Angel Clare rises out of the past not altogether as a distinct
figure, but as an appreciative voice, a long regard of fixed,
abstracted eyes, and a mobility of mouth somewhat too small and
delicately lined for a man's, though with an unexpectedly firm close
of the lower lip now and then; enough to do away with any inference
of indecision.  Nevertheless, something nebulous, preoccupied, vague,
in his bearing and regard, marked him as one who probably had no very
definite aim or concern about his material future.  Yet as a lad
people had said of him that he was one who might do anything if he
tried.

He was the youngest son of his father, a poor parson at the other end
of the county, and had arrived at Talbothays Dairy as a six months'
pupil, after going the round of some other farms, his object being
to acquire a practical skill in the various processes of farming,
with a view either to the Colonies or the tenure of a home-farm, as
circumstances might decide.

His entry into the ranks of the agriculturists and breeders was a
step in the young man's career which had been anticipated neither
by himself nor by others.

Mr Clare the elder, whose first wife had died and left him a
daughter, married a second late in life.  This lady had somewhat
unexpectedly brought him three sons, so that between Angel, the
youngest, and his father the Vicar there seemed to be almost a
missing generation.  Of these boys the aforesaid Angel, the child of
his old age, was the only son who had not taken a University degree,
though he was the single one of them whose early promise might have
done full justice to an academical training.

Some two or three years before Angel's appearance at the Marlott
dance, on a day when he had left school and was pursuing his studies
at home, a parcel came to the Vicarage from the local bookseller's,
directed to the Reverend James Clare.  The Vicar having opened it and
found it to contain a book, read a few pages; whereupon he jumped up
from his seat and went straight to the shop with the book under his
arm.

"Why has this been sent to my house?" he asked peremptorily, holding
up the volume.

"It was ordered, sir."

"Not by me, or any one belonging to me, I am happy to say."

The shopkeeper looked into his order-book.

"Oh, it has been misdirected, sir," he said.  "It was ordered by Mr
Angel Clare, and should have been sent to him."

Mr Clare winced as if he had been struck.  He went home pale and
dejected, and called Angel into his study.

"Look into this book, my boy," he said.  "What do you know about it?"

"I ordered it," said Angel simply.

"What for?"

"To read."

"How can you think of reading it?"

"How can I?  Why--it is a system of philosophy.  There is no more
moral, or even religious, work published."

"Yes--moral enough; I don't deny that.  But religious!--and for YOU,
who intend to be a minister of the Gospel!"

"Since you have alluded to the matter, father," said the son, with
anxious thought upon his face, "I should like to say, once for
all, that I should prefer not to take Orders.  I fear I could not
conscientiously do so.  I love the Church as one loves a parent.
I shall always have the warmest affection for her.  There is no
institution for whose history I have a deeper admiration; but I
cannot honestly be ordained her minister, as my brothers are, while
she refuses to liberate her mind from an untenable redemptive
theolatry."

It had never occurred to the straightforward and simple-minded Vicar
that one of his own flesh and blood could come to this!  He was
stultified, shocked, paralysed.  And if Angel were not going to
enter the Church, what was the use of sending him to Cambridge?  The
University as a step to anything but ordination seemed, to this man
of fixed ideas, a preface without a volume.  He was a man not merely
religious, but devout; a firm believer--not as the phrase is now
elusively construed by theological thimble-riggers in the Church and
out of it, but in the old and ardent sense of the Evangelical school:
one who could

              Indeed opine
        That the Eternal and Divine
        Did, eighteen centuries ago
        In very truth...

Angel's father tried argument, persuasion, entreaty.

"No, father; I cannot underwrite Article Four (leave alone the rest),
taking it 'in the literal and grammatical sense' as required by the
Declaration; and, therefore, I can't be a parson in the present state
of affairs," said Angel.  "My whole instinct in matters of religion
is towards reconstruction; to quote your favorite Epistle to the
Hebrews, 'the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things
that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.'"

His father grieved so deeply that it made Angel quite ill to see him.

"What is the good of your mother and me economizing and stinting
ourselves to give you a University education, if it is not to be used
for the honour and glory of God?" his father repeated.

"Why, that it may be used for the honour and glory of man, father."

Perhaps if Angel had persevered he might have gone to Cambridge like
his brothers.  But the Vicar's view of that seat of learning as a
stepping-stone to Orders alone was quite a family tradition; and so
rooted was the idea in his mind that perseverance began to appear to
the sensitive son akin to an intent to misappropriate a trust, and
wrong the pious heads of the household, who had been and were, as his
father had hinted, compelled to exercise much thrift to carry out
this uniform plan of education for the three young men.

"I will do without Cambridge," said Angel at last.  "I feel that I
have no right to go there in the circumstances."

The effects of this decisive debate were not long in showing
themselves.  He spent years and years in desultory studies,
undertakings, and meditations; he began to evince considerable
indifference to social forms and observances.  The material
distinctions of rank and wealth he increasingly despised.  Even the
"good old family" (to use a favourite phrase of a late local worthy)
had no aroma for him unless there were good new resolutions in its
representatives.  As a balance to these austerities, when he went to
live in London to see what the world was like, and with a view to
practising a profession or business there, he was carried off his
head, and nearly entrapped by a woman much older than himself, though
luckily he escaped not greatly the worse for the experience.

Early association with country solitudes had bred in him an
unconquerable, and almost unreasonable, aversion to modern town life,
and shut him out from such success as he might have aspired to by
following a mundane calling in the impracticability of the spiritual
one.  But something had to be done; he had wasted many valuable
years; and having an acquaintance who was starting on a thriving life
as a Colonial farmer, it occurred to Angel that this might be a lead
in the right direction.  Farming, either in the Colonies, America, or
at home--farming, at any rate, after becoming well qualified for the
business by a careful apprenticeship--that was a vocation which would
probably afford an independence without the sacrifice of what he
valued even more than a competency--intellectual liberty.

So we find Angel Clare at six-and-twenty here at Talbothays as a
student of kine, and, as there were no houses near at hand in which
he could get a comfortable lodging, a boarder at the dairyman's.

His room was an immense attic which ran the whole length of the
dairy-house.  It could only be reached by a ladder from the
cheese-loft, and had been closed up for a long time till he arrived
and selected it as his retreat.  Here Clare had plenty of space, and
could often be heard by the dairy-folk pacing up and down when the
household had gone to rest.  A portion was divided off at one end by
a curtain, behind which was his bed, the outer part being furnished
as a homely sitting-room.

At first he lived up above entirely, reading a good deal, and
strumming upon an old harp which he had bought at a sale, saying when
in a bitter humour that he might have to get his living by it in the
streets some day.  But he soon preferred to read human nature by
taking his meals downstairs in the general dining-kitchen, with the
dairyman and his wife, and the maids and men, who all together formed
a lively assembly; for though but few milking hands slept in the
house, several joined the family at meals.  The longer Clare resided
here the less objection had he to his company, and the more did he
like to share quarters with them in common.

Much to his surprise he took, indeed, a real delight in their
companionship.  The conventional farm-folk of his imagination--
personified in the newspaper-press by the pitiable dummy known as
Hodge--were obliterated after a few days' residence.  At close
quarters no Hodge was to be seen.  At first, it is true, when Clare's
intelligence was fresh from a contrasting society, these friends with
whom he now hobnobbed seemed a little strange.  Sitting down as a
level member of the dairyman's household seemed at the outset an
undignified proceeding.  The ideas, the modes, the surroundings,
appeared retrogressive and unmeaning.  But with living on there,
day after day, the acute sojourner became conscious of a new aspect
in the spectacle.  Without any objective change whatever, variety
had taken the place of monotonousness.  His host and his host's
household, his men and his maids, as they became intimately known to
Clare, began to differentiate themselves as in a chemical process.
The thought of Pascal's was brought home to him: "_A mesure qu'on a
plus d'esprit, on trouve qu'il y a plus d'hommes originaux.  Les
gens du commun ne trouvent pas de difference entre les hommes._"
The typical and unvarying Hodge ceased to exist.  He had been
disintegrated into a number of varied fellow-creatures--beings of
many minds, beings infinite in difference; some happy, many serene, a
few depressed, one here and there bright even to genius, some stupid,
others wanton, others austere; some mutely Miltonic, some potentially
Cromwellian--into men who had private views of each other, as he had
of his friends; who could applaud or condemn each other, amuse or
sadden themselves by the contemplation of each other's foibles or
vices; men every one of whom walked in his own individual way the
road to dusty death.

Unexpectedly he began to like the outdoor life for its own sake,
and for what it brought, apart from its bearing on his own proposed
career.  Considering his position he became wonderfully free from the
chronic melancholy which is taking hold of the civilized races with
the decline of belief in a beneficent Power.  For the first time of
late years he could read as his musings inclined him, without any eye
to cramming for a profession, since the few farming handbooks which
he deemed it desirable to master occupied him but little time.

He grew away from old associations, and saw something new in life and
humanity.  Secondarily, he made close acquaintance with phenomena
which he had before known but darkly--the seasons in their moods,
morning and evening, night and noon, winds in their different
tempers, trees, waters and mists, shades and silences, and the voices
of inanimate things.

The early mornings were still sufficiently cool to render a fire
acceptable in the large room wherein they breakfasted; and, by
Mrs Crick's orders, who held that he was too genteel to mess at
their table, it was Angel Clare's custom to sit in the yawning
chimney-corner during the meal, his cup-and-saucer and plate being
placed on a hinged flap at his elbow.  The light from the long, wide,
mullioned window opposite shone in upon his nook, and, assisted by a
secondary light of cold blue quality which shone down the chimney,
enabled him to read there easily whenever disposed to do so.  Between
Clare and the window was the table at which his companions sat, their
munching profiles rising sharp against the panes; while to the side
was the milk-house door, through which were visible the rectangular
leads in rows, full to the brim with the morning's milk.  At the
further end the great churn could be seen revolving, and its
slip-slopping heard--the moving power being discernible through the
window in the form of a spiritless horse walking in a circle and
driven by a boy.

For several days after Tess's arrival Clare, sitting abstractedly
reading from some book, periodical, or piece of music just come by
post, hardly noticed that she was present at table.  She talked so
little, and the other maids talked so much, that the babble did not
strike him as possessing a new note, and he was ever in the habit
of neglecting the particulars of an outward scene for the general
impression.  One day, however, when he had been conning one of his
music-scores, and by force of imagination was hearing the tune in
his head, he lapsed into listlessness, and the music-sheet rolled
to the hearth.  He looked at the fire of logs, with its one flame
pirouetting on the top in a dying dance after the breakfast-cooking
and boiling, and it seemed to jig to his inward tune; also at the two
chimney crooks dangling down from the cotterel, or cross-bar, plumed
with soot, which quivered to the same melody; also at the half-empty
kettle whining an accompaniment.  The conversation at the table mixed
in with his phantasmal orchestra till he thought: "What a fluty voice
one of those milkmaids has!  I suppose it is the new one."

Clare looked round upon her, seated with the others.

She was not looking towards him.  Indeed, owing to his long silence,
his presence in the room was almost forgotten.

"I don't know about ghosts," she was saying; "but I do know that our
souls can be made to go outside our bodies when we are alive."

The dairyman turned to her with his mouth full, his eyes charged
with serious inquiry, and his great knife and fork (breakfasts were
breakfasts here) planted erect on the table, like the beginning of
a gallows.

"What--really now?  And is it so, maidy?" he said.

"A very easy way to feel 'em go," continued Tess, "is to lie on the
grass at night and look straight up at some big bright star; and, by
fixing your mind upon it, you will soon find that you are hundreds
and hundreds o' miles away from your body, which you don't seem to
want at all."

The dairyman removed his hard gaze from Tess, and fixed it on his
wife.

"Now that's a rum thing, Christianer--hey?  To think o' the miles
I've vamped o' starlight nights these last thirty year, courting, or
trading, or for doctor, or for nurse, and yet never had the least
notion o' that till now, or feeled my soul rise so much as an inch
above my shirt-collar."

The general attention being drawn to her, including that of the
dairyman's pupil, Tess flushed, and remarking evasively that it was
only a fancy, resumed her breakfast.

Clare continued to observe her.  She soon finished her eating, and
having a consciousness that Clare was regarding her, began to trace
imaginary patterns on the tablecloth with her forefinger with the
constraint of a domestic animal that perceives itself to be watched.

"What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature that milkmaid is!" he
said to himself.

And then he seemed to discern in her something that was familiar,
something which carried him back into a joyous and unforeseeing past,
before the necessity of taking thought had made the heavens gray.  He
concluded that he had beheld her before; where he could not tell.  A
casual encounter during some country ramble it certainly had been,
and he was not greatly curious about it.  But the circumstance was
sufficient to lead him to select Tess in preference to the other
pretty milkmaids when he wished to contemplate contiguous womankind.

Angel Clare has a nebulous, preoccupied quality, for he is a man with no very definite aim or concern about his material future. The youngest son of his father, a poor parson, he is at Talbothays to acquire a practical skill in the various processes of farming. His father had married his mother late in life, and his brothers had each acquired a university degree, even though Angel was the one whose promise might have done full justice to academic training. Before Angel met Tess at the dance in Marlott years before, a parcel came to Reverend Clare from the bookseller. This book was a philosophical work that prompts an argument between Angel and his father in which he admits that he does not want to be a minister. Since he was not to be ordained, Mr. Clare did not send Angel to Cambridge. Angel instead spent years in desultory studies, undertakings and meditations, beginning to evince considerable indifference to social forms and observances. He began to despise the distinctions of rank and wealth. Angel now takes great delight in the companionship at Talbothays: the conventional farm-folk of his imagination were obliterated in favor of more respectable people. Angel had grown away from old associations and now sees something new in life and humanity, making close acquaintance with natural phenomena. Tess and Angel discuss whether or not one's soul can leave his body while alive, and he finds her to be a fresh and virginal daughter of nature. He seems to discern in her something familiar that carries him back to a joyous past.

Hardy shifts the focus of the novel for this chapter, leaving his constant focus on Tess Durbeyfield for the first time to give biographical information about Angel Clare. Hardy gives greater indication that Angel Clare is a man with unconventional moral and religious views; in contrast to the narrow religious beliefs of his father, Angel is open to other moral belief systems and it is this difference of opinion that leads Angel not to attend college and enter the clergy as his father expected. Angel's political beliefs coincidence with his unconventional religious beliefs; he does not believe in the primacy of rank and social status, beliefs which clash with traditional English mores. This disdain for polite social behavior complements Tess's equal disregard for convention, thus setting up greater similarities between the two characters. Nevertheless, even at this early point Hardy foreshadows later problems between Tess and Angel. Angel idealizes Tess as a "fresh and virginal daughter of nature," a characterization that obvious clashes with her more sordid past. The knowledge that Tess does not represent the qualities he exalts in her will provide area for conflict within the novel, while allowing for the theme of the permanence of sins. At this point in the novel, Hardy indicates that Tess has found a new purity and innocence after her troubled history with Alec d'Urberville; however, others may find that her earlier actions have permanently tainted Tess

The chapter starts with a description of Angel Clare--he's not altogether sure what he's going to do in the future, although he's smart enough that everyone always used to say that he could do anything he wanted. His decision to go into farming was a surprise to himself and to his family. Angel's father was a lot older than his mother, so his father is old enough to be his grandfather. About three years before Tess first saw Angel at the Marlott club-walking, Angel orders a book of philosophy. His father found the book, and got angry at Angel, claiming that the book might be "moral," but was not "religious" enough for a young man like Angel, who is intending to become a minister. Um, said Angel. About that. He told his father that he didn't want to become a minister. He loved the church, but he thought that the church, as an institution, was too closed-minded. His father was devastated, and said that if Angel weren't going to become a minister, he wouldn't pay for him to attend Cambridge University. Angel said he would do without a university education. So Angel had to find another career, one that wouldn't require a university degree. He decided that farming in the American colonies would be his best bet, and so he started learning about all the different branches of farming. Now, at the Talbothays dairy, he's learning about cows and dairy farming. He's twenty-six years old, and loving the company of his fellow dairymen and dairymaids. Spending time with them has made him realize how bogus all his assumptions about farm workers were. Tess has been there for several days, and Angel has hardly noticed her, because she doesn't talk once. One day, though, he sits up and pays attention when he hears her talking with some of the other workers about out-of-body experiences. She's telling them that if you lie on your back, and watch the stars, you'll suddenly feel that you're hundreds of miles away from your body. She realizes that Angel is watching her, and becomes self-conscious at the breakfast table. Angel thinks that she is "a genuine daughter of Nature," and wonders why she looks so familiar to him. He figures he must have seen her in the country on a walk sometime , and this sense of familiarity, combined with his interest in what she was saying about the stars and her soul, makes him prefer her to the other women at the farm.

CHAPTER 18 Summary In this chapter, Angel Clare is developed in much more detail, especially in the aspects that will affect Tess. He is the youngest son of Mr. Clare, who is a Vicar in Emminster and respected throughout Wessex. He is the only one of the three sons not to choose a vocation in the ministry; as a result, his father has not sent him to Cambridge, and for several years Angel is at loose ends. He goes to London for a while, unsuccessfully seeking a profession; while there he is involved with an older woman. He realizes he is more suited for country living, and at age twenty-six has decided to learn the farming business, which he feels will allow him to have "intellectual liberty. He is currently a trainee on the Talbothay farm, but he is not treated as an ordinary farmhand. Instead, he is treated as a gentleman who is learning the farming business. At the dairy, Angel at first remains aloof, eating by himself. Soon, however, he finds his fellow farm workers interesting and begins to eat with them, enjoying their company. He also begins to notice the beauty of nature and to enjoy outdoor life. After Tess arrives, Angel also notices her innocent beauty. He is deeply attracted towards her freshness and assumes she is a virgin. Angel judges her to be more than an ordinary milkmaid and is eager to get to know her. Tess, however, maintains a distance with Angel, because the ghosts of her stained past haunt her. Notes Several aspects of Angel Clare should be noted, for they will figure in his future relationship with Tess. His father, the Vicar in Emminster, has denied Angel an education at Cambridge because he has not chosen to go into the ministry; Mr. Clare is obviously a conservative person with fixed ideas. He, however, is respected as a special parson throughout Wessex, and some of his traits have been passed on to Angel. Everyone on the farm also recognizes Angel as someone different and special; even Mrs. Crick believes he should not eat with the other farmhands, for she perceives him as much better than her regular employees. Like Tess, he has had an adventure away from home, spending some time in London and having an affair with an older woman. In the end, however, he realizes he is best suited for country living. Angel Clare immediately recognizes that Tess is not an ordinary girl. Her pretty and delicate looks compensate for any sophistication that she lacks. Her mild manner and pure nature are reflected on her face. Her charming and attractive personality cannot easily be hidden. As a result, this beautiful young lady captivates Angel. It is important to notice the great irony in this chapter. From the moment Angel sets his eyes on Tess, he presumes her to be a virgin because of her loveliness. It never occurs to him that this delicate female could carry the stigma of a sordid past


In general the cows were milked as they presented themselves, without
fancy or choice.  But certain cows will show a fondness for a
particular pair of hands, sometimes carrying this predilection so far
as to refuse to stand at all except to their favourite, the pail of a
stranger being unceremoniously kicked over.

It was Dairyman Crick's rule to insist on breaking down these
partialities and aversions by constant interchange, since otherwise,
in the event of a milkman or maid going away from the dairy, he was
placed in a difficulty.  The maids' private aims, however, were the
reverse of the dairyman's rule, the daily selection by each damsel of
the eight or ten cows to which she had grown accustomed rendering the
operation on their willing udders surprisingly easy and effortless.

Tess, like her compeers, soon discovered which of the cows had a
preference for her style of manipulation, and her fingers having
become delicate from the long domiciliary imprisonments to which
she had subjected herself at intervals during the last two or three
years, she would have been glad to meet the milchers' views in
this respect.  Out of the whole ninety-five there were eight in
particular--Dumpling, Fancy, Lofty, Mist, Old Pretty, Young Pretty,
Tidy, and Loud--who, though the teats of one or two were as hard as
carrots, gave down to her with a readiness that made her work on them
a mere touch of the fingers.  Knowing, however, the dairyman's wish,
she endeavoured conscientiously to take the animals just as they
came, excepting the very hard yielders which she could not yet
manage.

But she soon found a curious correspondence between the ostensibly
chance position of the cows and her wishes in this matter, till she
felt that their order could not be the result of accident.  The
dairyman's pupil had lent a hand in getting the cows together of
late, and at the fifth or sixth time she turned her eyes, as she
rested against the cow, full of sly inquiry upon him.

"Mr Clare, you have ranged the cows!" she said, blushing; and in
making the accusation, symptoms of a smile gently lifted her upper
lip in spite of her, so as to show the tips of her teeth, the lower
lip remaining severely still.

"Well, it makes no difference," said he.  "You will always be here to
milk them."

"Do you think so?  I HOPE I shall!  But I don't KNOW."

She was angry with herself afterwards, thinking that he, unaware of
her grave reasons for liking this seclusion, might have mistaken her
meaning.  She had spoken so earnestly to him, as if his presence
were somehow a factor in her wish.  Her misgiving was such that at
dusk, when the milking was over, she walked in the garden alone, to
continue her regrets that she had disclosed to him her discovery of
his considerateness.

It was a typical summer evening in June, the atmosphere being in
such delicate equilibrium and so transmissive that inanimate objects
seemed endowed with two or three senses, if not five.  There was no
distinction between the near and the far, and an auditor felt close
to everything within the horizon.  The soundlessness impressed her as
a positive entity rather than as the mere negation of noise.  It was
broken by the strumming of strings.

Tess had heard those notes in the attic above her head.  Dim,
flattened, constrained by their confinement, they had never appealed
to her as now, when they wandered in the still air with a stark
quality like that of nudity.  To speak absolutely, both instrument
and execution were poor; but the relative is all, and as she listened
Tess, like a fascinated bird, could not leave the spot.  Far from
leaving she drew up towards the performer, keeping behind the hedge
that he might not guess her presence.

The outskirt of the garden in which Tess found herself had been
left uncultivated for some years, and was now damp and rank with
juicy grass which sent up mists of pollen at a touch; and with tall
blooming weeds emitting offensive smells--weeds whose red and yellow
and purple hues formed a polychrome as dazzling as that of cultivated
flowers.  She went stealthily as a cat through this profusion of
growth, gathering cuckoo-spittle on her skirts, cracking snails that
were underfoot, staining her hands with thistle-milk and slug-slime,
and rubbing off upon her naked arms sticky blights which, though
snow-white on the apple-tree trunks, made madder stains on her skin;
thus she drew quite near to Clare, still unobserved of him.

Tess was conscious of neither time nor space.  The exaltation which
she had described as being producible at will by gazing at a star
came now without any determination of hers; she undulated upon the
thin notes of the second-hand harp, and their harmonies passed like
breezes through her, bringing tears into her eyes.  The floating
pollen seemed to be his notes made visible, and the dampness of
the garden the weeping of the garden's sensibility.  Though near
nightfall, the rank-smelling weed-flowers glowed as if they would not
close for intentness, and the waves of colour mixed with the waves of
sound.

The light which still shone was derived mainly from a large hole in
the western bank of cloud; it was like a piece of day left behind
by accident, dusk having closed in elsewhere.  He concluded his
plaintive melody, a very simple performance, demanding no great
skill; and she waited, thinking another might be begun.  But, tired
of playing, he had desultorily come round the fence, and was rambling
up behind her.  Tess, her cheeks on fire, moved away furtively, as if
hardly moving at all.

Angel, however, saw her light summer gown, and he spoke; his low
tones reaching her, though he was some distance off.

"What makes you draw off in that way, Tess?" said he.  "Are you
afraid?"

"Oh no, sir--not of outdoor things; especially just now when the
apple-blooth is falling, and everything is so green."

"But you have your indoor fears--eh?"

"Well--yes, sir."

"What of?"

"I couldn't quite say."

"The milk turning sour?"

"No."

"Life in general?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ah--so have I, very often.  This hobble of being alive is rather
serious, don't you think so?"

"It is--now you put it that way."

"All the same, I shouldn't have expected a young girl like you to see
it so just yet.  How is it you do?"

She maintained a hesitating silence.

"Come, Tess, tell me in confidence."

She thought that he meant what were the aspects of things to her, and
replied shyly--

"The trees have inquisitive eyes, haven't they?--that is, seem as
if they had.  And the river says,--'Why do ye trouble me with your
looks?'  And you seem to see numbers of to-morrows just all in a
line, the first of them the biggest and clearest, the others getting
smaller and smaller as they stand farther away; but they all seem
very fierce and cruel and as if they said, 'I'm coming!  Beware of
me!  Beware of me!' ...  But YOU, sir, can raise up dreams with your
music, and drive all such horrid fancies away!"

He was surprised to find this young woman--who though but a milkmaid
had just that touch of rarity about her which might make her the
envied of her housemates--shaping such sad imaginings.  She was
expressing in her own native phrases--assisted a little by her Sixth
Standard training--feelings which might almost have been called those
of the age--the ache of modernism.  The perception arrested him less
when he reflected that what are called advanced ideas are really in
great part but the latest fashion in definition--a more accurate
expression, by words in _logy_ and _ism_, of sensations which men and
women have vaguely grasped for centuries.

Still, it was strange that they should have come to her while yet so
young; more than strange; it was impressive, interesting, pathetic.
Not guessing the cause, there was nothing to remind him that
experience is as to intensity, and not as to duration.  Tess's
passing corporeal blight had been her mental harvest.

Tess, on her part, could not understand why a man of clerical family
and good education, and above physical want, should look upon it as a
mishap to be alive.  For the unhappy pilgrim herself there was very
good reason.  But how could this admirable and poetic man ever have
descended into the Valley of Humiliation, have felt with the man of
Uz--as she herself had felt two or three years ago--"My soul chooseth
strangling and death rather than my life.  I loathe it; I would not
live alway."

It was true that he was at present out of his class.  But she knew
that was only because, like Peter the Great in a shipwright's yard,
he was studying what he wanted to know.  He did not milk cows because
he was obliged to milk cows, but because he was learning to be a
rich and prosperous dairyman, landowner, agriculturist, and breeder
of cattle.  He would become an American or Australian Abraham,
commanding like a monarch his flocks and his herds, his spotted
and his ring-straked, his men-servants and his maids.  At times,
nevertheless, it did seem unaccountable to her that a decidedly
bookish, musical, thinking young man should have chosen deliberately
to be a farmer, and not a clergyman, like his father and brothers.

Thus, neither having the clue to the other's secret, they were
respectively puzzled at what each revealed, and awaited new knowledge
of each other's character and mood without attempting to pry into
each other's history.

Every day, every hour, brought to him one more little stroke of
her nature, and to her one more of his.  Tess was trying to lead a
repressed life, but she little divined the strength of her own
vitality.

At first Tess seemed to regard Angel Clare as an intelligence rather
than as a man.  As such she compared him with herself; and at every
discovery of the abundance of his illuminations, of the distance
between her own modest mental standpoint and the unmeasurable, Andean
altitude of his, she became quite dejected, disheartened from all
further effort on her own part whatever.

He observed her dejection one day, when he had casually mentioned
something to her about pastoral life in ancient Greece.  She was
gathering the buds called "lords and ladies" from the bank while he
spoke.

"Why do you look so woebegone all of a sudden?" he asked.

"Oh, 'tis only--about my own self," she said, with a frail laugh of
sadness, fitfully beginning to peel "a lady" meanwhile.  "Just a
sense of what might have been with me!  My life looks as if it had
been wasted for want of chances!  When I see what you know, what you
have read, and seen, and thought, I feel what a nothing I am!  I'm
like the poor Queen of Sheba who lived in the Bible.  There is no
more spirit in me."

"Bless my soul, don't go troubling about that!  Why," he said with
some enthusiasm, "I should be only too glad, my dear Tess, to help
you to anything in the way of history, or any line of reading you
would like to take up--"

"It is a lady again," interrupted she, holding out the bud she had
peeled.

"What?"

"I meant that there are always more ladies than lords when you come
to peel them."

"Never mind about the lords and ladies.  Would you like to take up
any course of study--history, for example?"

"Sometimes I feel I don't want to know anything more about it than I
know already."

"Why not?"

"Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row
only--finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody
just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me
sad, that's all.  The best is not to remember that your nature and
your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and
that your coming life and doings 'll be like thousands's and
thousands'."

"What, really, then, you don't want to learn anything?"

"I shouldn't mind learning why--why the sun do shine on the just and
the unjust alike," she answered, with a slight quaver in her voice.
"But that's what books will not tell me."

"Tess, fie for such bitterness!"  Of course he spoke with a
conventional sense of duty only, for that sort of wondering had not
been unknown to himself in bygone days.  And as he looked at the
unpracticed mouth and lips, he thought that such a daughter of the
soil could only have caught up the sentiment by rote.  She went on
peeling the lords and ladies till Clare, regarding for a moment the
wave-like curl of her lashes as they dropped with her bent gaze on
her soft cheek, lingeringly went away.  When he was gone she stood
awhile, thoughtfully peeling the last bud; and then, awakening
from her reverie, flung it and all the crowd of floral nobility
impatiently on the ground, in an ebullition of displeasure with
herself for her _niaiserie_, and with a quickening warmth in her
heart of hearts.

How stupid he must think her!  In an access of hunger for his good
opinion she bethought herself of what she had latterly endeavoured to
forget, so unpleasant had been its issues--the identity of her family
with that of the knightly d'Urbervilles.  Barren attribute as it was,
disastrous as its discovery had been in many ways to her, perhaps
Mr Clare, as a gentleman and a student of history, would respect
her sufficiently to forget her childish conduct with the lords and
ladies if he knew that those Purbeck-marble and alabaster people in
Kingsbere Church really represented her own lineal forefathers; that
she was no spurious d'Urberville, compounded of money and ambition
like those at Trantridge, but true d'Urberville to the bone.

But, before venturing to make the revelation, dubious Tess indirectly
sounded the dairyman as to its possible effect upon Mr Clare, by
asking the former if Mr Clare had any great respect for old county
families when they had lost all their money and land.

"Mr Clare," said the dairyman emphatically, "is one of the most
rebellest rozums you ever knowed--not a bit like the rest of his
family; and if there's one thing that he do hate more than another
'tis the notion of what's called a' old family.  He says that it
stands to reason that old families have done their spurt of work in
past days, and can't have anything left in 'em now.  There's the
Billets and the Drenkhards and the Greys and the St Quintins and
the Hardys and the Goulds, who used to own the lands for miles down
this valley; you could buy 'em all up now for an old song a'most.
Why, our little Retty Priddle here, you know, is one of the
Paridelles--the old family that used to own lots o' the lands out by
King's Hintock, now owned by the Earl o' Wessex, afore even he or
his was heard of.  Well, Mr Clare found this out, and spoke quite
scornful to the poor girl for days.  'Ah!' he says to her, 'you'll
never make a good dairymaid!  All your skill was used up ages ago
in Palestine, and you must lie fallow for a thousand years to git
strength for more deeds!'  A boy came here t'other day asking for
a job, and said his name was Matt, and when we asked him his surname
he said he'd never heard that 'a had any surname, and when we asked
why, he said he supposed his folks hadn't been 'stablished long
enough.  'Ah! you're the very boy I want!' says Mr Clare, jumping
up and shaking hands wi'en; 'I've great hopes of you;' and gave him
half-a-crown.  O no! he can't stomach old families!"

After hearing this caricature of Clare's opinion poor Tess was glad
that she had not said a word in a weak moment about her family--even
though it was so unusually old almost to have gone round the circle
and become a new one.  Besides, another diary-girl was as good as
she, it seemed, in that respect.  She held her tongue about the
d'Urberville vault and the Knight of the Conqueror whose name she
bore.  The insight afforded into Clare's character suggested to her
that it was largely owing to her supposed untraditional newness that
she had won interest in his eyes.

Since cows tend to show a fondness for particular milkers, Dairyman Crick insists on breaking down these partialities by constant interchange, yet the milkers themselves prefer to stay with particular cows. Angel Clare begins to arrange the cows so that Tess may milk her favorite ones. She mentions this to Angel, yet later regrets that she disclosed to him that she learned of his kindness. Tess hears Angel playing at his harp, and when she finds him she admits that she has no fear of the wilderness, but has more indoor fears. Angel admits that he thinks that the hobble of being alive is rather serious. Tess cannot understand why a man of clerical family and good education should look upon it as a mishap to be alive. She realizes that he is at the dairy so that he may become a rich dairyman. Angel asks Tess if she would like to take up a course of study, but she tells him that sometimes she does not want to know anything more about history than she actually does. Later, Tess learns from Dairyman Crick that Angel has scorn for the descendants of many noble families. After hearing this caricature of Clare's opinions Tess is glad that she had not said a word about her family.

The romance between Angel Clare and Tess Durbeyfield begins to develop this chapter, a flirtation that stands in stark contrast to the combative pursuit of Tess by Alec d'Urberville. Angel does not make any physical advances toward her, only bestowing upon Tess small favors such as arranging the cows so that she may milk her favorites. The situation between the two is intensely chaste; both seem barely able to openly acknowledge their mutual affection. Angel even begins to exhibit characteristics appropriate to his name; Tess finds him playing the harp, thus recalling a literal angel. Nevertheless, even within this idealistic and serene romance Hardy develops darker undercurrents that foreshadow later difficulties. Tess finds that she must keep certain information secretive, both her relatively lofty status as a d'Urberville and her equally lowly status as a mother of an illegitimate child. Furthermore, Hardy develops the darker imperfections of Angel Clare's character in this chapter, demonstrating that he has the capability of being obstinate and judgmental. Although Angel has great moral convictions, he appears to have little flexibility or foresight. Angel has a particular scorn for the type of person that Tess represents, thus foreshadowing great conflict once he inevitably realizes her family history and perhaps details of her personal life

Dairyman Crick has a rule that the cows should be milked randomly--if the cow develops a preference for a particular milkmaid or milkman, he ends up having problems after they leave his farm. Knowing this, Tess tries to take whatever cows happen to be next in line, but notices that she keeps ending up with the eight or so cows that she particularly likes. She realizes that it's because Angel has been sneakily arranging the cows in that order as they come in from the field. She accuses him of sending her favorites her way, and he shrugs, and says "So what? You'll always be here to milk them." She hopes she will be... but she doesn't know that. She later regrets that she called him on it. One evening in June, the air is so still that you can hear a pin drop from across the yard. Tess hears the notes of a harp out in the garden, and wanders out towards it. Tess, as we know, loves music. The harp music she hears now gives her the same kind of out-of-body experience that she described before at the breakfast table. The description of her reaction to the music makes it sound sexy. The music stops, and Tess waits for him to begin again. He doesn't, so she tries to slip away unseen, but he spots her light-colored dress against the darkness in the garden. He calls her back, and asks why she's afraid. She says she's not--at least, not of outdoor things. He asks if she's afraid of life in general, and she says yes. He says he agrees with her, but asks her why she finds life to be a burden. She innocently describes her sense of how oppressive the future is, like an inescapable progression of tomorrows. Angel is startled to find such sad thoughts in a young milkmaid, and he finds her even more interesting because of it. On her side, Tess is startled to find that the wealthy son of a parson should find life to be a burden. Neither of them understands the other, but both are interested in learning more as the opportunity presents itself. Every day they learn more about each other. She feels daunted by his superior intelligence, so he offers to teach her anything she'd like to know that he's able to teach--history, for example. She doesn't see the use in learning history. She doesn't want to know that her own life isn't unique, and that countless others have gone through similar experiences before her. All she wants to know is why the world is so unjust. Again, he's startled to find so much bitterness in such a young woman, and he walks away. Tess is ashamed of her childishness, and wonders what she can do to restore his good opinion of her. She thinks about telling him about her D'Urberville heritage, but decides to test the waters a bit first. She asks Dairyman Crick if Mr. Clare respects old families. Not at all, he tells her. Mr. Clare thinks that old families are all dried up and useless. Hearing this, Tess is glad that she hadn't told Angel about her family.

CHAPTER 19 Summary Angel tries to befriend Tess. He even lines up her cows for her, which is against the rules. She says something to Angel about it, but then regrets having spoken. The same night, as she is walking in the garden, she hears Angel strumming on a harp. When he spies her, he takes the opportunity to ask her the reason for her somber behavior. She hides the truth and talks about life in general. Angel is surprised at both her intelligence and her pessimism and again thinks of her as more than a milkmaid. Tess wonders why a "decidedly bookish, musical, thinking young man should have chosen deliberately to be a farmer, and not a clergyman, like his father and brother. Tess points out the difference in learning between them, and Angel offers to help her in reading. She turns him down, stating that what she wants to learn cannot be found in books. Nonetheless, Tess is anxious to have Angel think kindly about her. She discusses him with Mr. Crick and is amazed to learn from him that Angel does not have a good opinion about old families. As a result, Tess again feels she has no chance with Angel. Notes Each day introduces a new facet of Tess's personality to Angel. She appears ever intriguing and fresh to him. While Tess is unaware of Angel's strong attraction to her, she does enjoy his presence on the farm and her conversations with him. The early spring has changed to warm summer with a spread of "juicy grass" and dazzling flowers. Tess has settled into her routine as a milkmaid, but is fearful that fate will intervene to destroy her peaceful days at Talbothay's. She is happier than she has ever been, but believes her joy cannot continue. Her pessimism confuses Angel, but her intelligence and independent thought surprise him. With fascination, he listens to her talk about her own individuality. He offers to teach her anything of her interest and is baffled that she refuses him. She grows philosophical and wants to know why the sun shines "on the just and the unjust alike. Not knowing her background, Angel finds her question quite puzzling and challenging. It is important to notice the image that Hardy creates around Angel. His name is significant; in addition, he is seen lounging in the garden and playing a harp. He is also pictured as extremely intelligent and kind. It is no wonder that Tess thinks of him almost as a god and believes his music to be heavenly. Hardy, however, hints that this way of thinking is dangerous; a love affair between the couple cannot be smooth. The author foreshadows this fact by making the garden  filled with ugly images, including offensive smells and slug slime. Just as Tess's innocence and purity have been spoiled by the world, even this idyllic scene has its darkness


The season developed and matured.  Another year's instalment of
flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes, finches, and such ephemeral
creatures, took up their positions where only a year ago others had
stood in their place when these were nothing more than germs and
inorganic particles.  Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and
stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams,
opened petals, and sucked out scents in invisible jets and
breathings.

Dairyman Crick's household of maids and men lived on comfortably,
placidly, even merrily.  Their position was perhaps the happiest of
all positions in the social scale, being above the line at which
neediness ends, and below the line at which the _convenances_ begin
to cramp natural feelings, and the stress of threadbare modishness
makes too little of enough.

Thus passed the leafy time when arborescence seems to be the one
thing aimed at out of doors.  Tess and Clare unconsciously studied
each other, ever balanced on the edge of a passion, yet apparently
keeping out of it.  All the while they were converging, under an
irresistible law, as surely as two streams in one vale.

Tess had never in her recent life been so happy as she was now,
possibly never would be so happy again.  She was, for one thing,
physically and mentally suited among these new surroundings.  The
sapling which had rooted down to a poisonous stratum on the spot of
its sowing had been transplanted to a deeper soil.  Moreover she, and
Clare also, stood as yet on the debatable land between predilection
and love; where no profundities have been reached; no reflections
have set in, awkwardly inquiring, "Whither does this new current tend
to carry me?  What does it mean to my future?  How does it stand
towards my past?"

Tess was the merest stray phenomenon to Angel Clare as yet--a rosy,
warming apparition which had only just acquired the attribute of
persistence in his consciousness.  So he allowed his mind to be
occupied with her, deeming his preoccupation to be no more than a
philosopher's regard of an exceedingly novel, fresh, and interesting
specimen of womankind.

They met continually; they could not help it.  They met daily in that
strange and solemn interval, the twilight of the morning, in the
violet or pink dawn; for it was necessary to rise early, so very
early, here.  Milking was done betimes; and before the milking came
the skimming, which began at a little past three.  It usually fell
to the lot of some one or other of them to wake the rest, the first
being aroused by an alarm-clock; and, as Tess was the latest arrival,
and they soon discovered that she could be depended upon not to sleep
though the alarm as others did, this task was thrust most frequently
upon her.  No sooner had the hour of three struck and whizzed,
than she left her room and ran to the dairyman's door; then up the
ladder to Angel's, calling him in a loud whisper; then woke her
fellow-milkmaids.  By the time that Tess was dressed Clare was
downstairs and out in the humid air.  The remaining maids and the
dairyman usually gave themselves another turn on the pillow, and did
not appear till a quarter of an hour later.

The gray half-tones of daybreak are not the gray half-tones of the
day's close, though the degree of their shade may be the same.  In
the twilight of the morning, light seems active, darkness passive;
in the twilight of evening it is the darkness which is active and
crescent, and the light which is the drowsy reverse.

Being so often--possibly not always by chance--the first two persons
to get up at the dairy-house, they seemed to themselves the first
persons up of all the world.  In these early days of her residence
here Tess did not skim, but went out of doors at once after rising,
where he was generally awaiting her.  The spectral, half-compounded,
aqueous light which pervaded the open mead impressed them with
a feeling of isolation, as if they were Adam and Eve.  At this
dim inceptive stage of the day Tess seemed to Clare to exhibit a
dignified largeness both of disposition and physique, an almost
regnant power, possibly because he knew that at that preternatural
time hardly any woman so well endowed in person as she was likely to
be walking in the open air within the boundaries of his horizon; very
few in all England.  Fair women are usually asleep at mid-summer
dawns.  She was close at hand, and the rest were nowhere.

The mixed, singular, luminous gloom in which they walked along
together to the spot where the cows lay often made him think of the
Resurrection hour.  He little thought that the Magdalen might be
at his side.  Whilst all the landscape was in neutral shade his
companion's face, which was the focus of his eyes, rising above the
mist stratum, seemed to have a sort of phosphorescence upon it.  She
looked ghostly, as if she were merely a soul at large.  In reality
her face, without appearing to do so, had caught the cold gleam of
day from the north-east; his own face, though he did not think of
it, wore the same aspect to her.

It was then, as has been said, that she impressed him most deeply.
She was no longer the milkmaid, but a visionary essence of woman--a
whole sex condensed into one typical form.  He called her Artemis,
Demeter, and other fanciful names half teasingly, which she did not
like because she did not understand them.

"Call me Tess," she would say askance; and he did.

Then it would grow lighter, and her features would become simply
feminine; they had changed from those of a divinity who could confer
bliss to those of a being who craved it.

At these non-human hours they could get quite close to the waterfowl.
Herons came, with a great bold noise as of opening doors and
shutters, out of the boughs of a plantation which they frequented at
the side of the mead; or, if already on the spot, hardily maintained
their standing in the water as the pair walked by, watching them by
moving their heads round in a slow, horizontal, passionless wheel,
like the turn of puppets by clockwork.

They could then see the faint summer fogs in layers, woolly, level,
and apparently no thicker than counterpanes, spread about the meadows
in detached remnants of small extent.  On the gray moisture of the
grass were marks where the cows had lain through the night--dark-green
islands of dry herbage the size of their carcasses, in the general
sea of dew. From each island proceeded a serpentine trail, by which
the cow had rambled away to feed after getting up, at the end of
which trail they found her; the snoring puff from her nostrils, when
she recognized them, making an intenser little fog of her own amid
the prevailing one.  Then they drove the animals back to the barton,
or sat down to milk them on the spot, as the case might require.

Or perhaps the summer fog was more general, and the meadows lay like
a white sea, out of which the scattered trees rose like dangerous
rocks.  Birds would soar through it into the upper radiance, and
hang on the wing sunning themselves, or alight on the wet rails
subdividing the mead, which now shone like glass rods.  Minute
diamonds of moisture from the mist hung, too, upon Tess's eyelashes,
and drops upon her hair, like seed pearls.  When the day grew quite
strong and commonplace these dried off her; moreover, Tess then
lost her strange and ethereal beauty; her teeth, lips, and eyes
scintillated in the sunbeams and she was again the dazzlingly fair
dairymaid only, who had to hold her own against the other women of
the world.

About this time they would hear Dairyman Crick's voice, lecturing the
non-resident milkers for arriving late, and speaking sharply to old
Deborah Fyander for not washing her hands.

"For Heaven's sake, pop thy hands under the pump, Deb!  Upon my soul,
if the London folk only knowed of thee and thy slovenly ways, they'd
swaller their milk and butter more mincing than they do a'ready; and
that's saying a good deal."

The milking progressed, till towards the end Tess and Clare, in
common with the rest, could hear the heavy breakfast table dragged
out from the wall in the kitchen by Mrs Crick, this being the
invariable preliminary to each meal; the same horrible scrape
accompanying its return journey when the table had been cleared.

Tess had never in her recent life been so happy and would possibly never be so happy again. She and Tess stand between predilection and love. For Angel, Tess represents a visionary essence of woman, and calls her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names, but she insists that he call her simply Tess. Tess seems to exhibit a dignified largeness of disposition and physique. The two are always the first to awake at the dairy house, where they feel an impressive isolation, as if they are Adam and Eve.

Hardy makes explicit that Tess's time at Talbothays dairy is an idyllic respite from her normal toil and hardship, yet states that this happiness will be short-lived, foreshadowing greater adversity for Tess Durbeyfield. Hardy compares Angel and Tess to Adam and Eve in the mornings, thus foreshadowing a later fall from perfection. It is the idealism and perfection that Tess finds at Talbothays that leads to this shaky foundation for her happiness; Angel Clare adores Tess as a representation of perfection. To Angel, Tess is a goddess such as Artemis or Demeter, a symbol of perfection rather than a person with obvious faults and foibles. There is a great irony in Angel's adoration for Tess; Angel exalts Tess as a goddess for her strength and disposition, yet this perfection comes from the adversity stemming from her greatest weakness

Time passes at the dairy. Everyone's enjoying the summer weather. Tess and Angel are studying each other day by day--but not quite in love yet. Tess is happier now than she's ever been in recent memory. She and Angel see each other frequently--often they're the first ones up. And dairy farmers have to get up really early in the morning. We're talking 3:30 a.m. Being the first ones up makes them feel like they're the only two people in the world. They're like Adam and Eve. He calls her "Artemis" and "Demeter" , but she prefers to be called Tess . In the pale light of the early morning, Tess's beauty seems almost supernatural to Angel, and he seems the same to her. But then their solitude would be ended by the arrival of the other milkmen and milkmaids, and the milking would begin.

CHAPTER 20 Summary Angel and Tess are in constant company of each other on the farm. As the season changes, their passion for each other grows stronger. She becomes "a visionary essence of woman" to him, and Artemis and Demeter are his fanciful names for her. Unfortunately, as he idealizes Tess more and more, it will be harder and harder for him to ever accept the truth about her. Notes For Tess, life goes on peacefully and cheerfully on Talbothay's farm. She is constantly in the company of Angel, which she enjoys immensely. Hardy states that these are the only happy days in this young woman's life. For Angel, each day spent with Tess enhances her beauty and divinity. He pictures her as a goddess , and calls her Artemis. The tragedy is that Angel, in seeing her as perfection, will never be able to understand or accept her flaws. It is significant to notice the faint summer fog which spreads over the meadows, making them appear gray. There is a comparison to Tess in this description of nature. The mist and moisture have increased her loveliness, and she glows with the wonderful weather; but like the mist that covers the valley, she is covering up her past from Angel. In her heart, there is a hidden panic, which still makes her sad and lonely


There was a great stir in the milk-house just after breakfast.  The
churn revolved as usual, but the butter would not come.  Whenever
this happened the dairy was paralyzed.  Squish, squash echoed the
milk in the great cylinder, but never arose the sound they waited
for.

Dairyman Crick and his wife, the milkmaids Tess, Marian, Retty
Priddle, Izz Huett, and the married ones from the cottages; also
Mr Clare, Jonathan Kail, old Deborah, and the rest, stood gazing
hopelessly at the churn; and the boy who kept the horse going outside
put on moon-like eyes to show his sense of the situation.  Even the
melancholy horse himself seemed to look in at the window in inquiring
despair at each walk round.

"'Tis years since I went to Conjuror Trendle's son in Egdon--years!"
said the dairyman bitterly.  "And he was nothing to what his father
had been.  I have said fifty times, if I have said once, that I DON'T
believe in en; though 'a do cast folks' waters very true.  But I
shall have to go to 'n if he's alive.  O yes, I shall have to go to
'n, if this sort of thing continnys!"

Even Mr Clare began to feel tragical at the dairyman's desperation.

"Conjuror Fall, t'other side of Casterbridge, that they used to call
'Wide-O', was a very good man when I was a boy," said Jonathan Kail.
"But he's rotten as touchwood by now."

"My grandfather used to go to Conjuror Mynterne, out at Owlscombe,
and a clever man a' were, so I've heard grandf'er say," continued Mr
Crick.  "But there's no such genuine folk about nowadays!"

Mrs Crick's mind kept nearer to the matter in hand.

"Perhaps somebody in the house is in love," she said tentatively.
"I've heard tell in my younger days that that will cause it.  Why,
Crick--that maid we had years ago, do ye mind, and how the butter
didn't come then--"

"Ah yes, yes!--but that isn't the rights o't.  It had nothing to do
with the love-making.  I can mind all about it--'twas the damage to
the churn."

He turned to Clare.

"Jack Dollop, a 'hore's-bird of a fellow we had here as milker at one
time, sir, courted a young woman over at Mellstock, and deceived her
as he had deceived many afore.  But he had another sort o' woman to
reckon wi' this time, and it was not the girl herself.  One Holy
Thursday of all days in the almanack, we was here as we mid be now,
only there was no churning in hand, when we zid the girl's mother
coming up to the door, wi' a great brass-mounted umbrella in her
hand that would ha' felled an ox, and saying 'Do Jack Dollop work
here?--because I want him!  I have a big bone to pick with he, I
can assure 'n!'  And some way behind her mother walked Jack's young
woman, crying bitterly into her handkercher.  'O Lard, here's a
time!' said Jack, looking out o' winder at 'em.  'She'll murder me!
Where shall I get--where shall I--?  Don't tell her where I be!'
And with that he scrambled into the churn through the trap-door, and
shut himself inside, just as the young woman's mother busted into
the milk-house.  'The villain--where is he?' says she.  'I'll claw
his face for'n, let me only catch him!'  Well, she hunted about
everywhere, ballyragging Jack by side and by seam, Jack lying
a'most stifled inside the churn, and the poor maid--or young woman
rather--standing at the door crying her eyes out.  I shall never
forget it, never! 'Twould have melted a marble stone!  But she
couldn't find him nowhere at all."

The dairyman paused, and one or two words of comment came from the
listeners.

Dairyman Crick's stories often seemed to be ended when they were not
really so, and strangers were betrayed into premature interjections
of finality; though old friends knew better.  The narrator went on--

"Well, how the old woman should have had the wit to guess it I could
never tell, but she found out that he was inside that there churn.
Without saying a word she took hold of the winch (it was turned by
handpower then), and round she swung him, and Jack began to flop
about inside.  'O Lard! stop the churn! let me out!' says he, popping
out his head.  'I shall be churned into a pummy!'  (He was a cowardly
chap in his heart, as such men mostly be).  'Not till ye make amends
for ravaging her virgin innocence!' says the old woman.  'Stop the
churn you old witch!' screams he.  'You call me old witch, do ye, you
deceiver!' says she, 'when ye ought to ha' been calling me mother-law
these last five months!'  And on went the churn, and Jack's bones
rattled round again.  Well, none of us ventured to interfere; and at
last 'a promised to make it right wi' her.  'Yes--I'll be as good as
my word!' he said.  And so it ended that day."

While the listeners were smiling their comments there was a
quick movement behind their backs, and they looked round.  Tess,
pale-faced, had gone to the door.

"How warm 'tis to-day!" she said, almost inaudibly.

It was warm, and none of them connected her withdrawal with the
reminiscences of the dairyman.  He went forward and opened the door
for her, saying with tender raillery--

"Why, maidy" (he frequently, with unconscious irony, gave her this
pet name), "the prettiest milker I've got in my dairy; you mustn't
get so fagged as this at the first breath of summer weather, or we
shall be finely put to for want of 'ee by dog-days, shan't we, Mr
Clare?"

"I was faint--and--I think I am better out o' doors," she said
mechanically; and disappeared outside.

Fortunately for her the milk in the revolving churn at that moment
changed its squashing for a decided flick-flack.

"'Tis coming!" cried Mrs Crick, and the attention of all was called
off from Tess.

That fair sufferer soon recovered herself externally; but she
remained much depressed all the afternoon. When the evening milking
was done she did not care to be with the rest of them, and went out
of doors, wandering along she knew not whither.  She was wretched--O
so wretched--at the perception that to her companions the dairyman's
story had been rather a humorous narration than otherwise; none of
them but herself seemed to see the sorrow of it; to a certainty, not
one knew how cruelly it touched the tender place in her experience.
The evening sun was now ugly to her, like a great inflamed wound in
the sky.  Only a solitary cracked-voice reed-sparrow greeted her from
the bushes by the river, in a sad, machine-made tone, resembling that
of a past friend whose friendship she had outworn.

In these long June days the milkmaids, and, indeed, most of the
household, went to bed at sunset or sooner, the morning work before
milking being so early and heavy at a time of full pails.  Tess
usually accompanied her fellows upstairs.  To-night, however, she was
the first to go to their common chamber; and she had dozed when the
other girls came in.  She saw them undressing in the orange light
of the vanished sun, which flushed their forms with its colour; she
dozed again, but she was reawakened by their voices, and quietly
turned her eyes towards them.

Neither of her three chamber-companions had got into bed.  They were
standing in a group, in their nightgowns, barefooted, at the window,
the last red rays of the west still warming their faces and necks and
the walls around them.  All were watching somebody in the garden with
deep interest, their three faces close together: a jovial and round
one, a pale one with dark hair, and a fair one whose tresses were
auburn.

"Don't push!  You can see as well as I," said Retty, the
auburn-haired and youngest girl, without removing her eyes from the
window.

"'Tis no use for you to be in love with him any more than me, Retty
Priddle," said jolly-faced Marian, the eldest, slily.  "His thoughts
be of other cheeks than thine!"

Retty Priddle still looked, and the others looked again.

"There he is again!" cried Izz Huett, the pale girl with dark damp
hair and keenly cut lips.

"You needn't say anything, Izz," answered Retty.  "For I zid you
kissing his shade."

"WHAT did you see her doing?" asked Marian.

"Why--he was standing over the whey-tub to let off the whey, and the
shade of his face came upon the wall behind, close to Izz, who was
standing there filling a vat.  She put her mouth against the wall and
kissed the shade of his mouth; I zid her, though he didn't."

"O Izz Huett!" said Marian.

A rosy spot came into the middle of Izz Huett's cheek.

"Well, there was no harm in it," she declared, with attempted
coolness.  "And if I be in love wi'en, so is Retty, too; and so be
you, Marian, come to that."

Marian's full face could not blush past its chronic pinkness.

"I!" she said.  "What a tale!  Ah, there he is again!  Dear
eyes--dear face--dear Mr Clare!"

"There--you've owned it!"

"So have you--so have we all," said Marian, with the dry frankness of
complete indifference to opinion.  "It is silly to pretend otherwise
amongst ourselves, though we need not own it to other folks.  I would
just marry 'n to-morrow!"

"So would I--and more," murmured Izz Huett.

"And I too," whispered the more timid Retty.

The listener grew warm.

"We can't all marry him," said Izz.

"We shan't, either of us; which is worse still," said the eldest.
"There he is again!"

They all three blew him a silent kiss.

"Why?" asked Retty quickly.

"Because he likes Tess Durbeyfield best," said Marian, lowering her
voice.  "I have watched him every day, and have found it out."

There was a reflective silence.

"But she don't care anything for 'n?" at length breathed Retty.

"Well--I sometimes think that too."

"But how silly all this is!" said Izz Huett impatiently.  "Of course
he won't marry any one of us, or Tess either--a gentleman's son,
who's going to be a great landowner and farmer abroad!  More likely
to ask us to come wi'en as farm-hands at so much a year!"

One sighed, and another sighed, and Marian's plump figure sighed
biggest of all.  Somebody in bed hard by sighed too.  Tears came into
the eyes of Retty Priddle, the pretty red-haired youngest--the last
bud of the Paridelles, so important in the county annals.  They
watched silently a little longer, their three faces still close
together as before, and the triple hues of their hair mingling.  But
the unconscious Mr Clare had gone indoors, and they saw him no more;
and, the shades beginning to deepen, they crept into their beds.
In a few minutes they heard him ascend the ladder to his own room.
Marian was soon snoring, but Izz did not drop into forgetfulness for
a long time.  Retty Priddle cried herself to sleep.

The deeper-passioned Tess was very far from sleeping even then.  This
conversation was another of the bitter pills she had been obliged to
swallow that day.  Scarce the least feeling of jealousy arose in her
breast.  For that matter she knew herself to have the preference.
Being more finely formed, better educated, and, though the youngest
except Retty, more woman than either, she perceived that only the
slightest ordinary care was necessary for holding her own in Angel
Clare's heart against these her candid friends.  But the grave
question was, ought she to do this?  There was, to be sure, hardly a
ghost of a chance for either of them, in a serious sense; but there
was, or had been, a chance of one or the other inspiring him with a
passing fancy for her, and enjoying the pleasure of his attentions
while he stayed here.  Such unequal attachments had led to marriage;
and she had heard from Mrs Crick that Mr Clare had one day asked, in
a laughing way, what would be the use of his marrying a fine lady,
and all the while ten thousand acres of Colonial pasture to feed,
and cattle to rear, and corn to reap.  A farm-woman would be the
only sensible kind of wife for him.  But whether Mr Clare had spoken
seriously or not, why should she, who could never conscientiously
allow any man to marry her now, and who had religiously determined
that she never would be tempted to do so, draw off Mr Clare's
attention from other women, for the brief happiness of sunning
herself in his eyes while he remained at Talbothays?

There is a great stir in the milk-house just after breakfast, for the churn revolved but butter would not come. Whenever this happens the dairy is paralyzed. Mrs. Crick says that perhaps somebody in the house is in love, for she heard that this will cause it. Dairyman Crick tells a story about how a Jack Dollop impregnated a local girl, whose mother came to the dairy to find him. Jack hid in the churn; the mother learned this and started the churn with him inside until he agreed to marry the girl. The problem with the churn resolves itself, and Tess remains depressed throughout the afternoon. She is wretched at the perception that to her companions the dairyman's story had been a humorous one, for none seemed to see the sorrow of it. One night, Tess's three roommates watch Angel in the garden from their window. The three each are attracted to Angel, but Retty says that none will marry him for he likes Tess Durbeyfield the best. Izz Huett says that Angel will not even marry Tess, for he will be a great landowner and a farmer abroad. Tess overhears this conversation and feels some deal of jealousy. She believes that unequal attachments of rank may lead for marriage, for she wonders what good a lady may be on a farm.

The affection between Angel Clare and Tess Durbeyfield, although not explicitly stated between these two characters is nevertheless obvious to the others at Talbothays dairy, who realize the love that Angel and Tess feel for one another. Mrs. Crick insinuates that a romance in her household is the cause for the stalled butter churn, while Tess's roommates become jealous that she receives the most attention from Angel, whom all of them adore. The jealousy that her roommates feel leads Tess to a realization that she may have a future with Angel Clare, for she believes that he would want to marry a working woman and not a lady of his own social rank; in fact, Tess represents both social spheres, having the family history of a noble lady and the actual history of a working class girl. Despite Tess's relative happiness at Talbothays dairy, Tess cannot fully escape her past history. The humorous anecdote that Dairyman Crick tells about the butter churn reminds Tess of the gravity of her situation; she can find the tragedy in the situation of the girl, while the others focus on the humorous of the mother and Jack Dollop

One day there's a crisis at the dairy: they can't make the butter come . The churn goes around and around, but the cream just goes swish, swish, and doesn't thicken into butter. Everyone is paralyzed--their livelihood at the farm depends on their ability to sell butter in London. Dairyman Crick is almost ready to call on a local conjuror for some magical spell or charm to make the butter come. Mrs. Crick has another idea. Perhaps, she suggests, someone in the house is in love? She's heard that that can cause it. But Dairyman Crick remembers the story his wife is referring to. It wasn't because someone was in love, it's because a girl had been seduced, and her lover had hidden himself in the huge churn to hide from the girl's mother, who was understandably angry. It's really a funny story--the girl's mother starts turning the churn, which paddles the young man inside repeatedly. But Tess doesn't think it's very funny--it reminds her too much of her own history. She starts to escape outside, and just then they hear the sound of the cream turning to butter, so no one notices that she's upset. That night, she goes to bed early, and is dozing when the other three girls come up to go to bed. They think she's asleep, so they speak softly amongst themselves about how much they're all in love with Angel. They know he's more interested in Tess, though, but they're too generous and fair to hold it against her. Tess blushes, but doesn't say anything, and the other three go to bed and cry themselves to sleep. They all wonder whether Angel might marry a dairywoman instead of a fine lady, since a dairywoman would make a better farmer's wife. Tess knows that Angel does prefer her to her friends, but has to ask herself whether she has any moral right to try to keep him to herself, when she doesn't feel that she can allow any man to marry her.

CHAPTER 21 Summary The Chapter begins with a commotion in the milk house. Butter is not churning out, and everyone is worried. Crick's wife remarks that it happens only when someone on the farm is in love. After lots of churning, butter starts forming, and everybody is relieved. By now, Angel's interest in Tess is no longer a secret; his love for Tess has become the favorite topic among the milkmaids. Tess feels a bit guilty about her involvement, for she has decided that she will never marry due to her past. Notes Tess knows that the milkmaids' candid opinions and Mrs. Crick's suspicion are true; at the same time, she realizes that unwittingly she has caused a setback to the milkmaids' fancies and imaginations, a fact which bothers her. She is also skeptical of Angel's wish to marry a farm woman, rather than a fine lady, and she imagines it is a temporary fancy for Angel. This chapter points out the differences in Tess, Marian, and Retty. Tess' love for Angel is deep and placid; it is only her past that prevents her from disclosing her love. The other milkmaids talk about their love freely, but it lacks the intensity of Tess's love


They came downstairs yawning next morning; but skimming and milking
were proceeded with as usual, and they went indoors to breakfast.
Dairyman Crick was discovered stamping about the house.  He had
received a letter, in which a customer had complained that the butter
had a twang.

"And begad, so 't have!" said the dairyman, who held in his left hand
a wooden slice on which a lump of butter was stuck. "Yes--taste for
yourself!"

Several of them gathered round him; and Mr Clare tasted, Tess tasted,
also the other indoor milkmaids, one or two of the milking-men, and
last of all Mrs Crick, who came out from the waiting breakfast-table.
There certainly was a twang.

The dairyman, who had thrown himself into abstraction to better
realize the taste, and so divine the particular species of noxious
weed to which it appertained, suddenly exclaimed--

"'Tis garlic! and I thought there wasn't a blade left in that mead!"

Then all the old hands remembered that a certain dry mead, into which
a few of the cows had been admitted of late, had, in years gone by,
spoilt the butter in the same way.  The dairyman had not recognized
the taste at that time, and thought the butter bewitched.

"We must overhaul that mead," he resumed; "this mustn't continny!"

All having armed themselves with old pointed knives, they went out
together.  As the inimical plant could only be present in very
microscopic dimensions to have escaped ordinary observation, to
find it seemed rather a hopeless attempt in the stretch of rich
grass before them.  However, they formed themselves into line, all
assisting, owing to the importance of the search; the dairyman at
the upper end with Mr Clare, who had volunteered to help; then
Tess, Marian, Izz Huett, and Retty; then Bill Lewell, Jonathan, and
the married dairywomen--Beck Knibbs, with her wooly black hair and
rolling eyes; and flaxen Frances, consumptive from the winter damps
of the water-meads--who lived in their respective cottages.

With eyes fixed upon the ground they crept slowly across a strip of
the field, returning a little further down in such a manner that,
when they should have finished, not a single inch of the pasture but
would have fallen under the eye of some one of them.  It was a most
tedious business, not more than half a dozen shoots of garlic being
discoverable in the whole field; yet such was the herb's pungency
that probably one bite of it by one cow had been sufficient to season
the whole dairy's produce for the day.

Differing one from another in natures and moods so greatly as they
did, they yet formed, bending, a curiously uniform row--automatic,
noiseless; and an alien observer passing down the neighbouring lane
might well have been excused for massing them as "Hodge".  As they
crept along, stooping low to discern the plant, a soft yellow gleam
was reflected from the buttercups into their shaded faces, giving
them an elfish, moonlit aspect, though the sun was pouring upon their
backs in all the strength of noon.

Angel Clare, who communistically stuck to his rule of taking part
with the rest in everything, glanced up now and then.  It was not,
of course, by accident that he walked next to Tess.

"Well, how are you?" he murmured.

"Very well, thank you, sir," she replied demurely.

As they had been discussing a score of personal matters only
half-an-hour before, the introductory style seemed a little
superfluous.  But they got no further in speech just then.  They
crept and crept, the hem of her petticoat just touching his gaiter,
and his elbow sometimes brushing hers.  At last the dairyman, who
came next, could stand it no longer.

"Upon my soul and body, this here stooping do fairly make my back
open and shut!" he exclaimed, straightening himself slowly with an
excruciated look till quite upright.  "And you, maidy Tess, you
wasn't well a day or two ago--this will make your head ache finely!
Don't do any more, if you feel fainty; leave the rest to finish it."

Dairyman Crick withdrew, and Tess dropped behind.  Mr Clare also
stepped out of line, and began privateering about for the weed.  When
she found him near her, her very tension at what she had heard the
night before made her the first to speak.

"Don't they look pretty?" she said.

"Who?"

"Izzy Huett and Retty."

Tess had moodily decided that either of these maidens would make a
good farmer's wife, and that she ought to recommend them, and obscure
her own wretched charms.

"Pretty?  Well, yes--they are pretty girls--fresh looking.  I have
often thought so."

"Though, poor dears, prettiness won't last long!"

"O no, unfortunately."

"They are excellent dairywomen."

"Yes: though not better than you."

"They skim better than I."

"Do they?"

Clare remained observing them--not without their observing him.

"She is colouring up," continued Tess heroically.

"Who?"

"Retty Priddle."

"Oh!  Why it that?"

"Because you are looking at her."

Self-sacrificing as her mood might be, Tess could not well go further
and cry, "Marry one of them, if you really do want a dairywoman and
not a lady; and don't think of marrying me!"  She followed Dairyman
Crick, and had the mournful satisfaction of seeing that Clare
remained behind.

From this day she forced herself to take pains to avoid him--never
allowing herself, as formerly, to remain long in his company, even if
their juxtaposition were purely accidental.  She gave the other three
every chance.

Tess was woman enough to realize from their avowals to herself that
Angel Clare had the honour of all the dairymaids in his keeping, and
her perception of his care to avoid compromising the happiness of
either in the least degree bred a tender respect in Tess for what she
deemed, rightly or wrongly, the self-controlling sense of duty shown
by him, a quality which she had never expected to find in one of the
opposite sex, and in the absence of which more than one of the simple
hearts who were his house-mates might have gone weeping on her
pilgrimage.

The next morning Dairyman Crick orders his workers to overhaul the mead, for there is garlic in it that has spoiled the milk. While searching for garlic in the field, Angel finds Tess and they search together. Dairyman Crick finds them and tells her that she should not be out in the fields, for she was not feeling well a day or so ago. Tess mentions to Angel that Izzy Huett and Retty look pretty, but Angel insists on Tess's superiority. Tess finally tells Angel to marry one of them if she wants a dairywoman and not a lady, and not to think of marrying her. From this day Tess forces herself to take pains to avoid Angel.

Tess begins to retreat from any possible romantic engagement with Angel Clare in this chapter, as he makes his feelings for her more explicit. She rejects Angel's affection for her because she believes that he wants a simple girl as a wife and not a member of a noble family. The rationale for Tess's rejection of Angel is ironic, for her shame stems not from the more lowly details of her history, but rather the lofty ones. She fears that she may be exposed as a noble lady, not that she may be exposed as an unchaste woman

The next morning, Dairyman Crick is all in a huff because he's had a letter complaining of a funny taste in the butter. He can taste it himself, and realizes that there must be garlic in the fields that the cows have been munching. So all the dairymaids and dairymen gather up and go over every inch of the field in a row, trying to find the offending plants. This, as you can imagine, is very tedious work--like hunting meticulously for a needle in the proverbial haystack. Angel is sure to put himself next to Tess in the row, so that they can speak quietly to each other as they scour the field. After a while, Tess separates herself from the rest of the group, and Angel follows after a few minutes. Tess remarks on how pretty the other dairymaids look, especially Izz and Retty. After this, she tries to avoid Angel as much as possible, to give the other dairymaids a fair chance. After all, she thinks that she can't, in good conscience, marry anyone after having had a baby out of wedlock.

CHAPTER 22 Summary The next morning begins with a complaint from a customer who says that the butter tastes sharp. All the farm hands and milkmaids go out in the meadow in search of garlic weeds, which can spoil the taste of butter if eaten by the cows. Angel waits for Tess and works beside her. She points out the virtues of Izz and Retty, two of the milkmaids who are crazy about Angel, and encourages him to take an interest in them. Her ulterior motive is to see that his attention is diverted from her, for she thinks he deserves somebody more pure and worthy than she is. Angel, however, makes it explicitly clear that Tess is above the rest of the milkmaids. Notes By now Tess is old enough to realize that Angel's interest in her is not purely platonic, but she also knows he seems serious about her, a fact that is troubling. Her selfless nature and her belief that she is unworthy of him make Tess stay away from Angel, for she does not want to deceive him or lead him on. She also tries to advance the cause of the other milkmaids, pointing out their virtues to Angel. At the end of this chapter, it is important to stop and compare the development of Tess's relationship with Angel to that of her encounter with Alec. Because of her loss of innocence and maturity, Tess is much more on guard about this relationship