At breakfast Brazil was the topic, and all endeavoured to take a
hopeful view of Clare's proposed experiment with that country's soil,
notwithstanding the discouraging reports of some farm-labourers who
had emigrated thither and returned home within the twelve months.
After breakfast Clare went into the little town to wind up such
trifling matters as he was concerned with there, and to get from
the local bank all the money he possessed.  On his way back he
encountered Miss Mercy Chant by the church, from whose walls she
seemed to be a sort of emanation.  She was carrying an armful of
Bibles for her class, and such was her view of life that events which
produced heartache in others wrought beatific smiles upon her--an
enviable result, although, in the opinion of Angel, it was obtained
by a curiously unnatural sacrifice of humanity to mysticism.

She had learnt that he was about to leave England, and observed what
an excellent and promising scheme it seemed to be.

"Yes; it is a likely scheme enough in a commercial sense, no doubt,"
he replied.  "But, my dear Mercy, it snaps the continuity of
existence.  Perhaps a cloister would be preferable."

"A cloister!  O, Angel Clare!"

"Well?"

"Why, you wicked man, a cloister implies a monk, and a monk Roman
Catholicism."

"And Roman Catholicism sin, and sin damnation.  Thou art in a parlous
state, Angel Clare."

"_I_ glory in my Protestantism!" she said severely.

Then Clare, thrown by sheer misery into one of the demoniacal moods
in which a man does despite to his true principles, called her close
to him, and fiendishly whispered in her ear the most heterodox ideas
he could think of.  His momentary laughter at the horror which
appeared on her fair face ceased when it merged in pain and anxiety
for his welfare.

"Dear Mercy," he said, "you must forgive me.  I think I am going
crazy!"

She thought that he was; and thus the interview ended, and Clare
re-entered the Vicarage.  With the local banker he deposited the
jewels till happier days should arise.  He also paid into the bank
thirty pounds--to be sent to Tess in a few months, as she might
require; and wrote to her at her parents' home in Blackmoor Vale to
inform her of what he had done.  This amount, with the sum he had
already placed in her hands--about fifty pounds--he hoped would be
amply sufficient for her wants just at present, particularly as in
an emergency she had been directed to apply to his father.

He deemed it best not to put his parents into communication with her
by informing them of her address; and, being unaware of what had
really happened to estrange the two, neither his father nor his
mother suggested that he should do so.  During the day he left the
parsonage, for what he had to complete he wished to get done quickly.

As the last duty before leaving this part of England it was necessary
for him to call at the Wellbridge farmhouse, in which he had spent
with Tess the first three days of their marriage, the trifle of rent
having to be paid, the key given up of the rooms they had occupied,
and two or three small articles fetched away that they had left
behind.  It was under this roof that the deepest shadow ever thrown
upon his life had stretched its gloom over him.  Yet when he had
unlocked the door of the sitting-room and looked into it, the memory
which returned first upon him was that of their happy arrival on a
similar afternoon, the first fresh sense of sharing a habitation
conjointly, the first meal together, the chatting by the fire with
joined hands.

The farmer and his wife were in the field at the moment of his visit,
and Clare was in the rooms alone for some time.  Inwardly swollen
with a renewal of sentiment that he had not quite reckoned with, he
went upstairs to her chamber, which had never been his.  The bed
was smooth as she had made it with her own hands on the morning of
leaving.  The mistletoe hung under the tester just as he had placed
it.  Having been there three or four weeks it was turning colour, and
the leaves and berries were wrinkled.  Angel took it down and crushed
it into the grate.  Standing there, he for the first time doubted
whether his course in this conjecture had been a wise, much less
a generous, one.  But had he not been cruelly blinded?  In the
incoherent multitude of his emotions he knelt down at the bedside
wet-eyed.  "O Tess!  If you had only told me sooner, I would have
forgiven you!" he mourned.

Hearing a footstep below, he rose and went to the top of the stairs.
At the bottom of the flight he saw a woman standing, and on her
turning up her face recognized the pale, dark-eyed Izz Huett.

"Mr Clare," she said, "I've called to see you and Mrs Clare, and to
inquire if ye be well.  I thought you might be back here again."

This was a girl whose secret he had guessed, but who had not yet
guessed his; an honest girl who loved him--one who would have made as
good, or nearly as good, a practical farmer's wife as Tess.

"I am here alone," he said; "we are not living here now."  Explaining
why he had come, he asked, "Which way are you going home, Izz?"

"I have no home at Talbothays Dairy now, sir," she said.

"Why is that?"

Izz looked down.

"It was so dismal there that I left!  I am staying out this way."
She pointed in a contrary direction, the direction in which he was
journeying.

"Well--are you going there now?  I can take you if you
wish for a lift."

Her olive complexion grew richer in hue.

"Thank 'ee, Mr Clare," she said.

He soon found the farmer, and settled the account for his rent and
the few other items which had to be considered by reason of the
sudden abandonment of the lodgings.  On Clare's return to his horse
and gig, Izz jumped up beside him.

"I am going to leave England, Izz," he said, as they drove on.
"Going to Brazil."

"And do Mrs Clare like the notion of such a journey?" she asked.

"She is not going at present--say for a year or so.  I am going out
to reconnoitre--to see what life there is like."

They sped along eastward for some considerable distance, Izz making
no observation.

"How are the others?" he inquired.  "How is Retty?"

"She was in a sort of nervous state when I zid her last; and so thin
and hollow-cheeked that 'a do seem in a decline.  Nobody will ever
fall in love wi' her any more," said Izz absently.

"And Marian?"

Izz lowered her voice.

"Marian drinks."

"Indeed!"

"Yes.  The dairyman has got rid of her."

"And you!"

"I don't drink, and I bain't in a decline.  But--I am no great things
at singing afore breakfast now!"

"How is that?  Do you remember how neatly you used to turn ''Twas
down in Cupid's Gardens' and 'The Tailor's Breeches' at morning
milking?"

"Ah, yes!  When you first came, sir, that was.  Not when you had been
there a bit."

"Why was that falling-off?"

Her black eyes flashed up to his face for one moment by way of
answer.

"Izz!--how weak of you--for such as I!" he said, and fell into
reverie.  "Then--suppose I had asked YOU to marry me?"

"If you had I should have said 'Yes', and you would have married a
woman who loved 'ee!"

"Really!"

"Down to the ground!" she whispered vehemently.  "O my God! did you
never guess it till now!"

By-and-by they reached a branch road to a village.

"I must get down.  I live out there," said Izz abruptly, never having
spoken since her avowal.

Clare slowed the horse.  He was incensed against his fate, bitterly
disposed towards social ordinances; for they had cooped him up in a
corner, out of which there was no legitimate pathway.  Why not be
revenged on society by shaping his future domesticities loosely,
instead of kissing the pedagogic rod of convention in this ensnaring
manner?

"I am going to Brazil alone, Izz," said he.  "I have separated from
my wife for personal, not voyaging, reasons.  I may never live with
her again.  I may not be able to love you; but--will you go with me
instead of her?"

"You truly wish me to go?"

"I do.  I have been badly used enough to wish for relief.  And you at
least love me disinterestedly."

"Yes--I will go," said Izz, after a pause.

"You will?  You know what it means, Izz?"

"It means that I shall live with you for the time you are over
there--that's good enough for me."

"Remember, you are not to trust me in morals now.  But I ought
to remind you that it will be wrong-doing in the eyes of
civilization--Western civilization, that is to say."

"I don't mind that; no woman do when it comes to agony-point, and
there's no other way!"

"Then don't get down, but sit where you are."

He drove past the cross-roads, one mile, two miles, without showing
any signs of affection.

"You love me very, very much, Izz?" he suddenly asked.

"I do--I have said I do!  I loved you all the time we was at the
dairy together!"

"More than Tess?"

She shook her head.

"No," she murmured, "not more than she."

"How's that?"

"Because nobody could love 'ee more than Tess did! ...  She would
have laid down her life for 'ee.  I could do no more."

Like the prophet on the top of Peor, Izz Huett would fain have spoken
perversely at such a moment, but the fascination exercised over her
rougher nature by Tess's character compelled her to grace.

Clare was silent; his heart had risen at these straightforward words
from such an unexpected unimpeachable quarter.  In his throat was
something as if a sob had solidified there.  His ears repeated, "SHE
WOULD HAVE LAID DOWN HER LIFE FOR 'EE.  I COULD DO NO MORE!"

"Forget our idle talk, Izz," he said, turning the horse's head
suddenly.  "I don't know what I've been saying!  I will now drive
you back to where your lane branches off."

"So much for honesty towards 'ee!  O--how can I bear it--how can
I--how can I!"

Izz Huett burst into wild tears, and beat her forehead as she saw
what she had done.

"Do you regret that poor little act of justice to an absent one?
O, Izz, don't spoil it by regret!"

She stilled herself by degrees.

"Very well, sir.  Perhaps I didn't know what I was saying, either,
wh--when I agreed to go!  I wish--what cannot be!"

"Because I have a loving wife already."

"Yes, yes!  You have!"

They reached the corner of the lane which they had passed half an
hour earlier, and she hopped down.

"Izz--please, please forget my momentary levity!" he cried.  "It was
so ill-considered, so ill-advised!"

"Forget it?  Never, never!  O, it was no levity to me!"

He felt how richly he deserved the reproach that the wounded cry
conveyed, and, in a sorrow that was inexpressible, leapt down and
took her hand.

"Well, but, Izz, we'll part friends, anyhow?  You don't know what
I've had to bear!"

She was a really generous girl, and allowed no further bitterness to
mar their adieux.

"I forgive 'ee, sir!" she said.

"Now, Izz," he said, while she stood beside him there, forcing
himself to the mentor's part he was far from feeling; "I want you to
tell Marian when you see her that she is to be a good woman, and not
to give way to folly.  Promise that, and tell Retty that there are
more worthy men than I in the world, that for my sake she is to act
wisely and well--remember the words--wisely and well--for my sake.
I send this message to them as a dying man to the dying; for I shall
never see them again.  And you, Izzy, you have saved me by your
honest words about my wife from an incredible impulse towards folly
and treachery.  Women may be bad, but they are not so bad as men in
these things!  On that one account I can never forget you.  Be always
the good and sincere girl you have hitherto been; and think of me as
a worthless lover, but a faithful friend.  Promise."

She gave the promise.

"Heaven bless and keep you, sir.  Goodbye!"

He drove on; but no sooner had Izz turned into the lane, and Clare
was out of sight, than she flung herself down on the bank in a fit of
racking anguish; and it was with a strained unnatural face that she
entered her mother's cottage late that night.  Nobody ever was told
how Izz spent the dark hours that intervened between Angel Clare's
parting from her and her arrival home.

Clare, too, after bidding the girl farewell, was wrought to aching
thoughts and quivering lips.  But his sorrow was not for Izz.  That
evening he was within a feather-weight's turn of abandoning his road
to the nearest station, and driving across that elevated dorsal line
of South Wessex which divided him from his Tess's home.  It was
neither a contempt for her nature, nor the probable state of her
heart, which deterred him.

No; it was a sense that, despite her love, as corroborated by Izz's
admission, the facts had not changed.  If he was right at first,
he was right now.  And the momentum of the course on which he
had embarked tended to keep him going in it, unless diverted by
a stronger, more sustained force than had played upon him this
afternoon.  He could soon come back to her.  He took the train that
night for London, and five days after shook hands in farewell of his
brothers at the port of embarkation.

Angel discusses Brazil with his parents at breakfast, then does errands around town. On the way to the bank, he encounters Mercy Chant, carrying an armful of Bibles. Angel suggests that he may go to Brazil as a monk, implying Roman Catholicism, which shocks Mercy, who claims she glories in her Protestantism. He apologizes to her, telling her that he thinks that he is going crazy. Angel deposits money for Tess and wrote to her at her parents to inform her of his plans. Angel calls at the Wellbridge farmhouse, where he surprisingly reminisces about the happier time there. Angel wonders whether he has been cruelly blinded, and believes that if she had told him sooner he would have forgiven her. Angel finds Izz Huett there. She tells Angel that if he had asked her to marry him, he would have married a woman who loved him. Angel admits to Izz that he has separated from his wife for personal reasons, and asks Izz to go to Brazil with him instead of her. He warns her that he is not to trust him in morals now, for what they will be doing is wrong in the eyes of Western civilization. She admits that she does not love him as much as Tess did, for Tess would have laid down her life for him and Izz could do no more. Finally Angel claims that he does not know what he has been saying, and apologizes for his momentary levity. He tells Izz that she has saved him by her honest words about Tess from an impulse toward folly and treachery. According to Angel, women may be bad, but are not so bad as men in such things.

The result of Angel's realization that he has treated Tess poorly is not that he makes amends for his actions; rather, he descends into undertaking a series of haphazard and self-destructive actions. Having realized the inadequacy of holding dogmatically to his own principles, Angel seems to abandon them altogether. His conversation with Mercy Chant, although sly and humorous, reveals a decadence and tendency to shock not previously exhibited by Angel Clare, while his proposal that Izz Huett accompany him to Brazil is an altogether abandonment of his moral code. Angel's decision to go to Brazil itself represents Angel's rejection of his principles; when he discusses Brazil with Izz Huett, he frames the journey as a means to reject the tenets of Western civilization. It is only when Izz Huett reminds Angel that no woman could love Angel more than Tess did that Angel returns to more grounded and rational behavior. This reinforces the theme of Tess's absolute love for Angel, and serves as a reminder that, even if Tess herself may not have a perfect personal history, in her love for Angel she is flawless

At breakfast, Angel and his parents discuss his Brazil plan. Everyone tries to be optimistic, but Brazil has a bad reputation--a lot of farmers have emigrated there to seek their fortunes, and have returned disappointed within a year. Angel goes to the town after breakfast to withdraw his money from the bank. While he's there, he arranges for thirty pounds to be sent to Tess in eight months, along with instructions that she write to his father in case of any emergency. On his way back, he runs into Mercy Chant. She asks him about his plans in Brazil, and the conversation turns to the Roman Catholicism of most of the people there. Since she, like Angel's own parents, is a strict Protestant, she's shocked when he makes light of the religious differences of Catholicism. He apologizes for having shocked her, and wonders if he's going nuts. Angel has one other errand before leaving for Brazil. He has to go back to the place where he and Tess spent those few nights after their wedding to pay the rent and pick up a few things they'd left. When he gets there, he remembers how happy they were when they arrived, and wonders if he made a mistake. Then Izz Huett shows up--she says she came to visit them. Angel explains that they're not living there, and tells Izz that Tess is at her parents' house because he's going to find a farm in Brazil. Angel asks how everyone's doing at the dairy, and Izz says that she left, because the dairy was just too depressing, what with Retty's attempted suicide and Marian's descent into alcoholism. Angel offers Izz a ride home, since she lives pretty close by. On the way, she admits that she was pretty depressed, herself, since Angel and Tess left the dairy. Angel asks why, and Izz is like, "hellooooo, I've had a crush on you for months!" Angel's quiet for a while, and then thinks about how the whole system of marriage has screwed him . So he tells Izz that he and Tess separated for personal reasons--not just because he's going to Brazil first to check out the farm situation. And then he asks Izz if she'll go with him. She says yes, even though it would be wrong and immoral in the eyes of most people. Angel asks if she really loves him--loves him more than Tess? Izz says she loves him, but not more than Tess - no one could love him more than Tess. That honesty from Izz snaps Angel out of his momentary lunacy, and he turns the cart around to drop Izz off at home. Izz starts crying, of course, but calms down and, when they say good-bye, is able to forgive Angel for totally messing with her head. He sends his farewells to Marian and Retty through Izz, and asks her to tell them to be strong and good. He wavers as he drives away--he almost turns around to drive back to Tess at her parents' house, but decides that if he was right before, he's right now. The state of Tess's feeling for him has nothing to do with it. So, five days later, he leaves for Brazil from a ship out of London.

CHAPTER 40 Summary On his way to London, from where he will sail to Brazil, Angel meets Izz Huett, one of the milkmaids at Well Bridge Farmhouse. He tells her that he and Tess have separated. Then in a moment of weakness, he asks Izz to accompany him on the trip. She readily agrees and confides honestly to him that, though she loves him, she lacks Tess's selfless love. Angel quickly realizes the foolishness of his invitation and leaves Izz behind. He goes straight to London and sails for Brazil five days later. Notes Fate continues to work in this chapter. Angel encounters Izz Huett when he stops by Well Bridge Farmhouse. When he tells her of his separation from Tess, Izz is astounded and tells Angel that "nobody could love 'ee more than Tess did. Her words cause Angel to think and he begins to wonder if he made a wise decision in treating Tess so harshly. He looks forward to his time in Brazil, when he can sort things out for himself. He also thinks that in this foreign land, with different customs and morals, that perhaps he and Tess can eventually make a life for themselves


From the foregoing events of the winter-time let us press on to
an October day, more than eight months subsequent to the parting
of Clare and Tess.  We discover the latter in changed conditions;
instead of a bride with boxes and trunks which others bore, we see
her a lonely woman with a basket and a bundle in her own porterage,
as at an earlier time when she was no bride; instead of the ample
means that were projected by her husband for her comfort through
this probationary period, she can produce only a flattened purse.

After again leaving Marlott, her home, she had got through the
spring and summer without any great stress upon her physical powers,
the time being mainly spent in rendering light irregular service
at dairy-work near Port-Bredy to the west of the Blackmoor Valley,
equally remote from her native place and from Talbothays.  She
preferred this to living on his allowance.  Mentally she remained in
utter stagnation, a condition which the mechanical occupation rather
fostered than checked.  Her consciousness was at that other dairy,
at that other season, in the presence of the tender lover who had
confronted her there--he who, the moment she had grasped him to keep
for her own, had disappeared like a shape in a vision.

The dairy-work lasted only till the milk began to lessen, for she
had not met with a second regular engagement as at Talbothays, but
had done duty as a supernumerary only.  However, as harvest was now
beginning, she had simply to remove from the pasture to the stubble
to find plenty of further occupation, and this continued till harvest
was done.

Of the five-and-twenty pounds which had remained to her of Clare's
allowance, after deducting the other half of the fifty as a
contribution to her parents for the trouble and expense to which
she had put them, she had as yet spent but little.  But there now
followed an unfortunate interval of wet weather, during which she was
obliged to fall back upon her sovereigns.

She could not bear to let them go.  Angel had put them into her hand,
had obtained them bright and new from his bank for her; his touch had
consecrated them to souvenirs of himself--they appeared to have had
as yet no other history than such as was created by his and her own
experiences--and to disperse them was like giving away relics.  But
she had to do it, and one by one they left her hands.

She had been compelled to send her mother her address from time to
time, but she concealed her circumstances.  When her money had almost
gone a letter from her mother reached her.  Joan stated that they
were in dreadful difficulty; the autumn rains had gone through the
thatch of the house, which required entire renewal; but this could
not be done because the previous thatching had never been paid for.
New rafters and a new ceiling upstairs also were required, which,
with the previous bill, would amount to a sum of twenty pounds.  As
her husband was a man of means, and had doubtless returned by this
time, could she not send them the money?

Tess had thirty pounds coming to her almost immediately from Angel's
bankers, and, the case being so deplorable, as soon as the sum was
received she sent the twenty as requested.  Part of the remainder
she was obliged to expend in winter clothing, leaving only a nominal
sum for the whole inclement season at hand.  When the last pound
had gone, a remark of Angel's that whenever she required further
resources she was to apply to his father, remained to be considered.

But the more Tess thought of the step, the more reluctant was she to
take it.  The same delicacy, pride, false shame, whatever it may be
called, on Clare's account, which had led her to hide from her own
parents the prolongation of the estrangement, hindered her owning to
his that she was in want after the fair allowance he had left her.
They probably despised her already; how much more they would despise
her in the character of a mendicant!  The consequence was that by no
effort could the parson's daughter-in-law bring herself to let him
know her state.

Her reluctance to communicate with her husband's parents might,
she thought, lessen with the lapse of time; but with her own the
reverse obtained.  On her leaving their house after the short visit
subsequent to her marriage they were under the impression that she
was ultimately going to join her husband; and from that time to the
present she had done nothing to disturb their belief that she was
awaiting his return in comfort, hoping against hope that his journey
to Brazil would result in a short stay only, after which he would
come to fetch her, or that he would write for her to join him; in any
case that they would soon present a united front to their families
and the world.  This hope she still fostered.  To let her parents
know that she was a deserted wife, dependent, now that she had
relieved their necessities, on her own hands for a living, after the
_eclat_ of a marriage which was to nullify the collapse of the first
attempt, would be too much indeed.

The set of brilliants returned to her mind.  Where Clare had
deposited them she did not know, and it mattered little, if it were
true that she could only use and not sell them.  Even were they
absolutely hers it would be passing mean to enrich herself by a legal
title to them which was not essentially hers at all.

Meanwhile her husband's days had been by no means free from trial.
At this moment he was lying ill of fever in the clay lands near
Curitiba in Brazil, having been drenched with thunder-storms and
persecuted by other hardships, in common with all the English farmers
and farm-labourers who, just at this time, were deluded into going
thither by the promises of the Brazilian Government, and by the
baseless assumption that those frames which, ploughing and sowing on
English uplands, had resisted all the weathers to whose moods they
had been born, could resist equally well all the weathers by which
they were surprised on Brazilian plains.

To return.  Thus it happened that when the last of Tess's sovereigns
had been spent she was unprovided with others to take their place,
while on account of the season she found it increasingly difficult
to get employment.  Not being aware of the rarity of intelligence,
energy, health, and willingness in any sphere of life, she refrained
from seeking an indoor occupation; fearing towns, large houses,
people of means and social sophistication, and of manners other
than rural.  From that direction of gentility Black Care had come.
Society might be better than she supposed from her slight experience
of it.  But she had no proof of this, and her instinct in the
circumstances was to avoid its purlieus.

The small dairies to the west, beyond Port-Bredy, in which she
had served as supernumerary milkmaid during the spring and summer
required no further aid.  Room would probably have been made for her
at Talbothays, if only out of sheer compassion; but comfortable as
her life had been there, she could not go back.  The anti-climax
would be too intolerable; and her return might bring reproach upon
her idolized husband.  She could not have borne their pity, and their
whispered remarks to one another upon her strange situation; though
she would almost have faced a knowledge of her circumstances by every
individual there, so long as her story had remained isolated in the
mind of each.  It was the interchange of ideas about her that made
her sensitiveness wince.  Tess could not account for this
distinction; she simply knew that she felt it.

She was now on her way to an upland farm in the centre of the county,
to which she had been recommended by a wandering letter which had
reached her from Marian.  Marian had somehow heard that Tess was
separated from her husband--probably through Izz Huett--and the
good-natured and now tippling girl, deeming Tess in trouble, had
hastened to notify to her former friend that she herself had gone to
this upland spot after leaving the dairy, and would like to see her
there, where there was room for other hands, if it was really true
that she worked again as of old.

With the shortening of the days all hope of obtaining her husband's
forgiveness began to leave her; and there was something of the
habitude of the wild animal in the unreflecting instinct with which
she rambled on--disconnecting herself by littles from her eventful
past at every step, obliterating her identity, giving no thought to
accidents or contingencies which might make a quick discovery of her
whereabouts by others of importance to her own happiness, if not to
theirs.

Among the difficulties of her lonely position not the least was
the attention she excited by her appearance, a certain bearing of
distinction, which she had caught from Clare, being superadded to her
natural attractiveness.  Whilst the clothes lasted which had been
prepared for her marriage, these casual glances of interest caused
her no inconvenience, but as soon as she was compelled to don the
wrapper of a fieldwoman, rude words were addressed to her more than
once; but nothing occurred to cause her bodily fear till a particular
November afternoon.

She had preferred the country west of the River Brit to the upland
farm for which she was now bound, because, for one thing, it was
nearer to the home of her husband's father; and to hover about that
region unrecognized, with the notion that she might decide to call at
the Vicarage some day, gave her pleasure.  But having once decided to
try the higher and drier levels, she pressed back eastward, marching
afoot towards the village of Chalk-Newton, where she meant to pass
the night.

The lane was long and unvaried, and, owing to the rapid shortening of
the days, dusk came upon her before she was aware.  She had reached
the top of a hill down which the lane stretched its serpentine length
in glimpses, when she heard footsteps behind her back, and in a few
moments she was overtaken by a man.  He stepped up alongside Tess and
said--

"Good night, my pretty maid": to which she civilly replied.

The light still remaining in the sky lit up her face, though the
landscape was nearly dark.  The man turned and stared hard at her.

"Why, surely, it is the young wench who was at Trantridge awhile--
young Squire d'Urberville's friend?  I was there at that time, though
I don't live there now."

She recognized in him the well-to-do boor whom Angel had knocked down
at the inn for addressing her coarsely.  A spasm of anguish shot
through her, and she returned him no answer.

"Be honest enough to own it, and that what I said in the town was
true, though your fancy-man was so up about it--hey, my sly one?  You
ought to beg my pardon for that blow of his, considering."

Still no answer came from Tess.  There seemed only one escape for her
hunted soul.  She suddenly took to her heels with the speed of the
wind, and, without looking behind her, ran along the road till she
came to a gate which opened directly into a plantation.  Into this
she plunged, and did not pause till she was deep enough in its shade
to be safe against any possibility of discovery.

Under foot the leaves were dry, and the foliage of some holly bushes
which grew among the deciduous trees was dense enough to keep off
draughts.  She scraped together the dead leaves till she had formed
them into a large heap, making a sort of nest in the middle.  Into
this Tess crept.

Such sleep as she got was naturally fitful; she fancied she heard
strange noises, but persuaded herself that they were caused by the
breeze.  She thought of her husband in some vague warm clime on the
other side of the globe, while she was here in the cold.  Was there
another such a wretched being as she in the world?  Tess asked
herself; and, thinking of her wasted life, said, "All is vanity."
She repeated the words mechanically, till she reflected that this
was a most inadequate thought for modern days.  Solomon had thought
as far as that more than two thousand years ago; she herself,
though not in the van of thinkers, had got much further.  If all
were only vanity, who would mind it?  All was, alas, worse than
vanity--injustice, punishment, exaction, death.  The wife of Angel
Clare put her hand to her brow, and felt its curve, and the edges of
her eye-sockets perceptible under the soft skin, and thought as she
did so that a time would come when that bone would be bare.  "I wish
it were now," she said.

In the midst of these whimsical fancies she heard a new strange sound
among the leaves.  It might be the wind; yet there was scarcely any
wind.  Sometimes it was a palpitation, sometimes a flutter; sometimes
it was a sort of gasp or gurgle.  Soon she was certain that the
noises came from wild creatures of some kind, the more so when,
originating in the boughs overhead, they were followed by the fall
of a heavy body upon the ground.  Had she been ensconced here under
other and more pleasant conditions she would have become alarmed;
but, outside humanity, she had at present no fear.

Day at length broke in the sky.  When it had been day aloft for some
little while it became day in the wood.

Directly the assuring and prosaic light of the world's active hours
had grown strong, she crept from under her hillock of leaves, and
looked around boldly.  Then she perceived what had been going on to
disturb her.  The plantation wherein she had taken shelter ran down
at this spot into a peak, which ended it hitherward, outside the
hedge being arable ground.  Under the trees several pheasants lay
about, their rich plumage dabbled with blood; some were dead, some
feebly twitching a wing, some staring up at the sky, some pulsating
quickly, some contorted, some stretched out--all of them writhing in
agony, except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the
night by the inability of nature to bear more.

Tess guessed at once the meaning of this.  The birds had been driven
down into this corner the day before by some shooting-party; and
while those that had dropped dead under the shot, or had died before
nightfall, had been searched for and carried off, many badly wounded
birds had escaped and hidden themselves away, or risen among the
thick boughs, where they had maintained their position till they grew
weaker with loss of blood in the night-time, when they had fallen one
by one as she had heard them.

She had occasionally caught glimpses of these men in girlhood,
looking over hedges, or peeping through bushes, and pointing their
guns, strangely accoutred, a bloodthirsty light in their eyes.  She
had been told that, rough and brutal as they seemed just then, they
were not like this all the year round, but were, in fact, quite civil
persons save during certain weeks of autumn and winter, when, like
the inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula, they ran amuck, and made
it their purpose to destroy life--in this case harmless feathered
creatures, brought into being by artificial means solely to gratify
these propensities--at once so unmannerly and so unchivalrous towards
their weaker fellows in Nature's teeming family.

With the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred sufferers as
much as for herself, Tess's first thought was to put the still living
birds out of their torture, and to this end with her own hands she
broke the necks of as many as she could find, leaving them to lie
where she had found them till the game-keepers should come--as they
probably would come--to look for them a second time.

"Poor darlings--to suppose myself the most miserable being on earth
in the sight o' such misery as yours!" she exclaimed, her tears
running down as she killed the birds tenderly.  "And not a twinge of
bodily pain about me!  I be not mangled, and I be not bleeding, and
I have two hands to feed and clothe me."  She was ashamed of herself
for her gloom of the night, based on nothing more tangible than a
sense of condemnation under an arbitrary law of society which had no
foundation in Nature.

Eight months after Angel and Tess part, Tess is a lonely woman who found irregular service at dairy-work near Port Bredy to the west of Blackmoor Valley. She had concealed her circumstances from her mother, but Joan wrote to Tess that the family was in dreadful difficulty, and Tess sent money to her. Tess is now reluctant to ask Reverend Clare for money, as Angel suggested that she could, for she fears that the Clares despise her already. At this point Angel lies ill from fever in Brazil, having been drenched with thunderstorms and persecuted by other hardships. Tess now journeys to an upland farm to which she had been recommended by Marian, who learned of her separation through Izz Huett. On her journey, she meets the man whom Angel confronted for addressing Tess coarsely. He tells Tess that she should apologize for allowing Angel to inappropriately defend her honor, but Tess cannot answer him. Tess instead runs away, where she hides in the forested area. She remains in hiding until morning, where she finds dying birds around her, the remains of a shooting party from the night before. She puts the birds out of their misery.

A combination of shame and honor render Tess unable to ask for assistance from the Clares, not knowing that they have no knowledge of the details of her separation from Angel, who himself suffers in Brazil. This chapter serves largely to illustrate the dire situation that Tess faces. She has essentially no support, despite the advice of Angel which she refuses to heed, and remains perpetually at the mercy of her past. This second encounter with the man who recognizes her as Alec d'Urberville's mistress serves to reinforce the idea that Tess is perpetually at the mercy of her past, which recurs no matter her wish to escape it. This character also symbolizes Tess's guilt concerning her treatment of Angel; she placed Angel in danger when he defended her honor, despite the truth of the accusations against her. When Tess kills the dying birds that were shot by the hunting party, she demonstrates her compassion and sympathy with the afflicted. She demonstrates mercy by sparing the animals' pain; although a direct analogy between Tess and the wounded birds is a drastic oversimplification, this event nevertheless introduces the idea of death as a compassionate end to suffering and thus appropriately frames and foreshadows the inevitable end to Tess Durbeyfield

Eight months later--it's now October. Tess has spent the summer working at a dairy on the far side of Blackmoor Vale, and since the busy time at the dairy is over, working at the harvest. She prefers to keep busy, rather than to live on the money Angel gave her, because she hates the idea of giving to strangers the money he handed her. And working keeps her mind occupied. But, after the harvest, there's a long run of wet weather, so Tess has trouble finding fieldwork. She starts spending the twenty-five pounds that her husband had left her . That money is almost gone when she gets a letter from her mother asking for twenty pounds to pay for a new roof. Tess has just received the additional thirty pounds from Angel, so she sends the twenty pounds to her mother immediately. Tess is too proud to write to Angel's father for help, and she doesn't let her own parents know that Angel hasn't returned to her. She doesn't even want to go back to her friends at the Talbothays Dairy, because she doesn't want them to talk about her, or to think badly of Angel for deserting her. So she works and lives alone. Things aren't going great for Angel, either--at this moment, he's sick with a bad fever in Brazil. But to return to Tess: Tess is on her way to a farm to the north, where Marian is working. Marian had sent her a letter, saying that it wasn't a bad place to work--if it were really true that Tess was separated from Angel, and was working for a living like she used to. Being a pretty young woman on her own was never a problem while she was wearing the fancier clothes that she'd gotten just before the marriage, but once she starts wearing common field clothes again, her prettiness attracts unwanted attention. One night it's particularly bad. She's on a lonely stretch of road, and a man catches sight of her, recognizing her from Trantridge. In fact, it's the same man who had recognized her in town the week before the wedding, when Angel punched him in the face. Tess panics and runs through the fields. She makes a nest for herself under a hedge, and tries to sleep there. She thinks she's the most miserable being in the world as she lies there shivering. During the night, she's awoken by gasping sounds and the noise of small thumps. When she wakes, she realizes what it was--there must have been a hunting party the day before, and some of the birds that were only wounded hid themselves in the trees overhead. But during the night, they fell one by one from the loss of blood. Some of the birds are still lying on the ground, half-alive. Tess pities them, and puts them out of their misery. She's ashamed of her despair the night before--at least she's better off than those poor birds.

CHAPTER 41 Summary After leaving home, Tess finds only irregular work as a dairymaid, except during harvest time. As winter approaches, she can barely make ends meet and must use some of the money Angel has left her. Since her parents believe she is living comfortably with her new husband again, they ask her for financial help, for their cottage is in serious need of repairs. She sends them the last of her money. In November, Tess heads to the farm where Marian is working, hoping to find employment for herself there. Along the way, she meets the same man whom Angel had struck. When pursued by him, she hides in the woods and wishes she were dead. Notes Tess sends the last of her money to her needy parents. Since she is too proud to approach Angel's parents for help, she travels upland, hoping to find work. She is miserable, lonely, and tormented. When she sees the pathetic sight of some pheasants writhing in pain, she identifies with them. To relieve them of their suffering, she kills them with her hands


It was now broad day, and she started again, emerging cautiously upon
the highway.  But there was no need for caution; not a soul was at
hand, and Tess went onward with fortitude, her recollection of the
birds' silent endurance of their night of agony impressing upon her
the relativity of sorrows and the tolerable nature of her own, if she
could once rise high enough to despise opinion.  But that she could
not do so long as it was held by Clare.

She reached Chalk-Newton, and breakfasted at an inn, where several
young men were troublesomely complimentary to her good looks.
Somehow she felt hopeful, for was it not possible that her husband
also might say these same things to her even yet?  She was bound to
take care of herself on the chance of it, and keep off these casual
lovers.  To this end Tess resolved to run no further risks from her
appearance.  As soon as she got out of the village she entered a
thicket and took from her basket one of the oldest field-gowns, which
she had never put on even at the dairy--never since she had worked
among the stubble at Marlott.  She also, by a felicitous thought,
took a handkerchief from her bundle and tied it round her face under
her bonnet, covering her chin and half her cheeks and temples, as if
she were suffering from toothache. Then with her little scissors,
by the aid of a pocket looking-glass, she mercilessly nipped her
eyebrows off, and thus insured against aggressive admiration, she
went on her uneven way.

"What a mommet of a maid!" said the next man who met her to a
companion.

Tears came into her eyes for very pity of herself as she heard him.

"But I don't care!" she said.  "O no--I don't care!  I'll always be
ugly now, because Angel is not here, and I have nobody to take care
of me.  My husband that was is gone away, and never will love me any
more; but I love him just the same, and hate all other men, and like
to make 'em think scornfully of me!"

Thus Tess walks on; a figure which is part of the landscape; a
fieldwoman pure and simple, in winter guise; a gray serge cape, a
red woollen cravat, a stuff skirt covered by a whitey-brown rough
wrapper, and buff-leather gloves.  Every thread of that old attire
has become faded and thin under the stroke of raindrops, the burn of
sunbeams, and the stress of winds.  There is no sign of young passion
in her now--

     The maiden's mouth is cold
     . . .
     Fold over simple fold
     Binding her head.

Inside this exterior, over which the eye might have roved as over a
thing scarcely percipient, almost inorganic, there was the record of
a pulsing life which had learnt too well, for its years, of the dust
and ashes of things, of the cruelty of lust and the fragility of
love.

Next day the weather was bad, but she trudged on, the honesty,
directness, and impartiality of elemental enmity disconcerting her
but little.  Her object being a winter's occupation and a winter's
home, there was no time to lose.  Her experience of short hirings
had been such that she was determined to accept no more.

Thus she went forward from farm to farm in the direction of the place
whence Marian had written to her, which she determined to make use of
as a last shift only, its rumoured stringencies being the reverse of
tempting.  First she inquired for the lighter kinds of employment,
and, as acceptance in any variety of these grew hopeless, applied
next for the less light, till, beginning with the dairy and poultry
tendance that she liked best, she ended with the heavy and course
pursuits which she liked least--work on arable land: work of such
roughness, indeed, as she would never have deliberately voluteered
for.

Towards the second evening she reached the irregular chalk table-land
or plateau, bosomed with semi-globular tumuli--as if Cybele the
Many-breasted were supinely extended there--which stretched between
the valley of her birth and the valley of her love.

Here the air was dry and cold, and the long cart-roads were blown
white and dusty within a few hours after rain.  There were few trees,
or none, those that would have grown in the hedges being mercilessly
plashed down with the quickset by the tenant-farmers, the natural
enemies of tree, bush, and brake.  In the middle distance ahead of
her she could see the summits of Bulbarrow and of Nettlecombe Tout,
and they seemed friendly.  They had a low and unassuming aspect from
this upland, though as approached on the other side from Blackmoor
in her childhood they were as lofty bastions against the sky.
Southerly, at many miles' distance, and over the hills and ridges
coastward, she could discern a surface like polished steel: it was
the English Channel at a point far out towards France.

Before her, in a slight depression, were the remains of a village.
She had, in fact, reached Flintcomb-Ash, the place of Marian's
sojourn.  There seemed to be no help for it; hither she was doomed to
come.  The stubborn soil around her showed plainly enough that the
kind of labour in demand here was of the roughest kind; but it was
time to rest from searching, and she resolved to stay, particularly
as it began to rain.  At the entrance to the village was a cottage
whose gable jutted into the road, and before applying for a lodging
she stood under its shelter, and watched the evening close in.

"Who would think I was Mrs Angel Clare!" she said.

The wall felt warm to her back and shoulders, and she found that
immediately within the gable was the cottage fireplace, the heat of
which came through the bricks.  She warmed her hands upon them, and
also put her cheek--red and moist with the drizzle--against their
comforting surface.  The wall seemed to be the only friend she had.
She had so little wish to leave it that she could have stayed there
all night.

Tess could hear the occupants of the cottage--gathered together after
their day's labour--talking to each other within, and the rattle of
their supper-plates was also audible.  But in the village-street she
had seen no soul as yet.  The solitude was at last broken by the
approach of one feminine figure, who, though the evening was cold,
wore the print gown and the tilt-bonnet of summer time.  Tess
instinctively thought it might be Marian, and when she came near
enough to be distinguishable in the gloom, surely enough it was
she.  Marian was even stouter and redder in the face than formerly,
and decidedly shabbier in attire.  At any previous period of her
existence Tess would hardly have cared to renew the acquaintance in
such conditions; but her loneliness was excessive, and she responded
readily to Marian's greeting.

Marian was quite respectful in her inquiries, but seemed much moved
by the fact that Tess should still continue in no better condition
than at first; though she had dimly heard of the separation.

"Tess--Mrs Clare--the dear wife of dear he!  And is it really so bad
as this, my child?  Why is your cwomely face tied up in such a way?
Anybody been beating 'ee?  Not HE?"

"No, no, no!  I merely did it not to be clipsed or colled, Marian."

She pulled off in disgust a bandage which could suggest such wild
thoughts.

"And you've got no collar on" (Tess had been accustomed to wear a
little white collar at the dairy).

"I know it, Marian."

"You've lost it travelling."

"I've not lost it.  The truth is, I don't care anything about my
looks; and so I didn't put it on."

"And you don't wear your wedding-ring?"

"Yes, I do; but not in public.  I wear it round my neck on a ribbon.
I don't wish people to think who I am by marriage, or that I am
married at all; it would be so awkward while I lead my present life."

Marian paused.

"But you BE a gentleman's wife; and it seems hardly fair that you
should live like this!"

"O yes it is, quite fair; though I am very unhappy."

"Well, well.  HE married you--and you can be unhappy!"

"Wives are unhappy sometimes; from no fault of their husbands--from
their own."

"You've no faults, deary; that I'm sure of.  And he's none.  So it
must be something outside ye both."

"Marian, dear Marian, will you do me a good turn without asking
questions?  My husband has gone abroad, and somehow I have overrun my
allowance, so that I have to fall back upon my old work for a time.
Do not call me Mrs Clare, but Tess, as before.  Do they want a hand
here?"

"O yes; they'll take one always, because few care to come.  'Tis a
starve-acre place.  Corn and swedes are all they grow.  Though I be
here myself, I feel 'tis a pity for such as you to come."

"But you used to be as good a dairywoman as I."

"Yes; but I've got out o' that since I took to drink.  Lord, that's
the only comfort I've got now!  If you engage, you'll be set
swede-hacking.  That's what I be doing; but you won't like it."

"O--anything!  Will you speak for me?"

"You will do better by speaking for yourself."

"Very well.  Now, Marian, remember--nothing about HIM if I get the
place.  I don't wish to bring his name down to the dirt."

Marian, who was really a trustworthy girl though of coarser grain
than Tess, promised anything she asked.

"This is pay-night," she said, "and if you were to come with me you
would know at once.  I be real sorry that you are not happy; but 'tis
because he's away, I know.  You couldn't be unhappy if he were here,
even if he gie'd ye no money--even if he used you like a drudge."

"That's true; I could not!"

They walked on together and soon reached the farmhouse, which was
almost sublime in its dreariness. There was not a tree within sight;
there was not, at this season, a green pasture--nothing but fallow
and turnips everywhere, in large fields divided by hedges plashed to
unrelieved levels.

Tess waited outside the door of the farmhouse till the group of
workfolk had received their wages, and then Marian introduced her.
The farmer himself, it appeared, was not at home, but his wife, who
represented him this evening, made no objection to hiring Tess, on
her agreeing to remain till Old Lady-Day.  Female field-labour was
seldom offered now, and its cheapness made it profitable for tasks
which women could perform as readily as men.

Having signed the agreement, there was nothing more for Tess to do
at present than to get a lodging, and she found one in the house at
whose gable-wall she had warmed herself.  It was a poor subsistence
that she had ensured, but it would afford a shelter for the winter
at any rate.

That night she wrote to inform her parents of her new address, in
case a letter should arrive at Marlott from her husband.  But she
did not tell them of the sorriness of her situation: it might have
brought reproach upon him.

Tess starts again alone toward Chalk-Newton, where she has breakfast at an inn. At this inn, several young men are troublesomely complimentary to her because of her good looks. After leaving the inn, Tess covers her chin and hair with a handkerchief and cuts off her eyebrows to deflect against men's admiration. She thinks that she will always be ugly as long as Angel is not with her. Tess walks onward, from farm to farm in the direction of the place from which Marian had written her. Tess finally reaches Flintcomb-Ash, the place of Marian's sojourn. The place is barren and rough. Tess's plain appearance surprises Marian, who thinks that she has been abused. Tess asks that Marian not call her Mrs. Clare. Marian tells Tess that she will be employed at swede-hacking, a rough profession. Tess asks Marian to say nothing about Angel, for she does not wish to bring his name down to the dirt.

In this chapter, Hardy focuses on the innate sexuality within Tess Durbeyfield, framing it as a force that Tess can do little to control and which remains the center of her life's maladies. Tess has remained the focus of sexual attention for primarily manipulative or self-serving reasons, as when her parents use her looks to gain her a gentleman husband and Alec d'Urberville uses her only as an object for his lust. By rejecting Tess, Angel Clare himself frames Tess in terms of her sexuality. Her attempt to remove this sexual component of herself by making herself less attractive therefore represents a measure of self-defense. Tess mutilates herself in order to ward off the attention that has damaged her. Flintcomb-Ash serves as a territorial representation of the adversity that Tess faces. The territory is barren and rough, in contrast to the more idyllic region of Talbothays Dairy; this parallels Tess's impoverished situation as well as her new appearance. Yet Tess accepts the surroundings at Flintcomb-Ash largely because of the adversity it offers; she considers it as a form of purgatory, as shown when she refuses to allow Marian to speak about Angel, whom she still considers too noble for the conditions she now faces

The next day, several more young men bother her with compliments about her good looks. So Tess decides to try to make herself ugly, and clips off her eyebrows and ties a handkerchief around her face as though she had a toothache. This has the desired effect--now when she passes men on the road, they mumble to each other about what an ugly girl she is. Tess arrives at the place where Marian has been working, and is happy to see her, even though it's clear that Marian's fallen on hard times, too. Marian is surprised at Tess's appearance, since she's married to a gentleman and all. Marian assumes that whatever's wrong, it must be the fault of something outside both Tess and Angel, since she won't admit that either of them has any real faults. Marian offers to help Tess to get a job at the farm where she's working, even though it's tough work and not much fun. Tess doesn't really care what she does, so long as Marian agrees not to tell anyone about Angel--Tess doesn't want Angel's name to be associated with farm labor. Tess signs an agreement with the farmer's wife to stay and work until "Old Lady Day" . She sends a letter to her parents telling them where she's living, but not how poor she is--she's afraid that they'd think badly of Angel if they knew.

CHAPTER 42 Summary After the encounter with the Trantridge man, Tess decides that she must make herself unattractive to prevent further incidents. She puts on her ugliest clothes and ties her hair up in a handkerchief. When she arrives at her destination, Marian is astonished at her appearance and questions her about Angel. Tess finds temporary work at the farm. She writes to her parents, giving them her new address; but she does not tell them of her situation. Notes Tess continues to be very hard on herself. She never feels that Angel did anything wrong to her, but readily accepts that she is being punished for her own wrongdoings. She refuses to say anything bad about her husband at all. She also blames herself for the affair with Alec and the pursuit by the Trantridge man. To add to her misery, Tess also finds Flintcomb-Ash to be hard. The setting is dreary, especially in comparison to the lush fields around the dairy farms; the soil is not fertile and is very hard to work and the camaraderie found at Talbothay's is missing from this farm. Fortunately, there is one bright spot for Tess. Marian becomes her loyal friend, who is willing to help in all sorts of ways


There was no exaggeration in Marian's definition of Flintcomb-Ash
farm as a starve-acre place.  The single fat thing on the soil was
Marian herself; and she was an importation.  Of the three classes of
village, the village cared for by its lord, the village cared for by
itself, and the village uncared for either by itself or by its lord
(in other words, the village of a resident squires's tenantry, the
village of free- or copy-holders, and the absentee-owner's village,
farmed with the land) this place, Flintcomb-Ash, was the third.

But Tess set to work.  Patience, that blending of moral courage with
physical timidity, was now no longer a minor feature in Mrs Angel
Clare; and it sustained her.

The swede-field in which she and her companion were set hacking was
a stretch of a hundred odd acres in one patch, on the highest ground
of the farm, rising above stony lanchets or lynchets--the outcrop of
siliceous veins in the chalk formation, composed of myriads of loose
white flints in bulbous, cusped, and phallic shapes.  The upper half
of each turnip had been eaten off by the live-stock, and it was the
business of the two women to grub up the lower or earthy half of the
root with a hooked fork called a hacker, that it might be eaten also.
Every leaf of the vegetable having already been consumed, the whole
field was in colour a desolate drab; it was a complexion without
features, as if a face, from chin to brow, should be only an expanse
of skin.  The sky wore, in another colour, the same likeness; a white
vacuity of countenance with the lineaments gone.  So these two upper
and nether visages confronted each other all day long, the white face
looking down on the brown face, and the brown face looking up at the
white face, without anything standing between them but the two girls
crawling over the surface of the former like flies.

Nobody came near them, and their movements showed a mechanical
regularity; their forms standing enshrouded in Hessian "wroppers"--
sleeved brown pinafores, tied behind to the bottom, to keep their
gowns from blowing about--scant skirts revealing boots that reached
high up the ankles, and yellow sheepskin gloves with gauntlets.  The
pensive character which the curtained hood lent to their bent heads
would have reminded the observer of some early Italian conception of
the two Marys.

They worked on hour after hour, unconscious of the forlorn aspect
they bore in the landscape, not thinking of the justice or injustice
of their lot.  Even in such a position as theirs it was possible
to exist in a dream.  In the afternoon the rain came on again, and
Marian said that they need not work any more.  But if they did not
work they would not be paid; so they worked on.  It was so high a
situation, this field, that the rain had no occasion to fall, but
raced along horizontally upon the yelling wind, sticking into them
like glass splinters till they were wet through.  Tess had not
known till now what was really meant by that.  There are degrees of
dampness, and a very little is called being wet through in common
talk.  But to stand working slowly in a field, and feel the creep of
rain-water, first in legs and shoulders, then on hips and head, then
at back, front, and sides, and yet to work on till the leaden light
diminishes and marks that the sun is down, demands a distinct modicum
of stoicism, even of valour.

Yet they did not feel the wetness so much as might be supposed.  They
were both young, and they were talking of the time when they lived
and loved together at Talbothays Dairy, that happy green tract of
land where summer had been liberal in her gifts; in substance to
all, emotionally to these.  Tess would fain not have conversed with
Marian of the man who was legally, if not actually, her husband;
but the irresistible fascination of the subject betrayed her into
reciprocating Marian's remarks.  And thus, as has been said, though
the damp curtains of their bonnets flapped smartly into their faces,
and their wrappers clung about them to wearisomeness, they lived all
this afternoon in memories of green, sunny, romantic Talbothays.

"You can see a gleam of a hill within a few miles o' Froom Valley
from here when 'tis fine," said Marian.

"Ah!  Can you?" said Tess, awake to the new value of this locality.

So the two forces were at work here as everywhere, the inherent will
to enjoy, and the circumstantial will against enjoyment.  Marian's
will had a method of assisting itself by taking from her pocket as
the afternoon wore on a pint bottle corked with white rag, from which
she invited Tess to drink.  Tess's unassisted power of dreaming,
however, being enough for her sublimation at present, she declined
except the merest sip, and then Marian took a pull from the spirits.

"I've got used to it," she said, "and can't leave it off now.  'Tis
my only comfort--You see I lost him: you didn't; and you can do
without it perhaps."

Tess thought her loss as great as Marian's, but upheld by the dignity
of being Angel's wife, in the letter at least, she accepted Marian's
differentiation.

Amid this scene Tess slaved in the morning frosts and in
the afternoon rains.  When it was not swede-grubbing it was
swede-trimming, in which process they sliced off the earth and the
fibres with a bill-hook before storing the roots for future use.  At
this occupation they could shelter themselves by a thatched hurdle if
it rained; but if it was frosty even their thick leather gloves could
not prevent the frozen masses they handled from biting their fingers.
Still Tess hoped.  She had a conviction that sooner or later the
magnanimity which she persisted in reckoning as a chief ingredient
of Clare's character would lead him to rejoin her.

Marian, primed to a humorous mood, would discover the queer-shaped
flints aforesaid, and shriek with laughter, Tess remaining severely
obtuse.  They often looked across the country to where the Var or
Froom was know to stretch, even though they might not be able to see
it; and, fixing their eyes on the cloaking gray mist, imagined the
old times they had spent out there.

"Ah," said Marian, "how I should like another or two of our old set
to come here!  Then we could bring up Talbothays every day here
afield, and talk of he, and of what nice times we had there, and o'
the old things we used to know, and make it all come back a'most, in
seeming!"  Marian's eyes softened, and her voice grew vague as the
visions returned.  "I'll write to Izz Huett," she said.  "She's
biding at home doing nothing now, I know, and I'll tell her we be
here, and ask her to come; and perhaps Retty is well enough now."

Tess had nothing to say against the proposal, and the next she heard
of this plan for importing old Talbothays' joys was two or three days
later, when Marian informed her that Izz had replied to her inquiry,
and had promised to come if she could.

There had not been such a winter for years.  It came on in stealthy
and measured glides, like the moves of a chess-player.  One morning
the few lonely trees and the thorns of the hedgerows appeared as if
they had put off a vegetable for an animal integument.  Every twig
was covered with a white nap as of fur grown from the rind during the
night, giving it four times its usual stoutness; the whole bush or
tree forming a staring sketch in white lines on the mournful gray
of the sky and horizon.  Cobwebs revealed their presence on sheds
and walls where none had ever been observed till brought out into
visibility by the crystallizing atmosphere, hanging like loops of
white worsted from salient points of the out-houses, posts, and
gates.

After this season of congealed dampness came a spell of dry frost,
when strange birds from behind the North Pole began to arrive
silently on the upland of Flintcomb-Ash; gaunt spectral creatures
with tragical eyes--eyes which had witnessed scenes of cataclysmal
horror in inaccessible polar regions of a magnitude such as no human
being had ever conceived, in curdling temperatures that no man could
endure; which had beheld the crash of icebergs and the slide of
snow-hills by the shooting light of the Aurora; been half blinded
by the whirl of colossal storms and terraqueous distortions; and
retained the expression of feature that such scenes had engendered.
These nameless birds came quite near to Tess and Marian, but of
all they had seen which humanity would never see, they brought no
account.  The traveller's ambition to tell was not theirs, and, with
dumb impassivity, they dismissed experiences which they did not
value for the immediate incidents of this homely upland--the trivial
movements of the two girls in disturbing the clods with their hackers
so as to uncover something or other that these visitants relished as
food.

Then one day a peculiar quality invaded the air of this open country.
There came a moisture which was not of rain, and a cold which was not
of frost.  It chilled the eyeballs of the twain, made their brows
ache, penetrated to their skeletons, affecting the surface of the
body less than its core.  They knew that it meant snow, and in the
night the snow came.  Tess, who continued to live at the cottage with
the warm gable that cheered any lonely pedestrian who paused beside
it, awoke in the night, and heard above the thatch noises which
seemed to signify that the roof had turned itself into a gymnasium
of all the winds.  When she lit her lamp to get up in the morning
she found that the snow had blown through a chink in the casement,
forming a white cone of the finest powder against the inside, and had
also come down the chimney, so that it lay sole-deep upon the floor,
on which her shoes left tracks when she moved about.  Without, the
storm drove so fast as to create a snow-mist in the kitchen; but as
yet it was too dark out-of-doors to see anything.

Tess knew that it was impossible to go on with the swedes; and by
the time she had finished breakfast beside the solitary little lamp,
Marian arrived to tell her that they were to join the rest of the
women at reed-drawing in the barn till the weather changed.  As soon,
therefore, as the uniform cloak of darkness without began to turn
to a disordered medley of grays, they blew out the lamp, wrapped
themselves up in their thickest pinners, tied their woollen cravats
round their necks and across their chests, and started for the barn.
The snow had followed the birds from the polar basin as a white
pillar of a cloud, and individual flakes could not be seen.  The
blast smelt of icebergs, arctic seas, whales, and white bears,
carrying the snow so that it licked the land but did not deepen on
it.  They trudged onwards with slanted bodies through the flossy
fields, keeping as well as they could in the shelter of hedges,
which, however, acted as strainers rather than screens.  The air,
afflicted to pallor with the hoary multitudes that infested it,
twisted and spun them eccentrically, suggesting an achromatic chaos
of things.  But both the young women were fairly cheerful; such
weather on a dry upland is not in itself dispiriting.

"Ha-ha! the cunning northern birds knew this was coming," said
Marian.  "Depend upon't, they keep just in front o't all the way from
the North Star.  Your husband, my dear, is, I make no doubt, having
scorching weather all this time.  Lord, if he could only see his
pretty wife now!  Not that this weather hurts your beauty at all--in
fact, it rather does it good."

"You mustn't talk about him to me, Marian," said Tess severely.

"Well, but--surely you care for'n!  Do you?"

Instead of answering, Tess, with tears in her eyes, impulsively faced
in the direction in which she imagined South America to lie, and,
putting up her lips, blew out a passionate kiss upon the snowy wind.

"Well, well, I know you do.  But 'pon my body, it is a rum life for
a married couple!  There--I won't say another word!  Well, as for
the weather, it won't hurt us in the wheat-barn; but reed-drawing is
fearful hard work--worse than swede-hacking.  I can stand it because
I'm stout; but you be slimmer than I.  I can't think why maister
should have set 'ee at it."

They reached the wheat-barn and entered it.  One end of the long
structure was full of corn; the middle was where the reed-drawing was
carried on, and there had already been placed in the reed-press the
evening before as many sheaves of wheat as would be sufficient for
the women to draw from during the day.

"Why, here's Izz!" said Marian.

Izz it was, and she came forward.  She had walked all the way from
her mother's home on the previous afternoon, and, not deeming the
distance so great, had been belated, arriving, however, just before
the snow began, and sleeping at the alehouse.  The farmer had agreed
with her mother at market to take her on if she came to-day, and she
had been afraid to disappoint him by delay.

In addition to Tess, Marian, and Izz, there were two women from a
neighbouring village; two Amazonian sisters, whom Tess with a start
remembered as Dark Car, the Queen of Spades, and her junior, the
Queen of Diamonds--those who had tried to fight with her in the
midnight quarrel at Trantridge.  They showed no recognition of her,
and possibly had none, for they had been under the influence of
liquor on that occasion, and were only temporary sojourners there
as here.  They did all kinds of men's work by preference, including
well-sinking, hedging, ditching, and excavating, without any sense of
fatigue.  Noted reed-drawers were they too, and looked round upon the
other three with some superciliousness.

Putting on their gloves, all set to work in a row in front of the
press, an erection formed of two posts connected by a cross-beam,
under which the sheaves to be drawn from were laid ears outward, the
beam being pegged down by pins in the uprights, and lowered as the
sheaves diminished.

The day hardened in colour, the light coming in at the barndoors
upwards from the snow instead of downwards from the sky.  The girls
pulled handful after handful from the press; but by reason of the
presence of the strange women, who were recounting scandals, Marian
and Izz could not at first talk of old times as they wished to do.
Presently they heard the muffled tread of a horse, and the farmer
rode up to the barndoor.  When he had dismounted he came close to
Tess, and remained looking musingly at the side of her face.  She had
not turned at first, but his fixed attitude led her to look round,
when she perceived that her employer was the native of Trantridge
from whom she had taken flight on the high-road because of his
allusion to her history.

He waited till she had carried the drawn bundles to the pile outside,
when he said, "So you be the young woman who took my civility in such
ill part?  Be drowned if I didn't think you might be as soon as I
heard of your being hired!  Well, you thought you had got the better
of me the first time at the inn with your fancy-man, and the second
time on the road, when you bolted; but now I think I've got the
better you."  He concluded with a hard laugh.

Tess, between the Amazons and the farmer, like a bird caught in a
clap-net, returned no answer, continuing to pull the straw.  She
could read character sufficiently well to know by this time that she
had nothing to fear from her employer's gallantry; it was rather the
tyranny induced by his mortification at Clare's treatment of him.
Upon the whole she preferred that sentiment in man and felt brave
enough to endure it.

"You thought I was in love with 'ee I suppose?  Some women are such
fools, to take every look as serious earnest.  But there's nothing
like a winter afield for taking that nonsense out o' young wenches'
heads; and you've signed and agreed till Lady-Day.  Now, are you
going to beg my pardon?"

"I think you ought to beg mine."

"Very well--as you like.  But we'll see which is master here.  Be
they all the sheaves you've done to-day?"

"Yes, sir."

"'Tis a very poor show.  Just see what they've done over there"
(pointing to the two stalwart women).  "The rest, too, have done
better than you."

"They've all practised it before, and I have not.  And I thought it
made no difference to you as it is task work, and we are only paid
for what we do."

"Oh, but it does.  I want the barn cleared."

"I am going to work all the afternoon instead of leaving at two as
the others will do."

He looked sullenly at her and went away.  Tess felt that she could
not have come to a much worse place; but anything was better than
gallantry.  When two o'clock arrived the professional reed-drawers
tossed off the last half-pint in their flagon, put down their hooks,
tied their last sheaves, and went away.  Marian and Izz would have
done likewise, but on hearing that Tess meant to stay, to make up
by longer hours for her lack of skill, they would not leave her.
Looking out at the snow, which still fell, Marian exclaimed, "Now,
we've got it all to ourselves."  And so at last the conversation
turned to their old experiences at the dairy; and, of course, the
incidents of their affection for Angel Clare.

"Izz and Marian," said Mrs Angel Clare, with a dignity which was
extremely touching, seeing how very little of a wife she was: "I
can't join in talk with you now, as I used to do, about Mr Clare; you
will see that I cannot; because, although he is gone away from me for
the present, he is my husband."

Izz was by nature the sauciest and most caustic of all the four girls
who had loved Clare.  "He was a very splendid lover, no doubt," she
said; "but I don't think he is a too fond husband to go away from you
so soon."

"He had to go--he was obliged to go, to see about the land over
there!" pleaded Tess.

"He might have tided 'ee over the winter."

"Ah--that's owing to an accident--a misunderstanding; and we won't
argue it," Tess answered, with tearfulness in her words.  "Perhaps
there's a good deal to be said for him!  He did not go away, like
some husbands, without telling me; and I can always find out where
he is."

After this they continued for some long time in a reverie, as they
went on seizing the ears of corn, drawing out the straw, gathering
it under their arms, and cutting off the ears with their bill-hooks,
nothing sounding in the barn but the swish of the straw and the
crunch of the hook.  Then Tess suddenly flagged, and sank down upon
the heap of wheat-ears at her feet.

"I knew you wouldn't be able to stand it!" cried Marian.  "It wants
harder flesh than yours for this work."

Just then the farmer entered.  "Oh, that's how you get on when I am
away," he said to her.

"But it is my own loss," she pleaded.  "Not yours."

"I want it finished," he said doggedly, as he crossed the barn and
went out at the other door.

"Don't 'ee mind him, there's a dear," said Marian.  "I've worked here
before.  Now you go and lie down there, and Izz and I will make up
your number."

"I don't like to let you do that.  I'm taller than you, too."

However, she was so overcome that she consented to lie down awhile,
and reclined on a heap of pull-tails--the refuse after the straight
straw had been drawn--thrown up at the further side of the barn.  Her
succumbing had been as largely owning to agitation at the re-opening
the subject of her separation from her husband as to the hard work.
She lay in a state of percipience without volition, and the rustle of
the straw and the cutting of the ears by the others had the weight of
bodily touches.

She could hear from her corner, in addition to these noises, the
murmur of their voices.  She felt certain that they were continuing
the subject already broached, but their voices were so low that she
could not catch the words.  At last Tess grew more and more anxious
to know what they were saying, and, persuading herself that she felt
better, she got up and resumed work.

Then Izz Huett broke down.  She had walked more than a dozen miles
the previous evening, had gone to bed at midnight, and had risen
again at five o'clock.  Marian alone, thanks to her bottle of liquor
and her stoutness of build, stood the strain upon back and arms
without suffering.  Tess urged Izz to leave off, agreeing, as she
felt better, to finish the day without her, and make equal division
of the number of sheaves.

Izz accepted the offer gratefully, and disappeared through the great
door into the snowy track to her lodging.  Marian, as was the case
every afternoon at this time on account of the bottle, began to feel
in a romantic vein.

"I should not have thought it of him--never!" she said in a dreamy
tone.  "And I loved him so!  I didn't mind his having YOU.  But this
about Izz is too bad!"

Tess, in her start at the words, narrowly missed cutting off a finger
with the bill-hook.

"Is it about my husband?" she stammered.

"Well, yes.  Izz said, 'Don't 'ee tell her'; but I am sure I can't
help it!  It was what he wanted Izz to do.  He wanted her to go off
to Brazil with him."

Tess's face faded as white as the scene without, and its curves
straightened.  "And did Izz refuse to go?" she asked.

"I don't know.  Anyhow he changed his mind."

"Pooh--then he didn't mean it!  'Twas just a man's jest!"

"Yes he did; for he drove her a good-ways towards the station."

"He didn't take her!"

They pulled on in silence till Tess, without any premonitory
symptoms, burst out crying.

"There!" said Marian.  "Now I wish I hadn't told 'ee!"

"No.  It is a very good thing that you have done!  I have been living
on in a thirtover, lackaday way, and have not seen what it may lead
to!  I ought to have sent him a letter oftener.  He said I could not
go to him, but he didn't say I was not to write as often as I liked.
I won't dally like this any longer!  I have been very wrong and
neglectful in leaving everything to be done by him!"

The dim light in the barn grew dimmer, and they could see to work no
longer.  When Tess had reached home that evening, and had entered
into the privacy of her little white-washed chamber, she began
impetuously writing a letter to Clare.  But falling into doubt, she
could not finish it.  Afterwards she took the ring from the ribbon on
which she wore it next her heart, and retained it on her finger all
night, as if to fortify herself in the sensation that she was really
the wife of this elusive lover of hers, who could propose that Izz
should go with him abroad, so shortly after he had left her.  Knowing
that, how could she write entreaties to him, or show that she cared
for him any more?

Tess sets to work at Flintcomb-Ash, sustained by her sense of patience. For Tess, patience combines moral courage with physical timidity. The movement of the swede-hackers shows a mechanical regularity, as they work hour after hour unconscious of the forlorn aspect they bear on the landscape. Marian now has alcohol as her only comfort. She proposes to Tess that they invite Izz Huett and Retty Priddle to come to Flintcomb-Ash. Marian soon hears from Izz that she is coming. The winter is particularly harsh, one day preventing work altogether. Marian tells Tess that the harsh weather improves Tess's beauty, and that her husband should see her now. Tess reprimands Marian for her mention of him. Along with Tess, Marian and Izz, two other women working at Flintcomb-Ash are Car and Nancy Darch, neither of whom recognize Tess. Tess finds that her employer is the Trantridge native from whom she had taken flight. He laughs that he has regained his superior position. Tess does not answer him, so he demands an apology. Izz tells Tess that Angel was a splendid lover, no doubt, and tells Tess that Angel has left for the New World. Tess claims that she can always find out where Angel is. Tess continues to work, but she finally sinks down upon a heap of wheat-ears at her feet. Marian cries out that the work requires harder flesh than hers. The farmer suddenly enters and reprimands her for not working. Izz and Marian continue working to make up for Tess after the farmer leaves. Marian tells Tess how Angel asked Izz to accompany him to Brazil, but changed his mind. Tess cries at this news, thinking that she has been wrong and neglectful. Tess writes a letter to Angel, but cannot finish it. Afterwards she takes the wedding ring she keeps on a ribbon around her neck and wears it on her finger.

Hardy continues to elaborate the theme of the recurrence of past events through the arrival of several characters present in earlier sections of the novel. Tess finds herself in the presence of the man who insulted Angel for the third time, now as an employer, while the other girls from Talbothays dairy also work at Flintcomb-Ash. Even Car and Nancy Darch, whose threats against Tess served as a catalyst for her nighttime ride with Alec, find themselves working with Tess. The recurrence of these characters is a particular humiliation for Tess; each of them remind Tess of humiliations or indignities she has suffered. Tess even learns about Angel's proposition for Izz Huett, thus shaking her faith in Angel. When Tess wears her wedding ring at the end of the chapter, this is more than anything a mark of desperation. Even without her husband himself, the one reassurance that Tess has is her marriage to Angel Clare. With so little to support her, Tess can rely only on a small reminder of what she once had

The farm where Tess and Marian are working is described repeatedly as a "starve-acre place" . It really is a poor and dismal place. Their job basically consists of pulling turnips out of the ground--not very exciting, and kind of hard on the back. Marian offers a nip from her flask to Tess, and Tess refuses. Marian excuses her own drinking by saying that she lost Angel, and Tess didn't, so that's why she needs the booze more. Marian is so happy to have Tess there that she proposes that they write to Izz and Retty, and tell them to come and work there as well. It would be like old times. The winter weather is brutally cold. The next day, the weather is so bad that it keeps them from working in the fields, and they hang out in the barn. Izz arrives that afternoon--along with two other new farm workers, Car and Nancy Darch, the two women who wanted to fight with Tess in Trantridge the night Alec raped her. They don't seem to recognize her, though, and everyone sets to work in the field the next day. The farmer gets back, and it turns out he's the Trantridge man whom Angel popped in the face, and who scared Tess on the road. And now she's signed something agreeing to work for him through the winter. He gives her a hard time about it, but she takes it calmly. Marian and Izz want to reminisce about the good old days at Talbothays, and how they all used to be in love with Angel, but Tess refuses to join in--after all, she married the guy. Izz makes a few sarcastic remarks about Angel's having left her, but she's really not a mean girl, so she lets up when she sees how it upsets Tess. After working in silence for a while, Tess sinks to the ground in exhaustion. Marian offers to help her, and Tess accepts, although she feels bad about it. While she's resting, Tess has the feeling that Marian and Izz are discussing Angel, and she doesn't like it. After a while, Tess gets up and gets back to work. Izz goes in early--she'd been walking all day, after all. Once Izz is gone, Marian shakes her head and says she wouldn't have believed it. Tess asks what she means--Marian's been drinking from her hip flask, and is inclined to be honest. Izz has told Marian about how Angel asked her to go to Brazil with him, and then changed his mind, and now Marian tells Tess. Tess bursts into tears, and resolves to write him a letter. But she never finishes the letter, and doesn't mail it.

CHAPTER 43 Summary At Flintcomb-Ash Farm, life is difficult for Tess. She learns that her employer is the Trantridge man, who is particularly hard on her. She and Marian are forced to work in the fields, through wind, rain, and cold, digging up rutabagas. When the snow begins, they are transferred into the barns, where the work is even more difficult. During the winter, Izz Huett comes to the farm and is also employed. She tells Marian about her encounter with Angel and the invitation that he offered her. When Tess hears the story, she decides she must write to Angel in Brazil. Notes The only happiness that Tess experiences at Flintcomb-Ash is the memories of Talbothay's and the company of Marian. Everything else is dreary -- the work, the landscape, the weather, and the atmosphere. Fate makes those things even worse, for Tess's employer turns out to be the man from Trantridge, who delights in making her life even harder