On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking
homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining
Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor.  The pair of legs that carried him
were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him
somewhat to the left of a straight line.  He occasionally gave a
smart nod, as if in confirmation of some opinion, though he was not
thinking of anything in particular.  An empty egg-basket was slung
upon his arm, the nap of his hat was ruffled, a patch being quite
worn away at its brim where his thumb came in taking it off.
Presently he was met by an elderly parson astride on a gray mare,
who, as he rode, hummed a wandering tune.

"Good night t'ee," said the man with the basket.

"Good night, Sir John," said the parson.

The pedestrian, after another pace or two, halted, and turned round.

"Now, sir, begging your pardon; we met last market-day on this road
about this time, and I said 'Good night,' and you made reply '_Good
night, Sir John_,' as now."

"I did," said the parson.

"And once before that--near a month ago."

"I may have."

"Then what might your meaning be in calling me 'Sir John' these
different times, when I be plain Jack Durbeyfield, the haggler?"

The parson rode a step or two nearer.

"It was only my whim," he said; and, after a moment's hesitation: "It
was on account of a discovery I made some little time ago, whilst I
was hunting up pedigrees for the new county history.  I am Parson
Tringham, the antiquary, of Stagfoot Lane.  Don't you really know,
Durbeyfield, that you are the lineal representative of the ancient
and knightly family of the d'Urbervilles, who derive their descent
from Sir Pagan d'Urberville, that renowned knight who came from
Normandy with William the Conqueror, as appears by Battle Abbey
Roll?"

"Never heard it before, sir!"

"Well it's true.  Throw up your chin a moment, so that I may catch
the profile of your face better.  Yes, that's the d'Urberville nose
and chin--a little debased.  Your ancestor was one of the twelve
knights who assisted the Lord of Estremavilla in Normandy in his
conquest of Glamorganshire.  Branches of your family held manors over
all this part of England; their names appear in the Pipe Rolls in the
time of King Stephen.  In the reign of King John one of them was rich
enough to give a manor to the Knights Hospitallers; and in Edward the
Second's time your forefather Brian was summoned to Westminster to
attend the great Council there.  You declined a little in Oliver
Cromwell's time, but to no serious extent, and in Charles the
Second's reign you were made Knights of the Royal Oak for your
loyalty.  Aye, there have been generations of Sir Johns among
you, and if knighthood were hereditary, like a baronetcy, as it
practically was in old times, when men were knighted from father
to son, you would be Sir John now."

"Ye don't say so!"

"In short," concluded the parson, decisively smacking his leg with
his switch, "there's hardly such another family in England."

"Daze my eyes, and isn't there?" said Durbeyfield.  "And here have I
been knocking about, year after year, from pillar to post, as if I
was no more than the commonest feller in the parish...  And how long
hev this news about me been knowed, Pa'son Tringham?"

The clergyman explained that, as far as he was aware, it had quite
died out of knowledge, and could hardly be said to be known at all.
His own investigations had begun on a day in the preceding spring
when, having been engaged in tracing the vicissitudes of the
d'Urberville family, he had observed Durbeyfield's name on his
waggon, and had thereupon been led to make inquiries about his
father and grandfather till he had no doubt on the subject.

"At first I resolved not to disturb you with such a useless piece of
information," said he.  "However, our impulses are too strong for our
judgement sometimes.  I thought you might perhaps know something of
it all the while."

"Well, I have heard once or twice, 'tis true, that my family had seen
better days afore they came to Blackmoor.  But I took no notice o't,
thinking it to mean that we had once kept two horses where we now
keep only one.  I've got a wold silver spoon, and a wold graven seal
at home, too; but, Lord, what's a spoon and seal? ...  And to think
that I and these noble d'Urbervilles were one flesh all the time.
'Twas said that my gr't-granfer had secrets, and didn't care to talk
of where he came from...  And where do we raise our smoke, now,
parson, if I may make so bold; I mean, where do we d'Urbervilles
live?"

"You don't live anywhere. You are extinct--as a county family."

"That's bad."

"Yes--what the mendacious family chronicles call extinct in the male
line--that is, gone down--gone under."

"Then where do we lie?"

"At Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill: rows and rows of you in your vaults,
with your effigies under Purbeck-marble canopies."

"And where be our family mansions and estates?"

"You haven't any."

"Oh?  No lands neither?"

"None; though you once had 'em in abundance, as I said, for you
family consisted of numerous branches.  In this county there was a
seat of yours at Kingsbere, and another at Sherton, and another in
Millpond, and another at Lullstead, and another at Wellbridge."

"And shall we ever come into our own again?"

"Ah--that I can't tell!"

"And what had I better do about it, sir?" asked Durbeyfield, after a
pause.

"Oh--nothing, nothing; except chasten yourself with the thought of
'how are the mighty fallen.'  It is a fact of some interest to the
local historian and genealogist, nothing more.  There are several
families among the cottagers of this county of almost equal lustre.
Good night."

"But you'll turn back and have a quart of beer wi' me on the strength
o't, Pa'son Tringham?  There's a very pretty brew in tap at The Pure
Drop--though, to be sure, not so good as at Rolliver's."

"No, thank you--not this evening, Durbeyfield.  You've had enough
already."  Concluding thus, the parson rode on his way, with doubts
as to his discretion in retailing this curious bit of lore.

When he was gone, Durbeyfield walked a few steps in a profound
reverie, and then sat down upon the grassy bank by the roadside,
depositing his basket before him.  In a few minutes a youth appeared
in the distance, walking in the same direction as that which had been
pursued by Durbeyfield.  The latter, on seeing him, held up his hand,
and the lad quickened his pace and came near.

"Boy, take up that basket!  I want 'ee to go on an errand for me."

The lath-like stripling frowned.  "Who be you, then, John
Durbeyfield, to order me about and call me 'boy'?  You know my
name as well as I know yours!"

"Do you, do you?  That's the secret--that's the secret! Now obey my
orders, and take the message I'm going to charge 'ee wi'...  Well,
Fred, I don't mind telling you that the secret is that I'm one of a
noble race--it has been just found out by me this present afternoon,
P.M."  And as he made the announcement, Durbeyfield, declining from
his sitting position, luxuriously stretched himself out upon the bank
among the daisies.

The lad stood before Durbeyfield, and contemplated his length from
crown to toe.

"Sir John d'Urberville--that's who I am," continued the prostrate
man.  "That is if knights were baronets--which they be.  'Tis
recorded in history all about me.  Dost know of such a place, lad,
as Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill?"

"Ees.  I've been there to Greenhill Fair."

"Well, under the church of that city there lie--"

"'Tisn't a city, the place I mean; leastwise 'twaddn' when I was
there--'twas a little one-eyed, blinking sort o' place."

"Never you mind the place, boy, that's not the question before us.
Under the church of that there parish lie my ancestors--hundreds of
'em--in coats of mail and jewels, in gr't lead coffins weighing tons
and tons.  There's not a man in the county o' South-Wessex that's
got grander and nobler skillentons in his family than I."

"Oh?"

"Now take up that basket, and goo on to Marlott, and when you've come
to The Pure Drop Inn, tell 'em to send a horse and carriage to me
immed'ately, to carry me hwome.  And in the bottom o' the carriage
they be to put a noggin o' rum in a small bottle, and chalk it up
to my account.  And when you've done that goo on to my house with
the basket, and tell my wife to put away that washing, because she
needn't finish it, and wait till I come hwome, as I've news to tell
her."

As the lad stood in a dubious attitude, Durbeyfield put his hand in
his pocket, and produced a shilling, one of the chronically few that
he possessed.

"Here's for your labour, lad."

This made a difference in the young man's estimate of the position.

"Yes, Sir John.  Thank 'ee.  Anything else I can do for 'ee, Sir
John?"

"Tell 'em at hwome that I should like for supper,--well, lamb's fry
if they can get it; and if they can't, black-pot; and if they can't
get that, well chitterlings will do."

"Yes, Sir John."

The boy took up the basket, and as he set out the notes of a brass
band were heard from the direction of the village.

"What's that?" said Durbeyfield.  "Not on account o' I?"

"'Tis the women's club-walking, Sir John.  Why, your da'ter is one o'
the members."

"To be sure--I'd quite forgot it in my thoughts of greater things!
Well, vamp on to Marlott, will ye, and order that carriage, and
maybe I'll drive round and inspect the club."

The lad departed, and Durbeyfield lay waiting on the grass and
daisies in the evening sun.  Not a soul passed that way for a long
while, and the faint notes of the band were the only human sounds
audible within the rim of blue hills.

Middle-aged Jack Durbeyfield walks home drunk to the village of Marlott one evening in May and meets Parson Tringham who is riding in the opposite direction. An antiquary, the old Parson calls Durbeyfield "Sir John" and Durbeyfield asks him why. The parson tells Durbeyfield that he is a descendent of an ancient Norman noble family and that if knighthoods were hereditary, he would most certainly be called Sir John today. When Durbeyfield inquires about the whereabouts of his noble family the parson answers: "you don't live anywhere. You are extinct--as a county family". The idea of royal blood running in his veins deeply delights Durbeyfield who orders a carriage to carry him home


The village of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the
beautiful Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor, aforesaid, an engirdled
and secluded region, for the most part untrodden as yet by tourist or
landscape-painter, though within a four hours' journey from London.

It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made by viewing it from the
summits of the hills that surround it--except perhaps during the
droughts of summer.  An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad
weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous,
and miry ways.

This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are
never brown and the springs never dry, is bounded on the south by the
bold chalk ridge that embraces the prominences of Hambledon Hill,
Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, and Bubb Down.  The
traveller from the coast, who, after plodding northward for a score
of miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches
the verge of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted
to behold, extended like a map beneath him, a country differing
absolutely from that which he has passed through.  Behind him the
hills are open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give
an unenclosed character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the
hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere colourless.  Here, in the
valley, the world seems to be constructed upon a smaller and more
delicate scale; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced that from
this height their hedgerows appear a network of dark green threads
overspreading the paler green of the grass.  The atmosphere beneath
is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the
middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond
is of the deepest ultramarine.  Arable lands are few and limited;
with but slight exceptions the prospect is a broad rich mass of grass
and trees, mantling minor hills and dales within the major.  Such is
the Vale of Blackmoor.

The district is of historic, no less than of topographical interest.
The Vale was known in former times as the Forest of White Hart, from
a curious legend of King Henry III's reign, in which the killing by
a certain Thomas de la Lynd of a beautiful white hart which the king
had run down and spared, was made the occasion of a heavy fine.
In those days, and till comparatively recent times, the country was
densely wooded.  Even now, traces of its earlier condition are to be
found in the old oak copses and irregular belts of timber that yet
survive upon its slopes, and the hollow-trunked trees that shade so
many of its pastures.

The forests have departed, but some old customs of their shades
remain.  Many, however, linger only in a metamorphosed or disguised
form.  The May-Day dance, for instance, was to be discerned on
the afternoon under notice, in the guise of the club revel, or
"club-walking," as it was there called.

It was an interesting event to the younger inhabitants of Marlott,
though its real interest was not observed by the participators in the
ceremony.  Its singularity lay less in the retention of a custom of
walking in procession and dancing on each anniversary than in the
members being solely women.  In men's clubs such celebrations were,
though expiring, less uncommon; but either the natural shyness of the
softer sex, or a sarcastic attitude on the part of male relatives,
had denuded such women's clubs as remained (if any other did) or this
their glory and consummation.  The club of Marlott alone lived to
uphold the local Cerealia.  It had walked for hundreds of years, if
not as benefit-club, as votive sisterhood of some sort; and it walked
still.

The banded ones were all dressed in white gowns--a gay survival from
Old Style days, when cheerfulness and May-time were synonyms--days
before the habit of taking long views had reduced emotions to a
monotonous average.  Their first exhibition of themselves was in a
processional march of two and two round the parish.  Ideal and real
clashed slightly as the sun lit up their figures against the green
hedges and creeper-laced house-fronts; for, though the whole troop
wore white garments, no two whites were alike among them.  Some
approached pure blanching; some had a bluish pallor; some worn by the
older characters (which had possibly lain by folded for many a year)
inclined to a cadaverous tint, and to a Georgian style.

In addition to the distinction of a white frock, every woman and girl
carried in her right hand a peeled willow wand, and in her left a
bunch of white flowers.  The peeling of the former, and the selection
of the latter, had been an operation of personal care.

There were a few middle-aged and even elderly women in the train,
their silver-wiry hair and wrinkled faces, scourged by time and
trouble, having almost a grotesque, certainly a pathetic, appearance
in such a jaunty situation.  In a true view, perhaps, there was more
to be gathered and told of each anxious and experienced one, to whom
the years were drawing nigh when she should say, "I have no pleasure
in them," than of her juvenile comrades.  But let the elder be passed
over here for those under whose bodices the life throbbed quick and
warm.

The young girls formed, indeed, the majority of the band, and their
heads of luxuriant hair reflected in the sunshine every tone of gold,
and black, and brown.  Some had beautiful eyes, others a beautiful
nose, others a beautiful mouth and figure: few, if any, had all.  A
difficulty of arranging their lips in this crude exposure to public
scrutiny, an inability to balance their heads, and to dissociate
self-consciousness from their features, was apparent in them, and
showed that they were genuine country girls, unaccustomed to many
eyes.

And as each and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each
had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some
affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which,
though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will.
They were all cheerful, and many of them merry.

They came round by The Pure Drop Inn, and were turning out of the
high road to pass through a wicket-gate into the meadows, when one of
the women said--

"The Load-a-Lord!  Why, Tess Durbeyfield, if there isn't thy father
riding hwome in a carriage!"

A young member of the band turned her head at the exclamation.
She was a fine and handsome girl--not handsomer than some others,
possibly--but her mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes added
eloquence to colour and shape.  She wore a red ribbon in her hair,
and was the only one of the white company who could boast of such
a pronounced adornment.  As she looked round Durbeyfield was seen
moving along the road in a chaise belonging to The Pure Drop, driven
by a frizzle-headed brawny damsel with her gown-sleeves rolled above
her elbows.  This was the cheerful servant of that establishment,
who, in her part of factotum, turned groom and ostler at times.
Durbeyfield, leaning back, and with his eyes closed luxuriously, was
waving his hand above his head, and singing in a slow recitative--

"I've-got-a-gr't-family-vault-at-Kingsbere--and
knighted-forefathers-in-lead-coffins-there!"

The clubbists tittered, except the girl called Tess--in whom a slow
heat seemed to rise at the sense that her father was making himself
foolish in their eyes.

"He's tired, that's all," she said hastily, "and he has got a lift
home, because our own horse has to rest to-day."

"Bless thy simplicity, Tess," said her companions.  "He's got his
market-nitch.  Haw-haw!"

"Look here; I won't walk another inch with you, if you say any jokes
about him!" Tess cried, and the colour upon her cheeks spread over
her face and neck.  In a moment her eyes grew moist, and her glance
drooped to the ground.  Perceiving that they had really pained her
they said no more, and order again prevailed.  Tess's pride would not
allow her to turn her head again, to learn what her father's meaning
was, if he had any; and thus she moved on with the whole body to the
enclosure where there was to be dancing on the green.  By the time
the spot was reached she has recovered her equanimity, and tapped her
neighbour with her wand and talked as usual.

Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of
emotion untinctured by experience.  The dialect was on her tongue
to some extent, despite the village school: the characteristic
intonation of that dialect for this district being the voicing
approximately rendered by the syllable UR, probably as rich an
utterance as any to be found in human speech.  The pouted-up deep red
mouth to which this syllable was native had hardly as yet settled
into its definite shape, and her lower lip had a way of thrusting the
middle of her top one upward, when they closed together after a word.

Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still.  As she walked
along to-day, for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could
sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling
from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her
mouth now and then.

Yet few knew, and still fewer considered this.  A small minority,
mainly strangers, would look long at her in casually passing by, and
grow momentarily fascinated by her freshness, and wonder if they
would ever see her again: but to almost everybody she was a fine and
picturesque country girl, and no more.

Nothing was seen or heard further of Durbeyfield in his triumphal
chariot under the conduct of the ostleress, and the club having
entered the allotted space, dancing began.  As there were no men in
the company, the girls danced at first with each other, but when the
hour for the close of labour drew on, the masculine inhabitants of
the village, together with other idlers and pedestrians, gathered
round the spot, and appeared inclined to negotiate for a partner.

Among these on-lookers were three young men of a superior class,
carrying small knapsacks strapped to their shoulders, and stout
sticks in their hands.  Their general likeness to each other, and
their consecutive ages, would almost have suggested that they might
be, what in fact they were, brothers.  The eldest wore the white tie,
high waistcoat, and thin-brimmed hat of the regulation curate; the
second was the normal undergraduate; the appearance of the third and
youngest would hardly have been sufficient to characterize him; there
was an uncribbed, uncabined aspect in his eyes and attire, implying
that he had hardly as yet found the entrance to his professional
groove.  That he was a desultory tentative student of something and
everything might only have been predicted of him.

These three brethren told casual acquaintance that they were spending
their Whitsun holidays in a walking tour through the Vale of
Blackmoor, their course being south-westerly from the town of Shaston
on the north-east.

They leant over the gate by the highway, and inquired as to the
meaning of the dance and the white-frocked maids.  The two elder of
the brothers were plainly not intending to linger more than a moment,
but the spectacle of a bevy of girls dancing without male partners
seemed to amuse the third, and make him in no hurry to move on.  He
unstrapped his knapsack, put it, with his stick, on the hedge-bank,
and opened the gate.

"What are you going to do, Angel?" asked the eldest.

"I am inclined to go and have a fling with them.  Why not all of
us--just for a minute or two--it will not detain us long?"

"No--no; nonsense!" said the first.  "Dancing in public with a troop
of country hoydens--suppose we should be seen!  Come along, or it
will be dark before we get to Stourcastle, and there's no place we
can sleep at nearer than that; besides, we must get through another
chapter of _A Counterblast to Agnosticism_ before we turn in, now I
have taken the trouble to bring the book."

"All right--I'll overtake you and Cuthbert in five minutes; don't
stop; I give my word that I will, Felix."

The two elder reluctantly left him and walked on, taking their
brother's knapsack to relieve him in following, and the youngest
entered the field.

"This is a thousand pities," he said gallantly, to two or three of
the girls nearest him, as soon as there was a pause in the dance.
"Where are your partners, my dears?"

"They've not left off work yet," answered one of the boldest.
"They'll be here by and by.  Till then, will you be one, sir?"

"Certainly.  But what's one among so many!"

"Better than none.  'Tis melancholy work facing and footing it to one
of your own sort, and no clipsing and colling at all.  Now, pick and
choose."

"'Ssh--don't be so for'ard!" said a shyer girl.

The young man, thus invited, glanced them over, and attempted some
discrimination; but, as the group were all so new to him, he could
not very well exercise it.  He took almost the first that came to
hand, which was not the speaker, as she had expected; nor did it
happen to be Tess Durbeyfield.  Pedigree, ancestral skeletons,
monumental record, the d'Urberville lineaments, did not help Tess in
her life's battle as yet, even to the extent of attracting to her a
dancing-partner over the heads of the commonest peasantry.  So much
for Norman blood unaided by Victorian lucre.

The name of the eclipsing girl, whatever it was, has not been handed
down; but she was envied by all as the first who enjoyed the luxury
of a masculine partner that evening.  Yet such was the force of
example that the village young men, who had not hastened to enter
the gate while no intruder was in the way, now dropped in quickly,
and soon the couples became leavened with rustic youth to a marked
extent, till at length the plainest woman in the club was no longer
compelled to foot it on the masculine side of the figure.

The church clock struck, when suddenly the student said that he must
leave--he had been forgetting himself--he had to join his companions.
As he fell out of the dance his eyes lighted on Tess Durbeyfield,
whose own large orbs wore, to tell the truth, the faintest aspect of
reproach that he had not chosen her.  He, too, was sorry then that,
owing to her backwardness, he had not observed her; and with that in
his mind he left the pasture.

On account of his long delay he started in a flying-run down the lane
westward, and had soon passed the hollow and mounted the next rise.
He had not yet overtaken his brothers, but he paused to get breath,
and looked back.  He could see the white figures of the girls in the
green enclosure whirling about as they had whirled when he was among
them.  They seemed to have quite forgotten him already.

All of them, except, perhaps, one.  This white shape stood apart
by the hedge alone.  From her position he knew it to be the pretty
maiden with whom he had not danced.  Trifling as the matter was, he
yet instinctively felt that she was hurt by his oversight.  He wished
that he had asked her; he wished that he had inquired her name.  She
was so modest, so expressive, she had looked so soft in her thin
white gown that he felt he had acted stupidly.

However, it could not be helped, and turning, and bending himself to
a rapid walk, he dismissed the subject from his mind.

Meanwhile, young Tess Durbeyfield is taking part in a traditional parade with other village women. Dressed in white they walk to the village green to dance. Her father's carriage passes and when the women jeer Tess feels humiliated. While they dance, three young men arrive. The two older brothers continue on their ramble through the Vale of Blackmoor but the younger, named Angel Clare, stops. He chooses a dancing partner but has to leave soon, but not before seeing Tess, who is somewhat offended that he didn't choose her. As he runs off he regrets not asking her to dance


As for Tess Durbeyfield, she did not so easily dislodge the incident
from her consideration.  She had no spirit to dance again for a long
time, though she might have had plenty of partners; but ah! they did
not speak so nicely as the strange young man had done.  It was not
till the rays of the sun had absorbed the young stranger's retreating
figure on the hill that she shook off her temporary sadness and
answered her would-be partner in the affirmative.

She remained with her comrades till dusk, and participated with a
certain zest in the dancing; though, being heart-whole as yet, she
enjoyed treading a measure purely for its own sake; little divining
when she saw "the soft torments, the bitter sweets, the pleasing
pains, and the agreeable distresses" of those girls who had been
wooed and won, what she herself was capable of in that kind.  The
struggles and wrangles of the lads for her hand in a jig were an
amusement to her--no more; and when they became fierce she rebuked
them.

She might have stayed even later, but the incident of her father's
odd appearance and manner returned upon the girl's mind to make her
anxious, and wondering what had become of him she dropped away from
the dancers and bent her steps towards the end of the village at
which the parental cottage lay.

While yet many score yards off, other rhythmic sounds than those she
had quitted became audible to her; sounds that she knew well--so
well.  They were a regular series of thumpings from the interior of
the house, occasioned by the violent rocking of a cradle upon a stone
floor, to which movement a feminine voice kept time by singing, in a
vigorous gallopade, the favourite ditty of "The Spotted Cow"--

   I saw her lie do'-own in yon'-der green gro'-ove;
        Come, love!' and I'll tell' you where!'

The cradle-rocking and the song would cease simultaneously for a
moment, and an exclamation at highest vocal pitch would take the
place of the melody.

"God bless thy diment eyes!  And thy waxen cheeks!  And thy cherry
mouth!  And thy Cubit's thighs!  And every bit o' thy blessed body!"

After this invocation the rocking and the singing would recommence,
and the "Spotted Cow" proceed as before.  So matters stood when Tess
opened the door and paused upon the mat within it, surveying the
scene.

The interior, in spite of the melody, struck upon the girl's senses
with an unspeakable dreariness.  From the holiday gaieties of the
field--the white gowns, the nosegays, the willow-wands, the whirling
movements on the green, the flash of gentle sentiment towards the
stranger--to the yellow melancholy of this one-candled spectacle,
what a step!  Besides the jar of contrast there came to her a chill
self-reproach that she had not returned sooner, to help her mother
in these domesticities, instead of indulging herself out-of-doors.

There stood her mother amid the group of children, as Tess had left
her, hanging over the Monday washing-tub, which had now, as always,
lingered on to the end of the week.  Out of that tub had come the day
before--Tess felt it with a dreadful sting of remorse--the very white
frock upon her back which she had so carelessly greened about the
skirt on the damping grass--which had been wrung up and ironed by her
mother's own hands.

As usual, Mrs Durbeyfield was balanced on one foot beside the tub,
the other being engaged in the aforesaid business of rocking her
youngest child.  The cradle-rockers had done hard duty for so many
years, under the weight of so many children, on that flagstone floor,
that they were worn nearly flat, in consequence of which a huge jerk
accompanied each swing of the cot, flinging the baby from side to
side like a weaver's shuttle, as Mrs Durbeyfield, excited by her
song, trod the rocker with all the spring that was left in her after
a long day's seething in the suds.

Nick-knock, nick-knock, went the cradle; the candle-flame stretched
itself tall, and began jigging up and down; the water dribbled from
the matron's elbows, and the song galloped on to the end of the
verse, Mrs Durbeyfield regarding her daughter the while.  Even now,
when burdened with a young family, Joan Durbeyfield was a passionate
lover of tune.  No ditty floated into Blackmoor Vale from the outer
world but Tess's mother caught up its notation in a week.

There still faintly beamed from the woman's features something of
the freshness, and even the prettiness, of her youth; rendering it
probable that the personal charms which Tess could boast of were in
main part her mother's gift, and therefore unknightly, unhistorical.

"I'll rock the cradle for 'ee, mother," said the daughter gently.
"Or I'll take off my best frock and help you wring up?  I thought you
had finished long ago."

Her mother bore Tess no ill-will for leaving the housework to her
single-handed efforts for so long; indeed, Joan seldom upbraided
her thereon at any time, feeling but slightly the lack of Tess's
assistance whilst her instinctive plan for relieving herself of her
labours lay in postponing them.  To-night, however, she was even in a
blither mood than usual.  There was a dreaminess, a pre-occupation,
an exaltation, in the maternal look which the girl could not
understand.

"Well, I'm glad you've come," her mother said, as soon as the last
note had passed out of her.  "I want to go and fetch your father;
but what's more'n that, I want to tell 'ee what have happened.  Y'll
be fess enough, my poppet, when th'st know!"  (Mrs Durbeyfield
habitually spoke the dialect; her daughter, who had passed the Sixth
Standard in the National School under a London-trained mistress,
spoke two languages: the dialect at home, more or less; ordinary
English abroad and to persons of quality.)

"Since I've been away?" Tess asked.

"Ay!"

"Had it anything to do with father's making such a mommet of himself
in thik carriage this afternoon?  Why did 'er?  I felt inclined to
sink into the ground with shame!"

"That wer all a part of the larry!  We've been found to be the
greatest gentlefolk in the whole county--reaching all back long
before Oliver Grumble's time--to the days of the Pagan Turks--with
monuments, and vaults, and crests, and 'scutcheons, and the Lord
knows what all.  In Saint Charles's days we was made Knights o' the
Royal Oak, our real name being d'Urberville! ...  Don't that make
your bosom plim?  'Twas on this account that your father rode home
in the vlee; not because he'd been drinking, as people supposed."

"I'm glad of that.  Will it do us any good, mother?"

"O yes!  'Tis thoughted that great things may come o't.  No doubt a
mampus of volk of our own rank will be down here in their carriages
as soon as 'tis known.  Your father learnt it on his way hwome
from Shaston, and he has been telling me the whole pedigree of the
matter."

"Where is father now?" asked Tess suddenly.

Her mother gave irrelevant information by way of answer: "He called
to see the doctor to-day in Shaston.  It is not consumption at all,
it seems.  It is fat round his heart, 'a says.  There, it is like
this."  Joan Durbeyfield, as she spoke, curved a sodden thumb
and forefinger to the shape of the letter C, and used the other
forefinger as a pointer.  "'At the present moment,' he says to your
father, 'your heart is enclosed all round there, and all round
there; this space is still open,' 'a says.  'As soon as it do
meet, so,'"--Mrs Durbeyfield closed her fingers into a circle
complete--"'off you will go like a shadder, Mr Durbeyfield,' 'a says.
'You mid last ten years; you mid go off in ten months, or ten days.'"

Tess looked alarmed.  Her father possibly to go behind the eternal
cloud so soon, notwithstanding this sudden greatness!

"But where IS father?" she asked again.

Her mother put on a deprecating look.  "Now don't you be bursting out
angry!  The poor man--he felt so rafted after his uplifting by the
pa'son's news--that he went up to Rolliver's half an hour ago.  He do
want to get up his strength for his journey to-morrow with that load
of beehives, which must be delivered, family or no.  He'll have to
start shortly after twelve to-night, as the distance is so long."

"Get up his strength!" said Tess impetuously, the tears welling to
her eyes.  "O my God!  Go to a public-house to get up his strength!
And you as well agreed as he, mother!"

Her rebuke and her mood seemed to fill the whole room, and to impart
a cowed look to the furniture, and candle, and children playing
about, and to her mother's face.

"No," said the latter touchily, "I be not agreed.  I have been
waiting for 'ee to bide and keep house while I go fetch him."

"I'll go."

"O no, Tess.  You see, it would be no use."

Tess did not expostulate.  She knew what her mother's objection
meant.  Mrs Durbeyfield's jacket and bonnet were already hanging
slily upon a chair by her side, in readiness for this contemplated
jaunt, the reason for which the matron deplored more than its
necessity.

"And take the _Compleat Fortune-Teller_ to the outhouse," Joan
continued, rapidly wiping her hands, and donning the garments.

The _Compleat Fortune-Teller_ was an old thick volume, which lay on a
table at her elbow, so worn by pocketing that the margins had reached
the edge of the type.  Tess took it up, and her mother started.

This going to hunt up her shiftless husband at the inn was one of
Mrs Durbeyfield's still extant enjoyments in the muck and muddle of
rearing children.  To discover him at Rolliver's, to sit there for
an hour or two by his side and dismiss all thought and care of the
children during the interval, made her happy.  A sort of halo, an
occidental glow, came over life then.  Troubles and other realities
took on themselves a metaphysical impalpability, sinking to mere
mental phenomena for serene contemplation, and no longer stood as
pressing concretions which chafed body and soul.  The youngsters,
not immediately within sight, seemed rather bright and desirable
appurtenances than otherwise; the incidents of daily life were not
without humorousness and jollity in their aspect there.  She felt a
little as she had used to feel when she sat by her now wedded husband
in the same spot during his wooing, shutting her eyes to his defects
of character, and regarding him only in his ideal presentation as
lover.

Tess, being left alone with the younger children, went first to the
outhouse with the fortune-telling book, and stuffed it into the
thatch.  A curious fetishistic fear of this grimy volume on the part
of her mother prevented her ever allowing it to stay in the house all
night, and hither it was brought back whenever it had been consulted.
Between the mother, with her fast-perishing lumber of superstitions,
folk-lore, dialect, and orally transmitted ballads, and the daughter,
with her trained National teachings and Standard knowledge under an
infinitely Revised Code, there was a gap of two hundred years as
ordinarily understood.  When they were together the Jacobean and the
Victorian ages were juxtaposed.

Returning along the garden path Tess mused on what the mother could
have wished to ascertain from the book on this particular day.  She
guessed the recent ancestral discovery to bear upon it, but did not
divine that it solely concerned herself.  Dismissing this, however,
she busied herself with sprinkling the linen dried during the
day-time, in company with her nine-year-old brother Abraham, and her
sister Eliza-Louisa of twelve and a half, called "'Liza-Lu," the
youngest ones being put to bed.  There was an interval of four years
and more between Tess and the next of the family, the two who had
filled the gap having died in their infancy, and this lent her a
deputy-maternal attitude when she was alone with her juniors.  Next
in juvenility to Abraham came two more girls, Hope and Modesty; then
a boy of three, and then the baby, who had just completed his first
year.

All these young souls were passengers in the Durbeyfield
ship--entirely dependent on the judgement of the two Durbeyfield
adults for their pleasures, their necessities, their health, even
their existence.  If the heads of the Durbeyfield household chose
to sail into difficulty, disaster, starvation, disease, degradation,
death, thither were these half-dozen little captives under hatches
compelled to sail with them--six helpless creatures, who had never
been asked if they wished for life on any terms, much less if they
wished for it on such hard conditions as were involved in being of
the shiftless house of Durbeyfield.  Some people would like to know
whence the poet whose philosophy is in these days deemed as profound
and trustworthy as his song is breezy and pure, gets his authority
for speaking of "Nature's holy plan."

It grew later, and neither father nor mother reappeared.  Tess looked
out of the door, and took a mental journey through Marlott.  The
village was shutting its eyes.  Candles and lamps were being put
out everywhere: she could inwardly behold the extinguisher and the
extended hand.

Her mother's fetching simply meant one more to fetch.  Tess began to
perceive that a man in indifferent health, who proposed to start on a
journey before one in the morning, ought not to be at an inn at this
late hour celebrating his ancient blood.

"Abraham," she said to her little brother, "do you put on your
hat--you bain't afraid?--and go up to Rolliver's, and see what has
gone wi' father and mother."

The boy jumped promptly from his seat, and opened the door, and the
night swallowed him up.  Half an hour passed yet again; neither man,
woman, nor child returned.  Abraham, like his parents, seemed to have
been limed and caught by the ensnaring inn.

"I must go myself," she said.

'Liza-Lu then went to bed, and Tess, locking them all in, started on
her way up the dark and crooked lane or street not made for hasty
progress; a street laid out before inches of land had value, and when
one-handed clocks sufficiently subdivided the day.

At home, Tess learns of her newly discovered noble lineage from her mother, Joan Durbeyfield. Mr. Durbeyfield is drinking at Rolliver's, a nearby home where locals drink illegally in an upstairs bedroom. Tess is outraged because her father must leave at midnight to transport beehives to the Casterbridge market. Under the pretext of retrieving her husband, Joan takes a break from her never-ending housework and Tess puts the younger children to bed. But, "since her mother's leaving simply meant one more to fetch," Tess sends her younger brother Abraham to fetch their parents. However, he too also becomes ensnared in the pub and Tess must leave the house to bring them all home


Rolliver's inn, the single alehouse at this end of the long and
broken village, could only boast of an off-licence; hence, as
nobody could legally drink on the premises, the amount of overt
accommodation for consumers was strictly limited to a little board
about six inches wide and two yards long, fixed to the garden palings
by pieces of wire, so as to form a ledge.  On this board thirsty
strangers deposited their cups as they stood in the road and drank,
and threw the dregs on the dusty ground to the pattern of Polynesia,
and wished they could have a restful seat inside.

Thus the strangers.  But there were also local customers who felt the
same wish; and where there's a will there's a way.

In a large bedroom upstairs, the window of which was thickly
curtained with a great woollen shawl lately discarded by the
landlady, Mrs Rolliver, were gathered on this evening nearly a dozen
persons, all seeking beatitude; all old inhabitants of the nearer
end of Marlott, and frequenters of this retreat. Not only did the
distance to the The Pure Drop, the fully-licensed tavern at the
further part of the dispersed village, render its accommodation
practically unavailable for dwellers at this end; but the far more
serious question, the quality of the liquor, confirmed the prevalent
opinion that it was better to drink with Rolliver in a corner of the
housetop than with the other landlord in a wide house.

A gaunt four-post bedstead which stood in the room afforded
sitting-space for several persons gathered round three of its sides;
a couple more men had elevated themselves on a chest of drawers;
another rested on the oak-carved "cwoffer"; two on the wash-stand;
another on the stool; and thus all were, somehow, seated at their
ease.  The stage of mental comfort to which they had arrived at this
hour was one wherein their souls expanded beyond their skins, and
spread their personalities warmly through the room.  In this process
the chamber and its furniture grew more and more dignified and
luxurious; the shawl hanging at the window took upon itself the
richness of tapestry; the brass handles of the chest of drawers were
as golden knockers; and the carved bedposts seemed to have some
kinship with the magnificent pillars of Solomon's temple.

Mrs Durbeyfield, having quickly walked hitherward after parting from
Tess, opened the front door, crossed the downstairs room, which was
in deep gloom, and then unfastened the stair-door like one whose
fingers knew the tricks of the latches well.  Her ascent of the
crooked staircase was a slower process, and her face, as it rose into
the light above the last stair, encountered the gaze of all the party
assembled in the bedroom.

"--Being a few private friends I've asked in to keep up club-walking
at my own expense," the landlady exclaimed at the sound of footsteps,
as glibly as a child repeating the Catechism, while she peered over
the stairs.  "Oh, 'tis you, Mrs Durbeyfield--Lard--how you frightened
me!--I thought it might be some gaffer sent by Gover'ment."

Mrs Durbeyfield was welcomed with glances and nods by the remainder
of the conclave, and turned to where her husband sat.  He was humming
absently to himself, in a low tone: "I be as good as some folks here
and there!  I've got a great family vault at Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill,
and finer skillentons than any man in Wessex!"

"I've something to tell 'ee that's come into my head about that--a
grand projick!" whispered his cheerful wife.  "Here, John, don't 'ee
see me?"  She nudged him, while he, looking through her as through a
window-pane, went on with his recitative.

"Hush!  Don't 'ee sing so loud, my good man," said the landlady; "in
case any member of the Gover'ment should be passing, and take away my
licends."

"He's told 'ee what's happened to us, I suppose?" asked Mrs
Durbeyfield.

"Yes--in a way.  D'ye think there's any money hanging by it?"

"Ah, that's the secret," said Joan Durbeyfield sagely.  "However,
'tis well to be kin to a coach, even if you don't ride in 'en."  She
dropped her public voice, and continued in a low tone to her husband:
"I've been thinking since you brought the news that there's a great
rich lady out by Trantridge, on the edge o' The Chase, of the name of
d'Urberville."

"Hey--what's that?" said Sir John.

She repeated the information.  "That lady must be our relation," she
said.  "And my projick is to send Tess to claim kin."

"There IS a lady of the name, now you mention it," said Durbeyfield.
"Pa'son Tringham didn't think of that.  But she's nothing beside
we--a junior branch of us, no doubt, hailing long since King Norman's
day."

While this question was being discussed neither of the pair noticed,
in their preoccupation, that little Abraham had crept into the room,
and was awaiting an opportunity of asking them to return.

"She is rich, and she'd be sure to take notice o' the maid,"
continued Mrs Durbeyfield; "and 'twill be a very good thing.  I don't
see why two branches o' one family should not be on visiting terms."

"Yes; and we'll all claim kin!" said Abraham brightly from under the
bedstead.  "And we'll all go and see her when Tess has gone to live
with her; and we'll ride in her coach and wear black clothes!"

"How do you come here, child?  What nonsense be ye talking!  Go away,
and play on the stairs till father and mother be ready! ...  Well,
Tess ought to go to this other member of our family.  She'd be sure
to win the lady--Tess would; and likely enough 'twould lead to some
noble gentleman marrying her.  In short, I know it."

"How?"

"I tried her fate in the _Fortune-Teller_, and it brought out that
very thing! ...  You should ha' seen how pretty she looked to-day;
her skin is as sumple as a duchess'."

"What says the maid herself to going?"

"I've not asked her.  She don't know there is any such lady-relation
yet.  But it would certainly put her in the way of a grand marriage,
and she won't say nay to going."

"Tess is queer."

"But she's tractable at bottom.  Leave her to me."

Though this conversation had been private, sufficient of its import
reached the understandings of those around to suggest to them that
the Durbeyfields had weightier concerns to talk of now than common
folks had, and that Tess, their pretty eldest daughter, had fine
prospects in store.

"Tess is a fine figure o' fun, as I said to myself to-day when I zeed
her vamping round parish with the rest," observed one of the elderly
boozers in an undertone.  "But Joan Durbeyfield must mind that she
don't get green malt in floor."  It was a local phrase which had a
peculiar meaning, and there was no reply.

The conversation became inclusive, and presently other footsteps were
heard crossing the room below.

"--Being a few private friends asked in to-night to keep up
club-walking at my own expense."  The landlady had rapidly re-used
the formula she kept on hand for intruders before she recognized that
the newcomer was Tess.

Even to her mother's gaze the girl's young features looked sadly
out of place amid the alcoholic vapours which floated here as
no unsuitable medium for wrinkled middle-age; and hardly was a
reproachful flash from Tess's dark eyes needed to make her father
and mother rise from their seats, hastily finish their ale, and
descend the stairs behind her, Mrs Rolliver's caution following
their footsteps.

"No noise, please, if ye'll be so good, my dears; or I mid lose my
licends, and be summons'd, and I don't know what all!  'Night t'ye!"

They went home together, Tess holding one arm of her father, and Mrs
Durbeyfield the other.  He had, in truth, drunk very little--not a
fourth of the quantity which a systematic tippler could carry to
church on a Sunday afternoon without a hitch in his eastings or
genuflections; but the weakness of Sir John's constitution made
mountains of his petty sins in this kind.  On reaching the fresh
air he was sufficiently unsteady to incline the row of three at one
moment as if they were marching to London, and at another as if they
were marching to Bath--which produced a comical effect, frequent
enough in families on nocturnal homegoings; and, like most comical
effects, not quite so comic after all.  The two women valiantly
disguised these forced excursions and countermarches as well as they
could from Durbeyfield, their cause, and from Abraham, and from
themselves; and so they approached by degrees their own door, the
head of the family bursting suddenly into his former refrain as he
drew near, as if to fortify his soul at sight of the smallness of
his present residence--

"I've got a fam--ily vault at Kingsbere!"

"Hush--don't be so silly, Jacky," said his wife.  "Yours is not the
only family that was of 'count in wold days.  Look at the Anktells,
and Horseys, and the Tringhams themselves--gone to seed a'most as
much as you--though you was bigger folks than they, that's true.
Thank God, I was never of no family, and have nothing to be ashamed
of in that way!"

"Don't you be so sure o' that.  From you nater 'tis my belief you've
disgraced yourselves more than any o' us, and was kings and queens
outright at one time."

Tess turned the subject by saying what was far more prominent in her
own mind at the moment than thoughts of her ancestry--"I am afraid
father won't be able to take the journey with the beehives to-morrow
so early."

"I? I shall be all right in an hour or two," said Durbeyfield.

It was eleven o'clock before the family were all in bed, and
two o'clock next morning was the latest hour for starting with
the beehives if they were to be delivered to the retailers in
Casterbridge before the Saturday market began, the way thither lying
by bad roads over a distance of between twenty and thirty miles, and
the horse and waggon being of the slowest.  At half-past one Mrs
Durbeyfield came into the large bedroom where Tess and all her
little brothers and sisters slept.

"The poor man can't go," she said to her eldest daughter, whose great
eyes had opened the moment her mother's hand touched the door.

Tess sat up in bed, lost in a vague interspace between a dream and
this information.

"But somebody must go," she replied.  "It is late for the hives
already.  Swarming will soon be over for the year; and it we put off
taking 'em till next week's market the call for 'em will be past, and
they'll be thrown on our hands."

Mrs Durbeyfield looked unequal to the emergency.  "Some young feller,
perhaps, would go?  One of them who were so much after dancing with
'ee yesterday," she presently suggested.

"O no--I wouldn't have it for the world!" declared Tess proudly.
"And letting everybody know the reason--such a thing to be ashamed
of!  I think _I_ could go if Abraham could go with me to kip me
company."

Her mother at length agreed to this arrangement.  Little Abraham was
aroused from his deep sleep in a corner of the same apartment, and
made to put on his clothes while still mentally in the other world.
Meanwhile Tess had hastily dressed herself; and the twain, lighting
a lantern, went out to the stable.  The rickety little waggon was
already laden, and the girl led out the horse, Prince, only a degree
less rickety than the vehicle.

The poor creature looked wonderingly round at the night, at the
lantern, at their two figures, as if he could not believe that at
that hour, when every living thing was intended to be in shelter and
at rest, he was called upon to go out and labour.  They put a stock
of candle-ends into the lantern, hung the latter to the off-side of
the load, and directed the horse onward, walking at his shoulder at
first during the uphill parts of the way, in order not to overload
an animal of so little vigour.  To cheer themselves as well as they
could, they made an artificial morning with the lantern, some bread
and butter, and their own conversation, the real morning being far
from come.  Abraham, as he more fully awoke (for he had moved in a
sort of trance so far), began to talk of the strange shapes assumed
by the various dark objects against the sky; of this tree that looked
like a raging tiger springing from a lair; of that which resembled a
giant's head.

When they had passed the little town of Stourcastle, dumbly somnolent
under its thick brown thatch, they reached higher ground.  Still
higher, on their left, the elevation called Bulbarrow, or Bealbarrow,
well-nigh the highest in South Wessex, swelled into the sky,
engirdled by its earthen trenches.  From hereabout the long road was
fairly level for some distance onward.  They mounted in front of the
waggon, and Abraham grew reflective.

"Tess!" he said in a preparatory tone, after a silence.

"Yes, Abraham."

"Bain't you glad that we've become gentlefolk?"

"Not particular glad."

"But you be glad that you 'm going to marry a gentleman?"

"What?" said Tess, lifting her face.

"That our great relation will help 'ee to marry a gentleman."

"I?  Our great relation?  We have no such relation.  What has put
that into your head?"

"I heard 'em talking about it up at Rolliver's when I went to find
father.  There's a rich lady of our family out at Trantridge, and
mother said that if you claimed kin with the lady, she'd put 'ee in
the way of marrying a gentleman."

His sister became abruptly still, and lapsed into a pondering
silence.  Abraham talked on, rather for the pleasure of utterance
than for audition, so that his sister's abstraction was of no
account.  He leant back against the hives, and with upturned face
made observations on the stars, whose cold pulses were beating
amid the black hollows above, in serene dissociation from these two
wisps of human life.  He asked how far away those twinklers were,
and whether God was on the other side of them.  But ever and anon
his childish prattle recurred to what impressed his imagination
even more deeply than the wonders of creation.  If Tess were made
rich by marrying a gentleman, would she have money enough to buy a
spyglass so large that it would draw the stars as near to her as
Nettlecombe-Tout?

The renewed subject, which seemed to have impregnated the whole
family, filled Tess with impatience.

"Never mind that now!" she exclaimed.

"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"

"Yes."

"All like ours?"

"I don't know; but I think so.  They sometimes seem to be like the
apples on our stubbard-tree.  Most of them splendid and sound--a few
blighted."

"Which do we live on--a splendid one or a blighted one?"

"A blighted one."

"'Tis very unlucky that we didn't pitch on a sound one, when there
were so many more of 'em!"

"Yes."

"Is it like that REALLY, Tess?" said Abraham, turning to her much
impressed, on reconsideration of this rare information.  "How would
it have been if we had pitched on a sound one?"

"Well, father wouldn't have coughed and creeped about as he does,
and wouldn't have got too tipsy to go on this journey; and mother
wouldn't have been always washing, and never getting finished."

"And you would have been a rich lady ready-made, and not have had to
be made rich by marrying a gentleman?"

"O Aby, don't--don't talk of that any more!"

Left to his reflections Abraham soon grew drowsy.  Tess was not
skilful in the management of a horse, but she thought that she could
take upon herself the entire conduct of the load for the present and
allow Abraham to go to sleep if he wished to do so.  She made him a
sort of nest in front of the hives, in such a manner that he could
not fall, and, taking the reins into her own hands, jogged on as
before.

Prince required but slight attention, lacking energy for superfluous
movements of any sort.  With no longer a companion to distract her,
Tess fell more deeply into reverie than ever, her back leaning
against the hives.  The mute procession past her shoulders of trees
and hedges became attached to fantastic scenes outside reality, and
the occasional heave of the wind became the sigh of some immense sad
soul, conterminous with the universe in space, and with history in
time.

Then, examining the mesh of events in her own life, she seemed to see
the vanity of her father's pride; the gentlemanly suitor awaiting
herself in her mother's fancy; to see him as a grimacing personage,
laughing at her poverty and her shrouded knightly ancestry.
Everything grew more and more extravagant, and she no longer knew how
time passed.  A sudden jerk shook her in her seat, and Tess awoke
from the sleep into which she, too, had fallen.

They were a long way further on than when she had lost consciousness,
and the waggon had stopped.  A hollow groan, unlike anything she had
ever heard in her life, came from the front, followed by a shout of
"Hoi there!"

The lantern hanging at her waggon had gone out, but another was
shining in her face--much brighter than her own had been.  Something
terrible had happened.  The harness was entangled with an object
which blocked the way.

In consternation Tess jumped down, and discovered the dreadful truth.
The groan had proceeded from her father's poor horse Prince.  The
morning mail-cart, with its two noiseless wheels, speeding along
these lanes like an arrow, as it always did, had driven into her slow
and unlighted equipage.  The pointed shaft of the cart had entered
the breast of the unhappy Prince like a sword, and from the wound his
life's blood was spouting in a stream, and falling with a hiss into
the road.

In her despair Tess sprang forward and put her hand upon the hole,
with the only result that she became splashed from face to skirt with
the crimson drops.  Then she stood helplessly looking on.  Prince
also stood firm and motionless as long as he could; till he suddenly
sank down in a heap.

By this time the mail-cart man had joined her, and began dragging and
unharnessing the hot form of Prince.  But he was already dead, and,
seeing that nothing more could be done immediately, the mail-cart man
returned to his own animal, which was uninjured.

"You was on the wrong side," he said.  "I am bound to go on with the
mail-bags, so that the best thing for you to do is bide here with
your load.  I'll send somebody to help you as soon as I can.  It is
getting daylight, and you have nothing to fear."

He mounted and sped on his way; while Tess stood and waited.  The
atmosphere turned pale, the birds shook themselves in the hedges,
arose, and twittered; the lane showed all its white features, and
Tess showed hers, still whiter.  The huge pool of blood in front of
her was already assuming the iridescence of coagulation; and when the
sun rose a hundred prismatic hues were reflected from it.  Prince lay
alongside, still and stark; his eyes half open, the hole in his chest
looking scarcely large enough to have let out all that had animated
him.

"'Tis all my doing--all mine!" the girl cried, gazing at the
spectacle.  "No excuse for me--none.  What will mother and father
live on now?  Aby, Aby!"  She shook the child, who had slept soundly
through the whole disaster.  "We can't go on with our load--Prince
is killed!"

When Abraham realized all, the furrows of fifty years were
extemporized on his young face.

"Why, I danced and laughed only yesterday!" she went on to herself.
"To think that I was such a fool!"

"'Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't
it, Tess?" murmured Abraham through his tears.

In silence they waited through an interval which seemed endless.  At
length a sound, and an approaching object, proved to them that the
driver of the mail-car had been as good as his word.  A farmer's
man from near Stourcastle came up, leading a strong cob.  He was
harnessed to the waggon of beehives in the place of Prince, and the
load taken on towards Casterbridge.

The evening of the same day saw the empty waggon reach again the
spot of the accident.  Prince had lain there in the ditch since the
morning; but the place of the blood-pool was still visible in the
middle of the road, though scratched and scraped over by passing
vehicles.  All that was left of Prince was now hoisted into the
waggon he had formerly hauled, and with his hoofs in the air, and his
shoes shining in the setting sunlight, he retraced the eight or nine
miles to Marlott.

Tess had gone back earlier.  How to break the news was more than she
could think.  It was a relief to her tongue to find from the faces of
her parents that they already knew of their loss, though this did not
lessen the self-reproach which she continued to heap upon herself for
her negligence.

But the very shiftlessness of the household rendered the misfortune
a less terrifying one to them than it would have been to a thriving
family, though in the present case it meant ruin, and in the other it
would only have meant inconvenience.  In the Durbeyfield countenances
there was nothing of the red wrath that would have burnt upon the
girl from parents more ambitious for her welfare.  Nobody blamed Tess
as she blamed herself.

When it was discovered that the knacker and tanner would give only a
very few shillings for Prince's carcase because of his decrepitude,
Durbeyfield rose to the occasion.

"No," said he stoically, "I won't sell his old body.  When we
d'Urbervilles was knights in the land, we didn't sell our chargers
for cat's meat.  Let 'em keep their shillings!  He've served me well
in his lifetime, and I won't part from him now."

He worked harder the next day in digging a grave for Prince in the
garden than he had worked for months to grow a crop for his family.
When the hole was ready, Durbeyfield and his wife tied a rope round
the horse and dragged him up the path towards it, the children
following in funeral train.  Abraham and 'Liza-Lu sobbed, Hope and
Modesty discharged their griefs in loud blares which echoed from the
walls; and when Prince was tumbled in they gathered round the grave.
The bread-winner had been taken away from them; what would they do?

"Is he gone to heaven?" asked Abraham, between the sobs.

Then Durbeyfield began to shovel in the earth, and the children cried
anew.  All except Tess.  Her face was dry and pale, as though she
regarded herself in the light of a murderess.

Meanwhile, upstairs at Rolliver's, Abraham listens to his parents discuss Tess's future. Joan tells Durbeyfield that Tess should be sent to rich relatives of the name d'Urberville to make her fortune and perhaps marry a rich man. Back home, Tess realizes that her father will not be able to take the beehives. Her mother soon wakes her to take on the job herself with her brother Abraham. As the horse Prince drags the cart in the dark, the youngsters talk about the stars and Tess explains that stars are indeed worlds "most of them splendid and sound--a few blighted," and that they have the misfortune to live on a blighted star. After a while, there is a jolt and Tess, who has fallen into a sound sleep, wakes in the midst of a horrible accident. The mail cart has run into the horse that lies dying on the road. Well aware of the economic damage to her family, Tess is overcome with guilt. Durbeyfield works harder than he ever has to bury Prince


The haggling business, which had mainly depended on the horse, became
disorganized forthwith.  Distress, if not penury, loomed in the
distance.  Durbeyfield was what was locally called a slack-twisted
fellow; he had good strength to work at times; but the times could
not be relied on to coincide with the hours of requirement; and,
having been unaccustomed to the regular toil of the day-labourer,
he was not particularly persistent when they did so coincide.

Tess, meanwhile, as the one who had dragged her parents into this
quagmire, was silently wondering what she could do to help them out
of it; and then her mother broached her scheme.

"We must take the ups wi' the downs, Tess," said she; "and never
could your high blood have been found out at a more called-for
moment.  You must try your friends.  Do ye know that there is a very
rich Mrs d'Urberville living on the outskirts o' The Chase, who must
be our relation?  You must go to her and claim kin, and ask for some
help in our trouble."

"I shouldn't care to do that," says Tess.  "If there is such a lady,
'twould be enough for us if she were friendly--not to expect her to
give us help."

"You could win her round to do anything, my dear.  Besides, perhaps
there's more in it than you know of. I've heard what I've heard,
good-now."

The oppressive sense of the harm she had done led Tess to be more
deferential than she might otherwise have been to the maternal
wish; but she could not understand why her mother should find such
satisfaction in contemplating an enterprise of, to her, such doubtful
profit.  Her mother might have made inquiries, and have discovered
that this Mrs d'Urberville was a lady of unequalled virtues and
charity.  But Tess's pride made the part of poor relation one of
particular distaste to her.

"I'd rather try to get work," she murmured.

"Durbeyfield, you can settle it," said his wife, turning to where he
sat in the background.  "If you say she ought to go, she will go."

"I don't like my children going and making themselves beholden to
strange kin," murmured he.  "I'm the head of the noblest branch o'
the family, and I ought to live up to it."

His reasons for staying away were worse to Tess than her own
objections to going.  "Well, as I killed the horse, mother," she said
mournfully, "I suppose I ought to do something.  I don't mind going
and seeing her, but you must leave it to me about asking for help.
And don't go thinking about her making a match for me--it is silly."

"Very well said, Tess!" observed her father sententiously.

"Who said I had such a thought?" asked Joan.

"I fancy it is in your mind, mother.  But I'll go."

Rising early next day she walked to the hill-town called Shaston,
and there took advantage of a van which twice in the week ran from
Shaston eastward to Chaseborough, passing near Trantridge, the parish
in which the vague and mysterious Mrs d'Urberville had her residence.

Tess Durbeyfield's route on this memorable morning lay amid the
north-eastern undulations of the Vale in which she had been born, and
in which her life had unfolded.  The Vale of Blackmoor was to her the
world, and its inhabitants the races thereof.  From the gates and
stiles of Marlott she had looked down its length in the wondering
days of infancy, and what had been mystery to her then was not
much less than mystery to her now.  She had seen daily from her
chamber-window towers, villages, faint white mansions; above all,
the town of Shaston standing majestically on its height; its windows
shining like lamps in the evening sun.  She had hardly ever visited
the place, only a small tract even of the Vale and its environs being
known to her by close inspection.  Much less had she been far outside
the valley.  Every contour of the surrounding hills was as personal
to her as that of her relatives' faces; but for what lay beyond, her
judgment was dependent on the teaching of the village school, where
she had held a leading place at the time of her leaving, a year or
two before this date.

In those early days she had been much loved by others of her own
sex and age, and had used to be seen about the village as one of
three--all nearly of the same year--walking home from school side
by side; Tess the middle one--in a pink print pinafore, of a finely
reticulated pattern, worn over a stuff frock that had lost its
original colour for a nondescript tertiary--marching on upon long
stalky legs, in tight stockings which had little ladder-like holes
at the knees, torn by kneeling in the roads and banks in search of
vegetable and mineral treasures; her then earth-coloured hair hanging
like pot-hooks; the arms of the two outside girls resting round the
waist of Tess; her arms on the shoulders of the two supporters.

As Tess grew older, and began to see how matters stood, she felt
quite a Malthusian towards her mother for thoughtlessly giving her so
many little sisters and brothers, when it was such a trouble to nurse
and provide for them.  Her mother's intelligence was that of a happy
child: Joan Durbeyfield was simply an additional one, and that not
the eldest, to her own long family of waiters on Providence.

However, Tess became humanely beneficent towards the small ones,
and to help them as much as possible she used, as soon as she left
school, to lend a hand at haymaking or harvesting on neighbouring
farms; or, by preference, at milking or butter-making processes,
which she had learnt when her father had owned cows; and being
deft-fingered it was a kind of work in which she excelled.

Every day seemed to throw upon her young shoulders more of the
family burdens, and that Tess should be the representative of the
Durbeyfields at the d'Urberville mansion came as a thing of course.
In this instance it must be admitted that the Durbeyfields were
putting their fairest side outward.

She alighted from the van at Trantridge Cross, and ascended on foot
a hill in the direction of the district known as The Chase, on the
borders of which, as she had been informed, Mrs d'Urberville's seat,
The Slopes, would be found.  It was not a manorial home in the
ordinary sense, with fields, and pastures, and a grumbling farmer,
out of whom the owner had to squeeze an income for himself and his
family by hook or by crook.  It was more, far more; a country-house
built for enjoyment pure and simple, with not an acre of troublesome
land attached to it beyond what was required for residential
purposes, and for a little fancy farm kept in hand by the owner, and
tended by a bailiff.

The crimson brick lodge came first in sight, up to its eaves in dense
evergreens.  Tess thought this was the mansion itself till, passing
through the side wicket with some trepidation, and onward to a point
at which the drive took a turn, the house proper stood in full view.
It was of recent erection--indeed almost new--and of the same rich
red colour that formed such a contrast with the evergreens of the
lodge.  Far behind the corner of the house--which rose like a
geranium bloom against the subdued colours around--stretched the soft
azure landscape of The Chase--a truly venerable tract of forest land,
one of the few remaining woodlands in England of undoubted primaeval
date, wherein Druidical mistletoe was still found on aged oaks, and
where enormous yew-trees, not planted by the hand of man grew as
they had grown when they were pollarded for bows.  All this sylvan
antiquity, however, though visible from The Slopes, was outside the
immediate boundaries of the estate.

Everything on this snug property was bright, thriving, and well kept;
acres of glass-houses stretched down the inclines to the copses at
their feet.  Everything looked like money--like the last coin issued
from the Mint.  The stables, partly screened by Austrian pines
and evergreen oaks, and fitted with every late appliance, were
as dignified as Chapels-of-Ease.  On the extensive lawn stood an
ornamental tent, its door being towards her.

Simple Tess Durbeyfield stood at gaze, in a half-alarmed attitude,
on the edge of the gravel sweep.  Her feet had brought her onward to
this point before she had quite realized where she was; and now all
was contrary to her expectation.

"I thought we were an old family; but this is all new!" she said, in
her artlessness.  She wished that she had not fallen in so readily
with her mother's plans for "claiming kin," and had endeavoured to
gain assistance nearer home.

The d'Urbervilles--or Stoke-d'Urbervilles, as they at first called
themselves--who owned all this, were a somewhat unusual family to
find in such an old-fashioned part of the country.  Parson Tringham
had spoken truly when he said that our shambling John Durbeyfield was
the only really lineal representative of the old d'Urberville family
existing in the county, or near it; he might have added, what he knew
very well, that the Stoke-d'Urbervilles were no more d'Urbervilles of
the true tree then he was himself.  Yet it must be admitted that this
family formed a very good stock whereon to regraft a name which sadly
wanted such renovation.

When old Mr Simon Stoke, latterly deceased, had made his fortune as
an honest merchant (some said money-lender) in the North, he decided
to settle as a county man in the South of England, out of hail of
his business district; and in doing this he felt the necessity of
recommencing with a name that would not too readily identify him with
the smart tradesman of the past, and that would be less commonplace
than the original bald, stark words.  Conning for an hour in the
British Museum the pages of works devoted to extinct, half-extinct,
obscured, and ruined families appertaining to the quarter of England
in which he proposed to settle, he considered that _d'Urberville_
looked and sounded as well as any of them: and d'Urberville
accordingly was annexed to his own name for himself and his heirs
eternally.  Yet he was not an extravagant-minded man in this, and in
constructing his family tree on the new basis was duly reasonable in
framing his inter-marriages and aristocratic links, never inserting
a single title above a rank of strict moderation.

Of this work of imagination poor Tess and her parents were naturally
in ignorance--much to their discomfiture; indeed, the very
possibility of such annexations was unknown to them; who supposed
that, though to be well-favoured might be the gift of fortune, a
family name came by nature.

Tess still stood hesitating like a bather about to make his plunge,
hardly knowing whether to retreat or to persevere, when a figure came
forth from the dark triangular door of the tent.  It was that of a
tall young man, smoking.

He had an almost swarthy complexion, with full lips, badly moulded,
though red and smooth, above which was a well-groomed black moustache
with curled points, though his age could not be more than three- or
four-and-twenty.  Despite the touches of barbarism in his contours,
there was a singular force in the gentleman's face, and in his bold
rolling eye.

"Well, my Beauty, what can I do for you?" said he, coming forward.
And perceiving that she stood quite confounded: "Never mind me. I am
Mr d'Urberville.  Have you come to see me or my mother?"

This embodiment of a d'Urberville and a namesake differed even more
from what Tess had expected than the house and grounds had differed.
She had dreamed of an aged and dignified face, the sublimation of
all the d'Urberville lineaments, furrowed with incarnate memories
representing in hieroglyphic the centuries of her family's and
England's history.  But she screwed herself up to the work in hand,
since she could not get out of it, and answered--

"I came to see your mother, sir."

"I am afraid you cannot see her--she is an invalid," replied the
present representative of the spurious house; for this was Mr Alec,
the only son of the lately deceased gentleman.  "Cannot I answer your
purpose? What is the business you wish to see her about?"

"It isn't business--it is--I can hardly say what!"

"Pleasure?"

"Oh no.  Why, sir, if I tell you, it will seem--"

Tess's sense of a certain ludicrousness in her errand was now
so strong that, notwithstanding her awe of him, and her general
discomfort at being here, her rosy lips curved towards a smile,
much to the attraction of the swarthy Alexander.

"It is so very foolish," she stammered; "I fear can't tell you!"

"Never mind; I like foolish things.  Try again, my dear," said he
kindly.

"Mother asked me to come," Tess continued; "and, indeed, I was in the
mind to do so myself likewise.  But I did not think it would be like
this.  I came, sir, to tell you that we are of the same family as
you."

"Ho!  Poor relations?"

"Yes."

"Stokes?"

"No; d'Urbervilles."

"Ay, ay; I mean d'Urbervilles."

"Our names are worn away to Durbeyfield; but we have several proofs
that we are d'Urbervilles.  Antiquarians hold we are,--and--and we
have an old seal, marked with a ramping lion on a shield, and a
castle over him.  And we have a very old silver spoon, round in the
bowl like a little ladle, and marked with the same castle.  But it
is so worn that mother uses it to stir the pea-soup."

"A castle argent is certainly my crest," said he blandly.  "And my
arms a lion rampant."

"And so mother said we ought to make ourselves beknown to you--as
we've lost our horse by a bad accident, and are the oldest branch o'
the family."

"Very kind of your mother, I'm sure.  And I, for one, don't regret
her step."  Alec looked at Tess as he spoke, in a way that made her
blush a little.  "And so, my pretty girl, you've come on a friendly
visit to us, as relations?"

"I suppose I have," faltered Tess, looking uncomfortable again.

"Well--there's no harm in it.  Where do you live?  What are you?"

She gave him brief particulars; and responding to further inquiries
told him that she was intending to go back by the same carrier who
had brought her.

"It is a long while before he returns past Trantridge Cross.
Supposing we walk round the grounds to pass the time, my pretty Coz?"

Tess wished to abridge her visit as much as possible; but the young
man was pressing, and she consented to accompany him.  He conducted
her about the lawns, and flower-beds, and conservatories; and thence
to the fruit-garden and greenhouses, where he asked her if she liked
strawberries.

"Yes," said Tess, "when they come."

"They are already here."  D'Urberville began gathering specimens
of the fruit for her, handing them back to her as he stooped; and,
presently, selecting a specially fine product of the "British Queen"
variety, he stood up and held it by the stem to her mouth.

"No--no!" she said quickly, putting her fingers between his hand and
her lips.  "I would rather take it in my own hand."

"Nonsense!" he insisted; and in a slight distress she parted her lips
and took it in.

They had spent some time wandering desultorily thus, Tess eating in
a half-pleased, half-reluctant state whatever d'Urberville offered
her.  When she could consume no more of the strawberries he filled
her little basket with them; and then the two passed round to the
rose-trees, whence he gathered blossoms and gave her to put in her
bosom. She obeyed like one in a dream, and when she could affix no
more he himself tucked a bud or two into her hat, and heaped her
basket with others in the prodigality of his bounty.  At last,
looking at his watch, he said, "Now, by the time you have had
something to eat, it will be time for you to leave, if you want to
catch the carrier to Shaston.  Come here, and I'll see what grub I
can find."

Stoke d'Urberville took her back to the lawn and into the tent, where
he left her, soon reappearing with a basket of light luncheon, which
he put before her himself.  It was evidently the gentleman's wish not
to be disturbed in this pleasant _tete-a-tete_ by the servantry.

"Do you mind my smoking?" he asked.

"Oh, not at all, sir."

He watched her pretty and unconscious munching through the skeins of
smoke that pervaded the tent, and Tess Durbeyfield did not divine,
as she innocently looked down at the roses in her bosom, that there
behind the blue narcotic haze was potentially the "tragic mischief"
of her drama--one who stood fair to be the blood-red ray in the
spectrum of her young life.  She had an attribute which amounted
to a disadvantage just now; and it was this that caused Alec
d'Urberville's eyes to rivet themselves upon her.  It was a
luxuriance of aspect, a fulness of growth, which made her appear more
of a woman than she really was.  She had inherited the feature from
her mother without the quality it denoted.  It had troubled her mind
occasionally, till her companions had said that it was a fault which
time would cure.

She soon had finished her lunch.  "Now I am going home, sir," she
said, rising.

"And what do they call you?" he asked, as he accompanied her along
the drive till they were out of sight of the house.

"Tess Durbeyfield, down at Marlott."

"And you say your people have lost their horse?"

"I--killed him!" she answered, her eyes filling with tears as she
gave particulars of Prince's death.  "And I don't know what to do
for father on account of it!"

"I must think if I cannot do something.  My mother must find a berth
for you.  But, Tess, no nonsense about 'd'Urberville';--'Durbeyfield'
only, you know--quite another name."

"I wish for no better, sir," said she with something of dignity.

For a moment--only for a moment--when they were in the turning of the
drive, between the tall rhododendrons and conifers, before the lodge
became visible, he inclined his face towards her as if--but, no: he
thought better of it, and let her go.

Thus the thing began.  Had she perceived this meeting's import she
might have asked why she was doomed to be seen and coveted that day
by the wrong man, and not by some other man, the right and desired
one in all respects--as nearly as humanity can supply the right
and desired; yet to him who amongst her acquaintance might have
approximated to this kind, she was but a transient impression, half
forgotten.

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the
call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with
the hour for loving.  Nature does not often say "See!" to her poor
creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply
"Here!" to a body's cry of "Where?" till the hide-and-seek has become
an irksome, outworn game.  We may wonder whether at the acme and
summit of the human progress these anachronisms will be corrected by
a finer intuition, a closer interaction of the social machinery than
that which now jolts us round and along; but such completeness is not
to be prophesied, or even conceived as possible.  Enough that in the
present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect
whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing
counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in
crass obtuseness till the late time came.  Out of which maladroit
delay sprang anxieties, disappointments, shocks, catastrophes, and
passing-strange destinies.

When d'Urberville got back to the tent he sat down astride on a
chair, reflecting, with a pleased gleam in his face.  Then he broke
into a loud laugh.

"Well, I'm damned!  What a funny thing!  Ha-ha-ha!  And what a crumby
girl!"

Tess does not argue when her mother sends her to the Trantridge estate of the d'Urbervilles to work. Joan Durbeyfield has no idea, however, that the d'Urbervilles have absolutely no blood relation to Tess and that the name itself was purchased to enhance the family's social standing. Tess is surprised to find a large new red brick country estate instead of the ancient house she envisioned. Here Tess meets Alec d'Urberville who, in his early twenties, is very attracted to his new "poor relation. After feeding her strawberries and showering her with roses, he explains that his mother is ill but that he will find a way to help her. Then he sends her on her way


Tess went down the hill to Trantridge Cross, and inattentively waited
to take her seat in the van returning from Chaseborough to Shaston.
She did not know what the other occupants said to her as she entered,
though she answered them; and when they had started anew she rode
along with an inward and not an outward eye.

One among her fellow-travellers addressed her more pointedly than
any had spoken before: "Why, you be quite a posy!  And such roses in
early June!"

Then she became aware of the spectacle she presented to their
surprised vision: roses at her breasts; roses in her hat; roses
and strawberries in her basket to the brim.  She blushed, and
said confusedly that the flowers had been given to her.  When the
passengers were not looking she stealthily removed the more prominent
blooms from her hat and placed them in the basket, where she covered
them with her handkerchief.  Then she fell to reflecting again, and
in looking downwards a thorn of the rose remaining in her breast
accidentally pricked her chin. Like all the cottagers in Blackmoor
Vale, Tess was steeped in fancies and prefigurative superstitions;
she thought this an ill omen--the first she had noticed that day.

The van travelled only so far as Shaston, and there were several
miles of pedestrian descent from that mountain-town into the vale to
Marlott.  Her mother had advised her to stay here for the night, at
the house of a cottage-woman they knew, if she should feel too tired
to come on; and this Tess did, not descending to her home till the
following afternoon.

When she entered the house she perceived in a moment from her
mother's triumphant manner that something had occurred in the
interim.

"Oh yes; I know all about it!  I told 'ee it would be all right, and
now 'tis proved!"

"Since I've been away?  What has?" said Tess rather wearily.

Her mother surveyed the girl up and down with arch approval, and went
on banteringly: "So you've brought 'em round!"

"How do you know, mother?"

"I've had a letter."

Tess then remembered that there would have been time for this.

"They say--Mrs d'Urberville says--that she wants you to look after a
little fowl-farm which is her hobby.  But this is only her artful way
of getting 'ee there without raising your hopes.  She's going to own
'ee as kin--that's the meaning o't."

"But I didn't see her."

"You zid somebody, I suppose?"

"I saw her son."

"And did he own 'ee?"

"Well--he called me Coz."

"An' I knew it!  Jacky--he called her Coz!" cried Joan to her
husband.  "Well, he spoke to his mother, of course, and she do want
'ee there."

"But I don't know that I am apt at tending fowls," said the dubious
Tess.

"Then I don't know who is apt.  You've be'n born in the business, and
brought up in it.  They that be born in a business always know more
about it than any 'prentice.  Besides, that's only just a show of
something for you to do, that you midn't feel beholden."

"I don't altogether think I ought to go," said Tess thoughtfully.
"Who wrote the letter?  Will you let me look at it?"

"Mrs d'Urberville wrote it.  Here it is."

The letter was in the third person, and briefly informed Mrs
Durbeyfield that her daughter's services would be useful to that lady
in the management of her poultry-farm, that a comfortable room would
be provided for her if she could come, and that the wages would be on
a liberal scale if they liked her.

"Oh--that's all!" said Tess.

"You couldn't expect her to throw her arms round 'ee, an' to kiss and
to coll 'ee all at once."

Tess looked out of the window.

"I would rather stay here with father and you," she said.

"But why?"

"I'd rather not tell you why, mother; indeed, I don't quite know
why."

A week afterwards she came in one evening from an unavailing search
for some light occupation in the immediate neighbourhood.  Her idea
had been to get together sufficient money during the summer to
purchase another horse.  Hardly had she crossed the threshold before
one of the children danced across the room, saying, "The gentleman's
been here!"

Her mother hastened to explain, smiles breaking from every inch of
her person.  Mrs d'Urberville's son had called on horseback, having
been riding by chance in the direction of Marlott.  He had wished
to know, finally, in the name of his mother, if Tess could really
come to manage the old lady's fowl-farm or not; the lad who had
hitherto superintended the birds having proved untrustworthy.  "Mr
d'Urberville says you must be a good girl if you are at all as you
appear; he knows you must be worth your weight in gold.  He is very
much interested in 'ee--truth to tell."

Tess seemed for the moment really pleased to hear that she had won
such high opinion from a stranger when, in her own esteem, she had
sunk so low.

"It is very good of him to think that," she murmured; "and if I was
quite sure how it would be living there, I would go any-when."

"He is a mighty handsome man!"

"I don't think so," said Tess coldly.

"Well, there's your chance, whether or no; and I'm sure he wears a
beautiful diamond ring!"

"Yes," said little Abraham, brightly, from the window-bench; "and
I seed it! and it did twinkle when he put his hand up to his
mistarshers.  Mother, why did our grand relation keep on putting his
hand up to his mistarshers?"

"Hark at that child!" cried Mrs Durbeyfield, with parenthetic
admiration.

"Perhaps to show his diamond ring," murmured Sir John, dreamily, from
his chair.

"I'll think it over," said Tess, leaving the room.

"Well, she's made a conquest o' the younger branch of us, straight
off," continued the matron to her husband, "and she's a fool if she
don't follow it up."

"I don't quite like my children going away from home," said the
haggler.  "As the head of the family, the rest ought to come to me."

"But do let her go, Jacky," coaxed his poor witless wife.  "He's
struck wi' her--you can see that. He called her Coz!  He'll marry
her, most likely, and make a lady of her; and then she'll be what
her forefathers was."

John Durbeyfield had more conceit than energy or health, and this
supposition was pleasant to him.

"Well, perhaps that's what young Mr d'Urberville means," he admitted;
"and sure enough he mid have serious thoughts about improving his
blood by linking on to the old line.  Tess, the little rogue!  And
have she really paid 'em a visit to such an end as this?"

Meanwhile Tess was walking thoughtfully among the gooseberry-bushes
in the garden, and over Prince's grave.  When she came in her mother
pursued her advantage.

"Well, what be you going to do?" she asked.

"I wish I had seen Mrs d'Urberville," said Tess.

"I think you mid as well settle it.  Then you'll see her soon
enough."

Her father coughed in his chair.

"I don't know what to say!" answered the girl restlessly.  "It is for
you to decide.  I killed the old horse, and I suppose I ought to do
something to get ye a new one.  But--but--I don't quite like Mr
d'Urberville being there!"

The children, who had made use of this idea of Tess being taken up by
their wealthy kinsfolk (which they imagined the other family to be)
as a species of dolorifuge after the death of the horse, began to cry
at Tess's reluctance, and teased and reproached her for hesitating.

"Tess won't go-o-o and be made a la-a-dy of!--no, she says she
wo-o-on't!" they wailed, with square mouths.  "And we shan't have a
nice new horse, and lots o' golden money to buy fairlings!  And Tess
won't look pretty in her best cloze no mo-o-ore!"

Her mother chimed in to the same tune: a certain way she had of
making her labours in the house seem heavier than they were by
prolonging them indefinitely, also weighed in the argument.  Her
father alone preserved an attitude of neutrality.

"I will go," said Tess at last.

Her mother could not repress her consciousness of the nuptial vision
conjured up by the girl's consent.

"That's right!  For such a pretty maid as 'tis, this is a fine
chance!"

Tess smiled crossly.

"I hope it is a chance for earning money.  It is no other kind of
chance.  You had better say nothing of that silly sort about parish."

Mrs Durbeyfield did not promise.  She was not quite sure that she did
not feel proud enough, after the visitor's remarks, to say a good
deal.

Thus it was arranged; and the young girl wrote, agreeing to be ready
to set out on any day on which she might be required.  She was duly
informed that Mrs d'Urberville was glad of her decision, and that a
spring-cart should be sent to meet her and her luggage at the top
of the Vale on the day after the morrow, when she must hold herself
prepared to start.  Mrs d'Urberville's handwriting seemed rather
masculine.

"A cart?" murmured Joan Durbeyfield doubtingly.  "It might have been
a carriage for her own kin!"

Having at last taken her course Tess was less restless and
abstracted, going about her business with some self-assurance in the
thought of acquiring another horse for her father by an occupation
which would not be onerous.  She had hoped to be a teacher at the
school, but the fates seemed to decide otherwise.  Being mentally
older than her mother she did not regard Mrs Durbeyfield's
matrimonial hopes for her in a serious aspect for a moment.  The
light-minded woman had been discovering good matches for her daughter
almost from the year of her birth.

When Tess returns home the following day a letter from Mrs. d'Urberville offering her a job tending fowl awaits her. Despite her mother's ecstatic eagerness, Tess is displeased and looks instead for local jobs to earn money to replace the family's horse. Alec d'Urberville stops by and prompts her mother for an answer about the job. Her efforts to find alternative work prove fruitless and so Tess accepts d'Urberville's offer. She remarks that Mrs. d'Urberville's handwriting looks masculine