Clare arose in the light of a dawn that was ashy and furtive, as
though associated with crime.  The fireplace confronted him with its
extinct embers; the spread supper-table, whereon stood the two full
glasses of untasted wine, now flat and filmy; her vacated seat and
his own; the other articles of furniture, with their eternal look of
not being able to help it, their intolerable inquiry what was to be
done?  From above there was no sound; but in a few minutes there came
a knock at the door.  He remembered that it would be the neighbouring
cottager's wife, who was to minister to their wants while they
remained here.

The presence of a third person in the house would be extremely
awkward just now, and, being already dressed, he opened the window
and informed her that they could manage to shift for themselves that
morning.  She had a milk-can in her hand, which he told her to leave
at the door.  When the dame had gone away he searched in the back
quarters of the house for fuel, and speedily lit a fire.  There was
plenty of eggs, butter, bread, and so on in the larder, and Clare
soon had breakfast laid, his experiences at the dairy having rendered
him facile in domestic preparations.  The smoke of the kindled wood
rose from the chimney without like a lotus-headed column; local
people who were passing by saw it, and thought of the newly-married
couple, and envied their happiness.

Angel cast a final glance round, and then going to the foot of the
stairs, called in a conventional voice--

"Breakfast is ready!"

He opened the front door, and took a few steps in the morning air.
When, after a short space, he came back she was already in the
sitting-room mechanically readjusting the breakfast things.  As she
was fully attired, and the interval since his calling her had been
but two or three minutes, she must have been dressed or nearly so
before he went to summon her.  Her hair was twisted up in a large
round mass at the back of her head, and she had put on one of the
new frocks--a pale blue woollen garment with neck-frillings of
white.  Her hands and face appeared to be cold, and she had possibly
been sitting dressed in the bedroom a long time without any fire.
The marked civility of Clare's tone in calling her seemed to have
inspired her, for the moment, with a new glimmer of hope.  But it
soon died when she looked at him.

The pair were, in truth, but the ashes of their former fires.  To the
hot sorrow of the previous night had succeeded heaviness; it seemed
as if nothing could kindle either of them to fervour of sensation any
more.

He spoke gently to her, and she replied with a like
undemonstrativeness.  At last she came up to him, looking in his
sharply-defined face as one who had no consciousness that her own
formed a visible object also.

"Angel!" she said, and paused, touching him with her fingers lightly
as a breeze, as though she could hardly believe to be there in the
flesh the man who was once her lover.  Her eyes were bright, her pale
cheek still showed its wonted roundness, though half-dried tears had
left glistening traces thereon; and the usually ripe red mouth was
almost as pale as her cheek.  Throbbingly alive as she was still,
under the stress of her mental grief the life beat so brokenly that
a little further pull upon it would cause real illness, dull her
characteristic eyes, and make her mouth thin.

She looked absolutely pure.  Nature, in her fantastic trickery, had
set such a seal of maidenhood upon Tess's countenance that he gazed
at her with a stupefied air.

"Tess!  Say it is not true!  No, it is not true!"

"It is true."

"Every word?"

"Every word."

He looked at her imploringly, as if he would willingly have taken a
lie from her lips, knowing it to be one, and have made of it, by some
sort of sophistry, a valid denial. However, she only repeated--

"It is true."

"Is he living?" Angel then asked.

"The baby died."

"But the man?"

"He is alive."

A last despair passed over Clare's face.

"Is he in England?"

"Yes."

He took a few vague steps.

"My position--is this," he said abruptly.  "I thought--any man would
have thought--that by giving up all ambition to win a wife with
social standing, with fortune, with knowledge of the world, I should
secure rustic innocence as surely as I should secure pink cheeks;
but--However, I am no man to reproach you, and I will not."

Tess felt his position so entirely that the remainder had not been
needed.  Therein lay just the distress of it; she saw that he had
lost all round.

"Angel--I should not have let it go on to marriage with you if I had
not known that, after all, there was a last way out of it for you;
though I hoped you would never--"

Her voice grew husky.

"A last way?"

"I mean, to get rid of me.  You CAN get rid of me."

"How?"

"By divorcing me."

"Good heavens--how can you be so simple!  How can I divorce you?"

"Can't you--now I have told you?  I thought my confession would give
you grounds for that."

"O Tess--you are too, too--childish--unformed--crude, I suppose!  I
don't know what you are.  You don't understand the law--you don't
understand!"

"What--you cannot?"

"Indeed I cannot."

A quick shame mixed with the misery upon his listener's face.

"I thought--I thought," she whispered.  "O, now I see how wicked I
seem to you!  Believe me--believe me, on my soul, I never thought but
that you could!  I hoped you would not; yet I believed, without a
doubt, that you could cast me off if you were determined, and didn't
love me at--at--all!"

"You were mistaken," he said.

"O, then I ought to have done it, to have done it last night!  But I
hadn't the courage.  That's just like me!"

"The courage to do what?"

As she did not answer he took her by the hand.

"What were you thinking of doing?" he inquired.

"Of putting an end to myself."

"When?"

She writhed under this inquisitorial manner of his.  "Last night,"
she answered.

"Where?"

"Under your mistletoe."

"My good--!  How?" he asked sternly.

"I'll tell you, if you won't be angry with me!" she said, shrinking.
"It was with the cord of my box.  But I could not--do the last thing!
I was afraid that it might cause a scandal to your name."

The unexpected quality of this confession, wrung from her, and not
volunteered, shook him perceptibly.  But he still held her, and,
letting his glance fall from her face downwards, he said,  "Now,
listen to this.  You must not dare to think of such a horrible thing!
How could you!  You will promise me as your husband to attempt that
no more."

"I am ready to promise.  I saw how wicked it was."

"Wicked!  The idea was unworthy of you beyond description."

"But, Angel," she pleaded, enlarging her eyes in calm unconcern upon
him, "it was thought of entirely on your account--to set you free
without the scandal of the divorce that I thought you would have to
get.  I should never have dreamt of doing it on mine.  However, to
do it with my own hand is too good for me, after all.  It is you, my
ruined husband, who ought to strike the blow.  I think I should love
you more, if that were possible, if you could bring yourself to do
it, since there's no other way of escape for 'ee.  I feel I am so
utterly worthless!  So very greatly in the way!"

"Ssh!"

"Well, since you say no, I won't.  I have no wish opposed to yours."

He knew this to be true enough.  Since the desperation of the night
her activities had dropped to zero, and there was no further rashness
to be feared.

Tess tried to busy herself again over the breakfast-table with more
or less success, and they sat down both on the same side, so that
their glances did not meet.  There was at first something awkward
in hearing each other eat and drink, but this could not be escaped;
moreover, the amount of eating done was small on both sides.
Breakfast over, he rose, and telling her the hour at which he might
be expected to dinner, went off to the miller's in a mechanical
pursuance of the plan of studying that business, which had been his
only practical reason for coming here.

When he was gone Tess stood at the window, and presently saw his form
crossing the great stone bridge which conducted to the mill premises.
He sank behind it, crossed the railway beyond, and disappeared.
Then, without a sigh, she turned her attention to the room, and began
clearing the table and setting it in order.

The charwoman soon came.  Her presence was at first a strain upon
Tess, but afterwards an alleviation.  At half-past twelve she
left her assistant alone in the kitchen, and, returning to the
sitting-room, waited for the reappearance of Angel's form behind the
bridge.

About one he showed himself.  Her face flushed, although he was a
quarter of a mile off.  She ran to the kitchen to get the dinner
served by the time he should enter.  He went first to the room where
they had washed their hands together the day before, and as he
entered the sitting-room the dish-covers rose from the dishes as if
by his own motion.

"How punctual!" he said.

"Yes.  I saw you coming over the bridge," said she.

The meal was passed in commonplace talk of what he had been doing
during the morning at the Abbey Mill, of the methods of bolting and
the old-fashioned machinery, which he feared would not enlighten him
greatly on modern improved methods, some of it seeming to have been
in use ever since the days it ground for the monks in the adjoining
conventual buildings--now a heap of ruins.  He left the house again
in the course of an hour, coming home at dusk, and occupying himself
through the evening with his papers.  She feared she was in the way
and, when the old woman was gone, retired to the kitchen, where she
made herself busy as well as she could for more than an hour.

Clare's shape appeared at the door. "You must not work like this," he
said.  "You are not my servant; you are my wife."

She raised her eyes, and brightened somewhat.  "I may think myself
that--indeed?" she murmured, in piteous raillery.  "You mean in name!
Well, I don't want to be anything more."

"You MAY think so, Tess!  You are.  What do you mean?"

"I don't know," she said hastily, with tears in her accents.  "I
thought I--because I am not respectable, I mean.  I told you I
thought I was not respectable enough long ago--and on that account
I didn't want to marry you, only--only you urged me!"

She broke into sobs, and turned her back to him.  It would almost
have won round any man but Angel Clare.  Within the remote depths of
his constitution, so gentle and affectionate as he was in general,
there lay hidden a hard logical deposit, like a vein of metal in a
soft loam, which turned the edge of everything that attempted to
traverse it.  It had blocked his acceptance of the Church; it blocked
his acceptance of Tess.  Moreover, his affection itself was less fire
than radiance, and, with regard to the other sex, when he ceased
to believe he ceased to follow: contrasting in this with many
impressionable natures, who remain sensuously infatuated with what
they intellectually despise.  He waited till her sobbing ceased.

"I wish half the women in England were as respectable as you," he
said, in an ebullition of bitterness against womankind in general.
"It isn't a question of respectability, but one of principle!"

He spoke such things as these and more of a kindred sort to her,
being still swayed by the antipathetic wave which warps direct souls
with such persistence when once their vision finds itself mocked by
appearances.  There was, it is true, underneath, a back current of
sympathy through which a woman of the world might have conquered him.
But Tess did not think of this; she took everything as her deserts,
and hardly opened her mouth.  The firmness of her devotion to him was
indeed almost pitiful; quick-tempered as she naturally was, nothing
that he could say made her unseemly; she sought not her own; was not
provoked; thought no evil of his treatment of her.  She might just
now have been Apostolic Charity herself returned to a self-seeking
modern world.

This evening, night, and morning were passed precisely as the
preceding ones had been passed.  On one, and only one, occasion did
she--the formerly free and independent Tess--venture to make any
advances.  It was on the third occasion of his starting after a meal
to go out to the flour-mill.  As he was leaving the table he said
"Goodbye," and she replied in the same words, at the same time
inclining her mouth in the way of his.  He did not avail himself of
the invitation, saying, as he turned hastily aside--

"I shall be home punctually."

Tess shrank into herself as if she had been struck.  Often enough had
he tried to reach those lips against her consent--often had he said
gaily that her mouth and breath tasted of the butter and eggs and
milk and honey on which she mainly lived, that he drew sustenance
from them, and other follies of that sort.  But he did not care for
them now.  He observed her sudden shrinking, and said gently--

"You know, I have to think of a course.  It was imperative that we
should stay together a little while, to avoid the scandal to you that
would have resulted from our immediate parting.  But you must see it
is only for form's sake."

"Yes," said Tess absently.

He went out, and on his way to the mill stood still, and wished for a
moment that he had responded yet more kindly, and kissed her once at
least.

Thus they lived through this despairing day or two; in the same
house, truly; but more widely apart than before they were lovers.  It
was evident to her that he was, as he had said, living with paralyzed
activities in his endeavour to think of a plan of procedure.  She
was awe-stricken to discover such determination under such apparent
flexibility.  His consistency was, indeed, too cruel.  She no longer
expected forgiveness now.  More than once she thought of going away
from him during his absence at the mill; but she feared that this,
instead of benefiting him, might be the means of hampering and
humiliating him yet more if it should become known.

Meanwhile Clare was meditating, verily.  His thought had been
unsuspended; he was becoming ill with thinking; eaten out with
thinking, withered by thinking; scourged out of all his former
pulsating, flexuous domesticity.  He walked about saying to himself,
"What's to be done--what's to be done?" and by chance she overheard
him.  It caused her to break the reserve about their future which had
hitherto prevailed.

"I suppose--you are not going to live with me--long, are you, Angel?"
she asked, the sunk corners of her mouth betraying how purely
mechanical were the means by which she retained that expression of
chastened calm upon her face.

"I cannot" he said, "without despising myself, and what is worse,
perhaps, despising you.  I mean, of course, cannot live with you
in the ordinary sense.  At present, whatever I feel, I do not
despise you.  And, let me speak plainly, or you may not see all my
difficulties.  How can we live together while that man lives?--he
being your husband in nature, and not I.  If he were dead it might
be different...  Besides, that's not all the difficulty; it lies in
another consideration--one bearing upon the future of other people
than ourselves.  Think of years to come, and children being born to
us, and this past matter getting known--for it must get known.  There
is not an uttermost part of the earth but somebody comes from it or
goes to it from elsewhere.  Well, think of wretches of our flesh and
blood growing up under a taunt which they will gradually get to feel
the full force of with their expanding years.  What an awakening
for them!  What a prospect!  Can you honestly say 'Remain' after
contemplating this contingency?  Don't you think we had better
endure the ills we have than fly to others?"

Her eyelids, weighted with trouble, continued drooping as before.

"I cannot say 'Remain,'" she answered, "I cannot; I had not thought
so far."

Tess's feminine hope--shall we confess it?--had been so obstinately
recuperative as to revive in her surreptitious visions of a
domiciliary intimacy continued long enough to break down his coldness
even against his judgement.  Though unsophisticated in the usual
sense, she was not incomplete; and it would have denoted deficiency
of womanhood if she had not instinctively known what an argument lies
in propinquity.  Nothing else would serve her, she knew, if this
failed.  It was wrong to hope in what was of the nature of strategy,
she said to herself: yet that sort of hope she could not extinguish.
His last representation had now been made, and it was, as she said,
a new view.  She had truly never thought so far as that, and his
lucid picture of possible offspring who would scorn her was one that
brought deadly convictions to an honest heart which was humanitarian
to its centre.  Sheer experience had already taught her that in some
circumstances there was one thing better than to lead a good life,
and that was to be saved from leading any life whatever.  Like all
who have been previsioned by suffering, she could, in the words of
M. Sully-Prudhomme, hear a penal sentence in the fiat, "You shall be
born," particularly if addressed to potential issue of hers.

Yet such is the vulpine slyness of Dame Nature, that, till now, Tess
had been hoodwinked by her love for Clare into forgetting it might
result in vitalizations that would inflict upon others what she had
bewailed as misfortune to herself.

She therefore could not withstand his argument.  But with the
self-combating proclivity of the supersensitive, an answer thereto
arose in Clare's own mind, and he almost feared it.  It was based
on her exceptional physical nature; and she might have used it
promisingly. She might have added besides: "On an Australian upland
or Texan plain, who is to know or care about my misfortunes, or to
reproach me or you?"  Yet, like the majority of women, she accepted
the momentary presentment as if it were the inevitable.  And she
may have been right.  The intuitive heart of woman knoweth not only
its own bitterness, but its husband's, and even if these assumed
reproaches were not likely to be addressed to him or to his by
strangers, they might have reached his ears from his own fastidious
brain.

It was the third day of the estrangement.  Some might risk the odd
paradox that with more animalism he would have been the nobler man.
We do not say it.  Yet Clare's love was doubtless ethereal to a
fault, imaginative to impracticability.  With these natures, corporal
presence is something less appealing than corporal absence; the
latter creating an ideal presence that conveniently drops the defects
of the real.  She found that her personality did not plead her cause
so forcibly as she had anticipated.  The figurative phrase was true:
she was another woman than the one who had excited his desire.

"I have thought over what you say," she remarked to him, moving her
forefinger over the tablecloth, her other hand, which bore the ring
that mocked them both, supporting her forehead.  "It is quite true,
     all of it; it must be.  You must go away from me."

     "But what can you do?"

     "I can go home."

     Clare had not thought of that.

     "Are you sure?" he inquired.

     "Quite sure.  We ought to part, and we may as well get it past and
     done.  You once said that I was apt to win men against their better
     judgement; and if I am constantly before your eyes I may cause you
     to change your plans in opposition to your reason and wish; and
     afterwards your repentance and my sorrow will be terrible."

     "And you would like to go home?" he asked.

     "I want to leave you, and go home."

     "Then it shall be so."

     Though she did not look up at him, she started.  There was a
     difference between the proposition and the covenant, which she had
     felt only too quickly.

     "I feared it would come to this," she murmured, her countenance
     meekly fixed.  "I don't complain, Angel, I--I think it best.  What
     you said has quite convinced me.  Yes, though nobody else should
     reproach me if we should stay together, yet somewhen, years hence,
     you might get angry with me for any ordinary matter, and knowing what
     you do of my bygones, you yourself might be tempted to say words, and
     they might be overheard, perhaps by my own children.  O, what only
     hurts me now would torture and kill me then! I will go--to-morrow."

     "And I shall not stay here.  Though I didn't like to initiate it, I
     have seen that it was advisable we should part--at least for a while,
     till I can better see the shape that things have taken, and can write
     to you."

     Tess stole a glance at her husband.  He was pale, even tremulous;
     but, as before, she was appalled by the determination revealed in the
     depths of this gentle being she had married--the will to subdue the
     grosser to the subtler emotion, the substance to the conception, the
     flesh to the spirit.  Propensities, tendencies, habits, were as dead
     leaves upon the tyrannous wind of his imaginative ascendency.

     He may have observed her look, for he explained--

     "I think of people more kindly when I am away from them"; adding
     cynically, "God knows; perhaps we will shake down together some day,
     for weariness; thousands have done it!"

     That day he began to pack up, and she went upstairs and began to pack
     also.  Both knew that it was in their two minds that they might part
     the next morning for ever, despite the gloss of assuaging conjectures
     thrown over their proceeding because they were of the sort to whom
     any parting which has an air of finality is a torture.  He knew,
     and she knew, that, though the fascination which each had exercised
     over the other--on her part independently of accomplishments--would
     probably in the first days of their separation be even more potent
     than ever, time must attenuate that effect; the practical arguments
     against accepting her as a housemate might pronounce themselves more
     strongly in the boreal light of a remoter view.  Moreover, when two
     people are once parted--have abandoned a common domicile and a common
     environment--new growths insensibly bud upward to fill each vacated
     place; unforeseen accidents hinder intentions, and old plans are
     forgotten.

Angel arises at dawn; the neighboring cottager's wife knocks on the door, but he sends her away because her presence is awkward. Angel prepares breakfast, and the two behave civilly to one another, although the pair are "but ashes of their former fires. Angel asks again if it is true, and he asks if the man is still in England. Tess says that he can get rid of her by divorcing her; her confession has given him adequate grounds for that. She tells him that she thought of putting an end to herself under the mistletoe, but did not because she felt it would cause scandal. Tess continues to do chores around the house for Angel while he visits a local miller, but he scolds her for behaving as a servant and not a wife. Tess breaks into tears, claiming that she had told him that she was not respectable enough to marry him, but he urged her. Her tears would have broken any man but Angel Clare, whose affection masks a hard, logical deposit like a vein of metal that blocks his acceptance of Tess as it blocked his acceptance of the Church. He tells her that it is not a question of respectability, but one of principle. Angel tells Tess that it is imperative that they should stay together to avoid scandal, but it is only for the sake of form. Angel tells Tess that he cannot live with Tess without despising himself and despising her. He considers what their possible children may think. She considers arguing that in Texas or Australia, nobody will know about her misfortunes, but she accepts the momentary sentiment as inevitable. Angel's love is doubtless ethereal to a fault, imaginative to impracticability. He orders her to go away from him, and she says that she can go home. She claims that she has convinced him and that she thinks it best.

In this chapter, Hardy focuses on Angel's principles and the effects that they have on his marriage to Tess. As earlier established, it is the idealistic perception that he has of Tess that blocks his acceptance of her; he can envision her either as a wholehearted saint or sinner, without any room for more subtle shadings. His stern devotion to these principles cause a certain inconsistency of behavior. He values his idealized conception of Tess as well as values of courtesy and duty. Angel does not allow Tess to act as a servant because, in principle, she is his wife and should not behave as such; nevertheless, his principles prevent him from treating Tess fully as his wife and partner. Angel will behave well toward Tess only insofar as he wishes to prevent scandal and assuage his guilt. Tess thus finds herself bereft at the end of this chapter, recalling her earlier fate after leaving The Chase. However, in this situation her fate occurs because of opposite impulses from the rejecting suitor. While Alec behaves only according to his passions, Angel cannot operate on a level that is not intellectual. Hardy therefore constructs a situation in which Angel, if he were to behave more like Alec, his entirely unscrupulous polar opposite, he would act more honorably to Tess. Instead, by remaining tied to his principles of morality, Angel acts far less decently than he would if he were to be more subject to his passions

Angel wakes up early, and sees their supper still sitting on the table, untouched. The woman from the cottage next door arrives to fix their breakfast, and Angel tells her from the window to leave the milk on the doorstep. He gets the rest of their breakfast together from the supplies in the pantry, and calls Tess down to eat. She comes down looking hopeful--maybe he's decided to forgive her. But he looks cold, and they barely speak. She looks so pure that he can hardly believe that her story was true. But she repeats that it was all true. Angel then asks if he's still alive. Tess thinks he means the baby, and replies that the baby died. But Angel meant the man--yes, the man is still alive, and still lives in England. Tess says that he can still get rid of her, if he wants to, by divorcing her. She had assumed that her confession would give him legal grounds to do so, if he wanted to. But he says he can't do that--it would be impossible, because it had happened before their marriage. Tess feels terribly guilty, and says that if she hadn't thought he'd be able to divorce her if he wanted, she would never have married her, and would have killed herself the night before, as she had planned. He asks what she means--apparently she had considered hanging herself from the bedstead, but had lost her courage. He tells her never to think of such a thing again, and she promises. Then Angel goes out and walks to the mill, since he does, after all, need to learn how mills work if he wants to be a farmer. Tess, meanwhile, stays at home to get lunch ready for when he comes home that afternoon. She's so eager to please him that she has the meal on the table exactly as he walks in the door. They discuss the mill as they eat, and he tells her to stop working so hard: she's his wife, not his servant. Tess is so glad to hear him call her his wife that she cries, and says she would never have married him, only he urged her to. Another couple of days pass in the same way. At one point, she puckers up for a kiss, but he turns away, and says that they must part soon, and that he's only stayed with her this long so that people won't gossip. He says that he can't live with her without hating himself, and growing to hate her. He can't live with her while Alec is still alive. Tess had hoped that spending time together, even though they're not talking, would slowly soften him and make him forgive her. But he points out that if they ever had children, their children would be disgraced as much as she would be if anyone ever found out. The next day, Tess says that he's right--they can't be together, and she'll go home to her parents. Angel agrees that that's the only option, and they both begin to pack.

CHAPTER 36 Summary The next morning Angel asks Tess to say her past is not true, but Tess cannot lie to him. Although Angel is crushed, he is not harsh with Tess. He treats her gently, but refuses to accept her as his wife. Tess proposes a divorce and is horrified to learn that the law does not permit it. For the next few days, Tess devotedly serves Angel and tries her best to soothe his broken heart. Nothing seems to change his attitude. Finally, Tess accepts that he will never accept her. As a result, she suggests going home, and Angel agrees it is a good idea. They both know that a separation will save them from the misery of further pretension. Notes Angel is a hard man. Although he still has deep feelings for Tess, his principles forbid him from accepting her as his wife. He can no longer imagine them living together on the farm, and he fears that if they were to have children, they would suffer. The ashes in the fireplace remind him of his wrecked relationship. Tess is equally miserable. She knows that Angel will never accept her and feels she is getting her just reward. When she learns that divorce is not a possibility, she offers to leave him and return home. Angel agrees that it is the best idea


Midnight came and passed silently, for there was nothing to announce
it in the Valley of the Froom.

Not long after one o'clock there was a slight creak in the darkened
farmhouse once the mansion of the d'Urbervilles.  Tess, who used the
upper chamber, heard it and awoke.  It had come from the corner step
of the staircase, which, as usual, was loosely nailed.  She saw the
door of her bedroom open, and the figure of her husband crossed the
stream of moonlight with a curiously careful tread.  He was in his
shirt and trousers only, and her first flush of joy died when she
perceived that his eyes were fixed in an unnatural stare on vacancy.
When he reached the middle of the room he stood still and murmured in
tones of indescribable sadness--

"Dead! dead! dead!"

Under the influence of any strongly-disturbing force, Clare would
occasionally walk in his sleep, and even perform strange feats, such
as he had done on the night of their return from market just before
their marriage, when he re-enacted in his bedroom his combat with the
man who had insulted her.  Tess saw that continued mental distress
had wrought him into that somnambulistic state now.

Her loyal confidence in him lay so deep down in her heart, that,
awake or asleep, he inspired her with no sort of personal fear.  If
he had entered with a pistol in his hand he would scarcely have
disturbed her trust in his protectiveness.

Clare came close, and bent over her. "Dead, dead, dead!" he murmured.

After fixedly regarding her for some moments with the same gaze of
unmeasurable woe, he bent lower, enclosed her in his arms, and rolled
her in the sheet as in a shroud.  Then lifting her from the bed with
as much respect as one would show to a dead body, he carried her
across the room, murmuring--

"My poor, poor Tess--my dearest, darling Tess!  So sweet, so good, so
true!"

The words of endearment, withheld so severely in his waking hours,
were inexpressibly sweet to her forlorn and hungry heart.  If it had
been to save her weary life she would not, by moving or struggling,
have put an end to the position she found herself in.  Thus she lay
in absolute stillness, scarcely venturing to breathe, and, wondering
what he was going to do with her, suffered herself to be borne out
upon the landing.

"My wife--dead, dead!" he said.

He paused in his labours for a moment to lean with her against the
banister.  Was he going to throw her down?  Self-solicitude was near
extinction in her, and in the knowledge that he had planned to depart
on the morrow, possibly for always, she lay in his arms in this
precarious position with a sense rather of luxury than of terror.  If
they could only fall together, and both be dashed to pieces, how fit,
how desirable.

However, he did not let her fall, but took advantage of the support
of the handrail to imprint a kiss upon her lips--lips in the day-time
scorned.  Then he clasped her with a renewed firmness of hold, and
descended the staircase.  The creak of the loose stair did not awaken
him, and they reached the ground-floor safely.  Freeing one of his
hands from his grasp of her for a moment, he slid back the door-bar
and passed out, slightly striking his stockinged toe against the edge
of the door.  But this he seemed not to mind, and, having room for
extension in the open air, he lifted her against his shoulder, so
that he could carry her with ease, the absence of clothes taking much
from his burden.  Thus he bore her off the premises in the direction
of the river a few yards distant.

His ultimate intention, if he had any, she had not yet divined; and
she found herself conjecturing on the matter as a third person might
have done.  So easefully had she delivered her whole being up to him
that it pleased her to think he was regarding her as his absolute
possession, to dispose of as he should choose.  It was consoling,
under the hovering terror of to-morrow's separation, to feel that he
really recognized her now as his wife Tess, and did not cast her off,
even if in that recognition he went so far as to arrogate to himself
the right of harming her.

Ah! now she knew what he was dreaming of--that Sunday morning when he
had borne her along through the water with the other dairymaids, who
had loved him nearly as much as she, if that were possible, which
Tess could hardly admit.  Clare did not cross the bridge with her,
but proceeding several paces on the same side towards the adjoining
mill, at length stood still on the brink of the river.

Its waters, in creeping down these miles of meadowland, frequently
divided, serpentining in purposeless curves, looping themselves
around little islands that had no name, returning and re-embodying
themselves as a broad main stream further on.  Opposite the spot to
which he had brought her was such a general confluence, and the river
was proportionately voluminous and deep.  Across it was a narrow
foot-bridge; but now the autumn flood had washed the handrail away,
leaving the bare plank only, which, lying a few inches above the
speeding current, formed a giddy pathway for even steady heads; and
Tess had noticed from the window of the house in the day-time young
men walking across upon it as a feat in balancing.  Her husband had
possibly observed the same performance; anyhow, he now mounted the
plank, and, sliding one foot forward, advanced along it.

Was he going to drown her?  Probably he was.  The spot was lonely,
the river deep and wide enough to make such a purpose easy of
accomplishment.  He might drown her if he would; it would be better
than parting to-morrow to lead severed lives.

The swift stream raced and gyrated under them, tossing, distorting,
and splitting the moon's reflected face.  Spots of froth travelled
past, and intercepted weeds waved behind the piles.  If they could
both fall together into the current now, their arms would be so
tightly clasped together that they could not be saved; they would
go out of the world almost painlessly, and there would be no more
reproach to her, or to him for marrying her.  His last half-hour with
her would have been a loving one, while if they lived till he awoke,
his day-time aversion would return, and this hour would remain to be
contemplated only as a transient dream.

The impulse stirred in her, yet she dared not indulge it, to make a
movement that would have precipitated them both into the gulf.  How
she valued her own life had been proved; but his--she had no right to
tamper with it.  He reached the other side with her in safety.

Here they were within a plantation which formed the Abbey grounds,
and taking a new hold of her he went onward a few steps till they
reached the ruined choir of the Abbey-church.  Against the north wall
was the empty stone coffin of an abbot, in which every tourist with
a turn for grim humour was accustomed to stretch himself.  In this
Clare carefully laid Tess.  Having kissed her lips a second time he
breathed deeply, as if a greatly desired end were attained.  Clare
then lay down on the ground alongside, when he immediately fell into
the deep dead slumber of exhaustion, and remained motionless as a
log.  The spurt of mental excitement which had produced the effort
was now over.

Tess sat up in the coffin.  The night, though dry and mild for the
season, was more than sufficiently cold to make it dangerous for him
to remain here long, in his half-clothed state.  If he were left to
himself he would in all probability stay there till the morning, and
be chilled to certain death.  She had heard of such deaths after
sleep-walking.  But how could she dare to awaken him, and let him
know what he had been doing, when it would mortify him to discover
his folly in respect of her?  Tess, however, stepping out of her
stone confine, shook him slightly, but was unable to arouse him
without being violent.  It was indispensable to do something, for she
was beginning to shiver, the sheet being but a poor protection.  Her
excitement had in a measure kept her warm during the few minutes'
adventure; but that beatific interval was over.

It suddenly occurred to her to try persuasion; and accordingly she
whispered in his ear, with as much firmness and decision as she could
summon--

"Let us walk on, darling," at the same time taking him suggestively
by the arm.  To her relief, he unresistingly acquiesced; her words
had apparently thrown him back into his dream, which thenceforward
seemed to enter on a new phase, wherein he fancied she had risen as a
spirit, and was leading him to Heaven. Thus she conducted him by the
arm to the stone bridge in front of their residence, crossing which
they stood at the manor-house door.  Tess's feet were quite bare, and
the stones hurt her, and chilled her to the bone; but Clare was in
his woollen stockings, and appeared to feel no discomfort.

There was no further difficulty.  She induced him to lie down on his
own sofa bed, and covered him up warmly, lighting a temporary fire of
wood, to dry any dampness out of him.  The noise of these attentions
she thought might awaken him, and secretly wished that they might.
But the exhaustion of his mind and body was such that he remained
undisturbed.

As soon as they met the next morning Tess divined that Angel knew
little or nothing of how far she had been concerned in the night's
excursion, though, as regarded himself, he may have been aware that
he had not lain still.  In truth, he had awakened that morning from
a sleep deep as annihilation; and during those first few moments
in which the brain, like a Samson shaking himself, is trying its
strength, he had some dim notion of an unusual nocturnal proceeding.
But the realities of his situation soon displaced conjecture on the
other subject.

He waited in expectancy to discern some mental pointing; he knew that
if any intention of his, concluded over-night, did not vanish in the
light of morning, it stood on a basis approximating to one of pure
reason, even if initiated by impulse of feeling; that it was so
far, therefore, to be trusted.  He thus beheld in the pale morning
light the resolve to separate from her; not as a hot and indignant
instinct, but denuded of the passionateness which had made it scorch
and burn; standing in its bones; nothing but a skeleton, but none the
less there.  Clare no longer hesitated.

At breakfast, and while they were packing the few remaining articles,
he showed his weariness from the night's effort so unmistakeably that
Tess was on the point of revealing all that had happened; but the
reflection that it would anger him, grieve him, stultify him, to know
that he had instinctively manifested a fondness for her of which his
common-sense did not approve, that his inclination had compromised
his dignity when reason slept, again deterred her.  It was too much
like laughing at a man when sober for his erratic deeds during
intoxication.

It just crossed her mind, too, that he might have a faint
recollection of his tender vagary, and was disinclined to allude to
it from a conviction that she would take amatory advantage of the
opportunity it gave her of appealing to him anew not to go.

He had ordered by letter a vehicle from the nearest town, and
soon after breakfast it arrived.  She saw in it the beginning of
the end--the temporary end, at least, for the revelation of his
tenderness by the incident of the night raised dreams of a possible
future with him.  The luggage was put on the top, and the man drove
them off, the miller and the old waiting-woman expressing some
surprise at their precipitate departure, which Clare attributed to
his discovery that the mill-work was not of the modern kind which he
wished to investigate, a statement that was true so far as it went.
Beyond this there was nothing in the manner of their leaving to
suggest a fiasco, or that they were not going together to visit
friends.

Their route lay near the dairy from which they had started with such
solemn joy in each other a few days back, and as Clare wished to wind
up his business with Mr Crick, Tess could hardly avoid paying Mrs
Crick a call at the same time, unless she would excite suspicion of
their unhappy state.

To make the call as unobtrusive as possible, they left the carriage
by the wicket leading down from the high road to the dairy-house, and
descended the track on foot, side by side.  The withy-bed had been
cut, and they could see over the stumps the spot to which Clare had
followed her when he pressed her to be his wife; to the left the
enclosure in which she had been fascinated by his harp; and far away
behind the cow-stalls the mead which had been the scene of their
first embrace.  The gold of the summer picture was now gray, the
colours mean, the rich soil mud, and the river cold.

Over the barton-gate the dairyman saw them, and came forward,
throwing into his face the kind of jocularity deemed appropriate
in Talbothays and its vicinity on the re-appearance of the
newly-married.  Then Mrs Crick emerged from the house, and several
others of their old acquaintance, though Marian and Retty did not
seem to be there.

Tess valiantly bore their sly attacks and friendly humours, which
affected her far otherwise than they supposed.  In the tacit
agreement of husband and wife to keep their estrangement a secret
they behaved as would have been ordinary.  And then, although she
would rather there had been no word spoken on the subject, Tess had
to hear in detail the story of Marian and Retty.  The later had gone
home to her father's, and Marian had left to look for employment
elsewhere.  They feared she would come to no good.

To dissipate the sadness of this recital Tess went and bade all her
favourite cows goodbye, touching each of them with her hand, and as
she and Clare stood side by side at leaving, as if united body and
soul, there would have been something peculiarly sorry in their
aspect to one who should have seen it truly; two limbs of one life,
as they outwardly were, his arm touching hers, her skirts touching
him, facing one way, as against all the dairy facing the other,
speaking in their adieux as "we", and yet sundered like the poles.
Perhaps something unusually stiff and embarrassed in their attitude,
some awkwardness in acting up to their profession of unity, different
from the natural shyness of young couples, may have been apparent,
for when they were gone Mrs Crick said to her husband--

"How onnatural the brightness of her eyes did seem, and how they
stood like waxen images and talked as if they were in a dream!
Didn't it strike 'ee that 'twas so?  Tess had always sommat strange
in her, and she's not now quite like the proud young bride of a
well-be-doing man."

They re-entered the vehicle, and were driven along the roads towards
Weatherbury and Stagfoot Lane, till they reached the Lane inn, where
Clare dismissed the fly and man.  They rested here a while, and
entering the Vale were next driven onward towards her home by a
stranger who did not know their relations.  At a midway point, when
Nuttlebury had been passed, and where there were cross-roads, Clare
stopped the conveyance and said to Tess that if she meant to return
to her mother's house it was here that he would leave her.  As they
could not talk with freedom in the driver's presence he asked her to
accompany him for a few steps on foot along one of the branch roads;
she assented, and directing the man to wait a few minutes they
strolled away.

"Now, let us understand each other," he said gently.  "There is no
anger between us, though there is that which I cannot endure at
present.  I will try to bring myself to endure it.  I will let you
know where I go to as soon as I know myself.  And if I can bring
myself to bear it--if it is desirable, possible--I will come to you.
But until I come to you it will be better that you should not try to
come to me."

The severity of the decree seemed deadly to Tess; she saw his view of
her clearly enough; he could regard her in no other light than that
of one who had practised gross deceit upon him.  Yet could a woman
who had done even what she had done deserve all this?  But she could
contest the point with him no further.  She simply repeated after him
his own words.

"Until you come to me I must not try to come to you?"

"Just so."

"May I write to you?"

"O yes--if you are ill, or want anything at all.  I hope that will
not be the case; so that it may happen that I write first to you."

"I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my
punishment ought to be; only--only--don't make it more than I can
bear!"

That was all she said on the matter.  If Tess had been artful, had
she made a scene, fainted, wept hysterically, in that lonely lane,
notwithstanding the fury of fastidiousness with which he was
possessed, he would probably not have withstood her.  But her mood
of long-suffering made his way easy for him, and she herself was
his best advocate.  Pride, too, entered into her submission--which
perhaps was a symptom of that reckless acquiescence in chance too
apparent in the whole d'Urberville family--and the many effective
chords which she could have stirred by an appeal were left untouched.

The remainder of their discourse was on practical matters only.  He
now handed her a packet containing a fairly good sum of money, which
he had obtained from his bankers for the purpose.  The brilliants,
the interest in which seemed to be Tess's for her life only (if he
understood the wording of the will), he advised her to let him send
to a bank for safety; and to this she readily agreed.

These things arranged, he walked with Tess back to the carriage,
and handed her in.  The coachman was paid and told where to drive
her.  Taking next his own bag and umbrella--the sole articles he had
brought with him hitherwards--he bade her goodbye; and they parted
there and then.

The fly moved creepingly up a hill, and Clare watched it go with an
unpremeditated hope that Tess would look out of the window for one
moment.  But that she never thought of doing, would not have ventured
to do, lying in a half-dead faint inside.  Thus he beheld her recede,
and in the anguish of his heart quoted a line from a poet, with
peculiar emendations of his own--

    God's NOT in his heaven:
    All's WRONG with the world!

When Tess had passed over the crest of the hill he turned to go his
own way, and hardly knew that he loved her still.

At midnight, Angel enters the bedroom to find Tess, who was asleep. Standing still, he murmurs in an indescribably sad tone "dead, dead, dead. Angel occasionally walks in his sleep as he does now. Tess sees this continued mental distress. Angel bends low and encloses Tess in his arms, and rolls her in the sheet as in a shroud. He lifts her from the bed and carries her across the room, murmuring "my dearest darling Tess. So sweet so good, so true. He leans her against the banister as if to throw her down, but rather kisses her and descends the staircase. Tess cannot determine Angel's ultimate intention, but finally realizes that he is dreaming about the Sunday when he carried her across the water with the other milkmaids. He carries her near the river, and she believes he may drown her. He walks through the shallow areas of the river carrying her, but they reach the other side in safety; if she had awakened him, they would have fallen into the gulf and both died. Angel carries her to the empty stone coffin of an abbot, where he lays Tess and then falls down asleep. Tess sits up in the coffin, but does not awake Angel out of fear that he may die if awakened from sleep-walking. She walks him back to the house and induces him to lay down on the sofa bed. The next morning, Angel seems to know nothing about the previous night's events. The two leave Wellbridge to return to Talbothays to pay a visit to the Cricks. At Talbothays, Tess learns that Marian and Retty have left Talbothays, and she fears they will come to no good. After Tess and Angel leave, Mrs. Crick remarks how unnatural the two look, as if they were in a dream. Angel tells Tess that he has no anger, and he will let her know where he is going as soon as he himself knows. He tells her that until he comes to her she should not come to him, and that she should write if she is ill or if she wants anything.

Hardy explores the depths to which Angel has been wounded by Tess's revelation in this chapter, in which Angel, while sleepwalking, reveals the great psychological torment that he feels. He so fervently believes that his wife is dead that he carries her to a coffin and lays her there. This is a departure from previous chapters in which Hardy has portrayed Angel as coldly observing his principles without any display of affection for his wife. Here the unconscious Angel shows that he still loves the previous conception he had of Tess, yet cannot reconcile it with this new information about her. His anguish is so great that it possesses him while asleep. However, that Angel cannot realize what he has done while sleepwalking demonstrates that he is unaware of the deep emotional vein of his torment; rather, he focuses on the intellectual disappointment. If Hardy allows Angel greater sympathy in this chapter, he also shows the degree to which Tess will sacrifice herself for her husband. Tess remains completely submissive to her sleepwalking husband as he carries her across the river and to the cemetery. She remains open to the possibility that he may murder her or cause their mutual death, but remains still rather than disturb Angel. Tess therefore makes manifest her promise to Angel in previous chapters by leaving her life in his hands. The final separation of Tess and Angel that ends this chapter leaves some degree of room for consideration. Angel remains calm, as always, yet realizes that it is he who must change before he can accept Tess again. He therefore places the burden of acceptance on himself rather than on Tess, while still allowing for her sustenance. Angel takes grudging steps toward admitting his own fallibility; his struggle to sacrifice his principles for greater ones and Tess's reaction to her new fate will provide a great deal of the narrative drive of the rest of the novel

That night, Tess wakes up when she hears a noise on the stairs. It's Angel: he's having another sleepwalking episode. He comes into her room, and stands over her bed, murmuring, "Dead, dead, dead!" and sounding very, very sad. She's not afraid of him, even though he doesn't know what he's doing. Then he murmurs, "My poor, poor Tess--my dearest, darling Tess! So sweet, so good, so true!" . Now she really doesn't want to wake him up. He hasn't murmured sweet nothings to her in days, and she's missed it. Then it becomes clear that he's dreaming that she is dead, and he picks up her body and carries her downstairs, and out the door. He carries down towards the river, and Tess remembers the time he carried her, and the other three dairymaids, across the flood. There's a small footbridge over the river, which is running high because of the recent rain. The bridge is narrow and Tess is a little nervous as he carries her across it--more for his sake than for her own, of course. But they reach the far side safely. He carries her to a ruined abbey, and puts her down in an empty stone coffin without a lid, and kisses her mouth. Then he lies down on the ground and falls asleep. She's afraid they'll both freeze to death if they stay there, but she doesn't want to embarrass him by waking him up. So she takes him by the arm and leads him back to the house. The next morning, it's clear that he has no recollection of any of it. She thinks about telling him, but doesn't want to embarrass him or make him angry. He had ordered a carriage the day before to come and pick her up after breakfast, and it arrives promptly. They swing by the Talbothays dairy, because Angel needs to wrap things up with Dairyman Crick, and they have to pretend everything is okay between them while they're there. Afterwards, Angel tells her that he'll let her know where he's going as soon as he's decided, and that eventually he might come back to her. But she shouldn't try to come to him. It's totally a "don't call us, we'll call you" kind of conversation. He says that she can write him if she's sick or needs anything, but that he hopes that won't happen. He's certainly not encouraging her to write love letters. He gives her an envelope of money, and advises her to put it in the bank. Then he helps her climb back in the carriage, and sends her on her way back to her parents' house. He watches the carriage disappear, totally miserable because, of course, he still loves her.

CHAPTER 37 Summary The night before Tess is to leave, she sees her husband sleep- walking. He assumes her to be dead and places her in a stone coffin after wrapping her up in a sheet and carrying her to the old Abbey church. She handles the situation very boldly and with subtle persuasion brings him back to the house. She does not mention the incident the next morning, and Angel does not seem to remember it. On their way to Marlott the next morning, Tess and Angel visit with the Cricks, but keep their separation a secret from them. When they draw near to Tess's hometown, Angel turns to go. He leaves Tess with a good sum of money, takes the diamonds from her, and then forbids her to approach him in person. He tells her to communicate only through letters until he decides to come for her. Tess agrees to his commands, departs for home, and slips again into her suffering, melancholy mood. Notes Love survives on mutual trust, and since Tess has broken that trust, Angel has difficulty dealing with her. His sleepwalking expresses his state of mind. His heart refuses to believe that the girl he loves could cause him so much agony. He is convinced that the real Tess is dead; therefore, he subconsciously buries her. It is a far-fetched and melodramatic scene. Tess suffers through the whole incident in silence. Through years of practice, she has learned to accept her punishment gracefully. On the day of their separation, Angel is a picture of practicality. He goes to the dairy and completes his business with Mr. Crick, not mentioning the fact that he and Tess are separating. He accompanies his wife on her journey until they reach the outskirts of Marlott. Then Angel gives her some money, retrieves his diamonds, and tells Tess not to contact him in person, only through letters. He says he will try to accept their situation and will contact her in the future. Tess feels totally devastated and hopeless


As she drove on through Blackmoor Vale, and the landscape of her
youth began to open around her, Tess aroused herself from her stupor.
Her first thought was how would she be able to face her parents?

She reached a turnpike-gate which stood upon the highway to the
village.  It was thrown open by a stranger, not by the old man who
had kept it for many years, and to whom she had been known; he had
probably left on New Year's Day, the date when such changes were
made.  Having received no intelligence lately from her home, she
asked the turnpike-keeper for news.

"Oh--nothing, miss," he answered.  "Marlott is Marlott still.  Folks
have died and that.  John Durbeyfield, too, hev had a daughter
married this week to a gentleman-farmer; not from John's own house,
you know; they was married elsewhere; the gentleman being of that
high standing that John's own folk was not considered well-be-doing
enough to have any part in it, the bridegroom seeming not to know
how't have been discovered that John is a old and ancient nobleman
himself by blood, with family skillentons in their own vaults to
this day, but done out of his property in the time o' the Romans.
However, Sir John, as we call 'n now, kept up the wedding-day as well
as he could, and stood treat to everybody in the parish; and John's
wife sung songs at The Pure Drop till past eleven o'clock."

Hearing this, Tess felt so sick at heart that she could not decide
to go home publicly in the fly with her luggage and belongings.  She
asked the turnpike-keeper if she might deposit her things at his
house for a while, and, on his offering no objection, she dismissed
her carriage, and went on to the village alone by a back lane.

At sight of her father's chimney she asked herself how she could
possibly enter the house?  Inside that cottage her relations were
calmly supposing her far away on a wedding-tour with a comparatively
rich man, who was to conduct her to bouncing prosperity; while here
she was, friendless, creeping up to the old door quite by herself,
with no better place to go to in the world.

She did not reach the house unobserved.  Just by the garden-hedge she
was met by a girl who knew her--one of the two or three with whom she
had been intimate at school.  After making a few inquiries as to how
Tess came there, her friend, unheeding her tragic look, interrupted
with--

"But where's thy gentleman, Tess?"

Tess hastily explained that he had been called away on business, and,
leaving her interlocutor, clambered over the garden-hedge, and thus
made her way to the house.

As she went up the garden-path she heard her mother singing by the
back door, coming in sight of which she perceived Mrs Durbeyfield on
the doorstep in the act of wringing a sheet.  Having performed this
without observing Tess, she went indoors, and her daughter followed
her.

The washing-tub stood in the same old place on the same old
quarter-hogshead, and her mother, having thrown the sheet aside, was
about to plunge her arms in anew.

"Why--Tess!--my chil'--I thought you was married!--married really and
truly this time--we sent the cider--"

"Yes, mother; so I am."

"Going to be?"

"No--I am married."

"Married!  Then where's thy husband?"

"Oh, he's gone away for a time."

"Gone away!  When was you married, then?  The day you said?"

"Yes, Tuesday, mother."

"And now 'tis on'y Saturday, and he gone away?"

"Yes, he's gone."

"What's the meaning o' that?  'Nation seize such husbands as you seem
to get, say I!"

"Mother!"  Tess went across to Joan Durbeyfield, laid her face upon
the matron's bosom, and burst into sobs.  "I don't know how to tell
'ee, mother!  You said to me, and wrote to me, that I was not to tell
him.  But I did tell him--I couldn't help it--and he went away!"

"O you little fool--you little fool!" burst out Mrs Durbeyfield,
splashing Tess and herself in her agitation.  "My good God! that ever
I should ha' lived to say it, but I say it again, you little fool!"

Tess was convulsed with weeping, the tension of so many days having
relaxed at last.

"I know it--I know--I know!" she gasped through her sobs.  "But,
O my mother, I could not help it!  He was so good--and I felt
the wickedness of trying to blind him as to what had happened!
If--if--it were to be done again--I should do the same.  I could
not--I dared not--so sin--against him!"

"But you sinned enough to marry him first!"

"Yes, yes; that's where my misery do lie!  But I thought he could get
rid o' me by law if he were determined not to overlook it.  And O, if
you knew--if you could only half know how I loved him--how anxious I
was to have him--and how wrung I was between caring so much for him
and my wish to be fair to him!"

Tess was so shaken that she could get no further, and sank, a
helpless thing, into a chair.

"Well, well; what's done can't be undone!  I'm sure I don't know why
children o' my bringing forth should all be bigger simpletons than
other people's--not to know better than to blab such a thing as
that, when he couldn't ha' found it out till too late!"  Here Mrs
Durbeyfield began shedding tears on her own account as a mother to
be pitied.  "What your father will say I don't know," she continued;
"for he's been talking about the wedding up at Rolliver's and The
Pure Drop every day since, and about his family getting back to their
rightful position through you--poor silly man!--and now you've made
this mess of it!  The Lord-a-Lord!"

As if to bring matters to a focus, Tess's father was heard
approaching at that moment.  He did not, however, enter immediately,
and Mrs Durbeyfield said that she would break the bad news to him
herself, Tess keeping out of sight for the present.  After her first
burst of disappointment Joan began to take the mishap as she had
taken Tess's original trouble, as she would have taken a wet holiday
or failure in the potato-crop; as a thing which had come upon them
irrespective of desert or folly; a chance external impingement to be
borne with; not a lesson.

Tess retreated upstairs and beheld casually that the beds had been
shifted, and new arrangements made.  Her old bed had been adapted for
two younger children.  There was no place here for her now.

The room below being unceiled she could hear most of what went on
there.  Presently her father entered, apparently carrying in a live
hen.  He was a foot-haggler now, having been obliged to sell his
second horse, and he travelled with his basket on his arm.  The hen
had been carried about this morning as it was often carried, to show
people that he was in his work, though it had lain, with its legs
tied, under the table at Rolliver's for more than an hour.

"We've just had up a story about--" Durbeyfield began, and thereupon
related in detail to his wife a discussion which had arisen at the
inn about the clergy, originated by the fact of his daughter having
married into a clerical family. "They was formerly styled 'sir',
like my own ancestry," he said, "though nowadays their true style,
strictly speaking, is 'clerk' only."  As Tess had wished that no
great publicity should be given to the event, he had mentioned no
particulars.  He hoped she would remove that prohibition soon.  He
proposed that the couple should take Tess's own name, d'Urberville,
as uncorrupted.  It was better than her husbands's.  He asked if any
letter had come from her that day.

Then Mrs Durbeyfield informed him that no letter had come, but Tess
unfortunately had come herself.

When at length the collapse was explained to him, a sullen
mortification, not usual with Durbeyfield, overpowered the influence
of the cheering glass.  Yet the intrinsic quality of the event moved
his touchy sensitiveness less than its conjectured effect upon the
minds of others.

"To think, now, that this was to be the end o't!" said Sir John.
"And I with a family vault under that there church of Kingsbere as
big as Squire Jollard's ale-cellar, and my folk lying there in sixes
and sevens, as genuine county bones and marrow as any recorded in
history.  And now to be sure what they fellers at Rolliver's and The
Pure Drop will say to me!  How they'll squint and glane, and say,
'This is yer mighty match is it; this is yer getting back to the true
level of yer forefathers in King Norman's time!' I feel this is too
much, Joan; I shall put an end to myself, title and all--I can bear
it no longer! ...  But she can make him keep her if he's married
her?"

"Why, yes. But she won't think o' doing that."

"D'ye think he really have married her?--or is it like the first--"

Poor Tess, who had heard as far as this, could not bear to hear more.
The perception that her word could be doubted even here, in her own
parental house, set her mind against the spot as nothing else could
have done.  How unexpected were the attacks of destiny!  And if her
father doubted her a little, would not neighbours and acquaintance
doubt her much?  O, she could not live long at home!

A few days, accordingly, were all that she allowed herself here, at
the end of which time she received a short note from Clare, informing
her that he had gone to the North of England to look at a farm.  In
her craving for the lustre of her true position as his wife, and to
hide from her parents the vast extent of the division between them,
she made use of this letter as her reason for again departing,
leaving them under the impression that she was setting out to join
him.  Still further to screen her husband from any imputation of
unkindness to her, she took twenty-five of the fifty pounds Clare
had given her, and handed the sum over to her mother, as if the wife
of a man like Angel Clare could well afford it, saying that it was a
slight return for the trouble and humiliation she had brought upon
them in years past.  With this assertion of her dignity she bade them
farewell; and after that there were lively doings in the Durbeyfield
household for some time on the strength of Tess's bounty, her mother
saying, and, indeed, believing, that the rupture which had arisen
between the young husband and wife had adjusted itself under their
strong feeling that they could not live apart from each other.

Tess returns to Marlott, where a turnpike-keeper tells how John Durbeyfield's daughter has married a gentleman farmer and the Durbeyfields have since been celebrating. Tess attempts to arrive at home unobserved, but cannot. She sees a girl whom she knew from school and claims that her husband is now away at business. When Tess arrives at home, she admits to her mother that she told Angel about her past. Tess claims that she could not so sin against him, but Joan replies that she sinned enough to marry him first. Tess finds that there is no place for her at home anymore; her old bed is now used by two of the younger children. Her father is a foot-haggler now, having sold his second horse. When John finds out what has happened to Tess, he laments the humiliation he will receive, and claims that he will put an end to himself. Tess decides to stay only a few days, and receives a letter from Angel informing her that he had gone to the north of England to look for a farm. Tess uses this as a reason to leave Marlott, claiming that she will join Angel. Before she leaves, she gives half of the fifty pounds Angel has given her to her mother, as a slight return for the humiliation she had brought upon them.

Once again Tess must endure the indignity of separation from a lover, as she returns to the Durbeyfields for the second time. In this chapter Hardy emphasizes the mistakes that Tess has made; Joan reminds Tess that she committed a sin by marrying Angel without telling him about Alec, thus she cannot behave as if her admission to Angel was an act of complete nobility. However, both Durbeyfield parents focus solely on the effect that Tess's marriage has on them; just as they manipulated Tess when they sent her to claim kinship with the d'Urbervilles, they can view Tess only in terms of how her fate affects their own. This emphasizes the theme of Tess as a pawn of others. No matter what actions Tess undertakes, she is subject to her parents' wills as well as Angel's

Tess's carriage pulls up to the gate of the village of Marlott, and she asks the turnpike-keeper if anything's new in the village. He says that John Durbeyfield's daughter recently got married, and that "Sir John," as the villagers now call him, honored the occasion by getting drunk at The Pure Drop tavern and buying drinks for his neighbors. This is obviously not very cheering news for Tess--she doesn't know how she's going to be able to face her family. She decides it would be easier to approach the house on foot, so she leaves her luggage at the turnpike-keeper's house and walks into town. An old friend meets her in the street, and asks where her husband is. Tess answers that he's away on business, and goes into her parents' house. Her mother is surprised to see her , and asks if she were married, and where her husband was. Tess says that he went away, because she told him what had happened. Her mother is furious, and calls her a fool. But her mother's anger doesn't last long--she's so chill that she calms down and takes a "whatever happens, happens" attitude about it. Her father soon gets home. He's been drinking at Rolliver's and bragging about his daughter's fine marriage. Mrs. Durbeyfield tells him that Tess is home, and that Angel has left her. Mr. Durbeyfield is pretty depressed about it, because he knows that they'll laugh at him at Rolliver's. He asks if Tess is actually married this time, or if it's like before, with Alec. Tess overhears all this from upstairs, and decides that if her own parents can doubt her word, she won't stay there for long. Tess gets a letter from Angel the next morning, saying that he is going to look at farm in the north of England. She uses that letter as an excuse to leave, and they all assume that the letter was asking Tess to join him. She leaves half of the fifty pounds of cash that Angel had given her to her parents, and leaves their house.

CHAPTER 38 Summary Tess does not look forward to facing her family and telling them the truth about her marriage. She first tells her mother and confesses that she has told Angel the truth about her past; her mother tells her she is a fool. Her father doubts that she is really married. Her brothers and sisters have taken over her room and do 2ot want to be inconvenienced. Tess quickly realizes that she cannot stay at home for long. When she receives a letter from Angel telling her he is going up north, she pretends he has called for her. She gives her parents some of the money Angel has given her and departs. Notes Tess dreads going home and facing her parents. They do not make it easy on her, and clearly indicate that they think she is a fool and that they feel disgraced. As a result, she does not tell them the depth of the separation between Angel and herself. Therefore, when the letter arrives from Angel, her parents accept the fact that Tess is returning to him. In truth, Tess is just running away from the bad situation she finds in Marlott


It was three weeks after the marriage that Clare found himself
descending the hill which led to the well-known parsonage of his
father.  With his downward course the tower of the church rose into
the evening sky in a manner of inquiry as to why he had come; and no
living person in the twilighted town seemed to notice him, still less
to expect him.  He was arriving like a ghost, and the sound of his
own footsteps was almost an encumbrance to be got rid of.

The picture of life had changed for him.  Before this time he had
known it but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical
man; though perhaps he did not, even yet.  Nevertheless humanity
stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art,
but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with
the leer of a study by Van Beers.

His conduct during these first weeks had been desultory beyond
description.  After mechanically attempting to pursue his
agricultural plans as though nothing unusual had happened, in
the manner recommended by the great and wise men of all ages, he
concluded that very few of those great and wise men had ever gone so
far outside themselves as to test the feasibility of their counsel.
"This is the chief thing: be not perturbed," said the Pagan moralist.
That was just Clare's own opinion.  But he was perturbed.  "Let not
your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid," said the Nazarene.
Clare chimed in cordially; but his heart was troubled all the same.
How he would have liked to confront those two great thinkers, and
earnestly appeal to them as fellow-man to fellow-men, and ask them
to tell him their method!

His mood transmuted itself into a dogged indifference till at length
he fancied he was looking on his own existence with the passive
interest of an outsider.

He was embittered by the conviction that all this desolation had been
brought about by the accident of her being a d'Urberville.  When he
found that Tess came of that exhausted ancient line, and was not of
the new tribes from below, as he had fondly dreamed, why had he not
stoically abandoned her in fidelity to his principles?  This was what
he had got by apostasy, and his punishment was deserved.

Then he became weary and anxious, and his anxiety increased.  He
wondered if he had treated her unfairly.  He ate without knowing that
he ate, and drank without tasting.  As the hours dropped past, as the
motive of each act in the long series of bygone days presented itself
to his view, he perceived how intimately the notion of having Tess as
a dear possession was mixed up with all his schemes and words and
ways.

In going hither and thither he observed in the outskirts of a small
town a red-and-blue placard setting forth the great advantages of
the Empire of Brazil as a field for the emigrating agriculturist.
Land was offered there on exceptionally advantageous terms.  Brazil
somewhat attracted him as a new idea.  Tess could eventually join him
there, and perhaps in that country of contrasting scenes and notions
and habits the conventions would not be so operative which made life
with her seem impracticable to him here.  In brief he was strongly
inclined to try Brazil, especially as the season for going thither
was just at hand.

With this view he was returning to Emminster to disclose his plan
to his parents, and to make the best explanation he could make of
arriving without Tess, short of revealing what had actually separated
them.  As he reached the door the new moon shone upon his face, just
as the old one had done in the small hours of that morning when he
had carried his wife in his arms across the river to the graveyard
of the monks; but his face was thinner now.

Clare had given his parents no warning of his visit, and his arrival
stirred the atmosphere of the Vicarage as the dive of the kingfisher
stirs a quiet pool.  His father and mother were both in the
drawing-room, but neither of his brothers was now at home.  Angel
entered, and closed the door quietly behind him.

"But--where's your wife, dear Angel?" cried his mother.  "How you
surprise us!"

"She is at her mother's--temporarily.  I have come home rather in a
hurry because I've decided to go to Brazil."

"Brazil!  Why they are all Roman Catholics there surely!"

"Are they?  I hadn't thought of that."

But even the novelty and painfulness of his going to a Papistical
land could not displace for long Mr and Mrs Clare's natural interest
in their son's marriage.

"We had your brief note three weeks ago announcing that it had taken
place," said Mrs Clare, "and your father sent your godmother's gift
to her, as you know.  Of course it was best that none of us should be
present, especially as you preferred to marry her from the dairy, and
not at her home, wherever that may be.  It would have embarrassed
you, and given us no pleasure.  Your bothers felt that very strongly.
Now it is done we do not complain, particularly if she suits you for
the business you have chosen to follow instead of the ministry of the
Gospel. ...  Yet I wish I could have seen her first, Angel, or have
known a little more about her.  We sent her no present of our own,
not knowing what would best give her pleasure, but you must suppose
it only delayed.  Angel, there is no irritation in my mind or your
father's against you for this marriage; but we have thought it much
better to reserve our liking for your wife till we could see her.
And now you have not brought her.  It seems strange.  What has
happened?"

He replied that it had been thought best by them that she should to
go her parents' home for the present, whilst he came there.

"I don't mind telling you, dear mother," he said, "that I always
meant to keep her away from this house till I should feel she could
come with credit to you.  But this idea of Brazil is quite a recent
one.  If I do go it will be unadvisable for me to take her on this my
first journey.  She will remain at her mother's till I come back."

"And I shall not see her before you start?"

He was afraid they would not.  His original plan had been, as he had
said, to refrain from bringing her there for some little while--not
to wound their prejudices--feelings--in any way; and for other
reasons he had adhered to it.  He would have to visit home in the
course of a year, if he went out at once; and it would be possible
for them to see her before he started a second time--with her.

A hastily prepared supper was brought in, and Clare made further
exposition of his plans.  His mother's disappointment at not seeing
the bride still remained with her.  Clare's late enthusiasm for Tess
had infected her through her maternal sympathies, till she had almost
fancied that a good thing could come out of Nazareth--a charming
woman out of Talbothays Dairy. She watched her son as he ate.

"Cannot you describe her?  I am sure she is very pretty, Angel."

"Of that there can be no question!" he said, with a zest which
covered its bitterness.

"And that she is pure and virtuous goes without question?"

"Pure and virtuous, of course, she is."

"I can see her quite distinctly.  You said the other day that she was
fine in figure; roundly built; had deep red lips like Cupid's bow;
dark eyelashes and brows, an immense rope of hair like a ship's
cable; and large eyes violety-bluey-blackish."

"I did, mother."

"I quite see her.  And living in such seclusion she naturally had
scarce ever seen any young man from the world without till she saw
you."

"Scarcely."

"You were her first love?"

"Of course."

"There are worse wives than these simple, rosy-mouthed, robust girls
of the farm.  Certainly I could have wished--well, since my son is to
be an agriculturist, it is perhaps but proper that his wife should
have been accustomed to an outdoor life."

His father was less inquisitive; but when the time came for the
chapter from the Bible which was always read before evening prayers,
the Vicar observed to Mrs Clare--

"I think, since Angel has come, that it will be more appropriate to
read the thirty-first of Proverbs than the chapter which we should
have had in the usual course of our reading?"

"Yes, certainly," said Mrs Clare.  "The words of King Lemuel" (she
could cite chapter and verse as well as her husband).  "My dear son,
your father has decided to read us the chapter in Proverbs in praise
of a virtuous wife.  We shall not need to be reminded to apply the
words to the absent one.  May Heaven shield her in all her ways!"

A lump rose in Clare's throat.  The portable lectern was taken out
from the corner and set in the middle of the fireplace, the two old
servants came in, and Angel's father began to read at the tenth verse
of the aforesaid chapter--

   "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far
   above rubies.  She riseth while it is yet night, and
   giveth meat to her household.  She girdeth her loins
   with strength and strengtheneth her arms.  She
   perceiveth that her merchandise is good; her candle
   goeth not out by night.  She looketh well to the ways
   of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
   Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband
   also, and he praiseth her.  Many daughters have done
   virtuously, but thou excellest them all."

When prayers were over, his mother said--

"I could not help thinking how very aptly that chapter your dear
father read applied, in some of its particulars, to the woman you
have chosen.  The perfect woman, you see, was a working woman; not an
idler; not a fine lady; but one who used her hands and her head and
her heart for the good of others.  'Her children arise up and call
her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.  Many daughters
have done virtuously, but she excelleth them all.'  Well, I wish I
could have seen her, Angel.  Since she is pure and chaste, she would
have been refined enough for me."

Clare could bear this no longer.  His eyes were full of tears, which
seemed like drops of molten lead.  He bade a quick good night to
these sincere and simple souls whom he loved so well; who knew
neither the world, the flesh, nor the devil in their own hearts, only
as something vague and external to themselves.  He went to his own
chamber.

His mother followed him, and tapped at his door.  Clare opened it to
discover her standing without, with anxious eyes.

"Angel," she asked, "is there something wrong that you go away so
soon?  I am quite sure you are not yourself."

"I am not, quite, mother," said he.

"About her?  Now, my son, I know it is that--I know it is about her!
Have you quarrelled in these three weeks?"

"We have not exactly quarrelled," he said.  "But we have had a
difference--"

"Angel--is she a young woman whose history will bear investigation?"

With a mother's instinct Mrs Clare had put her finger on the kind of
trouble that would cause such a disquiet as seemed to agitate her
son.

"She is spotless!" he replied; and felt that if it had sent him to
eternal hell there and then he would have told that lie.

"Then never mind the rest.  After all, there are few purer things in
nature then an unsullied country maid. Any crudeness of manner which
may offend your more educated sense at first, will, I am sure,
disappear under the influence or your companionship and tuition."

Such terrible sarcasm of blind magnanimity brought home to Clare the
secondary perception that he had utterly wrecked his career by this
marriage, which had not been among his early thoughts after the
disclosure.  True, on his own account he cared very little about his
career; but he had wished to make it at least a respectable one on
account of his parents and brothers.  And now as he looked into the
candle its flame dumbly expressed to him that it was made to shine on
sensible people, and that it abhorred lighting the face of a dupe and
a failure.

When his agitation had cooled he would be at moments incensed with
his poor wife for causing a situation in which he was obliged to
practise deception on his parents.  He almost talked to her in his
anger, as if she had been in the room.  And then her cooing voice,
plaintive in expostulation, disturbed the darkness, the velvet touch
of her lips passed over his brow, and he could distinguish in the air
the warmth of her breath.

This night the woman of his belittling deprecations was thinking how
great and good her husband was.  But over them both there hung a
deeper shade than the shade which Angel Clare perceived, namely, the
shade of his own limitations.  With all his attempted independence of
judgement this advanced and well-meaning young man, a sample product
of the last five-and-twenty years, was yet the slave to custom and
conventionality when surprised back into his early teachings.  No
prophet had told him, and he was not prophet enough to tell himself,
that essentially this young wife of his was as deserving of the
praise of King Lemuel as any other woman endowed with the same
dislike of evil, her moral value having to be reckoned not by
achievement but by tendency.  Moreover, the figure near at hand
suffers on such occasion, because it shows up its sorriness without
shade; while vague figures afar off are honoured, in that their
distance makes artistic virtues of their stains.  In considering
what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the
defective can be more than the entire.

Three weeks after the marriage, Angel returns to his father's parsonage. His recent conduct has been desultory, and his mood became one of dogged indifference. He wonders if he had treated Tess unfairly, and returns to Emminster to disclose his plan to his parents and to best explain why he has arrived without Tess without revealing the actual cause of their separation. Angel tells his parents that he has decided to go to Brazil. They regret that they could not have met his wife and that they did not attend the wedding. Mrs. Clare questions Angel about Tess, asking if he was her first love, and if she is pure and virtuous without question. He answers that she is. The Clares read a chapter in Proverbs in praise of a virtuous wife. After reading the chapter, Mrs. Clare thinks about how the passage so well describes the woman Angel has chosen. Angel can no longer bear this, and goes to his chamber. Mrs. Clare follows him, thinking that something is wrong. He admits to his mother that he and his wife have had a difference. Mrs. Clare senses that Tess is a young woman whose history will bear investigation, but he replies that she is spotless. Angel perceives his own limitations, knowing that he is a slave to custom and conventionality. In considering what Tess was not, he had overlooked what she was.

Angel Clare begins to break down his reservations against Tess, yet this process is slow and by no means reaches a conclusion by the end of the chapter. The most significant step that Angel takes during this chapter is admitting that he may have treated Tess harshly, but at this point he does nothing to make reparations. Rather, he admits his own faults without yet taking steps to amend them. However, just as Tess's guilt over her failure to tell Angel about her past accumulated before her wedding, Angel's guilt over his treatment of Tess builds throughout this chapter. Hardy constructs this as an interesting parallel; in both cases, their respective guilt becomes their sole preoccupation and every tangential detail relates to it. In this case, the passage from Proverbs and the Clares' questions about Tess serve as a constant reminder of the actions Angel wishes to forget

Three weeks after the wedding, Angel goes to visit his parents again. As he walks, he considers the last few weeks: all the philosophy he's ever read tells him that he shouldn't be disturbed by crises like this one, but he's pretty disturbed, anyway. How could he not be? He blames the whole thing on the fact that Tess is a D'Urberville. Why didn't he abandon her when he found that out? Now Angel is moving through life with a kind of passive indifference--he's just going through the motions, because he's incredibly depressed. Of course his parents want to know why he's come without his wife. He explains that she went to her parents' house, temporarily, while he goes to Brazil to see about setting up a farm there. Mrs. Clare is curious about Tess, and asks Angel a lot of questions. Angel gets agitated, especially when his father reads some Bible verses in praise of virtue in a wife. He leaves the table early to go to bed. His mother follows him after a few minutes, and asks him what's wrong. She guesses pretty easily that he's had some kind of quarrel with Tess. She asks if it has something to do with her past, but Angel replies, lying through his teeth, that Tess is "spotless." The narrator points out that the real trouble was not with Tess, but with Angel, and his limitations. He's bound by conventional ideas about purity and virtue, and ignores Tess's innate purity because of the "stain" of her history.

CHAPTER 39 Summary Angel goes home three weeks after his marriage and tells his parents that he plans to go to Brazil without his wife; however, he does not indicate to them that he and Tess have actually separated. They are curious about his plans and disappointed that they will not meet their daughter-in-law before Angel departs. Angel says he will stay in Brazil only for a year; after his return, they can meet Tess. They do not question Angel about his reasons for making the trip to South America; they merely accept his decision. Before departing Emminster, Angel deposits the jewels for safe- keeping and arranges for a sum of money to be sent to Tess in the future. Notes Like Tess, Angel deceives his parents, not telling them the depth of his separation from Tess. They wonder why he is going to Brazil, but do not question him. Since they are unable to meet his new wife, they do question their son about her, especially in terms of her morals and chastity. Mr. Clare even reads "The Words of King Lemuel,'' which praises purity in a wife. Angel feels uneasy and embittered by the conversation with his mother and father. He cannot lie to his parents and praise the worthiness of his wife; he simply remains silent. Angel regrets that, like him, his parents are deceived by Tess