lady was
not present, and turning round the girl had an impression that
the toes of a pair of boots were visible below the fringe of the
curtains.  Thereupon her whistling became so disjointed that the
listener, if such there were, must have discovered her suspicion of
his presence.  She searched the curtains every morning after that,
but never found anybody within them.  Alec d'Urberville had evidently
thought better of his freak to terrify her by an ambush of that kind.

Early the next morning Tess meets her new mistress, Mrs. d'Urberville, and discovers that the old woman is blind. Very attached to birds of all kinds, she has Tess place two chickens in her lap. Then she tells Tess that part of her job will be to whistle to her bullfinches. Tess, who has taken liberties describing her degree of expertise in the matter of fowls, says she will practice. However, despite her best efforts, Tess finds she cannot whistle until Alec, who is completely smitten, helps her


Every village has its idiosyncrasy, its constitution, often its own
code of morality.  The levity of some of the younger women in and
about Trantridge was marked, and was perhaps symptomatic of the
choice spirit who ruled The Slopes in that vicinity.  The place had
also a more abiding defect; it drank hard.  The staple conversation
on the farms around was on the uselessness of saving money; and
smock-frocked arithmeticians, leaning on their ploughs or hoes, would
enter into calculations of great nicety to prove that parish relief
was a fuller provision for a man in his old age than any which could
result from savings out of their wages during a whole lifetime.

The chief pleasure of these philosophers lay in going every Saturday
night, when work was done, to Chaseborough, a decayed market-town two
or three miles distant; and, returning in the small hours of the next
morning, to spend Sunday in sleeping off the dyspeptic effects of the
curious compounds sold to them as beer by the monopolizers of the
once-independent inns.

For a long time Tess did not join in the weekly pilgrimages.  But
under pressure from matrons not much older than herself--for a
field-man's wages being as high at twenty-one as at forty, marriage
was early here--Tess at length consented to go.  Her first experience
of the journey afforded her more enjoyment than she had expected,
the hilariousness of the others being quite contagious after her
monotonous attention to the poultry-farm all the week. She went again
and again.  Being graceful and interesting, standing moreover on the
momentary threshold of womanhood, her appearance drew down upon her
some sly regards from loungers in the streets of Chaseborough; hence,
though sometimes her journey to the town was made independently, she
always searched for her fellows at nightfall, to have the protection
of their companionship homeward.

This had gone on for a month or two when there came a Saturday in
September, on which a fair and a market coincided; and the pilgrims
from Trantridge sought double delights at the inns on that account.
Tess's occupations made her late in setting out, so that her comrades
reached the town long before her.  It was a fine September evening,
just before sunset, when yellow lights struggle with blue shades in
hairlike lines, and the atmosphere itself forms a prospect without
aid from more solid objects, except the innumerable winged insects
that dance in it.  Through this low-lit mistiness Tess walked
leisurely along.

She did not discover the coincidence of the market with the fair till
she had reached the place, by which time it was close upon dusk.  Her
limited marketing was soon completed; and then as usual she began to
look about for some of the Trantridge cottagers.

At first she could not find them, and she was informed that most of
them had gone to what they called a private little jig at the house
of a hay-trusser and peat-dealer who had transactions with their
farm.  He lived in an out-of-the-way nook of the townlet, and in
trying to find her course thither her eyes fell upon Mr d'Urberville
standing at a street corner.

"What--my Beauty?  You here so late?" he said.

She told him that she was simply waiting for company homeward.

"I'll see you again," said he over her shoulder as she went on down
the back lane.

Approaching the hay-trussers, she could hear the fiddled notes of
a reel proceeding from some building in the rear; but no sound of
dancing was audible--an exceptional state of things for these parts,
where as a rule the stamping drowned the music.  The front door being
open she could see straight through the house into the garden at the
back as far as the shades of night would allow; and nobody appearing
to her knock, she traversed the dwelling and went up the path to the
outhouse whence the sound had attracted her.

It was a windowless erection used for storage, and from the open door
there floated into the obscurity a mist of yellow radiance, which at
first Tess thought to be illuminated smoke.  But on drawing nearer
she perceived that it was a cloud of dust, lit by candles within the
outhouse, whose beams upon the haze carried forward the outline of
the doorway into the wide night of the garden.

When she came close and looked in she beheld indistinct forms
racing up and down to the figure of the dance, the silence of their
footfalls arising from their being overshoe in "scroff"--that is
to say, the powdery residuum from the storage of peat and other
products, the stirring of which by their turbulent feet created the
nebulosity that involved the scene.  Through this floating, fusty
_debris_ of peat and hay, mixed with the perspirations and warmth of
the dancers, and forming together a sort of vegeto-human pollen, the
muted fiddles feebly pushed their notes, in marked contrast to the
spirit with which the measure was trodden out.  They coughed as
they danced, and laughed as they coughed.  Of the rushing couples
there could barely be discerned more than the high lights--the
indistinctness shaping them to satyrs clasping nymphs--a multiplicity
of Pans whirling a multiplicity of Syrinxes; Lotis attempting to
elude Priapus, and always failing.

At intervals a couple would approach the doorway for air, and
the haze no longer veiling their features, the demigods resolved
themselves into the homely personalities of her own next-door
neighbours.  Could Trantridge in two or three short hours have
metamorphosed itself thus madly!

Some Sileni of the throng sat on benches and hay-trusses by the wall;
and one of them recognized her.

"The maids don't think it respectable to dance at The Flower-de-Luce,"
he explained.  "They don't like to let everybody see which be their
fancy-men.  Besides, the house sometimes shuts up just when their
jints begin to get greased.  So we come here and send out for
liquor."

"But when be any of you going home?" asked Tess with some anxiety.

"Now--a'most directly.  This is all but the last jig."

She waited.  The reel drew to a close, and some of the party were in
the mind of starting.  But others would not, and another dance was
formed.  This surely would end it, thought Tess.  But it merged in
yet another.  She became restless and uneasy; yet, having waited so
long, it was necessary to wait longer; on account of the fair the
roads were dotted with roving characters of possibly ill intent; and,
though not fearful of measurable dangers, she feared the unknown.
Had she been near Marlott she would have had less dread.

"Don't ye be nervous, my dear good soul," expostulated, between his
coughs, a young man with a wet face and his straw hat so far back
upon his head that the brim encircled it like the nimbus of a saint.
"What's yer hurry?  To-morrow is Sunday, thank God, and we can sleep
it off in church-time.  Now, have a turn with me?"

She did not abhor dancing, but she was not going to dance here.  The
movement grew more passionate: the fiddlers behind the luminous
pillar of cloud now and then varied the air by playing on the wrong
side of the bridge or with the back of the bow.  But it did not
matter; the panting shapes spun onwards.

They did not vary their partners if their inclination were to stick
to previous ones.  Changing partners simply meant that a satisfactory
choice had not as yet been arrived at by one or other of the pair,
and by this time every couple had been suitably matched.  It was then
that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which emotion was the matter
of the universe, and matter but an adventitious intrusion likely to
hinder you from spinning where you wanted to spin.

Suddenly there was a dull thump on the ground: a couple had fallen,
and lay in a mixed heap.  The next couple, unable to check its
progress, came toppling over the obstacle.  An inner cloud of dust
rose around the prostrate figures amid the general one of the room,
in which a twitching entanglement of arms and legs was discernible.

"You shall catch it for this, my gentleman, when you get home!" burst
in female accents from the human heap--those of the unhappy partner
of the man whose clumsiness had caused the mishap; she happened
also to be his recently married wife, in which assortment there was
nothing unusual at Trantridge as long as any affection remained
between wedded couples; and, indeed, it was not uncustomary in their
later lives, to avoid making odd lots of the single people between
whom there might be a warm understanding.

A loud laugh from behind Tess's back, in the shade of the garden,
united with the titter within the room.  She looked round, and saw
the red coal of a cigar: Alec d'Urberville was standing there alone.
He beckoned to her, and she reluctantly retreated towards him.

"Well, my Beauty, what are you doing here?"

She was so tired after her long day and her walk that she confided
her trouble to him--that she had been waiting ever since he saw her
to have their company home, because the road at night was strange to
her.  "But it seems they will never leave off, and I really think I
will wait no longer."

"Certainly do not.  I have only a saddle-horse here to-day; but come
to The Flower-de-Luce, and I'll hire a trap, and drive you home with
me."

Tess, though flattered, had never quite got over her original
mistrust of him, and, despite their tardiness, she preferred to walk
home with the work-folk.  So she answered that she was much obliged
to him, but would not trouble him.  "I have said that I will wait for
'em, and they will expect me to now."

"Very well, Miss Independence.  Please yourself...  Then I shall not
hurry...  My good Lord, what a kick-up they are having there!"

He had not put himself forward into the light, but some of them
had perceived him, and his presence led to a slight pause and a
consideration of how the time was flying.  As soon as he had re-lit
a cigar and walked away the Trantridge people began to collect
themselves from amid those who had come in from other farms, and
prepared to leave in a body.  Their bundles and baskets were gathered
up, and half an hour later, when the clock-chime sounded a quarter
past eleven, they were straggling along the lane which led up the
hill towards their homes.

It was a three-mile walk, along a dry white road, made whiter
to-night by the light of the moon.

Tess soon perceived as she walked in the flock, sometimes with this
one, sometimes with that, that the fresh night air was producing
staggerings and serpentine courses among the men who had partaken too
freely; some of the more careless women also were wandering in their
gait--to wit, a dark virago, Car Darch, dubbed Queen of Spades, till
lately a favourite of d'Urberville's; Nancy, her sister, nicknamed
the Queen of Diamonds; and the young married woman who had already
tumbled down.  Yet however terrestrial and lumpy their appearance
just now to the mean unglamoured eye, to themselves the case was
different.  They followed the road with a sensation that they were
soaring along in a supporting medium, possessed of original and
profound thoughts, themselves and surrounding nature forming
an organism of which all the parts harmoniously and joyously
interpenetrated each other.  They were as sublime as the moon and
stars above them, and the moon and stars were as ardent as they.

Tess, however, had undergone such painful experiences of this kind in
her father's house that the discovery of their condition spoilt the
pleasure she was beginning to feel in the moonlight journey.  Yet she
stuck to the party, for reasons above given.

In the open highway they had progressed in scattered order; but now
their route was through a field-gate, and the foremost finding a
difficulty in opening it, they closed up together.

This leading pedestrian was Car the Queen of Spades, who carried a
wicker-basket containing her mother's groceries, her own draperies,
and other purchases for the week.  The basket being large and heavy,
Car had placed it for convenience of porterage on the top of her
head, where it rode on in jeopardized balance as she walked with
arms akimbo.

"Well--whatever is that a-creeping down thy back, Car Darch?" said
one of the group suddenly.

All looked at Car.  Her gown was a light cotton print, and from the
back of her head a kind of rope could be seen descending to some
distance below her waist, like a Chinaman's queue.

"'Tis her hair falling down," said another.

No; it was not her hair: it was a black stream of something oozing
from her basket, and it glistened like a slimy snake in the cold
still rays of the moon.

"'Tis treacle," said an observant matron.

Treacle it was.  Car's poor old grandmother had a weakness for the
sweet stuff.  Honey she had in plenty out of her own hives, but
treacle was what her soul desired, and Car had been about to give her
a treat of surprise.  Hastily lowering the basket the dark girl found
that the vessel containing the syrup had been smashed within.

By this time there had arisen a shout of laughter at the
extraordinary appearance of Car's back, which irritated the dark
queen into getting rid of the disfigurement by the first sudden means
available, and independently of the help of the scoffers.  She rushed
excitedly into the field they were about to cross, and flinging
herself flat on her back upon the grass, began to wipe her gown
as well as she could by spinning horizontally on the herbage and
dragging herself over it upon her elbows.

The laughter rang louder; they clung to the gate, to the posts,
rested on their staves, in the weakness engendered by their
convulsions at the spectacle of Car.  Our heroine, who had hitherto
held her peace, at this wild moment could not help joining in with
the rest.

It was a misfortune--in more ways than one.  No sooner did the dark
queen hear the soberer richer note of Tess among those of the other
work-people than a long-smouldering sense of rivalry inflamed her to
madness.  She sprang to her feet and closely faced the object of her
dislike.

"How darest th' laugh at me, hussy!" she cried.

"I couldn't really help it when t'others did," apologized Tess,
still tittering.

"Ah, th'st think th' beest everybody, dostn't, because th' beest
first favourite with He just now!  But stop a bit, my lady, stop a
bit!  I'm as good as two of such! Look here--here's at 'ee!"

To Tess's horror the dark queen began stripping off the bodice of
her gown--which for the added reason of its ridiculed condition she
was only too glad to be free of--till she had bared her plump neck,
shoulders, and arms to the moonshine, under which they looked as
luminous and beautiful as some Praxitelean creation, in their
possession of the faultless rotundities of a lusty country-girl.
She closed her fists and squared up at Tess.

"Indeed, then, I shall not fight!" said the latter majestically; "and
if I had know you was of that sort, I wouldn't have so let myself
down as to come with such a whorage as this is!"

The rather too inclusive speech brought down a torrent of
vituperation from other quarters upon fair Tess's unlucky head,
particularly from the Queen of Diamonds, who having stood in the
relations to d'Urberville that Car had also been suspected of, united
with the latter against the common enemy.  Several other women also
chimed in, with an animus which none of them would have been so
fatuous as to show but for the rollicking evening they had passed.
Thereupon, finding Tess unfairly browbeaten, the husbands and lovers
tried to make peace by defending her; but the result of that attempt
was directly to increase the war.

Tess was indignant and ashamed.  She no longer minded the loneliness
of the way and the lateness of the hour; her one object was to get
away from the whole crew as soon as possible.  She knew well enough
that the better among them would repent of their passion next day.
They were all now inside the field, and she was edging back to rush
off alone when a horseman emerged almost silently from the corner of
the hedge that screened the road, and Alec d'Urberville looked round
upon them.

"What the devil is all this row about, work-folk?" he asked.

The explanation was not readily forthcoming; and, in truth, he did
not require any.  Having heard their voices while yet some way off he
had ridden creepingly forward, and learnt enough to satisfy himself.

Tess was standing apart from the rest, near the gate.  He bent over
towards her.  "Jump up behind me," he whispered, "and we'll get shot
of the screaming cats in a jiffy!"

She felt almost ready to faint, so vivid was her sense of the crisis.
At almost any other moment of her life she would have refused such
proffered aid and company, as she had refused them several times
before; and now the loneliness would not of itself have forced her
to do otherwise.  But coming as the invitation did at the particular
juncture when fear and indignation at these adversaries could be
transformed by a spring of the foot into a triumph over them, she
abandoned herself to her impulse, climbed the gate, put her toe upon
his instep, and scrambled into the saddle behind him.  The pair were
speeding away into the distant gray by the time that the contentious
revellers became aware of what had happened.

The Queen of Spades forgot the stain on her bodice, and stood
beside the Queen of Diamonds and the new-married, staggering young
woman--all with a gaze of fixity in the direction in which the
horse's tramp was diminishing into silence on the road.

"What be ye looking at?" asked a man who had not observed the
incident.

"Ho-ho-ho!" laughed dark Car.

"Hee-hee-hee!" laughed the tippling bride, as she steadied herself on
the arm of her fond husband.

"Heu-heu-heu!" laughed dark Car's mother, stroking her moustache as
she explained laconically: "Out of the frying-pan into the fire!"

Then these children of the open air, whom even excess of alcohol
could scarce injure permanently, betook themselves to the field-path;
and as they went there moved onward with them, around the shadow of
each one's head, a circle of opalized light, formed by the moon's
rays upon the glistening sheet of dew.  Each pedestrian could see
no halo but his or her own, which never deserted the head-shadow,
whatever its vulgar unsteadiness might be; but adhered to it, and
persistently beautified it; till the erratic motions seemed an
inherent part of the irradiation, and the fumes of their breathing
a component of the night's mist; and the spirit of the scene, and
of the moonlight, and of Nature, seemed harmoniously to mingle with
the spirit of wine.

Tess soon finds company in the other servants. After a few months, the town holds a fair and celebrations run late. Tess doesn't drink because she has seen the sad affects of alcohol on her own family and gets tired of waiting for her drunken friends. After first declining his offer, Tess is forced to accept a ride home with Alec on horseback after the drunken revelers turn on Tess after she laughs at Car Darch, who used to be involved with Alec. Although she rides away triumphantly from the drunken others, they realize that Tess has merely jumped "out of the frying-pan into the fire"


The twain cantered along for some time without speech, Tess as she
clung to him still panting in her triumph, yet in other respects
dubious.  She had perceived that the horse was not the spirited one
he sometimes rose, and felt no alarm on that score, though her seat
was precarious enough despite her tight hold of him.  She begged him
to slow the animal to a walk, which Alec accordingly did.

"Neatly done, was it not, dear Tess?" he said by and by.

"Yes!" said she.  "I am sure I ought to be much obliged to you."

"And are you?"

She did not reply.

"Tess, why do you always dislike my kissing you?"

"I suppose--because I don't love you."

"You are quite sure?"

"I am angry with you sometimes!"

"Ah, I half feared as much."  Nevertheless, Alec did not object to
that confession.  He knew that anything was better then frigidity.
"Why haven't you told me when I have made you angry?"

"You know very well why.  Because I cannot help myself here."

"I haven't offended you often by love-making?"

"You have sometimes."

"How many times?"

"You know as well as I--too many times."

"Every time I have tried?"

She was silent, and the horse ambled along for a considerable
distance, till a faint luminous fog, which had hung in the hollows
all the evening, became general and enveloped them.  It seemed to
hold the moonlight in suspension, rendering it more pervasive than in
clear air.  Whether on this account, or from absent-mindedness, or
from sleepiness, she did not perceive that they had long ago passed
the point at which the lane to Trantridge branched from the highway,
and that her conductor had not taken the Trantridge track.

She was inexpressibly weary.  She had risen at five o'clock every
morning of that week, had been on foot the whole of each day, and on
this evening had in addition walked the three miles to Chaseborough,
waited three hours for her neighbours without eating or drinking,
her impatience to start them preventing either; she had then walked
a mile of the way home, and had undergone the excitement of the
quarrel, till, with the slow progress of their steed, it was now
nearly one o'clock.  Only once, however, was she overcome by actual
drowsiness.  In that moment of oblivion her head sank gently against
him.

D'Urberville stopped the horse, withdrew his feet from the stirrups,
turned sideways on the saddle, and enclosed her waist with his arm to
support her.

This immediately put her on the defensive, and with one of those
sudden impulses of reprisal to which she was liable she gave him a
little push from her.  In his ticklish position he nearly lost his
balance and only just avoided rolling over into the road, the horse,
though a powerful one, being fortunately the quietest he rode.

"That is devilish unkind!" he said.  "I mean no harm--only to keep
you from falling."

She pondered suspiciously, till, thinking that this might after all
be true, she relented, and said quite humbly, "I beg your pardon,
sir."

"I won't pardon you unless you show some confidence in me.  Good
God!" he burst out, "what am I, to be repulsed so by a mere chit like
you?  For near three mortal months have you trifled with my feelings,
eluded me, and snubbed me; and I won't stand it!"

"I'll leave you to-morrow, sir."

"No, you will not leave me to-morrow!  Will you, I ask once more,
show your belief in me by letting me clasp you with my arm?  Come,
between us two and nobody else, now.  We know each other well; and
you know that I love you, and think you the prettiest girl in the
world, which you are.  Mayn't I treat you as a lover?"

She drew a quick pettish breath of objection, writhing uneasily on
her seat, looked far ahead, and murmured, "I don't know--I wish--how
can I say yes or no when--"

He settled the matter by clasping his arm round her as he desired,
and Tess expressed no further negative.  Thus they sidled
slowly onward till it struck her they had been advancing for an
unconscionable time--far longer than was usually occupied by the
short journey from Chaseborough, even at this walking pace, and
that they were no longer on hard road, but in a mere trackway.

"Why, where be we?" she exclaimed.

"Passing by a wood."

"A wood--what wood?  Surely we are quite out of the road?"

"A bit of The Chase--the oldest wood in England.  It is a lovely
night, and why should we not prolong our ride a little?"

"How could you be so treacherous!" said Tess, between archness and
real dismay, and getting rid of his arm by pulling open his fingers
one by one, though at the risk of slipping off herself.  "Just when
I've been putting such trust in you, and obliging you to please you,
because I thought I had wronged you by that push!  Please set me
down, and let me walk home."

"You cannot walk home, darling, even if the air were clear.  We are
miles away from Trantridge, if I must tell you, and in this growing
fog you might wander for hours among these trees."

"Never mind that," she coaxed.  "Put me down, I beg you.  I don't
mind where it is; only let me get down, sir, please!"

"Very well, then, I will--on one condition.  Having brought you
here to this out-of-the-way place, I feel myself responsible for
your safe-conduct home, whatever you may yourself feel about it.
As to your getting to Trantridge without assistance, it is quite
impossible; for, to tell the truth, dear, owing to this fog, which so
disguises everything, I don't quite know where we are myself.  Now,
if you will promise to wait beside the horse while I walk through the
bushes till I come to some road or house, and ascertain exactly our
whereabouts, I'll deposit you here willingly.  When I come back I'll
give you full directions, and if you insist upon walking you may; or
you may ride--at your pleasure."

She accepted these terms, and slid off on the near side, though not
till he had stolen a cursory kiss.  He sprang down on the other side.

"I suppose I must hold the horse?" said she.

"Oh no; it's not necessary," replied Alec, patting the panting
creature.  "He's had enough of it for to-night."

He turned the horse's head into the bushes, hitched him on to a
bough, and made a sort of couch or nest for her in the deep mass of
dead leaves.

"Now, you sit there," he said.  "The leaves have not got damp as yet.
Just give an eye to the horse--it will be quite sufficient."

He took a few steps away from her, but, returning, said, "By the bye,
Tess, your father has a new cob to-day.  Somebody gave it to him."

"Somebody?  You!"

D'Urberville nodded.

"O how very good of you that is!" she exclaimed, with a painful sense
of the awkwardness of having to thank him just then.

"And the children have some toys."

"I didn't know--you ever sent them anything!" she murmured, much
moved.  "I almost wish you had not--yes, I almost wish it!"

"Why, dear?"

"It--hampers me so."

"Tessy--don't you love me ever so little now?"

"I'm grateful," she reluctantly admitted.  "But I fear I do not--"
The sudden vision of his passion for herself as a factor in this
result so distressed her that, beginning with one slow tear, and
then following with another, she wept outright.

"Don't cry, dear, dear one!  Now sit down here, and wait till I
come."  She passively sat down amid the leaves he had heaped, and
shivered slightly.  "Are you cold?" he asked.

"Not very--a little."

He touched her with his fingers, which sank into her as into down.
"You have only that puffy muslin dress on--how's that?"

"It's my best summer one.  'Twas very warm when I started, and I
didn't know I was going to ride, and that it would be night."

"Nights grow chilly in September.  Let me see."  He pulled off a
light overcoat that he had worn, and put it round her tenderly.
"That's it--now you'll feel warmer," he continued.  "Now, my pretty,
rest there; I shall soon be back again."

Having buttoned the overcoat round her shoulders he plunged into the
webs of vapour which by this time formed veils between the trees.
She could hear the rustling of the branches as he ascended the
adjoining slope, till his movements were no louder than the hopping
of a bird, and finally died away.  With the setting of the moon the
pale light lessened, and Tess became invisible as she fell into
reverie upon the leaves where he had left her.

In the meantime Alec d'Urberville had pushed on up the slope to clear
his genuine doubt as to the quarter of The Chase they were in.  He
had, in fact, ridden quite at random for over an hour, taking any
turning that came to hand in order to prolong companionship with her,
and giving far more attention to Tess's moonlit person than to any
wayside object.  A little rest for the jaded animal being desirable,
he did not hasten his search for landmarks.  A clamber over the
hill into the adjoining vale brought him to the fence of a highway
whose contours he recognized, which settled the question of their
whereabouts.  D'Urberville thereupon turned back; but by this time
the moon had quite gone down, and partly on account of the fog The
Chase was wrapped in thick darkness, although morning was not far
off.  He was obliged to advance with outstretched hands to avoid
contact with the boughs, and discovered that to hit the exact spot
from which he had started was at first entirely beyond him.  Roaming
up and down, round and round, he at length heard a slight movement of
the horse close at hand; and the sleeve of his overcoat unexpectedly
caught his foot.

"Tess!" said d'Urberville.

There was no answer.  The obscurity was now so great that he could
see absolutely nothing but a pale nebulousness at his feet, which
represented the white muslin figure he had left upon the dead leaves.
Everything else was blackness alike.  D'Urberville stooped; and heard
a gentle regular breathing.  He knelt and bent lower, till her breath
warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers.
She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered
tears.

Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around.  Above them rose the
primeval yews and oaks of The Chase, in which there poised gentle
roosting birds in their last nap; and about them stole the hopping
rabbits and hares.  But, might some say, where was Tess's guardian
angel? where was the providence of her simple faith?  Perhaps, like
that other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking,
or he was pursuing, or he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and
not to be awaked.

Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as
gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have
been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why
so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the
woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical
philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order.  One may,
indeed, admit the possibility of a retribution lurking in the present
catastrophe.  Doubtless some of Tess d'Urberville's mailed ancestors
rollicking home from a fray had dealt the same measure even more
ruthlessly towards peasant girls of their time.  But though to visit
the sins of the fathers upon the children may be a morality good
enough for divinities, it is scorned by average human nature; and it
therefore does not mend the matter.

As Tess's own people down in those retreats are never tired of saying
among each other in their fatalistic way: "It was to be."  There
lay the pity of it.  An immeasurable social chasm was to divide our
heroine's personality thereafter from that previous self of hers
who stepped from her mother's door to try her fortune at Trantridge
poultry-farm.

END OF PHASE THE FIRST

Phase the Second: Maiden No More

Soon, Alec allows the horse to leave the path and Tess finds herself deep in the woods, lost in the fog. After she rebuffs his advances, he tells her that he has bought a new horse for her family and toys for her younger siblings. Although she is grateful, she is unhappy. Alec sets off to find a road, leaving her wrapped in his coat on a nest of leaves. Upon his return, he finds her asleep and takes advantage of her. The narrator attempts to understand why the wrong woman and the wrong man wind up together and states simply that "it was to be" and that "there lay the pity of it".

. Chapters I-XI. Set in southwestern England in the late-nineteenth century, Thomas Hardy begins Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman with a lush description of the rural undulating landscape. This is an agricultural community seeped in ancient tradition. Its simple inhabitants, who speak with a distinct country dialect, depend totally upon the earth for their survival. Many of these families, including the Durbeyfields, have descended from noble aristocratic Norman families but have, as Hardy writes, "gone to seed" over time. Learning of their noble lineage determines the rest of the Durbeyfield family's lives, especially that of the lovely teenage daughter, Tess. Overall, the pessimistic author argues that although individuals might possess superior traits--physical, mental, ethical--which might otherwise enable them to achieve great success, they are sadly condemned to their fate: "as Tess's own people down in their retreats never tire of saying 'It was to be "'. Hardy displays a great sense of sympathy for England's lower classes, especially for rural women. Unlike many of the farm women, Tess is pure, her purity represented by the color white. She wears a white dress, carries a white willow branch and white flowers. She is a virgin ready to marry and, in the agricultural sense, to bear a harvest of children. Hardly surprising then, a fairy-tale, prince-like man, an "Angel" as his name makes clear, appears to the young virgin in a scene reminiscent of the biblical Angel appearing to the Virgin Mary. However, Tess is disappointed when he fails to choose her to dance. As will become increasingly apparent, Angel Clare will fail Tess further in the future, and the only prince that Tess will ever encounter is the horse Prince, whose death determines her future. In contrast to the light-sinned Clare, the darker skinned "swarthy" Alec d'Urberville, who sports a black pointed moustache and tempts Tess to eat strawberries instead of an apple, in the garden, is cast as the villain. From the beginning, Mr. Durbeyfield takes on airs, riding in a carriage and proudly boasting to his drunken comrades at Rolliver's about his noble lineage, and Mrs. Durbeyfield's proud dreams reinforce his plan to change the family's fortunes. But, ultimately "pride goeth before a fall. After the death of Prince, the guilt-ridden Tess is put forth as the savior of the family. In this regard she is a fairy-tale heroine, like Beauty, who must face the beast, in this case Alec d'Urberville, to save her father. Hardy casts Tess as a superior woman. She is smarter than her parents and far more concerned about her brothers and sisters. She is, in fact, their teacher, an occupation she desires but one she will never achieve because, as Hardy would have us believe, it is not her fate. It is her sense of guilt, and the desire to pay back her family for killing the horse, that spurs Tess into taking a job she doesn't want. While the Durbeyfields might seem to work all day long, they never accomplish anything, but the superior Tess gets the job done, so to speak. At the Trantridge poultry farm, she is set apart from the other servants. While she enjoys their company, she does not drink and find release in the hazy alcohol-fueled world that Hardy describes so poetically: "it was then that the ecstasy and the dream began in which emotion was the matter of the universe, and matter but an adventitious intrusion likely to hinder you from spinning where you wanted to spin". The only thing that ever crosses Tess's lips is pure white milk as we shall see later on when Tess goes to work at Talbothays Dairy. Unlike the other working women, she does not take part in the wild dancing and certainly not the sexual revelry: "by this time every couple had been suitable matched. an inner cloud of dust rose around the prostate figures". Indeed, Tess is worried about being home early, even though the following morning is Sunday. It is also of interest to note that Tess is asleep when the tragic accident involving Prince occurs. Thus, she's not really to blame. On one hand, it seems that Tess is the only wide-awake Durbeyfield. Unlike her parents, she realizes the true state of the family; she knows that her father will be unable to take the hives to market. However, on the other hand, she seems to go through life half asleep; not completely tuned in, as it were. Also, she is asleep when Alec takes advantage of her sexually or "ruins her," in the Victorian sense of the word. In this manner, Hardy removes Tess from any responsibility. Despite her attempts to retain her chastity, Tess remains pure. It is her fate after all at play. She is without agency: there is nothing she can do. Readers should remember that in the Victorian era, one did not discuss sexual matters and authors could not write of them either. Indeed, some readers are surprised to find that after the night in the woods, Tess is no longer a virgin. Thus, it is important to read between the lines, so to speak. For instance, the other women that Tess walks home with have at earlier times "stood in relations with d'Urberville,"--they have also been sexually involved with Alec. So, they know perfectly well what will happen to the girl when she rides off with Alec into the woods, an event which should also be viewed in the metaphorical sense. Will Tess ever really leave the forest or will darkness descend on her forever. In today's world, Alec d'Urberville would certainly face charges and jail. During the Victorian era, however, such a heinous act was oftentimes considered to be an inevitable seduction. Also, the section of woods is called the Chase, which is self-explanatory


The basket was heavy and the bundle was large, but she lugged them
along like a person who did not find her especial burden in material
things.  Occasionally she stopped to rest in a mechanical way by some
gate or post; and then, giving the baggage another hitch upon her
full round arm, went steadily on again.

It was a Sunday morning in late October, about four months after Tess
Durbeyfield's arrival at Trantridge, and some few weeks subsequent to
the night ride in The Chase.  The time was not long past daybreak,
and the yellow luminosity upon the horizon behind her back lighted
the ridge towards which her face was set--the barrier of the vale
wherein she had of late been a stranger--which she would have to
climb over to reach her birthplace.  The ascent was gradual on this
side, and the soil and scenery differed much from those within
Blakemore Vale.  Even the character and accent of the two peoples
had shades of difference, despite the amalgamating effects of a
roundabout railway; so that, though less than twenty miles from the
place of her sojourn at Trantridge, her native village had seemed a
far-away spot.  The field-folk shut in there traded northward and
westward, travelled, courted, and married northward and westward,
thought northward and westward; those on this side mainly directed
their energies and attention to the east and south.

The incline was the same down which d'Urberville had driven her so
wildly on that day in June.  Tess went up the remainder of its length
without stopping, and on reaching the edge of the escarpment gazed
over the familiar green world beyond, now half-veiled in mist.  It
was always beautiful from here; it was terribly beautiful to Tess
to-day, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the
serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing, and her views of life had
been totally changed for her by the lesson.  Verily another girl than
the simple one she had been at home was she who, bowed by thought,
stood still here, and turned to look behind her. She could not bear
to look forward into the Vale.

Ascending by the long white road that Tess herself had just laboured
up, she saw a two-wheeled vehicle, beside which walked a man, who
held up his hand to attract her attention.

She obeyed the signal to wait for him with unspeculative repose, and
in a few minutes man and horse stopped beside her.

"Why did you slip away by stealth like this?" said d'Urberville, with
upbraiding breathlessness; "on a Sunday morning, too, when people
were all in bed!  I only discovered it by accident, and I have been
driving like the deuce to overtake you.  Just look at the mare.  Why
go off like this?  You know that nobody wished to hinder your going.
And how unnecessary it has been for you to toil along on foot, and
encumber yourself with this heavy load!  I have followed like a
madman, simply to drive you the rest of the distance, if you won't
come back."

"I shan't come back," said she.

"I thought you wouldn't--I said so!  Well, then, put up your basket,
and let me help you on."

She listlessly placed her basket and bundle within the dog-cart, and
stepped up, and they sat side by side.  She had no fear of him now,
and in the cause of her confidence her sorrow lay.

D'Urberville mechanically lit a cigar, and the journey was continued
with broken unemotional conversation on the commonplace objects by
the wayside.  He had quite forgotten his struggle to kiss her when,
in the early summer, they had driven in the opposite direction along
the same road.  But she had not, and she sat now, like a puppet,
replying to his remarks in monosyllables.  After some miles they came
in view of the clump of trees beyond which the village of Marlott
stood.  It was only then that her still face showed the least
emotion, a tear or two beginning to trickle down.

"What are you crying for?" he coldly asked.

"I was only thinking that I was born over there," murmured Tess.

"Well--we must all be born somewhere."

"I wish I had never been born--there or anywhere else!"

"Pooh!  Well, if you didn't wish to come to Trantridge why did you
come?"

She did not reply.

"You didn't come for love of me, that I'll swear."

"'Tis quite true.  If I had gone for love o' you, if I had ever
sincerely loved you, if I loved you still, I should not so loathe and
hate myself for my weakness as I do now! ...  My eyes were dazed by
you for a little, and that was all."

He shrugged his shoulders.  She resumed--

"I didn't understand your meaning till it was too late."

"That's what every woman says."

"How can you dare to use such words!" she cried, turning impetuously
upon him, her eyes flashing as the latent spirit (of which he was to
see more some day) awoke in her.  "My God!  I could knock you out of
the gig!  Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says
some women may feel?"

"Very well," he said, laughing; "I am sorry to wound you.  I did
wrong--I admit it."  He dropped into some little bitterness as he
continued: "Only you needn't be so everlastingly flinging it in my
face.  I am ready to pay to the uttermost farthing.  You know you
need not work in the fields or the dairies again.  You know you may
clothe yourself with the best, instead of in the bald plain way you
have lately affected, as if you couldn't get a ribbon more than you
earn."

Her lip lifted slightly, though there was little scorn, as a rule,
in her large and impulsive nature.

"I have said I will not take anything more from you, and I will
not--I cannot!  I SHOULD be your creature to go on doing that, and
I won't!"

"One would think you were a princess from your manner, in addition
to a true and original d'Urberville--ha! ha!  Well, Tess, dear, I
can say no more.  I suppose I am a bad fellow--a damn bad fellow.
I was born bad, and I have lived bad, and I shall die bad in all
probability.  But, upon my lost soul, I won't be bad towards you
again, Tess.  And if certain circumstances should arise--you
understand--in which you are in the least need, the least difficulty,
send me one line, and you shall have by return whatever you require.
I may not be at Trantridge--I am going to London for a time--I can't
stand the old woman.  But all letters will be forwarded."

She said that she did not wish him to drive her further, and they
stopped just under the clump of trees.  D'Urberville alighted, and
lifted her down bodily in his arms, afterwards placing her articles
on the ground beside her.  She bowed to him slightly, her eye just
lingering in his; and then she turned to take the parcels for
departure.

Alec d'Urberville removed his cigar, bent towards her, and said--

"You are not going to turn away like that, dear!  Come!"

"If you wish," she answered indifferently.  "See how you've mastered
me!"

She thereupon turned round and lifted her face to his, and remained
like a marble term while he imprinted a kiss upon her cheek--half
perfunctorily, half as if zest had not yet quite died out.  Her eyes
vaguely rested upon the remotest trees in the lane while the kiss was
given, as though she were nearly unconscious of what he did.

"Now the other side, for old acquaintance' sake."

She turned her head in the same passive way, as one might turn at the
request of a sketcher or hairdresser, and he kissed the other side,
his lips touching cheeks that were damp and smoothly chill as the
skin of the mushrooms in the fields around.

"You don't give me your mouth and kiss me back.  You never willingly
do that--you'll never love me, I fear."

"I have said so, often.  It is true.  I have never really and truly
loved you, and I think I never can."  She added mournfully, "Perhaps,
of all things, a lie on this thing would do the most good to me now;
but I have honour enough left, little as 'tis, not to tell that lie.
If I did love you, I may have the best o' causes for letting you know
it.  But I don't."

He emitted a laboured breath, as if the scene were getting rather
oppressive to his heart, or to his conscience, or to his gentility.

"Well, you are absurdly melancholy, Tess.  I have no
reason for flattering you now, and I can say plainly
that you need not be so sad.  You can hold your own for
beauty against any woman of these parts, gentle or
simple; I say it to you as a practical man and
well-wisher.  If you are wise you will show it to the
world more than you do before it fades...  And yet,
Tess, will you come back to me!  Upon my soul, I don't
like to let you go like this!"

"Never, never!  I made up my mind as soon as I saw--what I ought to
have seen sooner; and I won't come."

"Then good morning, my four months' cousin--good-bye!"

He leapt up lightly, arranged the reins, and was gone between the
tall red-berried hedges.

Tess did not look after him, but slowly wound along the crooked lane.
It was still early, and though the sun's lower limb was just free of
the hill, his rays, ungenial and peering, addressed the eye rather
than the touch as yet.  There was not a human soul near.  Sad October
and her sadder self seemed the only two existences haunting that
lane.

As she walked, however, some footsteps approached behind her, the
footsteps of a man; and owing to the briskness of his advance he was
close at her heels and had said "Good morning" before she had been
long aware of his propinquity.  He appeared to be an artisan of some
sort, and carried a tin pot of red paint in his hand.  He asked
in a business-like manner if he should take her basket, which she
permitted him to do, walking beside him.

"It is early to be astir this Sabbath morn!" he said cheerfully.

"Yes," said Tess.

"When most people are at rest from their week's work."

She also assented to this.

"Though I do more real work to-day than all the week besides."

"Do you?"

"All the week I work for the glory of man, and on Sunday for the
glory of God.  That's more real than the other--hey?  I have a little
to do here at this stile."  The man turned, as he spoke, to an
opening at the roadside leading into a pasture.  "If you'll wait a
moment," he added, "I shall not be long."

As he had her basket she could not well do otherwise; and she waited,
observing him.  He set down her basket and the tin pot, and stirring
the paint with the brush that was in it began painting large square
letters on the middle board of the three composing the stile, placing
a comma after each word, as if to give pause while that word was
driven well home to the reader's heart--

      THY, DAMNATION, SLUMBERETH, NOT.
                         2 Pet. ii. 3.

Against the peaceful landscape, the pale, decaying tints of the
copses, the blue air of the horizon, and the lichened stile-boards,
these staring vermilion words shone forth.  They seemed to shout
themselves out and make the atmosphere ring.  Some people might have
cried "Alas, poor Theology!" at the hideous defacement--the last
grotesque phase of a creed which had served mankind well in its time.
But the words entered Tess with accusatory horror.  It was as if this
man had known her recent history; yet he was a total stranger.

Having finished his text he picked up her basket, and she
mechanically resumed her walk beside him.

"Do you believe what you paint?" she asked in low tones.

"Believe that tex?  Do I believe in my own existence!"

"But," said she tremulously, "suppose your sin was not of your own
seeking?"

He shook his head.

"I cannot split hairs on that burning query," he said.  "I have
walked hundreds of miles this past summer, painting these texes on
every wall, gate, and stile the length and breadth of this district.
I leave their application to the hearts of the people who read 'em."

"I think they are horrible," said Tess.  "Crushing!  Killing!"

"That's what they are meant to be!" he replied in a trade voice.
"But you should read my hottest ones--them I kips for slums and
seaports.  They'd make ye wriggle!  Not but what this is a very good
tex for rural districts. ...  Ah--there's a nice bit of blank wall up
by that barn standing to waste.  I must put one there--one that it
will be good for dangerous young females like yerself to heed.  Will
ye wait, missy?"

"No," said she; and taking her basket Tess trudged on. A little way
forward she turned her head.  The old gray wall began to advertise
a similar fiery lettering to the first, with a strange and unwonted
mien, as if distressed at duties it had never before been called upon
to perform.  It was with a sudden flush that she read and realized
what was to be the inscription he was now halfway through--

      THOU, SHALT, NOT, COMMIT--

Her cheerful friend saw her looking, stopped his brush, and shouted--

"If you want to ask for edification on these things of moment,
there's a very earnest good man going to preach a charity-sermon
to-day in the parish you are going to--Mr Clare of Emminster.  I'm
not of his persuasion now, but he's a good man, and he'll expound as
well as any parson I know.  'Twas he began the work in me."

But Tess did not answer; she throbbingly resumed her walk, her eyes
fixed on the ground.  "Pooh--I don't believe God said such things!"
she murmured contemptuously when her flush had died away.

A plume of smoke soared up suddenly from her father's chimney, the
sight of which made her heart ache.  The aspect of the interior, when
she reached it, made her heart ache more.  Her mother, who had just
come down stairs, turned to greet her from the fireplace, where she
was kindling barked-oak twigs under the breakfast kettle.  The young
children were still above, as was also her father, it being Sunday
morning, when he felt justified in lying an additional half-hour.

"Well!--my dear Tess!" exclaimed her surprised mother, jumping up and
kissing the girl. "How be ye?  I didn't see you till you was in upon
me!  Have you come home to be married?"

"No, I have not come for that, mother."

"Then for a holiday?"

"Yes--for a holiday; for a long holiday," said Tess.

"What, isn't your cousin going to do the handsome thing?"

"He's not my cousin, and he's not going to marry me."

Her mother eyed her narrowly.

"Come, you have not told me all," she said.

Then Tess went up to her mother, put her face upon Joan's neck, and
told.

"And yet th'st not got him to marry 'ee!" reiterated her mother. "Any
woman would have done it but you, after that!"

"Perhaps any woman would except me."

"It would have been something like a story to come back with, if
you had!" continued Mrs Durbeyfield, ready to burst into tears of
vexation.  "After all the talk about you and him which has reached
us here, who would have expected it to end like this!  Why didn't ye
think of doing some good for your family instead o' thinking only of
yourself?  See how I've got to teave and slave, and your poor weak
father with his heart clogged like a dripping-pan.  I did hope for
something to come out o' this!  To see what a pretty pair you and he
made that day when you drove away together four months ago!  See what
he has given us--all, as we thought, because we were his kin.  But if
he's not, it must have been done because of his love for 'ee.  And
yet you've not got him to marry!"

Get Alec d'Urberville in the mind to marry her!  He marry HER!  On
matrimony he had never once said a word.  And what if he had?  How a
convulsive snatching at social salvation might have impelled her to
answer him she could not say.  But her poor foolish mother little
knew her present feeling towards this man.  Perhaps it was unusual
in the circumstances, unlucky, unaccountable; but there it was; and
this, as she had said, was what made her detest herself.  She had
never wholly cared for him; she did not at all care for him now.  She
had dreaded him, winced before him, succumbed to adroit advantages
he took of her helplessness; then, temporarily blinded by his ardent
manners, had been stirred to confused surrender awhile: had suddenly
despised and disliked him, and had run away.  That was all.  Hate him
she did not quite; but he was dust and ashes to her, and even for her
name's sake she scarcely wished to marry him.

"You ought to have been more careful if you didn't mean to get him to
make you his wife!"

"O mother, my mother!" cried the agonized girl, turning passionately
upon her parent as if her poor heart would break.  "How could I be
expected to know?  I was a child when I left this house four months
ago.  Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk?  Why
didn't you warn me?  Ladies know what to fend hands against, because
they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the
chance o' learning in that way, and you did not help me!"

Her mother was subdued.

"I thought if I spoke of his fond feelings and what they might lead
to, you would be hontish wi' him and lose your chance," she murmured,
wiping her eyes with her apron.  "Well, we must make the best of it,
I suppose.  'Tis nater, after all, and what do please God!"

Deeply angry with herself, Tess returns home early one Sunday morning in October after a few weeks with Alec. She knows that if she remains with him she will merely be his "creature," a mistress whom he supports financially but has no intention of ever marrying: "her views of life had been totally changed for her by the lesson". d'Urberville comes after her and begs her to return, but she refuses his offer to take her home. He tells her to call on him if circumstances necessitate. She walks with a sign painter who paints Biblical verses. After he stops to paint a sign, "THY DAMNATION SLUMBERETH NOT," she is shaken. He suggests she visit the clergyman who converted him. She dismisses the idea and returns to Marlott to her mother's initial welcome and ultimate frustration that her beautiful daughter didn't succeed in getting Alec d'Urberville as her husband: "why didn't ye think of doing some good for your family instead of thinking only of yourself. Tess scolds her mother for allowing her to go out into the world without telling her of the danger she faced in the company of men: "I was a child when I left this house four months ago"


The event of Tess Durbeyfield's return from the manor of her bogus
kinsfolk was rumoured abroad, if rumour be not too large a word for
a space of a square mile.  In the afternoon several young girls of
Marlott, former schoolfellows and acquaintances of Tess, called to
see her, arriving dressed in their best starched and ironed, as
became visitors to a person who had made a transcendent conquest (as
they supposed), and sat round the room looking at her with great
curiosity.  For the fact that it was this said thirty-first cousin,
Mr d'Urberville, who had fallen in love with her, a gentleman
not altogether local, whose reputation as a reckless gallant and
heartbreaker was beginning to spread beyond the immediate boundaries
of Trantridge, lent Tess's supposed position, by its fearsomeness, a
far higher fascination that it would have exercised if unhazardous.

Their interest was so deep that the younger ones whispered when her
back was turned--

"How pretty she is; and how that best frock do set her off!  I
believe it cost an immense deal, and that it was a gift from him."

Tess, who was reaching up to get the tea-things from the
corner-cupboard, did not hear these commentaries.  If she had heard
them, she might soon have set her friends right on the matter.  But
her mother heard, and Joan's simple vanity, having been denied the
hope of a dashing marriage, fed itself as well as it could upon
the sensation of a dashing flirtation.  Upon the whole she felt
gratified, even though such a limited and evanescent triumph should
involve her daughter's reputation; it might end in marriage yet, and
in the warmth of her responsiveness to their admiration she invited
her visitors to stay to tea.

Their chatter, their laughter, their good-humoured innuendoes, above
all, their flashes and flickerings of envy, revived Tess's spirits
also; and, as the evening wore on, she caught the infection of their
excitement, and grew almost gay.  The marble hardness left her face,
she moved with something of her old bounding step, and flushed in all
her young beauty.

At moments, in spite of thought, she would reply to their inquiries
with a manner of superiority, as if recognizing that her experiences
in the field of courtship had, indeed, been slightly enviable.  But
so far was she from being, in the words of Robert South, "in love
with her own ruin," that the illusion was transient as lightning;
cold reason came back to mock her spasmodic weakness; the ghastliness
of her momentary pride would convict her, and recall her to reserved
listlessness again.

And the despondency of the next morning's dawn, when it was no longer
Sunday, but Monday; and no best clothes; and the laughing visitors
were gone, and she awoke alone in her old bed, the innocent younger
children breathing softly around her.  In place of the excitement of
her return, and the interest it had inspired, she saw before her a
long and stony highway which she had to tread, without aid, and with
little sympathy.  Her depression was then terrible, and she could
have hidden herself in a tomb.

In the course of a few weeks Tess revived sufficiently to show
herself so far as was necessary to get to church one Sunday morning.
She liked to hear the chanting--such as it was--and the old Psalms,
and to join in the Morning Hymn.  That innate love of melody, which
she had inherited from her ballad-singing mother, gave the simplest
music a power over her which could well-nigh drag her heart out of
her bosom at times.

To be as much out of observation as possible for reasons of her own,
and to escape the gallantries of the young men, she set out before
the chiming began, and took a back seat under the gallery, close to
the lumber, where only old men and women came, and where the bier
stood on end among the churchyard tools.

Parishioners dropped in by twos and threes, deposited themselves
in rows before her, rested three-quarters of a minute on their
foreheads as if they were praying, though they were not; then sat up,
and looked around. When the chants came on, one of her favourites
happened to be chosen among the rest--the old double chant
"Langdon"--but she did not know what it was called, though she would
much have liked to know.  She thought, without exactly wording the
thought, how strange and god-like was a composer's power, who from
the grave could lead through sequences of emotion, which he alone had
felt at first, a girl like her who had never heard of his name, and
never would have a clue to his personality.

The people who had turned their heads turned them again as the
service proceeded; and at last observing her, they whispered to each
other.  She knew what their whispers were about, grew sick at heart,
and felt that she could come to church no more.

The bedroom which she shared with some of the children formed her
retreat more continually than ever.  Here, under her few square yards
of thatch, she watched winds, and snows, and rains, gorgeous sunsets,
and successive moons at their full.  So close kept she that at length
almost everybody thought she had gone away.

The only exercise that Tess took at this time was after dark; and it
was then, when out in the woods, that she seemed least solitary.  She
knew how to hit to a hair's-breadth that moment of evening when the
light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of
day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute
mental liberty.  It is then that the plight of being alive becomes
attenuated to its least possible dimensions.  She had no fear of the
shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind--or rather that
cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is
so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units.

On these lonely hills and dales her quiescent glide was of a piece
with the element she moved in.  Her flexuous and stealthy figure
became an integral part of the scene.  At times her whimsical fancy
would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part
of her own story.  Rather they became a part of it; for the world is
only a psychological phenomenon, and what they seemed they were.  The
midnight airs and gusts, moaning amongst the tightly-wrapped buds and
bark of the winter twigs, were formulae of bitter reproach.  A wet
day was the expression of irremediable grief at her weakness in the
mind of some vague ethical being whom she could not class definitely
as the God of her childhood, and could not comprehend as any other.

But this encompassment of her own characterization, based on shreds
of convention, peopled by phantoms and voices antipathetic to her,
was a sorry and mistaken creation of Tess's fancy--a cloud of moral
hobgoblins by which she was terrified without reason.  It was they
that were out of harmony with the actual world, not she.  Walking
among the sleeping birds in the hedges, watching the skipping rabbits
on a moonlit warren, or standing under a pheasant-laden bough, she
looked upon herself as a figure of Guilt intruding into the haunts
of Innocence.  But all the while she was making a distinction where
there was no difference.  Feeling herself in antagonism, she was
quite in accord.  She had been made to break an accepted social law,
but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such
an anomaly.

Tess's friends visit under the impression that she is to marry a rich gentleman. Tess is happy to be in their lively company and her depression over what seems like her hopeless life lets up only to return in full force. At church she sits with the old people in the back but "she knew what their whispers were about, grew sick at heart, and felt that she could come to church no more". Feeling herself to be a figure of shame, she leaves the house under cover of dark