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

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

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

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

"A comely maid that," said the other.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the meantime the lovers were driving onward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I do not, Tessy, really."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Now, Tess!"

He silenced her by a kiss.

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

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

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

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

She impulsively whispered to him--

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

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

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

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

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

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

The cock crew again--straight towards Clare.

"Well!" said the dairyman.

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

The cock crew again.

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

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

Angel wishes to spend a day with Tess away from the dairy before the wedding, thus they spend a day in the nearest town on Christmas Eve. While in town, others remark that she is a comely maid, although a Trantridge man thinks that he recognizes her. He thinks that she was once a woman of ill repute. That night, Angel has a dream that he fought with the man who insulted Tess. This is the last thing required for Tess to turn the scale of her indecision. Tess writes on four pages a succinct narrative of those events of years before and slips it under his door. The next morning, Angel meets her at the bottom of the stairs and kisses her as warmly as ever. Tess feels that her doubts were childish and he may have forgiven her. On the wedding day, Tess finds in Angel's room the note under the carpet, unopened and never seen. Tess attempts to tell Angel once more, but she does not. On the way to the church, Tess believes that she has seen the carriage before. Angel tells Tess the legend of the d'Urberville Coach, the superstition of the county that a certain d'Urberville who committed a dreadful crime in his family coach. Supposedly, members of the d'Urberville family see the coach at certain times, but Angel refuses to tell Tess when. Tess marries Angel, but feels that she is somewhat more truly Mrs. Alexander d'Urberville. When she finds herself alone, Tess prays. Although she tries to pray to God, she in fact prays to Angel. As the two leave Talbothays, Tess advises Angel to kiss her three roommates one more time. On their way out of Talbothays, they see an afternoon crow.

Tess averts the disaster that her reputation provides twice in this chapter. For the first time since leaving Marlott, Tess confronts her past when a Trantridge man recognizes her and believes her to be a woman with a tarnished reputation. Although Angel defends her, he does so without conceiving that the man's accusations against Tess may contain any truth. Tess averts a second disaster when Angel seems to respond favorably to the letter that Tess writes to him. Angel behaves as if nothing has troubled him the next morning after he has supposedly read the letter, and says nothing of its subject; his reaction, as Hardy foreshadows and eventually explains by the end of the chapter, stems from having not read the letter at all. The realization that Angel has not read the letter concerning Tess's past serves as a turning point. The anxiety and guilt that Tess has felt in previous chapters has been internalized. After this point on the wedding day, Hardy gives this anxiety physical manifestation through several symbols of foreboding. The appearance of an afternoon crow is a conventional sign foreshadowing ill omens, while Tess's vision of the d'Urberville coach foreshadows tragedy particular to her ancestors. This further bolsters the theme of Tess's inability to escape her d'Urberville past. Although now married to Angel Clare, Tess Durbeyfield cannot fully repudiate her ancestry and personal history

Angel wants to spend a day with Tess, just the two of them, before they get married. It'll be their last day as an engaged couple. So they go shopping together on Christmas Eve. Angel leaves Tess briefly in front of an inn . While she's waiting, a couple of men pass by. One of them is from Trantridge , and he recognizes her. He's starting to say so, when Angel comes back. Angel sees the horrified expression on Tess's face, and punches the guy in the jaw. The guy staggers back, and says that it must be a mistake--it must be some other girl, forty miles off. Angel realizes that he overreacted, and gives the guy a few shillings for a bandage. Tess is depressed by the incident, and asks if it would be possible to postpone the wedding. Angel says no, and Tess is silent the whole way home. She's thinking that they're going to move hundreds of miles away, where no one who knew her before could possibly ever see her. That night, Tess gets woken up by the sound of a scuffle from Angel's room overhead. She runs upstairs, and he tells her that he was having a dream that he was fighting that guy again, and was beating up his suitcase in his sleep. Tess makes up her mind at last: since she can't bring herself to tell him her history in person, she writes it all down in a letter, seals it up, and tiptoes upstairs and pokes it under Angel's door. The next morning, she meets him downstairs as usual, and he kisses her as usual. Even when they're alone, he doesn't allude to the letter. Could he have read it? She peeps into his room that afternoon, and doesn't see the note. He must have read it, and he must have forgiven her. The last few days before the wedding slip by. The morning of their wedding, she begins to suspect that he never got the letter. She slips up to his room, and finds the corner of the letter sticking out from under his carpet. It must have gone under the rug when she stuck it under the door. He never saw it. She burns the letter in her room, and pulls Angel aside downstairs. She wants to tell him all of her faults now, before they are married, so that he can never blame her for not telling him later. But Angel says that he doesn't want to hear them, since that they'll have plenty of time to talk over both of their faults later on, after they're married. She has to be "perfect" on her wedding day. He promises that he'll confess his own faults later, too. They have to take a coach to the church, because it's a long way off and it's the middle of winter. Because the Dairyman's cart is open, they've rented a closed coach from a local inn. It's old and rickety. There aren't very many people at the church to watch the ceremony, because they hadn't advertised it by publishing the banns . Tess repeats her vows in a low voice, and they are married. Angel knows that she loves him, but he doesn't realize that she'd lie down in front of a cart and get run over repeatedly for him. After the service, Tess stares for a while at the old coach--she thinks it looks familiar. Angel assumes that it's because it reminds her of the legend of the D'Urberville coach, but she's never heard it before. Angel doesn't want to tell her the whole story, since it's pretty gloomy. But he gives the bare bones of it: some member of the D'Urberville family committed some horrible crime in the family coach and, after that, members of the family have a vision of the coach whenever... but that's as far as Angel gets with the story. Tess asks whether it's when they've committed a crime, or when they're about to die, that D'Urbervilles see the coach? Angel doesn't answer, and kisses her. They get back to the dairy, and Tess manages to get a few minutes by herself to calm down. As they leave the dairy, all the workers and Mr. and Mrs. Crick line up to say good-bye. Angel kisses each in turn as a formal farewell, and the dairymaids get all agitated. But Angel doesn't notice. As they're starting to leave through the gate, a rooster crows. Hearing a rooster crow in the afternoon, apparently, is bad luck, and they hurry away as Dairyman Crick threatens to ring the bird's neck.

CHAPTER 33 Summary Before the wedding, Angel takes Tess into town to make some purchases. While she waits for Angel, Tess is spotted by an acquaintance from Trantridge, who rudely makes a comment about her lack of chastity. Angel hears the remark and hits the man. The Trantridge man apologizes, Angel gives him some money, and they go peacefully on their separate ways. The incident unnerves Tess, and she looks forward to moving far away where she will not be recognized. But that night, she decides she must confess her past to Angel in a letter. She writes down everything and slips the letter under Angel's door. The next day she is pleasantly surprised by his warmth and love and thinks he is forgiving her. Tess breathes a sigh of relief that the ordeal is over. On the day of the wedding she is shocked to discover her sealed letter beneath the carpet in his room. Since the wedding is about to begin, she decides to tell Angel in person about her past. She destroys the letter and rushes to find her future husband. She tells him she wants to confess her faults before the wedding. Angel, not wanting to spoil the day, assures Tess that there is plenty of time in the future to talk about their wrongdoings. With no choice left, a dismayed Tess proceeds with her wedding. It is a quiet ceremony held in the local church. Notes The work of fate is clearly seen in this chapter. While Tess and Angel are shopping in town, Tess is recognized by a male acquaintance from Trantridge, who casts aspersions upon her character. Angel defends his future wife by striking the man, but the whole incident, right before the wedding, unnerves Tess and plants a seed of doubt in Angel's mind. The incident also convinces Tess to write a letter of confession to Angel, which she does that very night. Fate also has a hand in the letter. When Tess slips it under Angel's door, it goes underneath the rug; therefore, Angel never sees it. When Angel is warm and kind to Tess the next morning, she reads it as a sign of his understanding and forgiveness and feels very relieved. On the morning of the wedding, she discovers the truth about the letter. She tears up the unopened envelope and rushes to tell Angel the truth in person. He refuses to hear any of her confession, stating there will be plenty of time for such things in their future. Dismayed by the power of fate, a confused Tess goes through with the marriage ceremony. The honest and kind young woman worships Angel, almost like a god; but she feels terribly troubled that she has been unable to tell him about her tainted past, even though she has made two earnest tries to do so. Her troubled heart receives a further jolt after the wedding when she sees the D'Urberville carriage that will take them away and when she hears the cock crow. Hardy explains that when a cock crows in the afternoon it brings ill luck. Thus, the stage is set for a series of tragic events in Tess's life


They drove by the level road along the valley to a distance of a few
miles, and, reaching Wellbridge, turned away from the village to the
left, and over the great Elizabethan bridge which gives the place
half its name.  Immediately behind it stood the house wherein they
had engaged lodgings, whose exterior features are so well known to
all travellers through the Froom Valley; once portion of a fine
manorial residence, and the property and seat of a d'Urberville, but
since its partial demolition a farmhouse.

"Welcome to one of your ancestral mansions!" said Clare as he handed
her down.  But he regretted the pleasantry; it was too near a satire.

On entering they found that, though they had only engaged a couple
of rooms, the farmer had taken advantage of their proposed presence
during the coming days to pay a New Year's visit to some friends,
leaving a woman from a neighbouring cottage to minister to their
few wants.  The absoluteness of possession pleased them, and they
realized it as the first moment of their experience under their own
exclusive roof-tree.

But he found that the mouldy old habitation somewhat depressed his
bride.  When the carriage was gone they ascended the stairs to wash
their hands, the charwoman showing the way.  On the landing Tess
stopped and started.

"What's the matter?" said he.

"Those horrid women!" she answered with a smile.  "How they
frightened me."

He looked up, and perceived two life-size portraits on panels built
into the masonry.  As all visitors to the mansion are aware, these
paintings represent women of middle age, of a date some two hundred
years ago, whose lineaments once seen can never be forgotten.
The long pointed features, narrow eye, and smirk of the one, so
suggestive of merciless treachery; the bill-hook nose, large
teeth, and bold eye of the other suggesting arrogance to the point
of ferocity, haunt the beholder afterwards in his dreams.

"Whose portraits are those?" asked Clare of the charwoman.

"I have been told by old folk that they were ladies of the
d'Urberville family, the ancient lords of this manor," she said,
"Owing to their being builded into the wall they can't be moved
away."

The unpleasantness of the matter was that, in addition to their
effect upon Tess, her fine features were unquestionably traceable
in these exaggerated forms.  He said nothing of this, however, and,
regretting that he had gone out of his way to choose the house for
their bridal time, went on into the adjoining room.  The place having
been rather hastily prepared for them, they washed their hands in one
basin.  Clare touched hers under the water.

"Which are my fingers and which are yours?" he said, looking up.
"They are very much mixed."

"They are all yours," said she, very prettily, and endeavoured
to be gayer than she was.  He had not been displeased with her
thoughtfulness on such an occasion; it was what every sensible woman
would show: but Tess knew that she had been thoughtful to excess,
and struggled against it.

The sun was so low on that short last afternoon of the year that it
shone in through a small opening and formed a golden staff which
stretched across to her skirt, where it made a spot like a paint-mark
set upon her.  They went into the ancient parlour to tea, and
here they shared their first common meal alone.  Such was their
childishness, or rather his, that he found it interesting to use the
same bread-and-butter plate as herself, and to brush crumbs from her
lips with his own.  He wondered a little that she did not enter into
these frivolities with his own zest.

Looking at her silently for a long time; "She is a dear dear Tess,"
he thought to himself, as one deciding on the true construction of
a difficult passage.  "Do I realize solemnly enough how utterly and
irretrievably this little womanly thing is the creature of my good
or bad faith and fortune?  I think not.  I think I could not, unless
I were a woman myself.  What I am in worldly estate, she is.  What I
become, she must become.  What I cannot be, she cannot be.  And shall
I ever neglect her, or hurt her, or even forget to consider her?  God
forbid such a crime!"

They sat on over the tea-table waiting for their luggage, which the
dairyman had promised to send before it grew dark.  But evening began
to close in, and the luggage did not arrive, and they had brought
nothing more than they stood in.  With the departure of the sun the
calm mood of the winter day changed.  Out of doors there began noises
as of silk smartly rubbed; the restful dead leaves of the preceding
autumn were stirred to irritated resurrection, and whirled about
unwillingly, and tapped against the shutters.  It soon began to rain.

"That cock knew the weather was going to change," said Clare.

The woman who had attended upon them had gone home for the night, but
she had placed candles upon the table, and now they lit them.  Each
candle-flame drew towards the fireplace.

"These old houses are so draughty," continued Angel, looking at the
flames, and at the grease guttering down the sides.  "I wonder where
that luggage is.  We haven't even a brush and comb."

"I don't know," she answered, absent-minded.

"Tess, you are not a bit cheerful this evening--not at all as you
used to be.  Those harridans on the panels upstairs have unsettled
you.  I am sorry I brought you here.  I wonder if you really love me,
after all?"

He knew that she did, and the words had no serious intent; but she
was surcharged with emotion, and winced like a wounded animal.
Though she tried not to shed tears, she could not help showing one
or two.

"I did not mean it!" said he, sorry.  "You are worried at not having
your things, I know.  I cannot think why old Jonathan has not come
with them.  Why, it is seven o'clock?  Ah, there he is!"

A knock had come to the door, and, there being nobody else to answer
it, Clare went out.  He returned to the room with a small package in
his hand.

"It is not Jonathan, after all," he said.

"How vexing!" said Tess.

The packet had been brought by a special messenger, who had arrived
at Talbothays from Emminster Vicarage immediately after the departure
of the married couple, and had followed them hither, being under
injunction to deliver it into nobody's hands but theirs.  Clare
brought it to the light.  It was less than a foot long, sewed up in
canvas, sealed in red wax with his father's seal, and directed in his
father's hand to "Mrs Angel Clare."

"It is a little wedding-present for you, Tess," said he, handing it
to her.  "How thoughtful they are!"

Tess looked a little flustered as she took it.

"I think I would rather have you open it, dearest," said she, turning
over the parcel.  "I don't like to break those great seals; they look
so serious.  Please open it for me!"

He undid the parcel.  Inside was a case of morocco leather, on the
top of which lay a note and a key.

The note was for Clare, in the following words:

   MY DEAR SON--

   Possibly you have forgotten that on the death of your
   godmother, Mrs Pitney, when you were a lad, she--vain,
   kind woman that she was--left to me a portion of the
   contents of her jewel-case in trust for your wife, if
   you should ever have one, as a mark of her affection
   for you and whomsoever you should choose.  This trust
   I have fulfilled, and the diamonds have been locked up
   at my banker's ever since.  Though I feel it to be a
   somewhat incongruous act in the circumstances, I am, as
   you will see, bound to hand over the articles to the
   woman to whom the use of them for her lifetime will now
   rightly belong, and they are therefore promptly sent.
   They become, I believe, heirlooms, strictly speaking,
   according to the terms of your godmother's will.  The
   precise words of the clause that refers to this matter
   are enclosed.

"I do remember," said Clare; "but I had quite forgotten."

Unlocking the case, they found it to contain a necklace, with
pendant, bracelets, and ear-rings; and also some other small
ornaments.

Tess seemed afraid to touch them at first, but her eyes sparkled for
a moment as much as the stones when Clare spread out the set.

"Are they mine?" she asked incredulously.

"They are, certainly," said he.

He looked into the fire.  He remembered how, when he was a lad of
fifteen, his godmother, the Squire's wife--the only rich person
with whom he had ever come in contact--had pinned her faith to his
success; had prophesied a wondrous career for him.  There had seemed
nothing at all out of keeping with such a conjectured career in the
storing up of these showy ornaments for his wife and the wives of
her descendants.  They gleamed somewhat ironically now.  "Yet why?"
he asked himself.  It was but a question of vanity throughout; and
if that were admitted into one side of the equation it should be
admitted into the other.  His wife was a d'Urberville: whom could
they become better than her?

Suddenly he said with enthusiasm--

"Tess, put them on--put them on!"  And he turned from the fire to
help her.

But as if by magic she had already donned them--necklace, ear-rings,
bracelets, and all.

"But the gown isn't right, Tess," said Clare.  "It ought to be a low
one for a set of brilliants like that."

"Ought it?" said Tess.

"Yes," said he.

He suggested to her how to tuck in the upper edge of her bodice, so
as to make it roughly approximate to the cut for evening wear; and
when she had done this, and the pendant to the necklace hung isolated
amid the whiteness of her throat, as it was designed to do, he
stepped back to survey her.

"My heavens," said Clare, "how beautiful you are!"

As everybody knows, fine feathers make fine birds; a peasant girl but
very moderately prepossessing to the casual observer in her simple
condition and attire will bloom as an amazing beauty if clothed as a
woman of fashion with the aids that Art can render; while the beauty
of the midnight crush would often cut but a sorry figure if placed
inside the field-woman's wrapper upon a monotonous acreage of
turnips on a dull day.  He had never till now estimated the artistic
excellence of Tess's limbs and features.

"If you were only to appear in a ball-room!" he said.  "But
no--no, dearest; I think I love you best in the wing-bonnet and
cotton-frock--yes, better than in this, well as you support these
dignities."

Tess's sense of her striking appearance had given her a flush of
excitement, which was yet not happiness.

"I'll take them off," she said, "in case Jonathan should see me.
They are not fit for me, are they?  They must be sold, I suppose?"

"Let them stay a few minutes longer.  Sell them?  Never. It would be
a breach of faith."

Influenced by a second thought she readily obeyed.  She had something
to tell, and there might be help in these.  She sat down with the
jewels upon her; and they again indulged in conjectures as to where
Jonathan could possibly be with their baggage.  The ale they had
poured out for his consumption when he came had gone flat with long
standing.

Shortly after this they began supper, which was already laid on
a side-table.  Ere they had finished there was a jerk in the
fire-smoke, the rising skein of which bulged out into the room, as if
some giant had laid his hand on the chimney-top for a moment.  It had
been caused by the opening of the outer door.  A heavy step was now
heard in the passage, and Angel went out.

"I couldn' make nobody hear at all by knocking," apologized Jonathan
Kail, for it was he at last; "and as't was raining out I opened the
door.  I've brought the things, sir."

"I am very glad to see them.  But you are very late."

"Well, yes, sir."

There was something subdued in Jonathan Kail's tone which had not
been there in the day, and lines of concern were ploughed upon his
forehead in addition to the lines of years.  He continued--

"We've all been gallied at the dairy at what might ha' been a most
terrible affliction since you and your Mis'ess--so to name her
now--left us this a'ternoon.  Perhaps you ha'nt forgot the cock's
afternoon crow?"

"Dear me;--what--"

"Well, some says it do mane one thing, and some another; but what's
happened is that poor little Retty Priddle hev tried to drown
herself."

"No! Really!  Why, she bade us goodbye with the rest--"

"Yes.  Well, sir, when you and your Mis'ess--so to name what she
lawful is--when you two drove away, as I say, Retty and Marian put on
their bonnets and went out; and as there is not much doing now, being
New Year's Eve, and folks mops and brooms from what's inside 'em,
nobody took much notice.  They went on to Lew-Everard, where they
had summut to drink, and then on they vamped to Dree-armed Cross,
and there they seemed to have parted, Retty striking across the
water-meads as if for home, and Marian going on to the next village,
where there's another public-house.  Nothing more was zeed or heard
o' Retty till the waterman, on his way home, noticed something by the
Great Pool; 'twas her bonnet and shawl packed up.  In the water he
found her.  He and another man brought her home, thinking a' was
dead; but she fetched round by degrees."

Angel, suddenly recollecting that Tess was overhearing this gloomy
tale, went to shut the door between the passage and the ante-room
to the inner parlour where she was; but his wife, flinging a shawl
round her, had come to the outer room and was listening to the man's
narrative, her eyes resting absently on the luggage and the drops of
rain glistening upon it.

"And, more than this, there's Marian; she's been found dead drunk
by the withy-bed--a girl who hev never been known to touch anything
before except shilling ale; though, to be sure, 'a was always a good
trencher-woman, as her face showed.  It seems as if the maids had
all gone out o' their minds!"

"And Izz?" asked Tess.

"Izz is about house as usual; but 'a do say 'a can guess how it
happened; and she seems to be very low in mind about it, poor maid,
as well she mid be.  And so you see, sir, as all this happened just
when we was packing your few traps and your Mis'ess's night-rail and
dressing things into the cart, why, it belated me."

"Yes.  Well, Jonathan, will you get the trunks upstairs, and drink a
cup of ale, and hasten back as soon as you can, in case you should be
wanted?"

Tess had gone back to the inner parlour, and sat down by the fire,
looking wistfully into it.  She heard Jonathan Kail's heavy footsteps
up and down the stairs till he had done placing the luggage, and
heard him express his thanks for the ale her husband took out to him,
and for the gratuity he received.  Jonathan's footsteps then died
from the door, and his cart creaked away.

Angel slid forward the massive oak bar which secured the door, and
coming in to where she sat over the hearth, pressed her cheeks
between his hands from behind.  He expected her to jump up gaily and
unpack the toilet-gear that she had been so anxious about, but as she
did not rise he sat down with her in the firelight, the candles on
the supper-table being too thin and glimmering to interfere with its
glow.

"I am so sorry you should have heard this sad story about the girls,"
he said.  "Still, don't let it depress you.  Retty was naturally
morbid, you know."

"Without the least cause," said Tess.  "While they who have cause to
be, hide it, and pretend they are not."

This incident had turned the scale for her.  They were simple and
innocent girls on whom the unhappiness of unrequited love had fallen;
they had deserved better at the hands of Fate.  She had deserved
worse--yet she was the chosen one.  It was wicked of her to take all
without paying.  She would pay to the uttermost farthing; she would
tell, there and then.  This final determination she came to when she
looked into the fire, he holding her hand.

A steady glare from the now flameless embers painted the sides
and back of the fireplace with its colour, and the well-polished
andirons, and the old brass tongs that would not meet.  The underside
of the mantel-shelf was flushed with the high-coloured light, and
the legs of the table nearest the fire.  Tess's face and neck
reflected the same warmth, which each gem turned into an Aldebaran
or a Sirius--a constellation of white, red, and green flashes, that
interchanged their hues with her every pulsation.

"Do you remember what we said to each other this morning about
telling our faults?" he asked abruptly, finding that she still
remained immovable.  "We spoke lightly perhaps, and you may well
have done so.  But for me it was no light promise.  I want to make
a confession to you, Love."

This, from him, so unexpectedly apposite, had the effect upon her of
a Providential interposition.

"You have to confess something?" she said quickly, and even with
gladness and relief.

"You did not expect it?  Ah--you thought too highly of me.  Now
listen.  Put your head there, because I want you to forgive me, and
not to be indignant with me for not telling you before, as perhaps
I ought to have done."

How strange it was!  He seemed to be her double.  She did not speak,
and Clare went on--

"I did not mention it because I was afraid of endangering my chance
of you, darling, the great prize of my life--my Fellowship I call
you.  My brother's Fellowship was won at his college, mine at
Talbothays Dairy.  Well, I would not risk it.  I was going to tell
you a month ago--at the time you agreed to be mine, but I could not;
I thought it might frighten you away from me.  I put it off; then I
thought I would tell you yesterday, to give you a chance at least of
escaping me.  But I did not.  And I did not this morning, when you
proposed our confessing our faults on the landing--the sinner that I
was!  But I must, now I see you sitting there so solemnly.  I wonder
if you will forgive me?"

"O yes!  I am sure that--"

"Well, I hope so.  But wait a minute.  You don't know. To begin at
the beginning.  Though I imagine my poor father fears that I am one
of the eternally lost for my doctrines, I am of course, a believer in
good morals, Tess, as much as you.  I used to wish to be a teacher of
men, and it was a great disappointment to me when I found I could not
enter the Church.  I admired spotlessness, even though I could lay no
claim to it, and hated impurity, as I hope I do now.  Whatever one
may think of plenary inspiration, one must heartily subscribe to
these words of Paul: 'Be thou an example--in word, in conversation,
in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.'  It is the only
safeguard for us poor human beings.  '_Integer vitae_,' says a Roman
poet, who is strange company for St Paul--

  "The man of upright life, from frailties free,
   Stands not in need of Moorish spear or bow.

"Well, a certain place is paved with good intentions, and having felt
all that so strongly, you will see what a terrible remorse it bred
in me when, in the midst of my fine aims for other people, I myself
fell."

He then told her of that time of his life to which allusion has been
made when, tossed about by doubts and difficulties in London, like a
cork on the waves, he plunged into eight-and-forty hours' dissipation
with a stranger.

"Happily I awoke almost immediately to a sense of my folly," he
continued.  "I would have no more to say to her, and I came home.  I
have never repeated the offence.  But I felt I should like to treat
you with perfect frankness and honour, and I could not do so without
telling this.  Do you forgive me?"

She pressed his hand tightly for an answer.

"Then we will dismiss it at once and for ever!--too painful as it is
for the occasion--and talk of something lighter."

"O, Angel--I am almost glad--because now YOU can forgive ME!  I have
not made my confession.  I have a confession, too--remember, I said
so."

"Ah, to be sure!  Now then for it, wicked little one."

"Perhaps, although you smile, it is as serious as yours, or more so."

"It can hardly be more serious, dearest."

"It cannot--O no, it cannot!"  She jumped up joyfully at the hope.
"No, it cannot be more serious, certainly," she cried, "because 'tis
just the same! I will tell you now."

She sat down again.

Their hands were still joined.  The ashes under the grate were lit
by the fire vertically, like a torrid waste.  Imagination might have
beheld a Last Day luridness in this red-coaled glow, which fell on
his face and hand, and on hers, peering into the loose hair about her
brow, and firing the delicate skin underneath.  A large shadow of her
shape rose upon the wall and ceiling.  She bent forward, at which
each diamond on her neck gave a sinister wink like a toad's; and
pressing her forehead against his temple she entered on her story of
her acquaintance with Alec d'Urberville and its results, murmuring
the words without flinching, and with her eyelids drooping down.

END OF PHASE THE FOURTH

Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays

Tess and Angel go to Wellbridge, where they stay in one of the d'Urberville ancestral mansions. On entering, they find that they have only a couple of rooms. Two life-size portraits of d'Urberville ladies frighten Tess, for she can see her form in theirs. Jonathan Kail, the servant, brings a package from Reverend Clare to Tess, containing a necklace with pendant, bracelets and earrings. Angel has Tess put on the jewelry, and imagines how wonderful she would appear in a ballroom. Tess thinks that the jewelry must be sold. Jonathan tells Tess how Retty Priddle attempted to drown herself when the Clares left, and how Marian was found drunk. Only Izzy remains as usual, but her spirits remain low. Tess feels guilty about her fate, thinking herself undeserving. Angel promises to tell Tess all of his faults. Angel admits how in London he plunged into a forty-eight hour dissipation with a stranger. Tess decides to tell Angel about her sin, and enters into her story about Alec d'Urberville and its results.

Several events in this chapter serve to precipitate Tess's confession in this chapter. Along with the earlier established feelings of guilt and anxiety, at Wellbridge Tess must face the imposition of her d'Urberville past upon her. The d'Urberville history literally faces Tess at Wellbridge, as foreboding and forbidding portraits of Tess's ancestors loom throughout the mansion. Furthermore, Tess also faces the irony of Angel's treatment of her; when he insists that she wear the jewelry sent by the Clare family, he envisions her as an esteemed lady, which starkly contrasts with her actual history. A third precipitating factor for Tess's confession comes from her realization of the consequences of her marriage; by marrying a man of whom she believes herself unworthy, Tess instigates Retty Priddle's suicide attempt and Marian's and Izz's depression. While the possibility that Tess actually prevented a romance between Angel and one of these women seems low, Tess nevertheless believes herself responsible. The final precipitating factor in this chapter is Angel's confession of his own sins. There is considerable irony in Angel's confession, for he admits to a premarital affair that seems worse than Tess's single moment of weakness; a further, tragic irony will result from Angel's reaction to Tess's similar admission. While Tess feels relieved by Angel's honesty, Angel will have a far more unforgiving reaction to Tess's sin, which he himself has committed

Angel has rented an old manor house that used to belong to the D'Urbervilles for their wedding night. The house is pretty dilapidated, and an old woman from a neighboring cottage has been hired to come over and bring them meals, and make sure there's a fire going when they get there so that they won't freeze. The woman has left them what they need, and they're happy to have the house to themselves. The house is full of old portraits of the D'Urbervilles, and Angel can see the family resemblance to Tess. As they eat their supper together, Angel reflects on how dependent she is on him, and swears to himself that he'll never betray her trust. After a while it starts to rain. Their luggage had been sent separately, and they're surprised that it hasn't arrived yet. When they hear a knock on the door, they assume it's old Jonathan with their luggage, but it's not--it's someone delivering a package. Turns out Angel's godmother had left some jewelry in his mother's keeping, to be given to Angel's wife if he should ever marry. So the package contains a set of diamonds. She tries them on, and looks totally gorgeous. Then, finally, Jonathan arrives with their luggage. Angel asks why he's so late, and he explains: It's because Retty Priddle tried to drown herself that afternoon. She was found in time, though, and will be okay. And Marian was found dead drunk in a gutter somewhere in the next town. Izz is okay, but very depressed. After Jonathan leaves, Angel says that he's sorry that Tess should have heard the bad news about the girls on what was supposed to be the happiest night of her life. Then, suddenly, Angel reminds her that they had promised to tell each other their faults after they were married. He says that he has something to confess, and wants her to forgive him, and not be angry that he hadn't told her before. She's shocked--he's saying exactly what she wanted to say. He tells her that although he has a problem with the way the church is organized, he's a stickler for good morals. So he's been beating himself up for this for a long time. But the long and short of it is, he was really depressed this one time, and went to London, and had a brief fling with some strange woman. But he never did it again. He realized that it was wrong, and went home, and never talked to her again. Of course Tess forgives him, and says she's actually kind of glad about it, because she wants to confess something, too. He says that it can't be more serious than his offense, and she gets hopeful: maybe it isn't, and he'll be able to forgive her, after all. So she sits next to him, and holds his hand, and tells him all about it.

CHAPTER 34 Summary After the wedding, Angel and Tess go to the D'Urberville mansion as planned. Tess is very upset by the mansion, especially the two life-size portraits of two female D'Urbervilles. Even though Tess tries to act happy and light-hearted betraying her true concerns, Angel regrets bringing his bride to the mansion. The marriage is not off to a good start. In the evening, a package arrives that is addressed to Mrs. Angel Clare. Inside are diamonds and a note from Angel's father. Angel's godmother, Mrs. Pitney, had left the jewels to Angel for his future wife, who she knows will be noble. Once again Tess feels guilty and unworthy to be Angel's wife. When Tess puts the diamonds on, Angel says she is beautiful in them. Jonathan Kail arrives from the dairy with their luggage and distressing news. Retty, one of the milkmaids, has tried to drown herself and Marian, another milkmaid, has been drinking heavily. Tess feels ashamed, for she knows that she is the cause of these actions; the women are miserable because they have lost Angel to Tess. Tess now feels more guilty and miserable than ever. The wedding day is turning from bad to worse. Before retiring for the night, Angel talks to Tess about the importance of good morals and pure character. He then tells Tess that he falls short of his own ideals and confesses his affair in London as he promised he would do. He apologizes that he has failed to tell Tess about his past before the wedding, but he was afraid of losing her. Angel asks Tess to forgive him, which she gladly does. In truth, she is delighted that his confession is very much like the one she needs to make. Encouraged by his confession, Tess tells Angel everything about her troublesome past. It is clear that Angel will not be forgiving like Tess has been. Everything seems to be colored by her confession. Even the diamonds on Tess's neck seems to give "a sinister wink like a toad's. Notes The wedding day is a total disaster for Tess. It begins with her finding the unopened letter of confession, followed by Angel's refusal to hear her out. The wedding takes place with Tess feeling terrible that she is marrying under false pretense. When she leaves the church with Angel, a D'Urberville carriage waits for them, reminding her of the past, and a cock crows, foreshadowing ill fate. The D'Urberville mansion is upsetting to Tess, especially the large portraits of her two female ancestors. The news of Retty and Marian upset her further and add to her guilt. Angel also keeps saying how he hates impurity and insists in good morals. Ironically, for Tess the only good news of the day is her husband's confession about having an affair. She is relieved to know that he has sinned, much like herself. It makes her own confession much easier, and Tess feels certain Angel will easily forgive her, just as she has done him. Such is not the case. Angel is horrified at her confession. It is obvious that the news completely changes his feelings for his wife. It is the double standard at work in the worst way


Her narrative ended; even its re-assertions and secondary
explanations were done.  Tess's voice throughout had hardly risen
higher than its opening tone; there had been no exculpatory phrase of
any kind, and she had not wept.

But the complexion even of external things seemed to suffer
transmutation as her announcement progressed.  The fire in the grate
looked impish--demoniacally funny, as if it did not care in the least
about her strait.  The fender grinned idly, as if it too did not
care.  The light from the water-bottle was merely engaged in a
chromatic problem.  All material objects around announced their
irresponsibility with terrible iteration.  And yet nothing had
changed since the moments when he had been kissing her; or rather,
nothing in the substance of things.  But the essence of things had
changed.

When she ceased, the auricular impressions from their previous
endearments seemed to hustle away into the corner of their brains,
repeating themselves as echoes from a time of supremely purblind
foolishness.

Clare performed the irrelevant act of stirring the fire; the
intelligence had not even yet got to the bottom of him.  After
stirring the embers he rose to his feet; all the force of her
disclosure had imparted itself now.  His face had withered.  In the
strenuousness of his concentration he treadled fitfully on the floor.
He could not, by any contrivance, think closely enough; that was the
meaning of his vague movement.  When he spoke it was in the most
inadequate, commonplace voice of the many varied tones she had heard
from him.

"Tess!"

"Yes, dearest."

"Am I to believe this?  From your manner I am to take it as true.
O you cannot be out of your mind!  You ought to be!  Yet you are
not...  My wife, my Tess--nothing in you warrants such a supposition
as that?"

"I am not out of my mind," she said.

"And yet--"  He looked vacantly at her, to resume with dazed senses:
"Why didn't you tell me before? Ah, yes, you would have told me, in a
way--but I hindered you, I remember!"

These and other of his words were nothing but the perfunctory babble
of the surface while the depths remained paralyzed.  He turned away,
and bent over a chair.  Tess followed him to the middle of the room,
where he was, and stood there staring at him with eyes that did not
weep.  Presently she slid down upon her knees beside his foot, and
from this position she crouched in a heap.

"In the name of our love, forgive me!" she whispered with a dry
mouth.  "I have forgiven you for the same!"

And, as he did not answer, she said again--

"Forgive me as you are forgiven!  _I_ forgive YOU, Angel."

"You--yes, you do."

"But you do not forgive me?"

"O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case!  You were one
person; now you are another.  My God--how can forgiveness meet such
a grotesque--prestidigitation as that!"

He paused, contemplating this definition; then suddenly broke into
horrible laughter--as unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell.

"Don't--don't!  It kills me quite, that!" she shrieked.  "O have
mercy upon me--have mercy!"

He did not answer; and, sickly white, she jumped up.

"Angel, Angel! what do you mean by that laugh?" she cried out.  "Do
you know what this is to me?"

He shook his head.

"I have been hoping, longing, praying, to make you happy!  I have
thought what joy it will be to do it, what an unworthy wife I shall
be if I do not!  That's what I have felt, Angel!"

"I know that."

"I thought, Angel, that you loved me--me, my very self!  If it is
I you do love, O how can it be that you look and speak so?  It
frightens me!  Having begun to love you, I love you for ever--in all
changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself.  I ask no more.
Then how can you, O my own husband, stop loving me?"

"I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you."

"But who?"

"Another woman in your shape."

She perceived in his words the realization of her own apprehensive
foreboding in former times.  He looked upon her as a species of
imposter; a guilty woman in the guise of an innocent one.  Terror was
upon her white face as she saw it; her cheek was flaccid, and her
mouth had almost the aspect of a round little hole. The horrible
sense of his view of her so deadened her that she staggered, and he
stepped forward, thinking she was going to fall.

"Sit down, sit down," he said gently.  "You are ill; and it is
natural that you should be."

She did sit down, without knowing where she was, that strained look
still upon her face, and her eyes such as to make his flesh creep.

"I don't belong to you any more, then; do I, Angel?" she asked
helplessly.  "It is not me, but another woman like me that he loved,
he says."

The image raised caused her to take pity upon herself as one who was
ill-used.  Her eyes filled as she regarded her position further; she
turned round and burst into a flood of self-sympathetic tears.

Clare was relieved at this change, for the effect on her of what had
happened was beginning to be a trouble to him only less than the
woe of the disclosure itself.  He waited patiently, apathetically,
till the violence of her grief had worn itself out, and her rush of
weeping had lessened to a catching gasp at intervals.

"Angel," she said suddenly, in her natural tones, the insane, dry
voice of terror having left her now.  "Angel, am I too wicked for
you and me to live together?"

"I have not been able to think what we can do."

"I shan't ask you to let me live with you, Angel, because I have
no right to!  I shall not write to mother and sisters to say we be
married, as I said I would do; and I shan't finish the good-hussif'
I cut out and meant to make while we were in lodgings."

"Shan't you?"

"No, I shan't do anything, unless you order me to; and if you go away
from me I shall not follow 'ee; and if you never speak to me any more
I shall not ask why, unless you tell me I may."

"And if I order you to do anything?"

"I will obey you like your wretched slave, even if it is to lie down
and die."

"You are very good.  But it strikes me that there is a want of
harmony between your present mood of self-sacrifice and your past
mood of self-preservation."

These were the first words of antagonism.  To fling elaborate
sarcasms at Tess, however, was much like flinging them at a dog or
cat.  The charms of their subtlety passed by her unappreciated, and
she only received them as inimical sounds which meant that anger
ruled.  She remained mute, not knowing that he was smothering his
affection for her.  She hardly observed that a tear descended slowly
upon his cheek, a tear so large that it magnified the pores of the
skin over which it rolled, like the object lens of a microscope.
Meanwhile reillumination as to the terrible and total change that her
confession had wrought in his life, in his universe, returned to him,
and he tried desperately to advance among the new conditions in which
he stood.  Some consequent action was necessary; yet what?

"Tess," he said, as gently as he could speak, "I cannot stay--in this
room--just now. I will walk out a little way."

He quietly left the room, and the two glasses of wine that he had
poured out for their supper--one for her, one for him--remained on
the table untasted.  This was what their _agape_ had come to.  At
tea, two or three hours earlier, they had, in the freakishness of
affection, drunk from one cup.

The closing of the door behind him, gently as it had been pulled
to, roused Tess from her stupor.  He was gone; she could not stay.
Hastily flinging her cloak around her she opened the door and
followed, putting out the candles as if she were never coming back.
The rain was over and the night was now clear.

She was soon close at his heels, for Clare walked slowly and without
purpose.  His form beside her light gray figure looked black,
sinister, and forbidding, and she felt as sarcasm the touch of the
jewels of which she had been momentarily so proud.  Clare turned at
hearing her footsteps, but his recognition of her presence seemed
to make no difference to him, and he went on over the five yawning
arches of the great bridge in front of the house.

The cow and horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain
having been enough to charge them, but not enough to wash them away.
Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick
transit as she passed; she would not have known they were shining
overhead if she had not seen them there--the vastest things of the
universe imaged in objects so mean.

The place to which they had travelled to-day was in the same
valley as Talbothays, but some miles lower down the river; and the
surroundings being open, she kept easily in sight of him.  Away from
the house the road wound through the meads, and along these she
followed Clare without any attempt to come up with him or to attract
him, but with dumb and vacant fidelity.

At last, however, her listless walk brought her up alongside him, and
still he said nothing.  The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great
after enlightenment, and it was mighty in Clare now.  The outdoor air
had apparently taken away from him all tendency to act on impulse;
she knew that he saw her without irradiation--in all her bareness;
that Time was chanting his satiric psalm at her then--

   Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee
      shall hate;
   Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate.
   For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain;
   And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown
      shall be pain.

He was still intently thinking, and her companionship had now
insufficient power to break or divert the strain of thought.  What a
weak thing her presence must have become to him!  She could not help
addressing Clare.

"What have I done--what HAVE I done!  I have not told of anything
that interferes with or belies my love for you.  You don't think I
planned it, do you?  It is in your own mind what you are angry at,
Angel; it is not in me.  O, it is not in me, and I am not that
deceitful woman you think me!"

"H'm--well.  Not deceitful, my wife; but not the same.  No, not the
same.  But do not make me reproach you.  I have sworn that I will
not; and I will do everything to avoid it."

But she went on pleading in her distraction; and perhaps said things
that would have been better left to silence.

"Angel!--Angel!  I was a child--a child when it happened!  I knew
nothing of men."

"You were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit."

"Then will you not forgive me?"

"I do forgive you, but forgiveness is not all."

"And love me?"

To this question he did not answer.

"O Angel--my mother says that it sometimes happens so!--she knows
several cases where they were worse than I, and the husband has not
minded it much--has got over it at least.  And yet the woman had not
loved him as I do you!"

"Don't, Tess; don't argue.  Different societies, different manners.
You almost make me say you are an unapprehending peasant woman, who
have never been initiated into the proportions of social things.
You don't know what you say."

"I am only a peasant by position, not by nature!"

She spoke with an impulse to anger, but it went as it came.

"So much the worse for you.  I think that parson who unearthed your
pedigree would have done better if he had held his tongue.  I cannot
help associating your decline as a family with this other fact--of
your want of firmness.  Decrepit families imply decrepit wills,
decrepit conduct.  Heaven, why did you give me a handle for despising
you more by informing me of your descent!  Here was I thinking you a
new-sprung child of nature; there were you, the belated seedling of
an effete aristocracy!"

"Lots of families are as bad as mine in that!  Retty's family were
once large landowners, and so were Dairyman Billett's.  And the
Debbyhouses, who now are carters, were once the De Bayeux family.
You find such as I everywhere; 'tis a feature of our county, and I
can't help it."

"So much the worse for the county."

She took these reproaches in their bulk simply, not in their
particulars; he did not love her as he had loved her hitherto, and
to all else she was indifferent.

They wandered on again in silence.  It was said afterwards that a
cottager of Wellbridge, who went out late that night for a doctor,
met two lovers in the pastures, walking very slowly, without
converse, one behind the other, as in a funeral procession, and the
glimpse that he obtained of their faces seemed to denote that they
were anxious and sad.  Returning later, he passed them again in the
same field, progressing just as slowly, and as regardless of the hour
and of the cheerless night as before.  It was only on account of his
preoccupation with his own affairs, and the illness in his house,
that he did not bear in mind the curious incident, which, however, he
recalled a long while after.

During the interval of the cottager's going and coming, she had said
to her husband--

"I don't see how I can help being the cause of much misery to you all
your life.  The river is down there.  I can put an end to myself in
it.  I am not afraid."

"I don't wish to add murder to my other follies," he said.

"I will leave something to show that I did it myself--on account of
my shame.  They will not blame you then."

"Don't speak so absurdly--I wish not to hear it.  It is nonsense
to have such thoughts in this kind of case, which is rather one
for satirical laughter than for tragedy.  You don't in the least
understand the quality of the mishap.  It would be viewed in the
light of a joke by nine-tenths of the world if it were known. Please
oblige me by returning to the house, and going to bed."

"I will," said she dutifully.

They had rambled round by a road which led to the well-known ruins of
the Cistercian abbey behind the mill, the latter having, in centuries
past, been attached to the monastic establishment.  The mill still
worked on, food being a perennial necessity; the abbey had perished,
creeds being transient.  One continually sees the ministration of the
temporary outlasting the ministration of the eternal.  Their walk
having been circuitous, they were still not far from the house, and
in obeying his direction she only had to reach the large stone bridge
across the main river and follow the road for a few yards.  When she
got back, everything remained as she had left it, the fire being
still burning.  She did not stay downstairs for more than a minute,
but proceeded to her chamber, whither the luggage had been taken.
Here she sat down on the edge of the bed, looking blankly around,
and presently began to undress.  In removing the light towards the
bedstead its rays fell upon the tester of white dimity; something was
hanging beneath it, and she lifted the candle to see what it was.
A bough of mistletoe.  Angel had put it there; she knew that in an
instant. This was the explanation of that mysterious parcel which it
had been so difficult to pack and bring; whose contents he would not
explain to her, saying that time would soon show her the purpose
thereof.  In his zest and his gaiety he had hung it there.  How
foolish and inopportune that mistletoe looked now.

Having nothing more to fear, having scarce anything to hope, for that
he would relent there seemed no promise whatever, she lay down dully.
When sorrow ceases to be speculative, sleep sees her opportunity.
Among so many happier moods which forbid repose this was a mood which
welcomed it, and in a few minutes the lonely Tess forgot existence,
surrounded by the aromatic stillness of the chamber that had once,
possibly, been the bride-chamber of her own ancestry.

Later on that night Clare also retraced his steps to the house.
Entering softly to the sitting-room he obtained a light, and with the
manner of one who had considered his course he spread his rugs upon
the old horse-hair sofa which stood there, and roughly shaped it to
a sleeping-couch.  Before lying down he crept shoeless upstairs, and
listened at the door of her apartment.  Her measured breathing told
that she was sleeping profoundly.

"Thank God!" murmured Clare; and yet he was conscious of a pang of
bitterness at the thought--approximately true, though not wholly
so--that having shifted the burden of her life to his shoulders, she
was now reposing without care.

He turned away to descend; then, irresolute, faced round to her
door again.  In the act he caught sight of one of the d'Urberville
dames, whose portrait was immediately over the entrance to Tess's
bedchamber.  In the candlelight the painting was more than
unpleasant.  Sinister design lurked in the woman's features, a
concentrated purpose of revenge on the other sex--so it seemed to
him then.  The Caroline bodice of the portrait was low--precisely as
Tess's had been when he tucked it in to show the necklace; and again
he experienced the distressing sensation of a resemblance between
them.

The check was sufficient.  He resumed his retreat and descended.

His air remained calm and cold, his small compressed mouth indexing
his powers of self-control; his face wearing still that terrible
sterile expression which had spread thereon since her disclosure.
It was the face of a man who was no longer passion's slave, yet who
found no advantage in his enfranchisement.  He was simply regarding
the harrowing contingencies of human experience, the unexpectedness
of things.  Nothing so pure, so sweet, so virginal as Tess had seemed
possible all the long while that he had adored her, up to an hour
ago; but

       The little less, and what worlds away!

He argued erroneously when he said to himself that her heart was not
indexed in the honest freshness of her face; but Tess had no advocate
to set him right.  Could it be possible, he continued, that eyes
which as they gazed never expressed any divergence from what the
tongue was telling, were yet ever seeing another world behind her
ostensible one, discordant and contrasting?

He reclined on his couch in the sitting-room, and extinguished the
light.  The night came in, and took up its place there, unconcerned
and indifferent; the night which had already swallowed up his
happiness, and was now digesting it listlessly; and was ready to
swallow up the happiness of a thousand other people with as little
disturbance or change of mien.

Tess finishes her story, which she had given in a monotone and without any displays of emotion. She watches the flame in the fireplace flicker, as everything around her seems to mock her situation with its lack of response. Angel stirs the fire, having not yet comprehended the events. His face withers as he cries out that this cannot be true. She begs for forgiveness, for she has forgiven him the same. Angel claims that forgiveness is irrelevant, for she was one person before and now is another. He calls her another woman in her shape. She bursts into tears as she asks whether or not she still belongs to him anymore. Tess vows not to do anything unless he orders her, and vows to behave as a wretched slave and die if he so desires. He tells her that there is a discordance between her present mood of self-sacrifice and her past mood of self-preservation. Angel leaves the room for a walk. Tess follows him, but the two say nothing. Finally she asks what she has done, saying that it is his mind that has changed and that she is not the deceitful woman that he thinks she is. She claims that she was a child when it happened and knew nothing of men. He claims he forgives her, but forgiveness is not all. Tess says that her mother has told her of many cases in which similar situations occur, in which the husband survives and still loves the wife. Angel claims that his situation is one for satirical laughter rather than tragedy, and asks Tess to return to the house to go to bed. Angel returns later to find her sleeping soundly. He turns to leave and sees a portrait of a d'Urberville lady that appears sinister.

There is little surprising in Angel's reaction to the news about Tess's imperfect history, yet Hardy finds irony in the external circumstances surrounding this event. For both Tess and Angel, the revelation that Tess had a child is a momentous event that inalterably changes Angel's perception of his new wife and brings the possibility for Tess to have a happy marriage to an essential end. However, as Tess notices, the actual external conditions around Tess do not change; while both characters believe to a great extent that their world has ended, essentially nothing differs from before. The character traits that Hardy has previously elucidated concerning Angel Clare become manifest in this chapter and his reaction to the news aligns completely with these traits. Angel exhibits a dogmatic inflexibility concerning his belief in Tess's moral infallibility. He cannot comprehend his own self-delusion toward Tess, for he cannot conceive of Tess as anything less than the perfect person whom he has envisioned. This recalls Angel's intellectualized ideas concerning his wife. Perhaps more than the actual person of Tess, Angel loves the theoretical conception of Tess. The news that she is not the chaste woman he assumed too greatly conflicts with this vision of Tess. The intellectual character of the love that Angel feels for Tess becomes apparent in Angel's reaction. He speaks calmly and rationally rather than resorting to a burst of anger at the news. His behavior is cold and clinical, and his words cautious and precise. This contrasts sharply with Tess's emotional behavior, as she vows that she would die for Angel if he were to so demand. This lends a particularly chilling quality to Angel's newfound contempt for Tess: he grounds his objections to Tess in such solid and inarguable ground, as when he contrasts her current self-sacrifice with past self-preservation, that he leaves no room for his own personal flexibility. Angel's principles doom him to forsake the woman that he previously loved

Tess finishes her story without raising her voice or shedding a single tear. Angel is beyond shocked. He can't believe it. He asks why she didn't tell him before, and then remembers that she had tried, repeatedly. She begins to cry now, and begs to be forgiven. He says that forgiveness has nothing to do with it--she isn't the same person he was in love with. She continues to cry, and promises to do anything he asks her to do. Angel still loves her, but is trying to suppress his feelings. He goes outside and, after a few moments, she follows him. He ignores her. She tells him she was a child when it happened, and didn't understand her danger until it was too late. He admits that she was "more sinned against than sinning," but even as he admits that it wasn't her fault, he can't bring himself to say that he still loves her. As they walk along the river, Tess offers to drown herself so that she'll be out of his way. Of course he tells her not to be a fool, and asks her to go inside and go to bed. She obeys. He wanders around more before coming upstairs, and he finds her asleep. He's inclined to relent, and forgive her, but then he catches another glimpse of one of the D'Urberville ladies in one of the portraits. He sees the resemblance again, and it seems to him that her relationship to that old family is part of her guilt. He leaves the room, and lies on a couch in the living room, totally miserable.

CHAPTER 35 Summary Tess's confession has a stupefying effect on Angel. The impact is so disturbing that for a few minutes, he does not seem to believe his ears. He moves about vaguely in a shell-shocked manner. All the while, she repeatedly begs him for forgiveness. He leaves the house, and Tess follows. They walk in silence for a long while, Tess occasionally begging forgiveness again. Angel is deeply hurt and confused. Tess now has two existences for him. One is the innocent and pure female who he believed he was marrying; the other is an impostor, guilty of betraying his trust. It is difficult for him to love both parts of her. Tess, like a meek slave, promises to obey all his commands. She also volunteers to kill herself. Angel scolds her for being ridiculous and sends her back to the mansion alone. When Angel returns, Tess is sleeping. He makes a bed for himself on the couch. Notes Tess's confession depresses Angel. He is bitter and shocked at his misjudgment of her. He adored the pure image of Tess, and she is not the same person to him now. The most desired woman in his life has disappointed him, and he does not feel he can love her anymore. The chapter is filled with irony. Angel has given up the chance to marry a wealthy Christian lady, chosen and approved by his family, in order to marry a pure county girl. On his wedding night, he finds out his dream is not a reality, his pure bride is not pure. The chapter also ironically reflects the contrast in morals between men and women. However much a man strays , he still expects his bride to be a virgin without any flaws