It was a hazy sunrise in August.  The denser nocturnal vapours,
attacked by the warm beams, were dividing and shrinking into isolated
fleeces within hollows and coverts, where they waited till they
should be dried away to nothing.

The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal
look, demanding the masculine pronoun for its adequate expression.
His present aspect, coupled with the lack of all human forms in the
scene, explained the old-time heliolatries in a moment.  One could
feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky.  The
luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like creature,
gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth that
was brimming with interest for him.

His light, a little later, broke though chinks of cottage shutters,
throwing stripes like red-hot pokers upon cupboards, chests of
drawers, and other furniture within; and awakening harvesters who
were not already astir.

But of all ruddy things that morning the brightest were two broad
arms of painted wood, which rose from the margin of yellow cornfield
hard by Marlott village.  They, with two others below, formed the
revolving Maltese cross of the reaping-machine, which had been
brought to the field on the previous evening to be ready for
operations this day.  The paint with which they were smeared,
intensified in hue by the sunlight, imparted to them a look of
having been dipped in liquid fire.

The field had already been "opened"; that is to say, a lane a few
feet wide had been hand-cut through the wheat along the whole
circumference of the field for the first passage of the horses and
machine.

Two groups, one of men and lads, the other of women, had come down
the lane just at the hour when the shadows of the eastern hedge-top
struck the west hedge midway, so that the heads of the groups were
enjoying sunrise while their feet were still in the dawn.  They
disappeared from the lane between the two stone posts which flanked
the nearest field-gate.

Presently there arose from within a ticking like the love-making of
the grasshopper.  The machine had begun, and a moving concatenation
of three horses and the aforesaid long rickety machine was visible
over the gate, a driver sitting  upon one of the hauling horses,
and an attendant on the seat of the implement.  Along one side of
the field the whole wain went, the arms of the mechanical reaper
revolving slowly, till it passed down the hill quite out of sight.
In a minute it came up on the other side of the field at the same
equable pace; the glistening brass star in the forehead of the fore
horse first catching the eye as it rose into view over the stubble,
then the bright arms, and then the whole machine.

The narrow lane of stubble encompassing the field grew wider with
each circuit, and the standing corn was reduced to a smaller area as
the morning wore on.  Rabbits, hares, snakes, rats, mice, retreated
inwards as into a fastness, unaware of the ephemeral nature of their
refuge, and of the doom that awaited them later in the day when,
their covert shrinking to a more and more horrible narrowness, they
were huddled together, friends and foes, till the last few yards of
upright wheat fell also under the teeth of the unerring reaper, and
they were every one put to death by the sticks and stones of the
harvesters.

The reaping-machine left the fallen corn behind it in little heaps,
each heap being of the quantity for a sheaf; and upon these the
active binders in the rear laid their hands--mainly women, but some
of them men in print shirts, and trousers supported round their
waists by leather straps, rendering useless the two buttons behind,
which twinkled and bristled with sunbeams at every movement of each
wearer, as if they were a pair of eyes in the small of his back.

But those of the other sex were the most interesting of this company
of binders, by reason of the charm which is acquired by woman when
she becomes part and parcel of outdoor nature, and is not merely
an object set down therein as at ordinary times.  A field-man is a
personality afield; a field-woman is a portion of the field; she had
somehow lost her own margin, imbibed the essence of her surrounding,
and assimilated herself with it.

The women--or rather girls, for they were mostly young--wore drawn
cotton bonnets with great flapping curtains to keep off the sun, and
gloves to prevent their hands being wounded by the stubble.  There
was one wearing a pale pink jacket, another in a cream-coloured
tight-sleeved gown, another in a petticoat as red as the arms of the
reaping-machine; and others, older, in the brown-rough "wropper"
or over-all--the old-established and most appropriate dress of the
field-woman, which the young ones were abandoning.  This morning the
eye returns involuntarily to the girl in the pink cotton jacket, she
being the most flexuous and finely-drawn figure of them all.  But
her bonnet is pulled so far over her brow that none of her face is
disclosed while she binds, though her complexion may be guessed from
a stray twine or two of dark brown hair which extends below the
curtain of her bonnet.  Perhaps one reason why she seduces casual
attention is that she never courts it, though the other women often
gaze around them.

Her binding proceeds with clock-like monotony.  From the sheaf last
finished she draws a handful of ears, patting their tips with her
left palm to bring them even.  Then, stooping low, she moves forward,
gathering the corn with both hands against her knees, and pushing
her left gloved hand under the bundle to meet the right on the other
side, holding the corn in an embrace like that of a lover.  She
brings the ends of the bond together, and kneels on the sheaf while
she ties it, beating back her skirts now and then when lifted by the
breeze.  A bit of her naked arm is visible between the buff leather
of the gauntlet and the sleeve of her gown; and as the day wears on
its feminine smoothness becomes scarified by the stubble and bleeds.

At intervals she stands up to rest, and to retie her disarranged
apron, or to pull her bonnet straight.  Then one can see the oval
face of a handsome young woman with deep dark eyes and long heavy
clinging tresses, which seem to clasp in a beseeching way anything
they fall against.  The cheeks are paler, the teeth more regular,
the red lips thinner than is usual in a country-bred girl.

It is Tess Durbeyfield, otherwise d'Urberville, somewhat changed--the
same, but not the same; at the present stage of her existence living
as a stranger and an alien here, though it was no strange land that
she was in.  After a long seclusion she had come to a resolve to
undertake outdoor work in her native village, the busiest season of
the year in the agricultural world having arrived, and nothing that
she could do within the house being so remunerative for the time as
harvesting in the fields.

The movements of the other women were more or less similar to Tess's,
the whole bevy of them drawing together like dancers in a quadrille
at the completion of a sheaf by each, every one placing her sheaf on
end against those of the rest, till a shock, or "stitch" as it was
here called, of ten or a dozen was formed.

They went to breakfast, and came again, and the work proceeded as
before.  As the hour of eleven drew near a person watching her might
have noticed that every now and then Tess's glance flitted wistfully
to the brow of the hill, though she did not pause in her sheafing.
On the verge of the hour the heads of a group of children, of ages
ranging from six to fourteen, rose over the stubbly convexity of the
hill.

The face of Tess flushed slightly, but still she did not pause.

The eldest of the comers, a girl who wore a triangular shawl, its
corner draggling on the stubble, carried in her arms what at first
sight seemed to be a doll, but proved to be an infant in long
clothes.  Another brought some lunch.  The harvesters ceased working,
took their provisions, and sat down against one of the shocks.  Here
they fell to, the men plying a stone jar freely, and passing round a
cup.

Tess Durbeyfield had been one of the last to suspend her labours.
She sat down at the end of the shock, her face turned somewhat away
from her companions.  When she had deposited herself a man in a
rabbit-skin cap, and with a red handkerchief tucked into his belt,
held the cup of ale over the top of the shock for her to drink.  But
she did not accept his offer.  As soon as her lunch was spread she
called up the big girl, her sister, and took the baby of her, who,
glad to be relieved of the burden, went away to the next shock and
joined the other children playing there.  Tess, with a curiously
stealthy yet courageous movement, and with a still rising colour,
unfastened her frock and began suckling the child.

The men who sat nearest considerately turned their faces towards the
other end of the field, some of them beginning to smoke; one, with
absent-minded fondness, regretfully stroking the jar that would no
longer yield a stream.  All the women but Tess fell into animated
talk, and adjusted the disarranged knots of their hair.

When the infant had taken its fill, the young mother sat it upright
in her lap, and looking into the far distance, dandled it with a
gloomy indifference that was almost dislike; then all of a sudden she
fell to violently kissing it some dozens of times, as if she could
never leave off, the child crying at the vehemence of an onset which
strangely combined passionateness with contempt.

"She's fond of that there child, though she mid pretend to hate en,
and say she wishes the baby and her too were in the churchyard,"
observed the woman in the red petticoat.

"She'll soon leave off saying that," replied the one in buff. "Lord,
'tis wonderful what a body can get used to o' that sort in time!"

"A little more than persuading had to do wi' the coming o't, I
reckon.  There were they that heard a sobbing one night last year in
The Chase; and it mid ha' gone hard wi' a certain party if folks had
come along."

"Well, a little more, or a little less, 'twas a thousand pities that
it should have happened to she, of all others.  But 'tis always the
comeliest!  The plain ones be as safe as churches--hey, Jenny?"  The
speaker turned to one of the group who certainly was not ill-defined
as plain.

It was a thousand pities, indeed; it was impossible for even an enemy
to feel otherwise on looking at Tess as she sat there, with her
flower-like mouth and large tender eyes, neither black nor blue nor
grey nor violet; rather all those shades together, and a hundred
others, which could be seen if one looked into their irises--shade
behind shade--tint beyond tint--around pupils that had no bottom; an
almost standard woman, but for the slight incautiousness of character
inherited from her race.

A resolution which had surprised herself had brought her into the
fields this week for the first time during many months.  After
wearing and wasting her palpitating heart with every engine of regret
that lonely inexperience could devise, common sense had illuminated
her.  She felt that she would do well to be useful again--to taste
anew sweet independence at any price.  The past was past; whatever
it had been, it was no more at hand.  Whatever its consequences,
time would close over them; they would all in a few years be as if
they had never been, and she herself grassed down and forgotten.
Meanwhile the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and
the sun shone as clearly now as ever.  The familiar surroundings had
not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain.

She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly--the
thought of the world's concern at her situation--was founded on an
illusion.  She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a
structure of sensations, to anybody but herself.  To all humankind
besides, Tess was only a passing thought.  Even to friends she was
no more than a frequently passing thought.  If she made herself
miserable the livelong night and day it was only this much to
them--"Ah, she makes herself unhappy."  If she tried to be cheerful,
to dismiss all care, to take pleasure in the daylight, the flowers,
the baby, she could only be this idea to them--"Ah, she bears it
very well."  Moreover, alone in a desert island would she have been
wretched at what had happened to her?  Not greatly.  If she could
have been but just created, to discover herself as a spouseless
mother, with no experience of life except as the parent of a nameless
child, would the position have caused her to despair?  No, she would
have taken it calmly, and found pleasure therein. Most of the misery
had been generated by her conventional aspect, and not by her innate
sensations.

Whatever Tess's reasoning, some spirit had induced her to dress
herself up neatly as she had formerly done, and come out into the
fields, harvest-hands being greatly in demand just then.  This was
why she had borne herself with dignity, and had looked people calmly
in the face at times, even when holding the baby in her arms.

The harvest-men rose from the shock of corn, and stretched their
limbs, and extinguished their pipes.  The horses, which had been
unharnessed and fed, were again attached to the scarlet machine.
Tess, having quickly eaten her own meal, beckoned to her eldest
sister to come and take away the baby, fastened her dress, put on
the buff gloves again, and stooped anew to draw a bond from the last
completed sheaf for the tying of the next.

In the afternoon and evening the proceedings of the morning were
continued, Tess staying on till dusk with the body of harvesters.
Then they all rode home in one of the largest wagons, in the company
of a broad tarnished moon that had risen from the ground to the
eastwards, its face resembling the outworn gold-leaf halo of some
worm-eaten Tuscan saint.  Tess's female companions sang songs, and
showed themselves very sympathetic and glad at her reappearance out
of doors, though they could not refrain from mischievously throwing
in a few verses of the ballad about the maid who went to the merry
green wood and came back a changed state.  There are counterpoises
and compensations in life; and the event which had made of her a
social warning had also for the moment made her the most interesting
personage in the village to many.  Their friendliness won her still
farther away from herself, their lively spirits were contagious, and
she became almost gay.

But now that her moral sorrows were passing away a fresh one arose on
the natural side of her which knew no social law.  When she reached
home it was to learn to her grief that the baby had been suddenly
taken ill since the afternoon.  Some such collapse had been probable,
so tender and puny was its frame; but the event came as a shock
nevertheless.

The baby's offence against society in coming into the world was
forgotten by the girl-mother; her soul's desire was to continue that
offence by preserving the life of the child.  However, it soon grew
clear that the hour of emancipation for that little prisoner of the
flesh was to arrive earlier than her worst misgiving had conjectured.
And when she had discovered this she was plunged into a misery which
transcended that of the child's simple loss.  Her baby had not been
baptized.

Tess had drifted into a frame of mind which accepted passively the
consideration that if she should have to burn for what she had done,
burn she must, and there was an end of it.  Like all village girls,
she was well grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and had dutifully
studied the histories of Aholah and Aholibah, and knew the inferences
to be drawn therefrom.  But when the same question arose with regard
to the baby, it had a very different colour.  Her darling was about
to die, and no salvation.

It was nearly bedtime, but she rushed downstairs and asked if she
might send for the parson.  The moment happened to be one at which
her father's sense of the antique nobility of his family was highest,
and his sensitiveness to the smudge which Tess had set upon that
nobility most pronounced, for he had just returned from his weekly
booze at Rolliver's Inn.  No parson should come inside his door, he
declared, prying into his affairs, just then, when, by her shame, it
had become more necessary than ever to hide them.  He locked the door
and put the key in his pocket.

The household went to bed, and, distressed beyond measure, Tess
retired also.  She was continually waking as she lay, and in the
middle of the night found that the baby was still worse.  It was
obviously dying--quietly and painlessly, but none the less surely.

In her misery she rocked herself upon the bed.  The clock struck the
solemn hour of one, that hour when fancy stalks outside reason, and
malignant possibilities stand rock-firm as facts.  She thought of
the child consigned to the nethermost corner of hell, as its double
doom for lack of baptism and lack of legitimacy; saw the arch-fiend
tossing it with his three-pronged fork, like the one they used for
heating the oven on baking days; to which picture she added many
other quaint and curious details of torment sometimes taught the
young in this Christian country.  The lurid presentment so powerfully
affected her imagination in the silence of the sleeping house that
her nightgown became damp with perspiration, and the bedstead shook
with each throb of her heart.

The infant's breathing grew more difficult, and the mother's mental
tension increased.  It was useless to devour the little thing with
kisses; she could stay in bed no longer, and walked feverishly about
the room.

"O merciful God, have pity; have pity upon my poor baby!" she cried.
"Heap as much anger as you want to upon me, and welcome; but pity the
child!"

She leant against the chest of drawers, and murmured incoherent
supplications for a long while, till she suddenly started up.

"Ah! perhaps baby can be saved!  Perhaps it will be just the same!"

She spoke so brightly that it seemed as though her face might have
shone in the gloom surrounding her.  She lit a candle, and went to
a second and a third bed under the wall, where she awoke her young
sisters and brothers, all of whom occupied the same room.  Pulling
out the washing-stand so that she could get behind it, she poured
some water from a jug, and made them kneel around, putting their
hands together with fingers exactly vertical.  While the children,
scarcely awake, awe-stricken at her manner, their eyes growing larger
and larger, remained in this position, she took the baby from her
bed--a child's child--so immature as scarce to seem a sufficient
personality to endow its producer with the maternal title.  Tess then
stood erect with the infant on her arm beside the basin; the next
sister held the Prayer-Book open before her, as the clerk at church
held it before the parson; and thus the girl set about baptizing her
child.

Her figure looked singularly tall and imposing as she stood in her
long white nightgown, a thick cable of twisted dark hair hanging
straight down her back to her waist.  The kindly dimness of the weak
candle abstracted from her form and features the little blemishes
which sunlight might have revealed--the stubble scratches upon her
wrists, and the weariness of her eyes--her high enthusiasm having
a transfiguring effect upon the face which had been her undoing,
showing it as a thing of immaculate beauty, with a touch of dignity
which was almost regal.  The little ones kneeling round, their sleepy
eyes blinking and red, awaited her preparations full of a suspended
wonder which their physical heaviness at that hour would not allow to
become active.

The most impressed of them said:

"Be you really going to christen him, Tess?"

The girl-mother replied in a grave affirmative.

"What's his name going to be?"

She had not thought of that, but a name suggested by a phrase in
the book of Genesis came into her head as she proceeded with the
baptismal service, and now she pronounced it:

"SORROW, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost."

She sprinkled the water, and there was silence.

"Say 'Amen,' children."

The tiny voices piped in obedient response, "Amen!"

Tess went on:

"We receive this child"--and so forth--"and do sign him with the sign
of the Cross."

Here she dipped her hand into the basin, and fervently drew an
immense cross upon the baby with her forefinger, continuing with
the customary sentences as to his manfully fighting against sin,
the world, and the devil, and being a faithful soldier and servant
unto his life's end.  She duly went on with the Lord's Prayer, the
children lisping it after her in a thin gnat-like wail, till, at the
conclusion, raising their voices to clerk's pitch, they again piped
into silence, "Amen!"

Then their sister, with much augmented confidence in the efficacy
of the sacrament, poured forth from the bottom of her heart the
thanksgiving that follows, uttering it boldly and triumphantly in the
stopt-diapason note which her voice acquired when her heart was in
her speech, and which will never be forgotten by those who knew her.
The ecstasy of faith almost apotheosized her; it set upon her face a
glowing irradiation, and brought a red spot into the middle of each
cheek; while the miniature candle-flame inverted in her eye-pupils
shone like a diamond.  The children gazed up at her with more and
more reverence, and no longer had a will for questioning.  She did
not look like Sissy to them now, but as a being large, towering, and
awful--a divine personage with whom they had nothing in common.

Poor Sorrow's campaign against sin, the world, and the devil was
doomed to be of limited brilliancy--luckily perhaps for himself,
considering his beginnings.  In the blue of the morning that fragile
soldier and servant breathed his last, and when the other children
awoke they cried bitterly, and begged Sissy to have another pretty
baby.

The calmness which had possessed Tess since the christening remained
with her in the infant's loss.  In the daylight, indeed, she felt her
terrors about his soul to have been somewhat exaggerated; whether
well founded or not, she had no uneasiness now, reasoning that
if Providence would not ratify such an act of approximation
she, for one, did not value the kind of heaven lost by the
irregularity--either for herself or for her child.

So passed away Sorrow the Undesired--that intrusive creature, that
bastard gift of shameless Nature, who respects not the social law;
a waif to whom eternal Time had been a matter of days merely, who
knew not that such things as years and centuries ever were; to whom
the cottage interior was the universe, the week's weather climate,
new-born babyhood human existence, and the instinct to suck human
knowledge.

Tess, who mused on the christening a good deal, wondered if it were
doctrinally sufficient to secure a Christian burial for the child.
Nobody could tell this but the parson of the parish, and he was a
new-comer, and did not know her.  She went to his house after dusk,
and stood by the gate, but could not summon courage to go in.  The
enterprise would have been abandoned if she had not by accident met
him coming homeward as she turned away.  In the gloom she did not
mind speaking freely.

"I should like to ask you something, sir."

He expressed his willingness to listen, and she told the story of the
baby's illness and the extemporized ordinance.  "And now, sir," she
added earnestly, "can you tell me this--will it be just the same for
him as if you had baptized him?"

Having the natural feelings of a tradesman at finding that a job he
should have been called in for had been unskilfully botched by his
customers among themselves, he was disposed to say no.  Yet the
dignity of the girl, the strange tenderness in her voice, combined
to affect his nobler impulses--or rather those that he had left in
him after ten years of endeavour to graft technical belief on actual
scepticism.  The man and the ecclesiastic fought within him, and the
victory fell to the man.

"My dear girl," he said, "it will be just the same."

"Then will you give him a Christian burial?" she asked quickly.

The Vicar felt himself cornered. Hearing of the baby's illness, he
had conscientiously gone to the house after nightfall to perform the
rite, and, unaware that the refusal to admit him had come from Tess's
father and not from Tess, he could not allow the plea of necessity
for its irregular administration.

"Ah--that's another matter," he said.

"Another matter--why?" asked Tess, rather warmly.

"Well--I would willingly do so if only we two were concerned.  But I
must not--for certain reasons."

"Just for once, sir!"

"Really I must not."

"O sir!"  She seized his hand as she spoke.

He withdrew it, shaking his head.

"Then I don't like you!" she burst out, "and I'll never come to your
church no more!"

"Don't talk so rashly."

"Perhaps it will be just the same to him if you don't? ...  Will it
be just the same?  Don't for God's sake speak as saint to sinner, but
as you yourself to me myself--poor me!"

How the Vicar reconciled his answer with the strict notions he
supposed himself to hold on these subjects it is beyond a layman's
power to tell, though not to excuse.  Somewhat moved, he said in
this case also--

"It will be just the same."

So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's
shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light,
at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that
shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow,
and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides,
and others of the conjecturally damned are laid.  In spite of the
untoward surroundings, however, Tess bravely made a little cross of
two laths and a piece of string, and having bound it with flowers,
she stuck it up at the head of the grave one evening when she could
enter the churchyard without being seen, putting at the foot also
a bunch of the same flowers in a little jar of water to keep them
alive.  What matter was it that on the outside of the jar the eye of
mere observation noted the words "Keelwell's Marmalade"?  The eye of
maternal affection did not see them in its vision of higher things.

On a hot August afternoon, the sun beats down on Marlott while men and women work in the corn fields. Among the women is Tess, whom the other women watch carefully. At intervals she rests, for she has been somewhat changed. After a long seclusion she had decided to undertake outdoor work during the busiest season of the year. When she finishes her labor, during lunch her sister brings Tess's child to her so that she may breastfeed it. A nearby woman observes that Tess is fond of her child, although she might pretend to hate it. Tess had come to bear herself with dignity and to resolve not to wallow in her own self-pity. However, as her sorrows over bearing an illegitimate child fade away, a fresh sorrow arises. The baby takes ill. When Tess returns home after work, she finds that the baby had taken ill. Tess realizes that the baby has not been baptized. Tess begs her father to send for the parson, but he refuses out of pride. Tess goes to bed, but the infant's breathing grows more difficult and Tess prays for pity. Tess finally decides to baptize the infant herself: she gives it the name Sorrow. As she baptizes Sorrow, Tess appears to her siblings as a large, towering, divine personage. When Tess awakes the next morning, she finds that Sorrow has died. Tess wonders whether if it were doctrinally sufficient to secure a Christian burial for the child. She asks the new parson, and he agrees that Sorrow had been properly baptized, but he refuses to give a Christian burial out of community reasons. She tells him not to speak to her as saint to sinner, but as person to person. Finally he agrees that the burial will be the same.

Hardy once again shifts the narrative forward to bypass momentous events in Tess's life; skipping nearly a year in Tess's life, the story picks up after Tess has given birth to the illegitimate child borne of her one encounter with Alec d'Urberville. This child is the living representation of her sin: during the first part of the chapter it exists only as a symbol and not as an actual person, receiving a name only before its death. Even the name that Tess gives her infant child, Sorrow, represents the aftermath of her sin. Nevertheless, if Sorrow represents Tess's guilt over her weakness with Alec d'Urberville, Tess's reaction to her child is significant. At first Tess claims to detest the child, yet grows accustomed to it as a part of her, accepting this sin as inherent in her with a profound sense of self-loathing. However, once the child is near death Tess accepts it fully by insisting on its baptism. By confronting her sin and naming it, Tess essentially allows Sorrow to die peacefully. The baptism of Sorrow is a pivotal event for Tess in which she moves from a simplistic child to, as her siblings see her, a "towering, divine personage. By baptizing her child, Tess also rejects the social structure around her that perceives the mother as an outcast, performing the ceremony that marks the acceptance of her child into society without the public declaration of the church. The baptism of Sorrow is thus a baptism for Tess as well, marking a new sense of self and self-worth that she has lacked. This can further be seen in the confrontation with the parson that follows: the once demure Tess demands that Sorrow be given a Christian burial, despite the objection of the parson

It's now August, and the sun is just coming up, casting a red glow on everything in the country. The sun makes the reaping machine appear even redder than it is. The reaper moves around the edge of the field, slowly moving inward as it cuts the grain. All the animals that live in the field are forced into an ever-shrinking area, until the last square yards are cut down by the reaper, and the animals are beaten to death by the workers. The female workers follow the machine, tying up the wheat into bundles as it falls from the machine. One of the women in the group of workers draws the particular attention of onlookers, because, unlike the others, she seems completely intent on what she's doing. When she stands up between tying bundles, one can see her face--she's a good-looking young woman. It's Tess, of course--the same, but not the same, as she was before. The whole group takes a break for breakfast, and then continues to work as before. After a while, Tess sees a group of children approaching the field. One of them is carrying a baby, and another is carrying some lunch. The other workers pause in their labor to go sit under the tree and eat. Tess is one of the last to stop. Tess's sister hands her the baby and runs off to play with the other children. Tess looks around with some embarrassment, and then begins to nurse the child. After the baby has had enough, Tess plays with it absent-mindedly, and then starts kissing it. Her fellow workers discuss her actions among themselves--some say that she loves the baby, though she pretends not to, and others remark that she'll get used to being an unwed mother in time. After the birth of the baby, Tess realized that, by secluding herself, she was only making herself miserable--the opinions of the rest of the world didn't matter much. So she got herself this job with the harvesters, because she wanted to do something that would make her relatively independent. Her friends are happy to see her out of doors again, and their friendliness and cheerfulness are contagious. But then when she gets home, she learns that her baby, which was already kind of weak and sickly, has gotten sick and might not make it. Tess is horrified--of course she wants her baby to live. But what makes her even more horrified is the thought that her baby hasn't been baptized. She takes what she'd been taught about baptism and salvation very literally and very seriously, so this is a matter of great concern to her. From what she's been taught, she believes that, if her baby dies without being baptized, it will go to hell. She asks her father to send for the parson, but he's drunk, and tells her that she's shamed their family honor enough, and that he doesn't want a parson snooping around their house. So Jack Durbeyfield locks the house and goes to bed. Tess goes to bed, too, but she's terribly upset. She prays to God to have pity on the baby. Suddenly she has a thought: what if she baptizes it herself? Perhaps that would be just the same. So she wakes the other children to witness the ceremony. She names the infant "Sorrow," and recites the part of the baptismal service that goes, "Sorrow, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" . The children pipe up with "Amen!" when called upon to do so, as Tess goes on with the rest of the service that she has memorized. The baby, Sorrow, dies in the early hours of the morning. Tess starts to worry about its soul again--will her service count? Will she be allowed to bury the child in the holy ground at the church, or will she have to bury it in the woods somewhere? She goes to the parson to ask. She first asks if her baptismal service will "count" with God--if it will keep the baby from burning in hell. He assures her that her service will get the job done. So then she asks if he'll give the baby a Christian burial at the church, and he feels trapped. He says that he can't for reasons of Church politics. She then asks, with some passion, whether it will be the same if she buries the baby herself in the churchyard. He reassures her that it would be the same. So Tess gathers some flowers and makes a wooden cross, tips the sexton , and buries her baby in the dead of night.

CHAPTER 14 Summary After Tess gives birth to a baby boy, she decides that it is time to end her self-imposed seclusion. She decides to help in the fields during the August harvest. Her family brings the infant out to her so she can nurse him. One day when Tess returns home, she finds her son very ill and worries he may die. Since the baby has not been baptized, she wants to call the minister, but her father refuses her request. Worried that her son will not have salvation without a baptism, Tess herself christens him in front of her brothers and sisters and appropriately names the child Sorrow. The next morning, the child dies. Tess is relieved to know from the parson that her baptism is acceptable for the child's salvation. She is, however, denied a Christian burial for the baby; therefore, Tess buries Sorrow in the churchyard at a place where all unbaptized and suicides are laid to rest. Then she decorates the grave. Notes The mornings are lazy and the nights are gloomy for Tess, and there is no relief in between. Her grief and remorse are insurmountable obstacles for her, and life holds little meaning. When her child is born, she gains courage and goes to the field to work. Then her baby grows ill, and Tess must perform a baptismal service for him, since her father will not allow the parson to come. She appropriately names the child Sorrow, which reflects the grief that Tess feels for her own sinfulness, for the baby's life, and for its early death. When the infant dies, Tess is forced to bury Sorrow in a neglected corner of the cemetery. This chapter reveals new images of Tess. She has been made to feel so ashamed of her pregnancy that she has gone into seclusion, giving her way too much time to punish herself. When the baby is finally born, she bravely goes to the fields to work and even nurses the child there with dignity. It is obvious that she cares about the infant and worries about its salvation. She knows, however, that the illegitimate child will never be accepted, which is one reason she calls the baby Sorrow. After Sorrow's christening and subsequent death, she questions the parson as to whether her baptismal service is adequate for the child's salvation. The parson gives her encouraging words, but will not give Sorrow a Christian burial. Tess must, therefore, lay Sorrow in a neglected corner of the churchyard, but she takes great care to decorate the grave. It is important to notice Hardy's descriptive powers in this chapter. He brings the harvest to life with vivid details, and his description of Sorrow's baptism is one of the most touching in the entire novel. It is also important to notice the part that fate has played in the novel by the end of this chapter. It has certainly been unkind to this sweet, innocent country girl. Tess left home in order to help earn money for her impoverished family, she falls into the hands of the sinister Alec who takes advantage of her naivete, she punishes herself severely for her sinfulness, she finds she is pregnant and ostracized from village life, and she finally loses the baby who has caused her so much sorrow. It is no wonder that Tess feels that there is little to live for in Marlott


"By experience," says Roger Ascham, "we find out a short way by
a long wandering."  Not seldom that long wandering unfits us for
further travel, and of what use is our experience to us then?  Tess
Durbeyfield's experience was of this incapacitating kind.  At last
she had learned what to do; but who would now accept her doing?

If before going to the d'Urbervilles' she had vigorously moved under
the guidance of sundry gnomic texts and phrases known to her and to
the world in general, no doubt she would never have been imposed on.
But it had not been in Tess's power--nor is it in anybody's power--to
feel the whole truth of golden opinions while it is possible to
profit by them.  She--and how many more--might have ironically said
to God with Saint Augustine: "Thou hast counselled a better course
than Thou hast permitted."

She remained at her father's house during the winter months, plucking
fowls, or cramming turkeys and geese, or making clothes for her
sisters and brothers out of some finery which d'Urberville had given
her, and she had put by with contempt.  Apply to him she would not.
But she would often clasp her hands behind her head and muse when she
was supposed to be working hard.

She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution
of the year; the disastrous night of her undoing at Trantridge with
its dark background of The Chase; also the dates of the baby's birth
and death; also her own birthday; and every other day individualized
by incidents in which she had taken some share.  She suddenly thought
one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there
was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that
of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day
which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving
no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less
surely there.  When was it?  Why did she not feel the chill of each
yearly encounter with such a cold relation?  She had Jeremy Taylor's
thought that some time in the future those who had known her would
say: "It is the ----th, the day that poor Tess Durbeyfield died"; and
there would be nothing singular to their minds in the statement.  Of
that day, doomed to be her terminus in time through all the ages, she
did not know the place in month, week, season or year.

Almost at a leap Tess thus changed from simple girl to complex woman.
Symbols of reflectiveness passed into her face, and a note of tragedy
at times into her voice.  Her eyes grew larger and more eloquent.
She became what would have been called a fine creature; her aspect
was fair and arresting; her soul that of a woman whom the turbulent
experiences of the last year or two had quite failed to demoralize.
But for the world's opinion those experiences would have been simply
a liberal education.

She had held so aloof of late that her trouble, never generally
known, was nearly forgotten in Marlott.  But it became evident to her
that she could never be really comfortable again in a place which
had seen the collapse of her family's attempt to "claim kin"--and,
through her, even closer union--with the rich d'Urbervilles.  At
least she could not be comfortable there till long years should have
obliterated her keen consciousness of it.  Yet even now Tess felt the
pulse of hopeful life still warm within her; she might be happy in
some nook which had no memories.  To escape the past and all that
appertained thereto was to annihilate it, and to do that she would
have to get away.

Was once lost always lost really true of chastity? she would ask
herself.  She might prove it false if she could veil bygones.  The
recuperative power which pervaded organic nature was surely not
denied to maidenhood alone.

She waited a long time without finding opportunity for a new
departure.  A particularly fine spring came round, and the stir of
germination was almost audible in the buds; it moved her, as it moved
the wild animals, and made her passionate to go.  At last, one day in
early May, a letter reached her from a former friend of her mother's,
to whom she had addressed inquiries long before--a person whom she
had never seen--that a skilful milkmaid was required at a dairy-house
many miles to the southward, and that the dairyman would be glad to
have her for the summer months.

It was not quite so far off as could have been wished; but it was
probably far enough, her radius of movement and repute having been
so small.  To persons of limited spheres, miles are as geographical
degrees, parishes as counties, counties as provinces and kingdoms.

On one point she was resolved: there should be no more d'Urberville
air-castles in the dreams and deeds of her new life.  She would be
the dairymaid Tess, and nothing more.  Her mother knew Tess's feeling
on this point so well, though no words had passed between them on the
subject, that she never alluded to the knightly ancestry now.

Yet such is human inconsistency that one of the interests of the
new place to her was the accidental virtues of its lying near her
forefathers' country (for they were not Blakemore men, though her
mother was Blakemore to the bone).  The dairy called Talbothays,
for which she was bound, stood not remotely from some of the former
estates of the d'Urbervilles, near the great family vaults of her
granddames and their powerful husbands.  She would be able to look at
them, and think not only that d'Urberville, like Babylon, had fallen,
but that the individual innocence of a humble descendant could lapse
as silently.  All the while she wondered if any strange good thing
might come of her being in her ancestral land; and some spirit within
her rose  automatically as the sap in the twigs.  It was unexpected
youth, surging up anew after its temporary check, and bringing with
it hope, and the invincible instinct towards self-delight.

END OF PHASE THE SECOND

Phase the Third: The Rally

Tess began to note the passing of anniversaries, such as her first arrival at Trantridge and the fateful night at The Chase. Almost suddenly Tess changed from a simple girl to a complex woman. Her eyes grow larger and more eloquent. She wonders if chastity, once lost, is always lost and waits for a new departure. She vows that there will be no more talk of d'Urberville castles, and prepares to go to the Talbothays dairy.

Hardy makes explicit in this chapter what he implied earlier, elucidating the transformative events that moved Tess from a timid girl to a strong and courageous woman. Her rebirth during the baptism of Sorrow is followed by Tess's decision to leave Marlott for a place in which she may start her life anew. However, at this point Hardy introduces one of the most important themes of the novel: the question of the extent to which sins may be forgiven. In this instance, the question is given explicitly: can Tess regain her chastity after one indiscretion. Although Tess herself appears as evidence that purity may be regained, this question will provide significant thematic material throughout the novel

Tess stays in her father's house in Marlott through the winter, making money doing odd jobs around the village, and turning the fancy clothes Alec had given her into good working clothes for her brothers and sisters. Tess takes note of dates as they pass--the date of her rape in The Chase, the birth and the death of the baby. Then she begins to think about her own death. On what day of the year will it occur? Will it be on a crisp October morning, or a sunny June afternoon? These meditations make Tess's already complex character even more complicated. Tess had stayed out of the way of most people since her "trouble," and since more than a year has passed, most people in Marlott had almost forgotten about it. But Tess knows that she'll never be really comfortable again in the place where she had known such tragedy. She wants to escape the past, but knows she can't, so she resolves at least to escape her hometown. It's a fine spring, and Tess is chomping at the bit--she wants out of there. Her mother happens to receive a letter from an old friend of her mother's--it's from a dairy farmer who's looking for a good dairymaid to come and work for him during the summer. It's not all that far away, but Tess decides that it's far enough, since she wasn't known outside of the Vale of Blackmoor and Trantridge. Tess doesn't want anyone at the dairy to know about her D'Urberville heritage. It's brought her nothing but trouble in the past, and she's embarrassed that her father has gotten so ridiculously snooty about it. But the dairy where she's going to work is actually very close to the ancient estate of the D'Urbervilles, her ancestral lands. Tess perks up at the prospect of leaving her troubles behind her.

CHAPTER 15 Summary Tess remains with her parents during the winter months. The loss of her baby in August has made her even more pensive and melancholy. She longs to leave Marlott and work some place where she can hide from her past. After waiting for over a year, she finally gets a job as a milkmaid at the Talbothay's farm. In springtime, she departs without hesitation, for she knows that she can never find peace in Marlott, where they judge her by her past. Notes Tess slips into an almost trance-like existence without emotion or sentiment. Her indelible memories, however, continue to remind her that her future holds nothing in store for her except sorrow and grief. She accepts her fate without complaining, for unhappiness by now, has simply become a way of life for this poor country girl. Hardy seems to challenge the idea that a fallen woman cannot have a future. He sounds pragmatic when he indicates that she could recover from the sin of her lost chastity if she is successful in veiling her past. At the end of the chapter, Tess is leaving Marlott and her accusers behind. It is important to notice that it is spring when Tess departs to find a new life for herself. It is significant because spring is the time of new beginnings and hope, foreshadowing that Tess may finally be moving towards happiness


On a thyme-scented, bird-hatching morning in May, between two and
three years after the return from Trantridge--silent, reconstructive
years for Tess Durbeyfield--she left her home for the second time.

Having packed up her luggage so that it could be sent to her later,
she started in a hired trap for the little town of Stourcastle,
through which it was necessary to pass on her journey, now in a
direction almost opposite to that of her first adventuring.  On the
curve of the nearest hill she looked back regretfully at Marlott and
her father's house, although she had been so anxious to get away.

Her kindred dwelling there would probably continue their daily
lives as heretofore, with no great diminution of pleasure in their
consciousness, although she would be far off, and they deprived of
her smile.  In a few days the children would engage in their games as
merrily as ever, without the sense of any gap left by her departure.
This leaving of the younger children she had decided to be for the
best; were she to remain they would probably gain less good by her
precepts than harm by her example.

She went through Stourcastle without pausing and onward to a junction
of highways, where she could await a carrier's van that ran to the
south-west; for the railways which engirdled this interior tract of
country had never yet struck across it.  While waiting, however,
there came along a farmer in his spring cart, driving approximately
in the direction that she wished to pursue.  Though he was a stranger
to her she accepted his offer of a seat beside him, ignoring that
its motive was a mere tribute to her countenance.  He was going to
Weatherbury, and by accompanying him thither she could walk the
remainder of the distance instead of travelling in the van by way of
Casterbridge.

Tess did not stop at Weatherbury, after this long drive, further than
to make a slight nondescript meal at noon at a cottage to which the
farmer recommended her.  Thence she started on foot, basket in hand,
to reach the wide upland of heath dividing this district from the
low-lying meads of a further valley in which the dairy stood that was
the aim and end of her day's pilgrimage.

Tess had never before visited this part of the country, and yet she
felt akin to the landscape.  Not so very far to the left of her she
could discern a dark patch in the scenery, which inquiry confirmed
her in supposing to be trees marking the environs of Kingsbere--in
the church of which parish the bones of her ancestors--her useless
ancestors--lay entombed.

She had no admiration for them now; she almost hated them for the
dance they had led her; not a thing of all that had been theirs did
she retain but the old seal and spoon.  "Pooh--I have as much of
mother as father in me!" she said.  "All my prettiness comes from
her, and she was only a dairymaid."

The journey over the intervening uplands and lowlands of Egdon,
when she reached them, was a more troublesome walk than she had
anticipated, the distance being actually but a few miles.  It was
two hours, owing to sundry wrong turnings, ere she found herself
on a summit commanding the long-sought-for vale, the Valley of the
Great Dairies, the valley in which milk and butter grew to rankness,
and were produced more profusely, if less delicately, than at her
home--the verdant plain so well watered by the river Var or Froom.

It was intrinsically different from the Vale of Little Dairies,
Blackmoor Vale, which, save during her disastrous sojourn at
Trantridge, she had exclusively known till now.  The world was drawn
to a larger pattern here.  The enclosures numbered fifty acres
instead of ten, the farmsteads were more extended, the groups of
cattle formed tribes hereabout; there only families.  These myriads
of cows stretching under her eyes from the far east to the far west
outnumbered any she had ever seen at one glance before. The green
lea was speckled as thickly with them as a canvas by Van Alsloot
or Sallaert with burghers.  The ripe hue of the red and dun kine
absorbed the evening sunlight, which the white-coated animals
returned to the eye in rays almost dazzling, even at the distant
elevation on which she stood.

The bird's-eye perspective before her was not so luxuriantly
beautiful, perhaps, as that other one which she knew so well; yet it
was more cheering.  It lacked the intensely blue atmosphere of the
rival vale, and its heavy soils and scents; the new air was clear,
bracing, ethereal.  The river itself, which nourished the grass
and cows of these renowned dairies, flowed not like the streams in
Blackmoor.  Those were slow, silent, often turbid; flowing over
beds of mud into which the incautious wader might sink and vanish
unawares.  The Froom waters were clear as the pure River of Life
shown to the Evangelist, rapid as the shadow of a cloud, with
pebbly shallows that prattled to the sky all day long.  There the
water-flower was the lily; the crow-foot here.

Either the change in the quality of the air from heavy to light, or
the sense of being amid new scenes where there were no invidious eyes
upon her, sent up her spirits wonderfully.  Her hopes mingled with
the sunshine in an ideal photosphere which surrounded her as she
bounded along against the soft south wind.  She heard a pleasant
voice in every breeze, and in every bird's note seemed to lurk a
joy.

Her face had latterly changed with changing states of mind,
continually fluctuating between beauty and ordinariness, according as
the thoughts were gay or grave.  One day she was pink and flawless;
another pale and tragical.  When she was pink she was feeling less
than when pale; her more perfect beauty accorded with her less
elevated mood; her more intense mood with her less perfect beauty.
It was her best face physically that was now set against the south
wind.

The irresistible, universal, automatic tendency to find sweet
pleasure somewhere, which pervades all life, from the meanest to the
highest, had at length mastered Tess.  Being even now only a young
woman of twenty, one who mentally and sentimentally had not finished
growing, it was impossible that any event should have left upon her
an impression that was not in time capable of transmutation.

And thus her spirits, and her thankfulness, and her hopes, rose
higher and higher.  She tried several ballads, but found them
inadequate; till, recollecting the psalter that her eyes had so often
wandered over of a Sunday morning before she had eaten of the tree
of knowledge, she chanted: "O ye Sun and Moon ... O ye Stars ... ye
Green Things upon the Earth ... ye Fowls of the Air ... Beasts and
Cattle ... Children of Men ... bless ye the Lord, praise Him and
magnify Him for ever!"

She suddenly stopped and murmured: "But perhaps I don't quite know
the Lord as yet."

And probably the half-unconscious rhapsody was a Fetishistic
utterance in a Monotheistic setting; women whose chief companions
are the forms and forces of outdoor Nature retain in their souls far
more of the Pagan fantasy of their remote forefathers than of the
systematized religion taught their race at later date.  However, Tess
found at least approximate expression for her feelings in the old
_Benedicite_ that she had lisped from infancy; and it was enough.
Such high contentment with such a slight initial performance as that
of having started towards a means of independent living was a part of
the Durbeyfield temperament.  Tess really wished to walk uprightly,
while her father did nothing of the kind; but she resembled him in
being content with immediate and small achievements, and in having no
mind for laborious effort towards such petty social advancement as
could alone be effected by a family so heavily handicapped as the
once powerful d'Urbervilles were now.

There was, it might be said, the energy of her mother's unexpended
family, as well as the natural energy of Tess's years, rekindled
after the experience which had so overwhelmed her for the time. Let
the truth be told--women do as a rule live through such humiliations,
and regain their spirits, and again look about them with an
interested eye.  While there's life there's hope is a conviction not
so entirely unknown to the "betrayed" as some amiable theorists would
have us believe.

Tess Durbeyfield, then, in good heart, and full of zest for life,
descended the Egdon slopes lower and lower towards the dairy of her
pilgrimage.

The marked difference, in the final particular, between the rival
vales now showed itself.  The secret of Blackmoor was best discovered
from the heights around; to read aright the valley before her it was
necessary to descend into its midst.  When Tess had accomplished this
feat she found herself to be standing on a carpeted level, which
stretched to the east and west as far as the eye could reach.

The river had stolen from the higher tracts and brought in particles
to the vale all this horizontal land; and now, exhausted, aged, and
attenuated, lay serpentining along through the midst of its former
spoils.

Not quite sure of her direction, Tess stood still upon the hemmed
expanse of verdant flatness, like a fly on a billiard-table of
indefinite length, and of no more consequence to the surroundings
than that fly.  The sole effect of her presence upon the placid
valley so far had been to excite the mind of a solitary heron, which,
after descending to the ground not far from her path, stood with neck
erect, looking at her.

Suddenly there arose from all parts of the lowland a prolonged and
repeated call--"Waow! waow! waow!"

From the furthest east to the furthest west the cries spread as if by
contagion, accompanied in some cases by the barking of a dog.  It was
not the expression of the valley's consciousness that beautiful Tess
had arrived, but the ordinary announcement of milking-time--half-past
four o'clock, when the dairymen set about getting in the cows.

The red and white herd nearest at hand, which had been phlegmatically
waiting for the call, now trooped towards the steading in the
background, their great bags of milk swinging under them as they
walked.  Tess followed slowly in their rear, and entered the barton
by the open gate through which they had entered before her.  Long
thatched sheds stretched round the enclosure, their slopes encrusted
with vivid green moss, and their eaves supported by wooden posts
rubbed to a glossy smoothness by the flanks of infinite cows
and calves of bygone years, now passed to an oblivion almost
inconceivable in its profundity.  Between the post were ranged
the milchers, each exhibiting herself at the present moment to a
whimsical eye in the rear as a circle on two stalks, down the centre
of which a switch moved pendulum-wise; while the sun, lowering itself
behind this patient row, threw their shadows accurately inwards upon
the wall.  Thus it threw shadows of these obscure and homely figures
every evening with as much care over each contour as if it had been
the profile of a court beauty on a palace wall; copied them as
diligently as it had copied Olympian shapes on marble _facades_ long
ago, or the outline of Alexander, Caesar, and the Pharaohs.

They were the less restful cows that were stalled.  Those that would
stand still of their own will were milked in the middle of the yard,
where many of such better behaved ones stood waiting now--all prime
milchers, such as were seldom seen out of this valley, and not always
within it; nourished by the succulent feed which the water-meads
supplied at this prime season of the year.  Those of them that were
spotted with white reflected the sunshine in dazzling brilliancy,
and the polished brass knobs of their horns glittered with something
of military display.  Their large-veined udders hung ponderous as
sandbags, the teats sticking out like the legs of a gipsy's crock;
and as each animal lingered for her turn to arrive the milk oozed
forth and fell in drops to the ground.

Tess leaves home for the second time, deciding that were she to remain, her younger siblings would probably gain less good by her precepts than harm by her example. On the way to Talbothays, Tess passes Kingsbere, the area in which her ancestors lay entombed. She dismisses ideas about her ancestors, realizing that she has as much of her mother as her father in her. Tess arrives at the dairy around milking time, half-past four in the morning.

Upon leaving Marlott, Tess Durbeyfield once again confronts the ancestors whose discovery by her father prompted Tess to be sent to find ruin with Alec d'Urberville. However, while she was once intrigued by the idea that she may find fortune and security with the d'Urbervilles, by this point in her life she has rejected such unrealistic dreams. Her journey to the dairy contrasts with her first journey out of Marlott, for in this instance Tess goes to perform hard manual labor, yet nevertheless appears more calm and confident on her second journey than her more leisurely first

Tess is traveling from her home town of Marlott to the town where the dairy farm is. It's been just over two years since she returned from Trantridge. Tess hitches a ride part of the way with a farmer in a cart, even though she can tell he only offered her a lift because she's pretty. Tess feels a connection to the country here, because it was the country of her "useless ancestors" . The first thing Tess notices about this valley, as compared to the Vale of Blackmoor where she's grown up, is that the fields and farms are larger. She also notices that the air seems lighter, and that lifts her mood. The narrator reminds us that Tess is only just twenty years old, and that she's hardly finished developing , so it's no wonder that she should find joy in the physical pleasure of sunshine and a beautiful view, despite her tragic history. Tess goes down the hill into the valley, and isn't sure which way to turn. She hears someone calling to the nearby herd of cattle, and the cows turn to enter a gate. Tess follows the cows, which are going in to be milked. The cows that kick and move around while being milked are put in stalls in the barn, while the better behaved ones wait in rows in the middle of the yard.


The dairymaids and men had flocked down from their cottages and out
of the dairy-house with the arrival of the cows from the meads; the
maids walking in pattens, not on account of the weather, but to keep
their shoes above the mulch of the barton.  Each girl sat down on
her three-legged stool, her face sideways, her right cheek resting
against the cow, and looked musingly along the animal's flank at Tess
as she approached.  The male milkers, with hat-brims turned down,
resting flat on their foreheads and gazing on the ground, did not
observe her.

One of these was a sturdy middle-aged man--whose long white "pinner"
was somewhat finer and cleaner than the wraps of the others, and
whose jacket underneath had a presentable marketing aspect--the
master-dairyman, of whom she was in quest, his double character as
a working milker and butter maker here during six days, and on the
seventh as a man in shining broad-cloth in his family pew at church,
being so marked as to have inspired a rhyme:

             Dairyman Dick
             All the week:--
     On Sundays Mister Richard Crick.

Seeing Tess standing at gaze he went across to her.

The majority of dairymen have a cross manner at milking time, but it
happened that Mr Crick was glad to get a new hand--for the days were
busy ones now--and he received her warmly; inquiring for her mother
and the rest of the family--(though this as a matter of form merely,
for in reality he had not been aware of Mrs Durbeyfield's existence
till apprised of the fact by a brief business-letter about Tess).

"Oh--ay, as a lad I knowed your part o' the country very well," he
said terminatively.  "Though I've never been there since.  And a aged
woman of ninety that use to live nigh here, but is dead and gone long
ago, told me that a family of some such name as yours in Blackmoor
Vale came originally from these parts, and that 'twere a old ancient
race that had all but perished off the earth--though the new
generations didn't know it.  But, Lord, I took no notice of the old
woman's ramblings, not I."

"Oh no--it is nothing," said Tess.

Then the talk was of business only.

"You can milk 'em clean, my maidy? I don't want my cows going azew at
this time o' year."

She reassured him on that point, and he surveyed her up and down.
She had been staying indoors a good deal, and her complexion had
grown delicate.

"Quite sure you can stand it?  'Tis comfortable enough here for rough
folk; but we don't live in a cowcumber frame."

She declared that she could stand it, and her zest and willingness
seemed to win him over.

"Well, I suppose you'll want a dish o' tay, or victuals of some sort,
hey?  Not yet?  Well, do as ye like about it.  But faith, if 'twas I,
I should be as dry as a kex wi' travelling so far."

"I'll begin milking now, to get my hand in," said Tess.

She drank a little milk as temporary refreshment--to the
surprise--indeed, slight contempt--of Dairyman Crick, to whose mind
it had apparently never occurred that milk was good as a beverage.

"Oh, if ye can swaller that, be it so," he said indifferently, while
holding up the pail that she sipped from.  "'Tis what I hain't
touched for years--not I.  Rot the stuff; it would lie in my innerds
like lead.  You can try your hand upon she," he pursued, nodding to
the nearest cow.  "Not but what she do milk rather hard.  We've hard
ones and we've easy ones, like other folks.  However, you'll find out
that soon enough."

When Tess had changed her bonnet for a hood, and was really on her
stool under the cow, and the milk was squirting from her fists
into the pail, she appeared to feel that she really had laid a new
foundation for her future.  The conviction bred serenity, her pulse
slowed, and she was able to look about her.

The milkers formed quite a little battalion of men and maids, the
men operating on the hard-teated animals, the maids on the kindlier
natures.  It was a large dairy.  There were nearly a hundred
milchers under Crick's management, all told; and of the herd the
master-dairyman milked six or eight with his own hands, unless away
from home.  These were the cows that milked hardest of all; for his
journey-milkmen being more or less casually hired, he would not
entrust this half-dozen to their treatment, lest, from indifference,
they should not milk them fully; nor to the maids, lest they should
fail in the same way for lack of finger-grip; with the result that in
course of time the cows would "go azew"--that is, dry up.  It was not
the loss for the moment that made slack milking so serious, but that
with the decline of demand there came decline, and ultimately
cessation, of supply.

After Tess had settled down to her cow there was for a time no talk
in the barton, and not a sound interfered with the purr of the
milk-jets into the numerous pails, except a momentary exclamation
to one or other of the beasts requesting her to turn round or stand
still. The only movements were those of the milkers' hands up and
down, and the swing of the cows' tails.  Thus they all worked on,
encompassed by the vast flat mead which extended to either slope
of the valley--a level landscape compounded of old landscapes long
forgotten, and, no doubt, differing in character very greatly from
the landscape they composed now.

"To my thinking," said the dairyman, rising suddenly from a cow
he had just finished off, snatching up his three-legged stool in
one hand and the pail in the other, and moving on to the next
hard-yielder in his vicinity, "to my thinking, the cows don't gie
down their milk to-day as usual.  Upon my life, if Winker do begin
keeping back like this, she'll not be worth going under by
midsummer."

"'Tis because there's a new hand come among us," said Jonathan Kail.
"I've noticed such things afore."

"To be sure.  It may be so.  I didn't think o't."

"I've been told that it goes up into their horns at such times," said
a dairymaid.

"Well, as to going up into their horns," replied Dairyman Crick
dubiously, as though even witchcraft might be limited by anatomical
possibilities, "I couldn't say; I certainly could not.  But as nott
cows will keep it back as well as the horned ones, I don't quite
agree to it.  Do ye know that riddle about the nott cows, Jonathan?
Why do nott cows give less milk in a year than horned?"

"I don't!" interposed the milkmaid, "Why do they?"

"Because there bain't so many of 'em," said the dairyman.
"Howsomever, these gam'sters do certainly keep back their milk
to-day.  Folks, we must lift up a stave or two--that's the only cure
for't."

Songs were often resorted to in dairies hereabout as an enticement
to the cows when they showed signs of withholding their usual yield;
and the band of milkers at this request burst into melody--in purely
business-like tones, it is true, and with no great spontaneity; the
result, according to their own belief, being a decided improvement
during the song's continuance.  When they had gone through fourteen
or fifteen verses of a cheerful ballad about a murderer who was
afraid to go to bed in the dark because he saw certain brimstone
flames around him, one of the male milkers said--

"I wish singing on the stoop didn't use up so much of a man's wind!
You should get your harp, sir; not but what a fiddle is best."

Tess, who had given ear to this, thought the words were addressed to
the dairyman, but she was wrong.  A reply, in the shape of "Why?"
came as it were out of the belly of a dun cow in the stalls; it had
been spoken by a milker behind the animal, whom she had not hitherto
perceived.

"Oh yes; there's nothing like a fiddle," said the dairyman. "Though
I do think that bulls are more moved by a tune than cows--at least
that's my experience.  Once there was an old aged man over at
Mellstock--William Dewy by name--one of the family that used to do
a good deal of business as tranters over there--Jonathan, do ye
mind?--I knowed the man by sight as well as I know my own brother, in
a manner of speaking.  Well, this man was a coming home along from a
wedding, where he had been playing his fiddle, one fine moonlight
night, and for shortness' sake he took a cut across Forty-acres, a
field lying that way, where a bull was out to grass.  The bull seed
William, and took after him, horns aground, begad; and though William
runned his best, and hadn't MUCH drink in him (considering 'twas a
wedding, and the folks well off), he found he'd never reach the fence
and get over in time to save himself.  Well, as a last thought, he
pulled out his fiddle as he runned, and struck up a jig, turning to
the bull, and backing towards the corner.  The bull softened down,
and stood still, looking hard at William Dewy, who fiddled on and on;
till a sort of a smile stole over the bull's face.  But no sooner
did William stop his playing and turn to get over hedge than the
bull would stop his smiling and lower his horns towards the seat of
William's breeches.  Well, William had to turn about and play on,
willy-nilly; and 'twas only three o'clock in the world, and 'a knowed
that nobody would come that way for hours, and he so leery and tired
that 'a didn't know what to do.  When he had scraped till about four
o'clock he felt that he verily would have to give over soon, and he
said to himself, 'There's only this last tune between me and eternal
welfare! Heaven save me, or I'm a done man.'  Well, then he called to
mind how he'd seen the cattle kneel o' Christmas Eves in the dead o'
night.  It was not Christmas Eve then, but it came into his head to
play a trick upon the bull.  So he broke into the 'Tivity Hymm, just
as at Christmas carol-singing; when, lo and behold, down went the
bull on his bended knees, in his ignorance, just as if 'twere the
true 'Tivity night and hour.  As soon as his horned friend were down,
William turned, clinked off like a long-dog, and jumped safe over
hedge, before the praying bull had got on his feet again to take
after him.  William used to say that he'd seen a man look a fool
a good many times, but never such a fool as that bull looked when
he found his pious feelings had been played upon, and 'twas not
Christmas Eve. ...  Yes, William Dewy, that was the man's name; and
I can tell you to a foot where's he a-lying in Mellstock Churchyard
at this very moment--just between the second yew-tree and the north
aisle."

"It's a curious story; it carries us back to medieval times, when
faith was a living thing!"

The remark, singular for a dairy-yard, was murmured by the voice
behind the dun cow; but as nobody understood the reference, no notice
was taken, except that the narrator seemed to think it might imply
scepticism as to his tale.

"Well, 'tis quite true, sir, whether or no.  I knowed the man well."

"Oh yes; I have no doubt of it," said the person behind the dun cow.

Tess's attention was thus attracted to the dairyman's interlocutor,
of whom she could see but the merest patch, owing to his burying his
head so persistently in the flank of the milcher.  She could not
understand why he should be addressed as "sir" even by the dairyman
himself.  But no explanation was discernible; he remained under the
cow long enough to have milked three, uttering a private ejaculation
now and then, as if he could not get on.

"Take it gentle, sir; take it gentle," said the dairyman.  "'Tis
knack, not strength, that does it."

"So I find," said the other, standing up at last and stretching his
arms.  "I think I have finished her, however, though she made my
fingers ache."

Tess could then see him at full length.  He wore the ordinary white
pinner and leather leggings of a dairy-farmer when milking, and his
boots were clogged with the mulch of the yard; but this was all his
local livery.  Beneath it was something educated, reserved, subtle,
sad, differing.

But the details of his aspect were temporarily thrust aside by
the discovery that he was one whom she had seen before.  Such
vicissitudes had Tess passed through since that time that for a
moment she could not remember where she had met him; and then it
flashed upon her that he was the pedestrian who had joined in the
club-dance at Marlott--the passing stranger who had come she knew
not whence, had danced with others but not with her, and slightingly
left her, and gone on his way with his friends.

The flood of memories brought back by this revival of an incident
anterior to her troubles produced a momentary dismay lest,
recognizing her also, he should by some means discover her story.
But it passed away when she found no sign of remembrance in him.  She
saw by degrees that since their first and only encounter his mobile
face had grown more thoughtful, and had acquired a young man's
shapely moustache and beard--the latter of the palest straw colour
where it began upon his cheeks, and deepening to a warm brown farther
from its root.  Under his linen milking-pinner he wore a dark
velveteen jacket, cord breeches and gaiters, and a starched white
shirt.  Without the milking-gear nobody could have guessed what
he was.  He might with equal probability have been an eccentric
landowner or a gentlemanly ploughman.  That he was but a novice at
dairy work she had realized in a moment, from the time he had spent
upon the milking of one cow.

Meanwhile many of the milkmaids had said to one another of the
newcomer, "How pretty she is!" with something of real generosity and
admiration, though with a half hope that the auditors would qualify
the assertion--which, strictly speaking, they might have done,
prettiness being an inexact definition of what struck the eye in
Tess.  When the milking was finished for the evening they straggled
indoors, where Mrs Crick, the dairyman's wife--who was too
respectable to go out milking herself, and wore a hot stuff gown in
warm weather because the dairymaids wore prints--was giving an eye
to the leads and things.

Only two or three of the maids, Tess learnt, slept in the dairy-house
besides herself, most of the helpers going to their homes.  She saw
nothing at supper-time of the superior milker who had commented on
the story, and asked no questions about him, the remainder of the
evening being occupied in arranging her place in the bed-chamber.
It was a large room over the milk-house, some thirty feet long; the
sleeping-cots of the other three indoor milkmaids being in the same
apartment.  They were blooming young women, and, except one, rather
older than herself.  By bedtime Tess was thoroughly tired, and fell
asleep immediately.

But one of the girls, who occupied an adjoining bed, was more wakeful
than Tess, and would insist upon relating to the latter various
particulars of the homestead into which she had just entered.  The
girl's whispered words mingled with the shades, and, to Tess's drowsy
mind, they seemed to be generated by the darkness in which they
floated.

"Mr Angel Clare--he that is learning milking, and that plays
the harp--never says much to us.  He is a pa'son's son, and is
too much taken up wi' his own thoughts to notice girls.  He is
the dairyman's pupil--learning farming in all its branches.  He
has learnt sheep-farming at another place, and he's now mastering
dairy-work....  Yes, he is quite the gentleman-born.  His father is
the Reverent Mr Clare at Emminster--a good many miles from here."

"Oh--I have heard of him," said her companion, now awake.  "A very
earnest clergyman, is he not?"

"Yes--that he is--the earnestest man in all Wessex, they say--the
last of the old Low Church sort, they tell me--for all about here be
what they call High.  All his sons, except our Mr Clare, be made
pa'sons too."

Tess had not at this hour the curiosity to ask why the present Mr
Clare was not made a parson like his brethren, and gradually fell
asleep again, the words of her informant coming to her along with the
smell of the cheeses in the adjoining cheeseloft, and the measured
dripping of the whey from the wrings downstairs.

Tess begins milking with the other milkers, including the master dairyman, Richard Crick, who introduces himself to Tess and inquires after her family. Crick knows a little about the d'Urbervilles, but Tess dismisses the ideas that she comes from an esteemed family. Later, while Tess is on a break with the other workers, Crick tells a story about an aged man named William Dewy who was chased by a bull, but played a Christmas Eve hymn for the bull on his fiddle, causing it to lay down as if it were in a Nativity scene. After Crick tells the story, a young man remarks that the story is a reminder of medieval times, when faith was a living thing. The young man is Angel Clare, with whom Tess danced years ago. Later, Tess inquires about Angel, and another milkmaid tells her that Angel is learning milking and never says much. Since he is a parson's son, he is too taken with his thoughts to notice girls. Angel's father is Reverend Clare at Emminster, and all of his sons except for Angel are clergymen.

In contrast to Alec d'Urberville and the immediate sense of danger that he presents to Tess, Angel Clare represents a significant sense of idealism and purity. While Alec presents Tess with a forceful sexuality upon his first entrance in the novel, Angel is in a great sense desexualized; one of the milkmaids even thinks that he does not even think of girls. As Angel's family history and reaction to Dairyman Crick's story suggest, Angel is a person with deep moral convictions, although the particular religious leanings of Angel will later be revealed. Hardy indicates that the deeply moral Angel is nevertheless a religious outsider, the only one in his family who did not enter the clergy. As an outsider in some sense, Angel Clare thus bears some similarities to the outcast Tess. The meeting of these two characters seems to be the work of fate, for they had a chance meeting in the opening chapters of the novel. This bolsters the themes of fate and inevitability that pervade Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Tess finds herself for the first time in an accommodating environment at Talbothays dairy. Dairyman Crick is cheerful and friendly toward Tess, in comparison to her manipulative parents and predatory relatives. The atmosphere is jovial and inviting, as Dairyman Crick tells absurd stories and inquires after Tess's family. Hardy constructs the dairy as an idyllic atmosphere, yet the relief that Tess finds here is certainly to be short-lived

This was long before the days of milking machines, so when the cows are all in the barnyard, the dairymaids and dairymen come out of their cottages to start milking. The dairymaids all sit alongside the cows on their stools, with their cheeks pressed against the animals' flanks, watching Tess curiously as they milk the cows. One of the men comes over to her--it's "Dairyman Dick," a.k.a. "Mr. Richard Crick," the owner of the farm and Tess's new boss. He looks her over, asks about her experience, and says he knew her mother well--she had come from this part of the country, and had only moved to Blackmoor Vale after marrying Jack Durbeyfield. He offers Tess a cup of tea, but she says she'll start milking immediately. Tess begins milking, and finds the rhythmic pumping of the cow's udders to be soothing and meditative. Dairyman Crick does his share of the milking, too, and they all set to work in silence. There are more than one hundred cows in his herd--quite a lot. Someone remarks that the cows aren't giving up their usual yield. Some think it's because there's a new dairymaid. They sing a ballad as a group, because tradition has it that singing helps induce the cows to give more milk. One of the dairymen asks someone to bring out his harp, while admitting that a fiddle would be better. The dairyman in question asks why fiddles are better. Tess hadn't seen him before, and still can't. He's on the other side of his cow. The first dairyman gives a lengthy explanation in the form of a folktale about a man who played a Christmas hymn to a bull on a fiddle, and tricked the bull into thinking it was the Nativity. The second dairyman finishes his cow, under the watchful eye of Dairyman Crick, who gives him a few pointers. The second dairyman stands up, and Tess has a good look at him. He's dressed the same as everyone else, but he looks different--more educated, more reserved, more sad. He looks familiar to her. She realizes that it's the man who had been walking through Marlott on the day of the club-walking--it's the man who had not danced with her. She panics momentarily. What if he has connections in Blackmoor, and is able to learn about her past? But he doesn't seem to recognize her. He's grown up a fair amount in the last couple of years, too. She doesn't see him at supper, and asks no questions about him. Her bedroom is over the milk house, and she shares it with three other milkmaids. Tess is ready to fall asleep immediately, but the girl in the bed next to her insists on telling her about the strange milkman. His name is Mr. Angel Clare, and he's learning about milking, and about all kinds of farming so that he can be a gentleman farmer somewhere. He plays the harp, and is the son of a parson, and is too busy "wi' his own thoughts to notice girls." His father, the parson Mr. Clare, is a very good preacher. That's the parson that the man had told Tess about on her way back from Trantridge, so she perks up a bit, and asks more about him. The girl tells Tess that both of Angel's brothers are parsons now, like their father, but Angel opted for a different career route. Tess isn't able to stay awake for much more gossip, so she falls asleep.