Tess wrote a most touching and urgent letter to her mother the very
next day, and by the end of the week a response to her communication
arrived in Joan Durbeyfield's wandering last-century hand.

   DEAR TESS,--

   J write these few lines Hoping they will find you well,
   as they leave me at Present, thank God for it.  Dear
   Tess, we are all glad to Hear that you are going really
   to be married soon.  But with respect to your question,
   Tess, J say between ourselves, quite private but very
   strong, that on no account do you say a word of your
   Bygone Trouble to him.  J did not tell everything
   to your Father, he being so Proud on account of his
   Respectability, which, perhaps, your Intended is
   the same.  Many a woman--some of the Highest in the
   Land--have had a Trouble in their time; and why should
   you Trumpet yours when others don't Trumpet theirs?  No
   girl would be such a Fool, specially as it is so long
   ago, and not your Fault at all.  J shall answer the
   same if you ask me fifty times.  Besides, you must bear
   in mind that, knowing it to be your Childish Nature to
   tell all that's in your heart--so simple!--J made you
   promise me never to let it out by Word or Deed, having
   your Welfare in my Mind; and you most solemnly did
   promise it going from this Door.  J have not named
   either that Question or your coming marriage to your
   Father, as he would blab it everywhere, poor Simple
   Man.

   Dear Tess, keep up your Spirits, and we mean to send
   you a Hogshead of Cyder for you Wedding, knowing there
   is not much in your parts, and thin Sour Stuff what
   there is.  So no more at present, and with kind love
   to your Young Man.--From your affectte. Mother,

   J. DURBEYFIELD

"O mother, mother!" murmured Tess.

She was recognizing how light was the touch of events the most
oppressive upon Mrs Durbeyfield's elastic spirit.  Her mother did not
see life as Tess saw it.  That haunting episode of bygone days was
to her mother but a passing accident.  But perhaps her mother was
right as to the course to be followed, whatever she might be in her
reasons.  Silence seemed, on the face of it, best for her adored
one's happiness: silence it should be.

Thus steadied by a command from the only person in the world who had
any shadow of right to control her action, Tess grew calmer.  The
responsibility was shifted, and her heart was lighter than it had
been for weeks.  The days of declining autumn which followed her
assent, beginning with the month of October, formed a season through
which she lived in spiritual altitudes more nearly approaching
ecstasy than any other period of her life.

There was hardly a touch of earth in her love for Clare.  To her
sublime trustfulness he was all that goodness could be--knew all that
a guide, philosopher, and friend should know.  She thought every line
in the contour of his person the perfection of masculine beauty, his
soul the soul of a saint, his intellect that of a seer.  The wisdom
of her love for him, as love, sustained her dignity; she seemed to be
wearing a crown.  The compassion of his love for her, as she saw it,
made her lift up her heart to him in devotion.  He would sometimes
catch her large, worshipful eyes, that had no bottom to them looking
at him from their depths, as if she saw something immortal before
her.

She dismissed the past--trod upon it and put it out, as one treads on
a coal that is smouldering and dangerous.

She had not known that men could be so disinterested, chivalrous,
protective, in their love for women as he.  Angel Clare was far from
all that she thought him in this respect; absurdly far, indeed;
but he was, in truth, more spiritual than animal; he had himself
well in hand, and was singularly free from grossness.  Though not
cold-natured, he was rather bright than hot--less Byronic than
Shelleyan; could love desperately, but with a love more especially
inclined to the imaginative and ethereal; it was a fastidious emotion
which could jealously guard the loved one against his very self.
This amazed and enraptured Tess, whose slight experiences had been so
infelicitous till now; and in her reaction from indignation against
the male sex she swerved to excess of honour for Clare.

They unaffectedly sought each other's company; in her honest faith
she did not disguise her desire to be with him.  The sum of her
instincts on this matter, if clearly stated, would have been that the
elusive quality of her sex which attracts men in general might be
distasteful to so perfect a man after an avowal of love, since it
must in its very nature carry with it a suspicion of art.

The country custom of unreserved comradeship out of doors during
betrothal was the only custom she knew, and to her it had no
strangeness; though it seemed oddly anticipative to Clare till he
saw how normal a thing she, in common with all the other dairy-folk,
regarded it.  Thus, during this October month of wonderful afternoons
they roved along the meads by creeping paths which followed the
brinks of trickling tributary brooks, hopping across by little wooden
bridges to the other side, and back again.  They were never out of
the sound of some purling weir, whose buzz accompanied their own
murmuring, while the beams of the sun, almost as horizontal as the
mead itself, formed a pollen of radiance over the landscape.  They
saw tiny blue fogs in the shadows of trees and hedges, all the time
that there was bright sunshine elsewhere.  The sun was so near the
ground, and the sward so flat, that the shadows of Clare and Tess
would stretch a quarter of a mile ahead of them, like two long
fingers pointing afar to where the green alluvial reaches abutted
against the sloping sides of the vale.

Men were at work here and there--for it was the season for "taking
up" the meadows, or digging the little waterways clear for the winter
irrigation, and mending their banks where trodden down by the cows.
The shovelfuls of loam, black as jet, brought there by the river
when it was as wide as the whole valley, were an essence of soils,
pounded champaigns of the past, steeped, refined, and subtilized to
extraordinary richness, out of which came all the fertility of the
mead, and of the cattle grazing there.

Clare hardily kept his arm round her waist in sight of these
watermen, with the air of a man who was accustomed to public
dalliance, though actually as shy as she who, with lips parted and
eyes askance on the labourers, wore the look of a wary animal the
while.

"You are not ashamed of owning me as yours before them!" she said
gladly.

"O no!"

"But if it should reach the ears of your friends at Emminster that
you are walking about like this with me, a milkmaid--"

"The most bewitching milkmaid ever seen."

"They might feel it a hurt to their dignity."

"My dear girl--a d'Urberville hurt the dignity of a Clare!  It is a
grand card to play--that of your belonging to such a family, and I
am reserving it for a grand effect when we are married, and have
the proofs of your descent from Parson Tringham.  Apart from that,
my future is to be totally foreign to my family--it will not affect
even the surface of their lives.  We shall leave this part of
England--perhaps England itself--and what does it matter how people
regard us here?  You will like going, will you not?"

She could answer no more than a bare affirmative, so great was the
emotion aroused in her at the thought of going through the world with
him as his own familiar friend.  Her feelings almost filled her ears
like a babble of waves, and surged up to her eyes.  She put her hand
in his, and thus they went on, to a place where the reflected sun
glared up from the river, under a bridge, with a molten-metallic glow
that dazzled their eyes, though the sun itself was hidden by the
bridge.  They stood still, whereupon little furred and feathered
heads popped up from the smooth surface of the water; but, finding
that the disturbing presences had paused, and not passed by, they
disappeared again.  Upon this river-brink they lingered till the fog
began to close round them--which was very early in the evening at
this time of the year--settling on the lashes of her eyes, where it
rested like crystals, and on his brows and hair.

They walked later on Sundays, when it was quite dark.  Some of the
dairy-people, who were also out of doors on the first Sunday evening
after their engagement, heard her impulsive speeches, ecstasized to
fragments, though they were too far off to hear the words discoursed;
noted the spasmodic catch in her remarks, broken into syllables by
the leapings of her heart, as she walked leaning on his arm; her
contented pauses, the occasional little laugh upon which her soul
seemed to ride--the laugh of a woman in company with the man she
loves and has won from all other women--unlike anything else in
nature.  They marked the buoyancy of her tread, like the skim of a
bird which has not quite alighted.

Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being;
it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness
of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would
persist in their attempts to touch her--doubt, fear, moodiness, care,
shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the
circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them
in hungry subjection there.

A spiritual forgetfulness co-existed with an intellectual
remembrance.  She walked in brightness, but she knew that in the
background those shapes of darkness were always spread.  They might
be receding, or they might be approaching, one or the other, a little
every day.

One evening Tess and Clare were obliged to sit indoors keeping house,
all the other occupants of the domicile being away.  As they talked
she looked thoughtfully up at him, and met his two appreciative eyes.

"I am not worthy of you--no, I am not!" she burst out, jumping up
from her low stool as though appalled at his homage, and the fulness
of her own joy thereat.

Clare, deeming the whole basis of her excitement to be that which was
only the smaller part of it, said--

"I won't have you speak like it, dear Tess!  Distinction does not
consist in the facile use of a contemptible set of conventions, but
in being numbered among those who are true, and honest, and just, and
pure, and lovely, and of good report--as you are, my Tess."

She struggled with the sob in her throat.  How often had that string
of excellences made her young heart ache in church of late years, and
how strange that he should have cited them now.

"Why didn't you stay and love me when I--was sixteen; living with my
little sisters and brothers, and you danced on the green?  O, why
didn't you, why didn't you!" she said, impetuously clasping her
hands.

Angel began to comfort and reassure her, thinking to himself, truly
enough, what a creature of moods she was, and how careful he would
have to be of her when she depended for her happiness entirely on
him.

"Ah--why didn't I stay!" he said.  "That is just what I feel.  If I
had only known!  But you must not be so bitter in your regret--why
should you be?"

With the woman's instinct to hide she diverged hastily--

"I should have had four years more of your heart than I can ever have
now.  Then I should not have wasted my time as I have done--I should
have had so much longer happiness!"

It was no mature woman with a long dark vista of intrigue behind her
who was tormented thus, but a girl of simple life, not yet one-and
twenty, who had been caught during her days of immaturity like a bird
in a springe.  To calm herself the more completely, she rose from her
little stool and left the room, overturning the stool with her skirts
as she went.

He sat on by the cheerful firelight thrown from a bundle of green
ash-sticks laid across the dogs; the sticks snapped pleasantly, and
hissed out bubbles of sap from their ends.  When she came back she
was herself again.

"Do you not think you are just a wee bit capricious, fitful, Tess?"
he said, good-humouredly, as he spread a cushion for her on the
stool, and seated himself in the settle beside her.  "I wanted to
ask you something, and just then you ran away."

"Yes, perhaps I am capricious," she murmured.  She suddenly
approached him, and put a hand upon each of his arms.  "No, Angel,
I am not really so--by nature, I mean!"  The more particularly to
assure him that she was not, she placed herself close to him in the
settle, and allowed her head to find a resting-place against Clare's
shoulder.  "What did you want to ask me--I am sure I will answer it,"
she continued humbly.

"Well, you love me, and have agreed to marry me, and hence there
follows a thirdly, 'When shall the day be?'"

"I like living like this."

"But I must think of starting in business on my own hook with the
new year, or a little later.  And before I get involved in the
multifarious details of my new position, I should like to have
secured my partner."

"But," she timidly answered, "to talk quite practically, wouldn't it
be best not to marry till after all that?--Though I can't bear the
thought o' your going away and leaving me here!"

"Of course you cannot--and it is not best in this case.  I want you
to help me in many ways in making my start. When shall it be?  Why
not a fortnight from now?"

"No," she said, becoming grave: "I have so many things to think of
first."

"But--"

He drew her gently nearer to him.

The reality of marriage was startling when it loomed so near.  Before
discussion of the question had proceeded further there walked round
the corner of the settle into the full firelight of the apartment Mr
Dairyman Crick, Mrs Crick, and two of the milkmaids.

Tess sprang like an elastic ball from his side to her feet, while her
face flushed and her eyes shone in the firelight.

"I knew how it would be if I sat so close to him!" she cried, with
vexation.  "I said to myself, they are sure to come and catch us!
But I wasn't really sitting on his knee, though it might ha' seemed
as if I was almost!"

"Well--if so be you hadn't told us, I am sure we shouldn't ha'
noticed that ye had been sitting anywhere at all in this light,"
replied the dairyman.  He continued to his wife, with the stolid
mien of a man who understood nothing of the emotions relating to
matrimony--"Now, Christianer, that shows that folks should never
fancy other folks be supposing things when they bain't.  O no, I
should never ha' thought a word of where she was a sitting to, if
she hadn't told me--not I."

"We are going to be married soon," said Clare, with improvised
phlegm.

"Ah--and be ye!  Well, I am truly glad to hear it, sir.  I've
thought you mid do such a thing for some time.  She's too good for a
dairymaid--I said so the very first day I zid her--and a prize for
any man; and what's more, a wonderful woman for a gentleman-farmer's
wife; he won't be at the mercy of his baily wi' her at his side."

Somehow Tess disappeared.  She had been even more struck with the
look of the girls who followed Crick than abashed by Crick's blunt
praise.

After supper, when she reached her bedroom, they were all present.  A
light was burning, and each damsel was sitting up whitely in her bed,
awaiting Tess, the whole like a row of avenging ghosts.

But she saw in a few moments that there was no malice in their mood.
They could scarcely feel as a loss what they had never expected to
have.  Their condition was objective, contemplative.

"He's going to marry her!" murmured Retty, never taking eyes off
Tess.  "How her face do show it!"

"You BE going to marry him?" asked Marian.

"Yes," said Tess.

"When?"

"Some day."

They thought that this was evasiveness only.

"YES--going to MARRY him--a gentleman!" repeated Izz Huett.

And by a sort of fascination the three girls, one after another,
crept out of their beds, and came and stood barefooted round Tess.
Retty put her hands upon Tess's shoulders, as if to realize her
friend's corporeality after such a miracle, and the other two laid
their arms round her waist, all looking into her face.

"How it do seem!  Almost more than I can think of!" said Izz Huett.

Marian kissed Tess.  "Yes," she murmured as she withdrew her lips.

"Was that because of love for her, or because other lips have touched
there by now?" continued Izz drily to Marian.

"I wasn't thinking o' that," said Marian simply.  "I was on'y feeling
all the strangeness o't--that she is to be his wife, and nobody else.
I don't say nay to it, nor either of us, because we did not think
of it--only loved him.  Still, nobody else is to marry'n in the
world--no fine lady, nobody in silks and satins; but she who do live
like we."

"Are you sure you don't dislike me for it?" said Tess in a low voice.

They hung about her in their white nightgowns before replying, as if
they considered their answer might lie in her look.

"I don't know--I don't know," murmured Retty Priddle.  "I want to
hate 'ee; but I cannot!"

"That's how I feel," echoed Izz and Marian.  "I can't hate her.
Somehow she hinders me!"

"He ought to marry one of you," murmured Tess.

"Why?"

"You are all better than I."

"We better than you?" said the girls in a low, slow whisper.  "No,
no, dear Tess!"

"You are!" she contradicted impetuously.  And suddenly tearing away
from their clinging arms she burst into a hysterical fit of tears,
bowing herself on the chest of drawers and repeating incessantly,
"O yes, yes, yes!"

Having once given way she could not stop her weeping.

"He ought to have had one of you!" she cried.  "I think I ought to
make him even now!  You would be better for him than--I don't know
what I'm saying!  O!  O!"

They went up to her and clasped her round, but still her sobs tore
her.

"Get some water," said Marian,  "She's upset by us, poor thing, poor
thing!"

They gently led her back to the side of her bed, where they kissed
her warmly.

"You are best for'n," said Marian.  "More ladylike, and a better
scholar than we, especially since he had taught 'ee so much.  But
even you ought to be proud.  You BE proud, I'm sure!"

"Yes, I am," she said; "and I am ashamed at so breaking down."

When they were all in bed, and the light was out, Marian whispered
across to her--

"You will think of us when you be his wife, Tess, and of how we told
'ee that we loved him, and how we tried not to hate you, and did not
hate you, and could not hate you, because you were his choice, and
we never hoped to be chose by him."

They were not aware that, at these words, salt, stinging tears
trickled down upon Tess's pillow anew, and how she resolved, with a
bursting heart, to tell all her history to Angel Clare, despite her
mother's command--to let him for whom she lived and breathed despise
her if he would, and her mother regard her as a fool, rather then
preserve a silence which might be deemed a treachery to him, and
which somehow seemed a wrong to these.

This penitential mood kept her from naming the wedding-day. The
beginning of November found its date still in abeyance, though he
asked her at the most tempting times.  But Tess's desire seemed to be
for a perpetual betrothal in which everything should remain as it was
then.

The meads were changing now; but it was still warm enough in early
afternoons before milking to idle there awhile, and the state of
dairy-work at this time of year allowed a spare hour for idling.
Looking over the damp sod in the direction of the sun, a glistening
ripple of gossamer webs was visible to their eyes under the luminary,
like the track of moonlight on the sea.  Gnats, knowing nothing
of their brief glorification, wandered across the shimmer of this
pathway, irradiated as if they bore fire within them, then passed out
of its line, and were quite extinct.  In the presence of these things
he would remind her that the date was still the question.

Or he would ask her at night, when he accompanied her on some mission
invented by Mrs Crick to give him the opportunity.  This was mostly a
journey to the farmhouse on the slopes above the vale, to inquire how
the advanced cows were getting on in the straw-barton to which they
were relegated.  For it was a time of the year that brought great
changes to the world of kine.  Batches of the animals were sent away
daily to this lying-in hospital, where they lived on straw till their
calves were born, after which event, and as soon as the calf could
walk, mother and offspring were driven back to the dairy.  In the
interval which elapsed before the calves were sold there was, of
course, little milking to be done, but as soon as the calf had been
taken away the milkmaids would have to set to work as usual.

Returning from one of these dark walks they reached a great
gravel-cliff immediately over the levels, where they stood still and
listened.  The water was now high in the streams, squirting through
the weirs, and tinkling under culverts; the smallest gullies were all
full; there was no taking short cuts anywhere, and foot-passengers
were compelled to follow the permanent ways.  From the whole extent
of the invisible vale came a multitudinous intonation; it forced upon
their fancy that a great city lay below them, and that the murmur was
the vociferation of its populace.

"It seems like tens of thousands of them," said Tess; "holding
public-meetings in their market-places, arguing, preaching,
quarrelling, sobbing, groaning, praying, and cursing."

Clare was not particularly heeding.

"Did Crick speak to you to-day, dear, about his not wanting much
assistance during the winter months?"

"No."

"The cows are going dry rapidly."

"Yes.  Six or seven went to the straw-barton yesterday, and three the
day before, making nearly twenty in the straw already.  Ah--is it
that the farmer don't want my help for the calving?  O, I am not
wanted here any more!  And I have tried so hard to--"

"Crick didn't exactly say that he would no longer require you.  But,
knowing what our relations were, he said in the most good-natured
and respectful manner possible that he supposed on my leaving at
Christmas I should take you with me, and on my asking what he would
do without you he merely observed that, as a matter of fact, it was a
time of year when he could do with a very little female help.  I am
afraid I was sinner enough to feel rather glad that he was in this
way forcing your hand."

"I don't think you ought to have felt glad, Angel.  Because 'tis
always mournful not to be wanted, even if at the same time 'tis
convenient."

"Well, it is convenient--you have admitted that."  He put his finger
upon her cheek.  "Ah!" he said.

"What?"

"I feel the red rising up at her having been caught!  But why should
I trifle so!  We will not trifle--life is too serious."

"It is.  Perhaps I saw that before you did."

She was seeing it then.  To decline to marry him after all--in
obedience to her emotion of last night--and leave the dairy, meant
to go to some strange place, not a dairy; for milkmaids were not in
request now calving-time was coming on; to go to some arable farm
where no divine being like Angel Clare was.  She hated the thought,
and she hated more the thought of going home.

"So that, seriously, dearest Tess," he continued, "since you will
probably have to leave at Christmas, it is in every way desirable and
convenient that I should carry you off then as my property.  Besides,
if you were not the most uncalculating girl in the world you would
know that we could not go on like this for ever."

"I wish we could.  That it would always be summer and autumn, and you
always courting me, and always thinking as much of me as you have
done through the past summer-time!"

"I always shall."

"O, I know you will!" she cried, with a sudden fervour of faith
in him.  "Angel, I will fix the day when I will become yours for
always!"

Thus at last it was arranged between them, during that dark walk
home, amid the myriads of liquid voices on the right and left.

When they reached the dairy Mr and Mrs Crick were promptly told--with
injunctions of secrecy; for each of the lovers was desirous that the
marriage should be kept as private as possible.  The dairyman, though
he had thought of dismissing her soon, now made a great concern about
losing her.  What should he do about his skimming?  Who would make
the ornamental butter-pats for the Anglebury and Sandbourne ladies?
Mrs Crick congratulated Tess on the shilly-shallying having at last
come to an end, and said that directly she set eyes on Tess she
divined that she was to be the chosen one of somebody who was no
common outdoor man; Tess had looked so superior as she walked across
the barton on that afternoon of her arrival; that she was of a good
family she could have sworn.  In point of fact Mrs Crick did remember
thinking that Tess was graceful and good-looking as she approached;
but the superiority might have been a growth of the imagination aided
by subsequent knowledge.

Tess was now carried along upon the wings of the hours, without the
sense of a will.  The word had been given; the number of the day
written down.  Her naturally bright intelligence had begun to admit
the fatalistic convictions common to field-folk and those who
associate more extensively with natural phenomena than with their
fellow-creatures; and she accordingly drifted into that passive
responsiveness to all things her lover suggested, characteristic of
the frame of mind.

But she wrote anew to her mother, ostensibly to notify the
wedding-day; really to again implore her advice.  It was a gentleman
who had chosen her, which perhaps her mother had not sufficiently
considered.  A post-nuptial explanation, which might be accepted with
a light heart by a rougher man, might not be received with the same
feeling by him.  But this communication brought no reply from Mrs
Durbeyfield.

Despite Angel Clare's plausible representation to himself and to Tess
of the practical need for their immediate marriage, there was in
truth an element of precipitancy in the step, as became apparent at a
later date.  He loved her dearly, though perhaps rather ideally and
fancifully than with the impassioned thoroughness of her feeling for
him.  He had entertained no notion, when doomed as he had thought to
an unintellectual bucolic life, that such charms as he beheld in this
idyllic creature would be found behind the scenes.  Unsophistication
was a thing to talk of; but he had not known how it really struck one
until he came here.  Yet he was very far from seeing his future track
clearly, and it might be a year or two before he would be able to
consider himself fairly started in life.  The secret lay in the tinge
of recklessness imparted to his career and character by the sense
that he had been made to miss his true destiny through the prejudices
of his family.

"Don't you think 'twould have been better for us to wait till you
were quite settled in your midland farm?" she once asked timidly.
(A midland farm was the idea just then.)

"To tell the truth, my Tess, I don't like you to be left anywhere
away from my protection and sympathy."

The reason was a good one, so far as it went.  His influence over her
had been so marked that she had caught his manner and habits, his
speech and phrases, his likings and his aversions.  And to leave her
in farmland would be to let her slip back again out of accord with
him.  He wished to have her under his charge for another reason.
His parents had naturally desired to see her once at least before he
carried her off to a distant settlement, English or colonial; and
as no opinion of theirs was to be allowed to change his intention,
he judged that a couple of months' life with him in lodgings
whilst seeking for an advantageous opening would be of some social
assistance to her at what she might feel to be a trying ordeal--her
presentation to his mother at the Vicarage.

Next, he wished to see a little of the working of a flour-mill,
having an idea that he might combine the use of one with
corn-growing.  The proprietor of a large old water-mill at
Wellbridge--once the mill of an Abbey--had offered him the inspection
of his time-honoured mode of procedure, and a hand in the operations
for a few days, whenever he should choose to come.  Clare paid a
visit to the place, some few miles distant, one day at this time,
to inquire particulars, and returned to Talbothays in the evening.
She found him determined to spend a short time at the Wellbridge
flour-mills. And what had determined him?  Less the opportunity of an
insight into grinding and bolting than the casual fact that lodgings
were to be obtained in that very farmhouse which, before its
mutilation, had been the mansion of a branch of the d'Urberville
family.  This was always how Clare settled practical questions; by
a sentiment which had nothing to do with them.  They decided to go
immediately after the wedding, and remain for a fortnight, instead
of journeying to towns and inns.

"Then we will start off to examine some farms on the other side of
London that I have heard of," he said, "and by March or April we will
pay a visit to my father and mother."

Questions of procedure such as these arose and passed, and the day,
the incredible day, on which she was to become his, loomed large in
the near future.  The thirty-first of December, New Year's Eve, was
the date.  His wife, she said to herself.  Could it ever be?  Their
two selves together, nothing to divide them, every incident shared
by them; why not?  And yet why?

One Sunday morning Izz Huett returned from church, and spoke
privately to Tess.

"You was not called home this morning."

"What?"

"It should ha' been the first time of asking to-day," she answered,
looking quietly at Tess.  "You meant to be married New Year's Eve,
deary?"

The other returned a quick affirmative.

"And there must be three times of asking.  And now there be only two
Sundays left between."

Tess felt her cheek paling; Izz was right; of course there must be
three.  Perhaps he had forgotten!  If so, there must be a week's
postponement, and that was unlucky.  How could she remind her lover?
She who had been so backward was suddenly fired with impatience and
alarm lest she should lose her dear prize.

A natural incident relieved her anxiety.  Izz mentioned the omission
of the banns to Mrs Crick, and Mrs Crick assumed a matron's privilege
of speaking to Angel on the point.

"Have ye forgot 'em, Mr Clare?  The banns, I mean."

"No, I have not forgot 'em," says Clare.

As soon as he caught Tess alone he assured her:

"Don't let them tease you about the banns.  A licence will be quieter
for us, and I have decided on a licence without consulting you.
So if you go to church on Sunday morning you will not hear your own
name, if you wished to."

"I didn't wish to hear it, dearest," she said proudly.

But to know that things were in train was an immense relief to Tess
notwithstanding, who had well-nigh feared that somebody would stand
up and forbid the banns on the ground of her history.  How events
were favouring her!

"I don't quite feel easy," she said to herself.  "All this good
fortune may be scourged out of me afterwards by a lot of ill.  That's
how Heaven mostly does.  I wish I could have had common banns!"

But everything went smoothly.  She wondered whether he would like her
to be married in her present best white frock, or if she ought to
buy a new one.  The question was set at rest by his forethought,
disclosed by the arrival of some large packages addressed to her.
Inside them she found a whole stock of clothing, from bonnet to
shoes, including a perfect morning costume, such as would well suit
the simple wedding they planned.  He entered the house shortly after
the arrival of the packages, and heard her upstairs undoing them.

A minute later she came down with a flush on her face and tears in
her eyes.

"How thoughtful you've been!" she murmured, her cheek upon his
shoulder.  "Even to the gloves and handkerchief!  My own love--how
good, how kind!"

"No, no, Tess; just an order to a tradeswoman in London--nothing
more."

And to divert her from thinking too highly of him, he told her to go
upstairs, and take her time, and see if it all fitted; and, if not,
to get the village sempstress to make a few alterations.

She did return upstairs, and put on the gown.  Alone, she stood for a
moment before the glass looking at the effect of her silk attire; and
then there came into her head her mother's ballad of the mystic
robe--

     That never would become that wife
       That had once done amiss,

which Mrs Durbeyfield had used to sing to her as a child, so blithely
and so archly, her foot on the cradle, which she rocked to the tune.
Suppose this robe should betray her by changing colour, as her robe
had betrayed Queen Guinevere.  Since she had been at the dairy she
had not once thought of the lines till now.

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

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

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

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

"A comely maid that," said the other.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the meantime the lovers were driving onward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I do not, Tessy, really."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Now, Tess!"

He silenced her by a kiss.

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

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

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

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

She impulsively whispered to him--

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

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

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

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

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

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

The cock crew again--straight towards Clare.

"Well!" said the dairyman.

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

The cock crew again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's the matter?" said he.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How vexing!" said Tess.

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

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

Tess looked a little flustered as she took it.

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

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

The note was for Clare, in the following words:

   MY DEAR SON--

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

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

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

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

"Are they mine?" she asked incredulously.

"They are, certainly," said he.

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

Suddenly he said with enthusiasm--

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

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

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

"Ought it?" said Tess.

"Yes," said he.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, yes, sir."

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

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

"Dear me;--what--"

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

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

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

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

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

"And Izz?" asked Tess.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"O yes!  I am sure that--"

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

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

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

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

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

She pressed his hand tightly for an answer.

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

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

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

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

"It can hardly be more serious, dearest."

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

She sat down again.

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

END OF PHASE THE FOURTH

Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays

Tess writes to her mother and receives a response by the end of the week. Joan Durbeyfield tells Tess not to tell of her past. Joan also mentions that a barrel of alcoholic cider will be sent for a wedding present. Tess decides not to tell Angel of her history. Everyone at the dairy seems to know that Tess will someday marry Angel. Even when the maids feel some jealousy toward Tess at the possibility of marriage, they cannot bear her any ill will. Tess tells the young maids, "You are all better than I." Tess cannot bear to keep silent on the matter of her past, and she vows to tell Angel all of her history, despite her mother's advice not to. Tess sets the date of their wedding as December 31. The time for Tess' services at the dairy are at an end. Angel is also finished with the apprenticeship at the dairy and seeks a new aspect of farming for study. He settles on the flourmill at Wellbridge to learn about milling flour. He then proposes a tour of other farms during the first of the year, stopping to visit his parents in March or April. Tess' bridal gown arrives, a simple dress, and the wedding arrangements are completed. Angel and Tess travel to the nearby town, Vale of Blackmoor, on Christmas Eve to do some last minute shopping. There Tess sees two Trantridge men who know of her past and speak of it loud enough for all to hear. Angel confronts the men, who admit their possible mistake of confusing Tess with another woman. The incident disconcerts Tess, who asks Angel if the wedding can be postponed. He asks her to forget the incident. Tess writes a four-page note to Angel that explains her history and slips it under his door. However, the note becomes lodged under the carpet, and he never reads it; Tess later finds the note and destroys it. The pair remain as guests at Talbothays until the day of their wedding. No one from the Durbeyfield or Clare families attends the ceremony; instead, the Cricks and all the workers at Talbothays attend the services. After they leave the wedding ceremony, Tess tries to confess her past sins, but Angel will not hear of it. When Tess says that the carriage they are riding in seems familiar to her, Angel recalls the legend of the d'Urberville Coach: During the sixteenth or seventeenth century, a d'Urberville supposedly committed a "dreadful crime" in the family coach and that, since that time, only the d'Urberville family members can hear the coach, whose appearance foretells a tragic or bad event. Upon leaving Talbothays, an old white rooster crows in mid-afternoon -- in the world of the farm an omen for bad fortune. The house the newlyweds take in Wellbridge is an old d'Urberville home, complete with old d'Urberville portraits on panels in the walls. The luggage from Talbothays is late, but Tess receives a package from the Clare family of heirloom jewels, which Tess immediately puts on. The luggage arrives via Jonathan Kail, a Talbothays dairyman, who tells the new couple that Retty had tried to commit suicide, Marian gets "dead drunk," and Izz is moping around the house depressed. Tess feels guilty that she had some hand in the incidents that happened to her friends. Then Tess and Angel confess their sins, first Angel, then Tess.

Hardy uses several omens to warn the readers that something is about to happen to the characters. Consider, for example, Tess' serendipitous meeting with Angel in Chapter 1, which foreshadowed their later meeting. That both Tess and Angel recall that meeting in this chapter brings a poignancy to their current situation. The reader knows, as Tess does, what happened between her first meeting with Angel and her second. Angel does not share this knowledge and simply regrets having not danced with Tess or staying in Marlott, saying "If I had only known!" -- a sentiment, no doubt, that Tess surely feels and with greater reason. Hardy increases the sense of foreboding with Tess' failed attempts at revealing her secret. She volunteers time and again to tell Angel of her past only to be rebuffed each time. Beyond this, Hardy piles up the signs, each one sharpening the readers' sense of doom for the pair: The settling on the last day of the year, December 31, to be married; the misdirected note , the kisses that Angel bestows on each of the dairymaids. Further heightening the sense of foreboding are the omens that Hardy specifically points out as being portents: the d'Urberville Coach legend and the rooster crowing at noon. In combination, all the omens from these chapters prefigure events to come in the next phase of the novel. Although hopeful readers may want to see the events at Talbothays Dairy following Tess and Angel's departure as the events that the omens prefigured , Hardy's choice of title for the next part -- Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays -- undermines what little glimmer of hope he may have tried to offer. Again, in these chapters, Hardy's view of fate and the role it plays in our lives come to the forefront of the story. Essentially, his point seems to be that things just happen, for good or bad , and that these things have significant impact on the courses our lives take. Consider, for example, Tess' happening to meet Alec d'Urberville upon her initial journey to The Slopes. She could have met anyone, but chance decreed that she meet and draw the attention of a man who was not only not worthy of her but capable of -- willing to -- destroy her for his own pleasure. The reader can imagine how differently Tess' life would have been had she met Angel before Alec, but it was the culmination of small, inconsequential things -- a missed dance, a chance meeting, for example -- that send Tess' life in the direction toward ruin. Combine this with the fact that Tess is a decent person, that she is undeserving of such a life and such a fate. She did not willingly attract Alec; she does not deliberately deceive Angel; and yet she must suffer the consequences as though she had. In short, Tess is a decent person for whom things just don't work out -- a seemingly innocuous statement that leads to tragedy, especially when we consider that everything could have happened some other way, and that if only one thing had happened differently, perhaps Tess' life would have been altered for the better. Glossary hogshead a large barrel or cask holding from 63 to 140 gallons  "less Byronic than Shelleyan" less passionate than spiritual in inclination. Champaigns plains; level open country. "those who are true..." list of virtues comes from Paul; Philippians 4:8. springe  a snare consisting of a noose attached to something under tension, as a bent tree branch. capricious subject to caprices; tending to change abruptly and without apparent reason; erratic; flighty. baily in England, a steward or manager of a farm or estate. penitential expressing penitence for having sinned or done other wrong and willing to atone. banns the proclamation, generally made in church on three successive Sundays, of an intended marriage. license written permission from a bishop in place of a banns. "her mother's ballad of the mystic robe" from "The Boy and the Mantle," in which a robe betrays Queen Guenever, the wife of King Arthur. ostler  hosteler. Felloes rims of a spoked wheel, or segments of the rim. Partie carree party of four, from French. cumbrous cumbersome. Friar Lawrence from Romeo and Juliet . Skein a quantity of thread or yarn wound in a coil; something like this, as a coil of hair. summut  somewhat. Withy-bed stand of willows. night-rail a loose dressing-jacket or dressing gown. trencher-woman a woman who eats much and heartily Aldebaran or Sirius two of the brightest stars in the sky. Integer Vitae phrase from Roman poet Horace is in an ode translated in the lines quoted as "upright life."