It was evening at Emminster Vicarage.  The two customary candles were
burning under their green shades in the Vicar's study, but he had not
been sitting there.  Occasionally he came in, stirred the small fire
which sufficed for the increasing mildness of the spring, and went
out again; sometimes pausing at the front door, going on to the
drawing-room, then returning again to the front door.

It faced westward, and though gloom prevailed inside, there was still
light enough without to see with distinctness.  Mrs Clare, who had
been sitting in the drawing-room, followed him hither.

"Plenty of time yet," said the Vicar.  "He doesn't reach Chalk-Newton
till six, even if the train should be punctual, and ten miles of
country-road, five of them in Crimmercrock Lane, are not jogged over
in a hurry by our old horse."

"But he has done it in an hour with us, my dear."

"Years ago."

Thus they passed the minutes, each well knowing that this was only
waste of breath, the one essential being simply to wait.

At length there was a slight noise in the lane, and the old
pony-chaise appeared indeed outside the railings.  They saw alight
therefrom a form which they affected to recognize, but would actually
have passed by in the street without identifying had he not got out
of their carriage at the particular moment when a particular person
was due.

Mrs Clare rushed through the dark passage to the door, and her
husband came more slowly after her.

The new arrival, who was just about to enter, saw their anxious faces
in the doorway and the gleam of the west in their spectacles because
they confronted the last rays of day; but they could only see his
shape against the light.

"O, my boy, my boy--home again at last!" cried Mrs Clare, who cared
no more at that moment for the stains of heterodoxy which had caused
all this separation than for the dust upon his clothes.  What woman,
indeed, among the most faithful adherents of the truth, believes the
promises and threats of the Word in the sense in which she believes
in her own children, or would not throw her theology to the wind if
weighed against their happiness?  As soon as they reached the room
where the candles were lighted she looked at his face.

"O, it is not Angel--not my son--the Angel who went away!" she cried
in all the irony of sorrow, as she turned herself aside.

His father, too, was shocked to see him, so reduced was that figure
from its former contours by worry and the bad season that Clare had
experienced, in the climate to which he had so rashly hurried in his
first aversion to the mockery of events at home.  You could see the
skeleton behind the man, and almost the ghost behind the skeleton.
He matched Crivelli's dead _Christus_.  His sunken eye-pits were of
morbid hue, and the light in his eyes had waned.  The angular hollows
and lines of his aged ancestors had succeeded to their reign in his
face twenty years before their time.

"I was ill over there, you know," he said.  "I am all right now."

As if, however, to falsify this assertion, his legs seemed to give
way, and he suddenly sat down to save himself from falling.  It was
only a slight attack of faintness, resulting from the tedious day's
journey, and the excitement of arrival.

"Has any letter come for me lately?" he asked.  "I received the
last you sent on by the merest chance, and after considerable delay
through being inland; or I might have come sooner."

"It was from your wife, we supposed?"

"It was."

Only one other had recently come.  They had not sent it on to him,
knowing he would start for home so soon.

He hastily opened the letter produced, and was much disturbed to read
in Tess's handwriting the sentiments expressed in her last hurried
scrawl to him.

   O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do
   not deserve it.  I have thought it all over carefully,
   and I can never, never forgive you!  You know that I
   did not intend to wrong you--why have you so wronged
   me?  You are cruel, cruel indeed!  I will try to forget
   you.  It is all injustice I have received at your
   hands!
                                  T.

"It is quite true!" said Angel, throwing down the letter.  "Perhaps
she will never be reconciled to me!"

"Don't, Angel, be so anxious about a mere child of the soil!" said
his mother.

"Child of the soil!  Well, we all are children of the soil.  I wish
she were so in the sense you mean; but let me now explain to you what
I have never explained before, that her father is a descendant in the
male line of one of the oldest Norman houses, like a good many others
who lead obscure agricultural lives in our villages, and are dubbed
'sons of the soil.'"

He soon retired to bed; and the next morning, feeling exceedingly
unwell, he remained in his room pondering.  The circumstances amid
which he had left Tess were such that though, while on the south of
the Equator and just in receipt of her loving epistle, it had seemed
the easiest thing in the world to rush back into her arms the moment
he chose to forgive her, now that he had arrived it was not so easy
as it had seemed.  She was passionate, and her present letter,
showing that her estimate of him had changed under his delay--too
justly changed, he sadly owned,--made him ask himself if it would
be wise to confront her unannounced in the presence of her parents.
Supposing that her love had indeed turned to dislike during the last
weeks of separation, a sudden meeting might lead to bitter words.

Clare therefore thought it would be best to prepare Tess and her
family by sending a line to Marlott announcing his return, and his
hope that she was still living with them there, as he had arranged
for her to do when he left England.  He despatched the inquiry that
very day, and before the week was out there came a short reply from
Mrs Durbeyfield which did not remove his embarrassment, for it bore
no address, though to his surprise it was not written from Marlott.

   SIR,

   J write these few lines to say that my Daughter is away
   from me at present, and J am not sure when she will
   return, but J will let you know as Soon as she do.
   J do not feel at liberty to tell you Where she is
   temperly biding.  J should say that me and my Family
   have left Marlott for some Time.--

   Yours,

   J. DURBEYFIELD

It was such a relief to Clare to learn that Tess was at least
apparently well that her mother's stiff reticence as to her
whereabouts did not long distress him.  They were all angry with him,
evidently.  He would wait till Mrs Durbeyfield could inform him of
Tess's return, which her letter implied to be soon.  He deserved no
more.  His had been a love "which alters when it alteration finds".
He had undergone some strange experiences in his absence; he had seen
the virtual Faustina in the literal Cornelia, a spiritual Lucretia in
a corporeal Phryne; he had thought of the woman taken and set in the
midst as one deserving to be stoned, and of the wife of Uriah being
made a queen; and he had asked himself why he had not judged Tess
constructively rather than biographically, by the will rather than
by the deed?

A day or two passed while he waited at his father's house for the
promised second note from Joan Durbeyfield, and indirectly to recover
a little more strength.  The strength showed signs of coming back,
but there was no sign of Joan's letter.  Then he hunted up the
old letter sent on to him in Brazil, which Tess had written from
Flintcomb-Ash, and re-read it.  The sentences touched him now as
much as when he had first perused them.

   ... I must cry to you in my trouble--I have no one
   else! ...  I think I must die if you do not come
   soon, or tell me to come to you... please, please,
   not to be just--only a little kind to me ...  If
   you would come, I could die in your arms!  I would
   be well content to do that if so be you had forgiven
   me! ... if you will send me one little line, and say,
   "I am coming soon," I will bide on, Angel--O, so
   cheerfully! ... think how it do hurt my heart not to
   see you ever--ever!  Ah, if I could only make your
   dear heart ache one little minute of each day as mine
   does every day and all day long, it might lead you to
   show pity to your poor lonely one. ...  I would be
   content, ay, glad, to live with you as your servant,
   if I may not as your wife; so that I could only be
   near you, and get glimpses of you, and think of you
   as mine. ...  I long for only one thing in heaven
   or earth or under the earth, to meet you, my own
   dear!  Come to me--come to me, and save me from what
   threatens me!

Clare determined that he would no longer believe in her more recent
and severer regard of him, but would go and find her immediately.  He
asked his father if she had applied for any money during his absence.
His father returned a negative, and then for the first time it
occurred to Angel that her pride had stood in her way, and that she
had suffered privation.  From his remarks his parents now gathered
the real reason of the separation; and their Christianity was such
that, reprobates being their especial care, the tenderness towards
Tess which her blood, her simplicity, even her poverty, had not
engendered, was instantly excited by her sin.

Whilst he was hastily packing together a few articles for his journey
he glanced over a poor plain missive also lately come to hand--the
one from Marian and Izz Huett, beginning--

"Honour'd Sir, Look to your Wife if you do love her as much as she do
love you," and signed, "From Two Well-Wishers."

Finally, Angel returns from Brazil. His parents are shocked at his physical appearance: "so reduced was that figure from his former". Gaunt and thin from illness, he has aged twenty years. After reading Tess's second letter castigating him for abandoning her, he fears losing her. His mother asks why he cares so much for a "mere child of the soil," at which point Angel retaliates, informing her of Tess's noble lineage. After writing to Tess at Marlott, he hears back from Joan Durbeyfield that Tess has left. He realizes how Tess must have suffered, is overcome by guilt and tells his parents the truth about why the couple split. They surprise him with kind understanding. Then he reads the warning letter from Marian and Izz


In a quarter of an hour Clare was leaving the house, whence his
mother watched his thin figure as it disappeared into the street.
He had declined to borrow his father's old mare, well knowing of
its necessity to the household.  He went to the inn, where he hired
a trap, and could hardly wait during the harnessing.  In a very few
minutes after, he was driving up the hill out of the town which,
three or four months earlier in the year, Tess had descended with
such hopes and ascended with such shattered purposes.

Benvill Lane soon stretched before him, its hedges and trees purple
with buds; but he was looking at other things, and only recalled
himself to the scene sufficiently to enable him to keep the way.  In
something less than an hour-and-a-half he had skirted the south of
the King's Hintock estates and ascended to the untoward solitude of
Cross-in-Hand, the unholy stone whereon Tess had been compelled by
Alec d'Urberville, in his whim of reformation, to swear the strange
oath that she would never wilfully tempt him again.  The pale and
blasted nettle-stems of the preceding year even now lingered nakedly
in the banks, young green nettles of the present spring growing from
their roots.

Thence he went along the verge of the upland overhanging the other
Hintocks, and, turning to the right, plunged into the bracing
calcareous region of Flintcomb-Ash, the address from which she had
written to him in one of the letters, and which he supposed to be
the place of sojourn referred to by her mother.  Here, of course, he
did not find her; and what added to his depression was the discovery
that no "Mrs Clare" had ever been heard of by the cottagers or by
the farmer himself, though Tess was remembered well enough by her
Christian name.  His name she had obviously never used during their
separation, and her dignified sense of their total severance was
shown not much less by this abstention than by the hardships she had
chosen to undergo (of which he now learnt for the first time) rather
than apply to his father for more funds.

From this place they told him Tess Durbeyfield had gone, without due
notice, to the home of her parents on the other side of Blackmoor,
and it therefore became necessary to find Mrs Durbeyfield.  She had
told him she was not now at Marlott, but had been curiously reticent
as to her actual address, and the only course was to go to Marlott
and inquire for it.  The farmer who had been so churlish with Tess
was quite smooth-tongued to Clare, and lent him a horse and man to
drive him towards Marlott, the gig he had arrived in being sent back
to Emminster; for the limit of a day's journey with that horse was
reached.

Clare would not accept the loan of the farmer's vehicle for a further
distance than to the outskirts of the Vale, and, sending it back with
the man who had driven him, he put up at an inn, and next day entered
on foot the region wherein was the spot of his dear Tess's birth.
It was as yet too early in the year for much colour to appear in the
gardens and foliage; the so-called spring was but winter overlaid
with a thin coat of greenness, and it was of a parcel with his
expectations.

The house in which Tess had passed the years of her childhood was
now inhabited by another family who had never known her.  The new
residents were in the garden, taking as much interest in their own
doings as if the homestead had never passed its primal time in
conjunction with the histories of others, beside which the histories
of these were but as a tale told by an idiot.  They walked about the
garden paths with thoughts of their own concerns entirely uppermost,
bringing their actions at every moment in jarring collision with the
dim ghosts behind them, talking as though the time when Tess lived
there were not one whit intenser in story than now.  Even the spring
birds sang over their heads as if they thought there was nobody
missing in particular.

On inquiry of these precious innocents, to whom even the name of
their predecessors was a failing memory, Clare learned that John
Durbeyfield was dead; that his widow and children had left Marlott,
declaring that they were going to live at Kingsbere, but instead of
doing so had gone on to another place they mentioned.  By this time
Clare abhorred the house for ceasing to contain Tess, and hastened
away from its hated presence without once looking back.

His way was by the field in which he had first beheld her at the
dance.  It was as bad as the house--even worse.  He passed on through
the churchyard, where, amongst the new headstones, he saw one of a
somewhat superior design to the rest.  The inscription ran thus:

  In memory of John Durbeyfield, rightly d'Urberville, of
  the once powerful family of that Name, and Direct
  Descendant through an illustrious Line from Sir Pagan
  d'Urberville, one of the Knights of the Conqueror.  Died
  March 10th, 18--

                HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN.

Some man, apparently the sexton, had observed Clare standing there,
and drew nigh.  "Ah, sir, now that's a man who didn't want to lie
here, but wished to be carried to Kingsbere, where his ancestors be."

"And why didn't they respect his wish?"

"Oh--no money.  Bless your soul, sir, why--there, I wouldn't wish to
say it everywhere, but--even this headstone, for all the flourish
wrote upon en, is not paid for."

"Ah, who put it up?"

The man told the name of a mason in the village, and, on leaving the
churchyard, Clare called at the mason's house.  He found that the
statement was true, and paid the bill.  This done, he turned in the
direction of the migrants.

The distance was too long for a walk, but Clare felt such a strong
desire for isolation that at first he would neither hire a conveyance
nor go to a circuitous line of railway by which he might eventually
reach the place.  At Shaston, however, he found he must hire; but
the way was such that he did not enter Joan's place till about seven
o'clock in the evening, having traversed a distance of over twenty
miles since leaving Marlott.

The village being small he had little difficulty in finding Mrs
Durbeyfield's tenement, which was a house in a walled garden,
remote from the main road, where she had stowed away her clumsy old
furniture as best she could.  It was plain that for some reason or
other she had not wished him to visit her, and he felt his call to
be somewhat of an intrusion.  She came to the door herself, and the
light from the evening sky fell upon her face.

This was the first time that Clare had ever met her, but he was too
preoccupied to observe more than that she was still a handsome woman,
in the garb of a respectable widow.  He was obliged to explain that
he was Tess's husband, and his object in coming there, and he did it
awkwardly enough.  "I want to see her at once," he added.  "You said
you would write to me again, but you have not done so."

"Because she've not come home," said Joan.

"Do you know if she is well?"

"I don't.  But you ought to, sir," said she.

"I admit it.  Where is she staying?"

From the beginning of the interview Joan had disclosed her
embarrassment by keeping her hand to the side of her cheek.

"I--don't know exactly where she is staying," she answered. "She
was--but--"

"Where was she?"

"Well, she is not there now."

In her evasiveness she paused again, and the younger children had by
this time crept to the door, where, pulling at his mother's skirts,
the youngest murmured--

"Is this the gentleman who is going to marry Tess?"

"He has married her," Joan whispered.  "Go inside."

Clare saw her efforts for reticence, and asked--

"Do you think Tess would wish me to try and find her?  If not, of
course--"

"I don't think she would."

"Are you sure?"

"I am sure she wouldn't."

He was turning away; and then he thought of Tess's tender letter.

"I am sure she would!" he retorted passionately.  "I know her better
than you do."

"That's very likely, sir; for I have never really known her."

"Please tell me her address, Mrs Durbeyfield, in kindness to a lonely
wretched man!"  Tess's mother again restlessly swept her cheek with
her vertical hand, and seeing that he suffered, she at last said, is
a low voice--

"She is at Sandbourne."

"Ah--where there?  Sandbourne has become a large place, they say."

"I don't know more particularly than I have said--Sandbourne.  For
myself, I was never there."

It was apparent that Joan spoke the truth in this, and he pressed her
no further.

"Are you in want of anything?" he said gently.

"No, sir," she replied.  "We are fairly well provided for."

Without entering the house Clare turned away.  There was a station
three miles ahead, and paying off his coachman, he walked thither.
The last train to Sandbourne left shortly after, and it bore Clare
on its wheels.

Angel follows Tess to Marlott, learns that Sir John Durbeyfield has died and that the family is living at Trantridge. He pays for the headstone. After first withholding the information of Tess's whereabouts, her now well-cared for mother informs Angel, and he leaves to go to Sandbourne


At eleven o'clock that night, having secured a bed at one of the
hotels and telegraphed his address to his father immediately on his
arrival, he walked out into the streets of Sandbourne.  It was too
late to call on or inquire for any one, and he reluctantly postponed
his purpose till the morning.  But he could not retire to rest just
yet.

This fashionable watering-place, with its eastern and its western
stations, its piers, its groves of pines, its promenades, and its
covered gardens, was, to Angel Clare, like a fairy place suddenly
created by the stroke of a wand, and allowed to get a little dusty.
An outlying eastern tract of the enormous Egdon Waste was close at
hand, yet on the very verge of that tawny piece of antiquity such a
glittering novelty as this pleasure city had chosen to spring up.
Within the space of a mile from its outskirts every irregularity
of the soil was prehistoric, every channel an undisturbed British
trackway; not a sod having been turned there since the days of the
Caesars.  Yet the exotic had grown here, suddenly as the prophet's
gourd; and had drawn hither Tess.

By the midnight lamps he went up and down the winding way of this new
world in an old one, and could discern between the trees and against
the stars the lofty roofs, chimneys, gazebos, and towers of the
numerous fanciful residences of which the place was composed. It
was a city of detached mansions; a Mediterranean lounging-place on
the English Channel; and as seen now by night it seemed even more
imposing than it was.

The sea was near at hand, but not intrusive; it murmured, and he
thought it was the pines; the pines murmured in precisely the same
tones, and he thought they were the sea.

Where could Tess possibly be, a cottage-girl, his young wife, amidst
all this wealth and fashion?  The more he pondered, the more was he
puzzled.  Were there any cows to milk here?  There certainly were
no fields to till. She was most probably engaged to do something in
one of these large houses; and he sauntered along, looking at the
chamber-windows and their lights going out one by one, and wondered
which of them might be hers.

Conjecture was useless, and just after twelve o'clock he entered
and went to bed.   Before putting out his light he re-read Tess's
impassioned letter.  Sleep, however, he could not--so near her, yet
so far from her--and he continually lifted the window-blind and
regarded the backs of the opposite houses, and wondered behind which
of the sashes she reposed at that moment.

He might almost as well have sat up all night.  In the morning he
arose at seven, and shortly after went out, taking the direction of
the chief post-office.  At the door he met an intelligent postman
coming out with letters for the morning delivery.

"Do you know the address of a Mrs Clare?" asked Angel.  The postman
shook his head.

Then, remembering that she would have been likely to continue the use
of her maiden name, Clare said--

"Of a Miss Durbeyfield?"

"Durbeyfield?"

This also was strange to the postman addressed.

"There's visitors coming and going every day, as you know, sir," he
said; "and without the name of the house 'tis impossible to find
'em."

One of his comrades hastening out at that moment, the name was
repeated to him.

"I know no name of Durbeyfield; but there is the name of d'Urberville
at The Herons," said the second.

"That's it!" cried Clare, pleased to think that she had reverted to
the real pronunciation.  "What place is The Herons?"

"A stylish lodging-house.  'Tis all lodging-houses here, bless 'ee."

Clare received directions how to find the house, and hastened
thither, arriving with the milkman.  The Herons, though an ordinary
villa, stood in its own grounds, and was certainly the last place
in which one would have expected to find lodgings, so private was
its appearance.  If poor Tess was a servant here, as he feared, she
would go to the back-door to that milkman, and he was inclined to go
thither also.  However, in his doubts he turned to the front, and
rang.

The hour being early, the landlady herself opened the door.  Clare
inquired for Teresa d'Urberville or Durbeyfield.

"Mrs d'Urberville?"

"Yes."

Tess, then, passed as a married woman, and he felt glad, even though
she had not adopted his name.

"Will you kindly tell her that a relative is anxious to see her?"

"It is rather early.  What name shall I give, sir?"

"Angel."

"Mr Angel?"

"No; Angel.  It is my Christian name.  She'll understand."

"I'll see if she is awake."

He was shown into the front room--the dining-room--and looked out
through the spring curtains at the little lawn, and the rhododendrons
and other shrubs upon it.  Obviously her position was by no means so
bad as he had feared, and it crossed his mind that she must somehow
have claimed and sold the jewels to attain it.  He did not blame her
for one moment.  Soon his sharpened ear detected footsteps upon the
stairs, at which his heart thumped so painfully that he could hardly
stand firm.  "Dear me! what will she think of me, so altered as I
am!" he said to himself; and the door opened.

Tess appeared on the threshold--not at all as he had expected to
see her--bewilderingly otherwise, indeed.  Her great natural beauty
was, if not heightened, rendered more obvious by her attire.  She
was loosely wrapped in a cashmere dressing-gown of gray-white,
embroidered in half-mourning tints, and she wore slippers of the same
hue.  Her neck rose out of a frill of down, and her well-remembered
cable of dark-brown hair was partially coiled up in a mass at the
back of her head and partly hanging on her shoulder--the evident
result of haste.

He had held out his arms, but they had fallen again to his side;
for she had not come forward, remaining still in the opening of the
doorway.  Mere yellow skeleton that he was now, he felt the contrast
between them, and thought his appearance distasteful to her.

"Tess!" he said huskily, "can you forgive me for going away?  Can't
you--come to me?  How do you get to be--like this?"

"It is too late," said she, her voice sounding hard through the room,
her eyes shining unnaturally.

"I did not think rightly of you--I did not see you as you were!" he
continued to plead.  "I have learnt to since, dearest Tessy mine!"

"Too late, too late!" she said, waving her hand in the impatience of
a person whose tortures cause every instant to seem an hour.  "Don't
come close to me, Angel!  No--you must not.  Keep away."

"But don't you love me, my dear wife, because I have been so pulled
down by illness?  You are not so fickle--I am come on purpose for
you--my mother and father will welcome you now!"

"Yes--O, yes, yes!  But I say, I say it is too late."

She seemed to feel like a fugitive in a dream, who tries to move
away, but cannot.  "Don't you know all--don't you know it?  Yet how
do you come here if you do not know?"

"I inquired here and there, and I found the way."

"I waited and waited for you," she went on, her tones suddenly
resuming their old fluty pathos.  "But you did not come!  And I wrote
to you, and you did not come! He kept on saying you would never come
any more, and that I was a foolish woman.  He was very kind to me,
and to mother, and to all of us after father's death. He--"

"I don't understand."

"He has won me back to him."

Clare looked at her keenly, then, gathering her meaning, flagged
like one plague-stricken, and his glance sank; it fell on her hands,
which, once rosy, were now white and more delicate.

She continued--

"He is upstairs.  I hate him now, because he told me a lie--that you
would not come again; and you HAVE come!  These clothes are what he's
put upon me: I didn't care what he did wi' me!  But--will you go
away, Angel, please, and never come any more?"

They stood fixed, their baffled hearts looking out of their eyes with
a joylessness pitiful to see.  Both seemed to implore something to
shelter them from reality.

"Ah--it is my fault!" said Clare.

But he could not get on.  Speech was as inexpressive as silence.  But
he had a vague consciousness of one thing, though it was not clear
to him till later; that his original Tess had spiritually ceased to
recognize the body before him as hers--allowing it to drift, like a
corpse upon the current, in a direction dissociated from its living
will.

A few instants passed, and he found that Tess was gone.  His face
grew colder and more shrunken as he stood concentrated on the moment,
and a minute or two after, he found himself in the street, walking
along he did not know whither.

Angel's search finally leads him to an expensive lodging house called The Herons, where he finds Tess expensively dressed and in the company of Alec d'Urberville. He begs her to forgive him but she explains that it is too late: "he has won me back to him". She believed that Angel would never return and so left with d'Urberville for the sake of her homeless family. Devastated, Angel leaves


Mrs Brooks, the lady who was the householder at The Herons and owner
of all the handsome furniture, was not a person of an unusually
curious turn of mind. She was too deeply materialized, poor woman,
by her long and enforced bondage to that arithmetical demon
Profit-and-Loss, to retain much curiousity for its own sake, and
apart from possible lodgers' pockets.  Nevertheless, the visit of
Angel Clare to her well-paying tenants, Mr and Mrs d'Urberville, as
she deemed them, was sufficiently exceptional in point of time and
manner to reinvigorate the feminine proclivity which had been stifled
down as useless save in its bearings to the letting trade.

Tess had spoken to her husband from the doorway, without entering
the dining-room, and Mrs Brooks, who stood within the partly-closed
door of her own sitting-room at the back of the passage, could
hear fragments of the conversation--if conversation it could be
called--between those two wretched souls.  She heard Tess re-ascend
the stairs to the first floor, and the departure of Clare, and the
closing of the front door behind him.  Then the door of the room
above was shut, and Mrs Brooks knew that Tess had re-entered her
apartment.  As the young lady was not fully dressed, Mrs Brooks knew
that she would not emerge again for some time.

She accordingly ascended the stairs softly, and stood at the door of
the front room--a drawing-room, connected with the room immediately
behind it (which was a bedroom) by folding-doors in the common
manner.  This first floor, containing Mrs Brooks's best apartments,
had been taken by the week by the d'Urbervilles.  The back room was
now in silence; but from the drawing-room there came sounds.

All that she could at first distinguish of them was one syllable,
continually repeated in a low note of moaning, as if it came from a
soul bound to some Ixionian wheel--

"O--O--O!"

Then a silence, then a heavy sigh, and again--

"O--O--O!"

The landlady looked through the keyhole.  Only a small space of the
room inside was visible, but within that space came a corner of the
breakfast table, which was already spread for the meal, and also a
chair beside.  Over the seat of the chair Tess's face was bowed, her
posture being a kneeling one in front of it; her hands were clasped
over her head, the skirts of her dressing-gown and the embroidery of
her night-gown flowed upon the floor behind her, and her stockingless
feet, from which the slippers had fallen, protruded upon the carpet.
It was from her lips that came the murmur of unspeakable despair.

Then a man's voice from the adjoining bedroom--

"What's the matter?"

She did not answer, but went on, in a tone which was a soliloquy
rather than an exclamation, and a dirge rather than a soliloquy.
Mrs Brooks could only catch a portion:

"And then my dear, dear husband came home to me ... and I did not
know it! ...  And you had used your cruel persuasion upon me ... you
did not stop using it--no--you did not stop! My little sisters and
brothers and my mother's needs--they were the things you moved me
by ... and you said my husband would never come back--never; and you
taunted me, and said what a simpleton I was to expect him! ...  And
at last I believed you and gave way! ...  And then he came back!
Now he is gone.  Gone a second time, and I have lost him now
for ever ... and he will not love me the littlest bit ever any
more--only hate me! ... O yes, I have lost him now--again because
of--you!"  In writhing, with her head on the chair, she turned her
face towards the door, and Mrs Brooks could see the pain upon it,
and that her lips were bleeding from the clench of her teeth upon
them, and that the long lashes of her closed eyes stuck in wet tags
to her cheeks.  She continued: "And he is dying--he looks as if he
is dying! ...  And my sin will kill him and not kill me! ...  O, you
have torn my life all to pieces ... made me be what I prayed you in
pity not to make me be again! ...  My own true husband will never,
never--O God--I can't bear this!--I cannot!"

There were more and sharper words from the man; then a sudden rustle;
she had sprung to her feet.  Mrs Brooks, thinking that the speaker
was coming to rush out of the door, hastily retreated down the
stairs.

She need not have done so, however, for the door of the sitting-room
was not opened.  But Mrs Brooks felt it unsafe to watch on the
landing again, and entered her own parlour below.

She could hear nothing through the floor, although she listened
intently, and thereupon went to the kitchen to finish her interrupted
breakfast.  Coming up presently to the front room on the ground floor
she took up some sewing, waiting for her lodgers to ring that she
might take away the breakfast, which she meant to do herself, to
discover what was the matter if possible.  Overhead, as she sat, she
could now hear the floorboards slightly creak, as if some one were
walking about, and presently the movement was explained by the rustle
of garments against the banisters, the opening and the closing of
the front door, and the form of Tess passing to the gate on her way
into the street.  She was fully dressed now in the walking costume
of a well-to-do young lady in which she had arrived, with the sole
addition that over her hat and black feathers a veil was drawn.

Mrs Brooks had not been able to catch any word of farewell, temporary
or otherwise, between her tenants at the door above.  They might have
quarrelled, or Mr d'Urberville might still be asleep, for he was not
an early riser.

She went into the back room, which was more especially her own
apartment, and continued her sewing there.  The lady lodger did not
return, nor did the gentleman ring his bell.  Mrs Brooks pondered on
the delay, and on what probable relation the visitor who had called
so early bore to the couple upstairs.  In reflecting she leant back
in her chair.

As she did so her eyes glanced casually over the ceiling till they
were arrested by a spot in the middle of its white surface which she
had never noticed there before.  It was about the size of a wafer
when she first observed it, but it speedily grew as large as the palm
of her hand, and then she could perceive that it was red.  The oblong
white ceiling, with this scarlet blot in the midst, had the
appearance of a gigantic ace of hearts.

Mrs Brooks had strange qualms of misgiving.  She got upon the table,
and touched the spot in the ceiling with her fingers. It was damp,
and she fancied that it was a blood stain.

Descending from the table, she left the parlour, and went upstairs,
intending to enter the room overhead, which was the bedchamber at
the back of the drawing-room.  But, nerveless woman as she had now
become, she could not bring herself to attempt the handle.  She
listened.  The dead silence within was broken only by a regular beat.

Drip, drip, drip.

Mrs Brooks hastened downstairs, opened the front door, and ran into
the street.  A man she knew, one of the workmen employed at an
adjoining villa, was passing by, and she begged him to come in and go
upstairs with her; she feared something had happened to one of her
lodgers.  The workman assented, and followed her to the landing.

She opened the door of the drawing-room, and stood back for him
to pass in, entering herself behind him.  The room was empty; the
breakfast--a substantial repast of coffee, eggs, and a cold ham--lay
spread upon the table untouched, as when she had taken it up,
excepting that the carving-knife was missing.  She asked the man to
go through the folding-doors into the adjoining room.

He opened the doors, entered a step or two, and came back almost
instantly with a rigid face.  "My good God, the gentleman in bed is
dead!  I think he has been hurt with a knife--a lot of blood had run
down upon the floor!"

The alarm was soon given, and the house which had lately been so
quiet resounded with the tramp of many footsteps, a surgeon among the
rest.  The wound was small, but the point of the blade had touched
the heart of the victim, who lay on his back, pale, fixed, dead, as
if he had scarcely moved after the infliction of the blow.  In a
quarter of an hour the news that a gentleman who was a temporary
visitor to the town had been stabbed in his bed, spread through every
street and villa of the popular watering-place.

The landlady Mrs. Brooks looks in through the keyhole, sees Tess crying and hears her accusing d'Urberville: "you used your cruel persuasion upon me". Mrs. Brooks returns downstairs and sees Tess leaving in a hurry. Soon she wonders why d'Urberville doesn't ring to have the breakfast tray removed. Then she looks up to see a dark red spot spreading across the ceiling. She calls for help. Alec is discovered stabbed to death on the bed


Meanwhile Angel Clare had walked automatically along the way by which
he had come, and, entering his hotel, sat down over the breakfast,
staring at nothingness.  He went on eating and drinking unconsciously
till on a sudden he demanded his bill; having paid which, he took his
dressing-bag in his hand, the only luggage he had brought with him,
and went out.

At the moment of his departure a telegram was handed to him--a few
words from his mother, stating that they were glad to know his
address, and informing him that his brother Cuthbert had proposed to
and been accepted by Mercy Chant.

Clare crumpled up the paper and followed the route to the station;
reaching it, he found that there would be no train leaving for an
hour and more.  He sat down to wait, and having waited a quarter of
an hour felt that he could wait there no longer.  Broken in heart and
numbed, he had nothing to hurry for; but he wished to get out of a
town which had been the scene of such an experience, and turned to
walk to the first station onward, and let the train pick him up
there.

The highway that he followed was open, and at a little distance
dipped into a valley, across which it could be seen running from edge
to edge.  He had traversed the greater part of this depression, and
was climbing the western acclivity when, pausing for breath, he
unconsciously looked back.  Why he did so he could not say, but
something seemed to impel him to the act.  The tape-like surface of
the road diminished in his rear as far as he could see, and as he
gazed a moving spot intruded on the white vacuity of its perspective.

It was a human figure running.  Clare waited, with a dim sense that
somebody was trying to overtake him.

The form descending the incline was a woman's, yet so entirely was
his mind blinded to the idea of his wife's following him that even
when she came nearer he did not recognize her under the totally
changed attire in which he now beheld her.  It was not till she was
quite close that he could believe her to be Tess.

"I saw you--turn away from the station--just before I got there--and
I have been following you all this way!"

She was so pale, so breathless, so quivering in every muscle, that he
did not ask her a single question, but seizing her hand, and pulling
it within his arm, he led her along.  To avoid meeting any possible
wayfarers he left the high road and took a footpath under some
fir-trees.  When they were deep among the moaning boughs he stopped
and looked at her inquiringly.

"Angel," she said, as if waiting for this, "do you know what I have
been running after you for?  To tell you that I have killed him!"
A pitiful white smile lit her face as she spoke.

"What!" said he, thinking from the strangeness of her manner that she
was in some delirium.

"I have done it--I don't know how," she continued.  "Still, I owed it
to you, and to myself, Angel.  I feared long ago, when I struck him
on the mouth with my glove, that I might do it some day for the trap
he set for me in my simple youth, and his wrong to you through me.
He has come between us and ruined us, and now he can never do it any
more.  I never loved him at all, Angel, as I loved you.  You know it,
don't you?  You believe it?  You didn't come back to me, and I was
obliged to go back to him.  Why did you go away--why did you--when I
loved you so?  I can't think why you did it.  But I don't blame you;
only, Angel, will you forgive me my sin against you, now I have
killed him?  I thought as I ran along that you would be sure to
forgive me now I have done that.  It came to me as a shining light
that I should get you back that way.  I could not bear the loss of
you any longer--you don't know how entirely I was unable to bear your
not loving me!  Say you do now, dear, dear husband; say you do, now I
have killed him!"

"I do love you, Tess--O, I do--it is all come back!" he said,
tightening his arms round her with fervid pressure.  "But how do you
mean--you have killed him?"

"I mean that I have," she murmured in a reverie.

"What, bodily?  Is he dead?"

"Yes.  He heard me crying about you, and he bitterly taunted me; and
called you by a foul name; and then I did it.  My heart could not
bear it.  He had nagged me about you before.  And then I dressed
myself and came away to find you."

By degrees he was inclined to believe that she had faintly attempted,
at least, what she said she had done; and his horror at her impulse
was mixed with amazement at the strength of her affection for
himself, and at the strangeness of its quality, which had apparently
extinguished her moral sense altogether.  Unable to realize the
gravity of her conduct, she seemed at last content; and he looked
at her as she lay upon his shoulder, weeping with happiness, and
wondered what obscure strain in the d'Urberville blood had led to
this aberration--if it were an aberration.  There momentarily flashed
through his mind that the family tradition of the coach and murder
might have arisen because the d'Urbervilles had been known to do
these things.  As well as his confused and excited ideas could
reason, he supposed that in the moment of mad grief of which she
spoke, her mind had lost its balance, and plunged her into this
abyss.

It was very terrible if true; if a temporary hallucination, sad.  But,
anyhow, here was this deserted wife of his, this passionately-fond
woman, clinging to him without a suspicion that he would be anything
to her but a protector.  He saw that for him to be otherwise was
not, in her mind, within the region of the possible.  Tenderness was
absolutely dominant in Clare at last.  He kissed her endlessly with
his white lips, and held her hand, and said--

"I will not desert you!  I will protect you by every means in my
power, dearest love, whatever you may have done or not have done!"

They then walked on under the trees, Tess turning her head every now
and then to look at him.  Worn and unhandsome as he had become, it
was plain that she did not discern the least fault in his appearance.
To her he was, as of old, all that was perfection, personally and
mentally.  He was still her Antinous, her Apollo even; his sickly
face was beautiful as the morning to her affectionate regard on
this day no less than when she first beheld him; for was it not the
face of the one man on earth who had loved her purely, and who had
believed in her as pure!

With an instinct as to possibilities, he did not now, as he had
intended, make for the first station beyond the town, but plunged
still farther under the firs, which here abounded for miles.  Each
clasping the other round the waist they promenaded over the dry bed
of fir-needles, thrown into a vague intoxicating atmosphere at the
consciousness of being together at last, with no living soul between
them; ignoring that there was a corpse.  Thus they proceeded for
several miles till Tess, arousing herself, looked about her, and
said, timidly--

"Are we going anywhere in particular?"

"I don't know, dearest.  Why?"

"I don't know."

"Well, we might walk a few miles further, and when it is evening find
lodgings somewhere or other--in a lonely cottage, perhaps.  Can you
walk well, Tessy?"

"O yes!  I could walk for ever and ever with your arm round me!"

Upon the whole it seemed a good thing to do.  Thereupon they
quickened their pace, avoiding high roads, and following obscure
paths tending more or less northward.  But there was an unpractical
vagueness in their movements throughout the day; neither one of them
seemed to consider any question of effectual escape, disguise, or
long concealment.  Their every idea was temporary and unforefending,
like the plans of two children.

At mid-day they drew near to a roadside inn, and Tess would have
entered it with him to get something to eat, but he persuaded
her to remain among the trees and bushes of this half-woodland,
half-moorland part of the country till he should come back.  Her
clothes were of recent fashion; even the ivory-handled parasol that
she carried was of a shape unknown in the retired spot to which they
had now wandered; and the cut of such articles would have attracted
attention in the settle of a tavern.  He soon returned, with food
enough for half-a-dozen people and two bottles of wine--enough to
last them for a day or more, should any emergency arise.

They sat down upon some dead boughs and shared their meal.  Between
one and two o'clock they packed up the remainder and went on again.

"I feel strong enough to walk any distance," said she.

"I think we may as well steer in a general way towards the interior
of the country, where we can hide for a time, and are less likely to
be looked for than anywhere near the coast," Clare remarked.  "Later
on, when they have forgotten us, we can make for some port."

She made no reply to this beyond that of grasping him more tightly,
and straight inland they went.  Though the season was an English May,
the weather was serenely bright, and during the afternoon it was
quite warm.  Through the latter miles of their walk their footpath
had taken them into the depths of the New Forest, and towards
evening, turning the corner of a lane, they perceived behind a brook
and bridge a large board on which was painted in white letters, "This
desirable Mansion to be Let Furnished"; particulars following, with
directions to apply to some London agents.  Passing through the gate
they could see the house, an old brick building of regular design and
large accommodation.

"I know it," said Clare.  "It is Bramshurst Court.  You can see that
it is shut up, and grass is growing on the drive."

"Some of the windows are open," said Tess.

"Just to air the rooms, I suppose."

"All these rooms empty, and we without a roof to our heads!"

"You are getting tired, my Tess!" he said.  "We'll stop soon."  And
kissing her sad mouth, he again led her onwards.

He was growing weary likewise, for they had wandered a dozen or
fifteen miles, and it became necessary to consider what they should
do for rest.  They looked from afar at isolated cottages and little
inns, and were inclined to approach one of the latter, when their
hearts failed them, and they sheered off.  At length their gait
dragged, and they stood still.

"Could we sleep under the trees?" she asked.

He thought the season insufficiently advanced.

"I have been thinking of that empty mansion we passed," he said.
"Let us go back towards it again."

They retraced their steps, but it was half an hour before they stood
without the entrance-gate as earlier.  He then requested her to stay
where she was, whilst he went to see who was within.

She sat down among the bushes within the gate, and Clare crept
towards the house.  His absence lasted some considerable time, and
when he returned Tess was wildly anxious, not for herself, but for
him.  He had found out from a boy that there was only an old woman in
charge as caretaker, and she only came there on fine days, from the
hamlet near, to open and shut the windows.  She would come to shut
them at sunset.  "Now, we can get in through one of the lower
windows, and rest there," said he.

Under his escort she went tardily forward to the main front, whose
shuttered windows, like sightless eyeballs, excluded the possibility
of watchers.  The door was reached a few steps further, and one of
the windows beside it was open. Clare clambered in, and pulled Tess
in after him.

Except the hall, the rooms were all in darkness, and they ascended
the staircase.  Up here also the shutters were tightly closed,
the ventilation being perfunctorily done, for this day at least,
by opening the hall-window in front and an upper window behind.
Clare unlatched the door of a large chamber, felt his way across
it, and parted the shutters to the width of two or three inches.
A shaft of dazzling sunlight glanced into the room, revealing heavy,
old-fashioned furniture, crimson damask hangings, and an enormous
four-post bedstead, along the head of which were carved running
figures, apparently Atalanta's race.

"Rest at last!" said he, setting down his bag and the parcel of
viands.

They remained in great quietness till the caretaker should have come
to shut the windows: as a precaution, putting themselves in total
darkness by barring the shutters as before, lest the woman should
open the door of their chamber for any casual reason.  Between six
and seven o'clock she came, but did not approach the wing they
were in.  They heard her close the windows, fasten them, lock the
door, and go away.  Then Clare again stole a chink of light from
the window, and they shared another meal, till by-and-by they
were enveloped in the shades of night which they had no candle to
disperse.

As Angel walks to catch the train, he turns to see Tess running behind him. She tells him that she has just killed d'Urberville, and the couple flees. She pleads with him to forgive her and, thinking she is merely hysterical, he declares his love: "it is all come back". Soon however, it becomes apparent that she has in fact stabbed d'Urberville, but still can't believe he is dead. Angel buys food, the couple flees into the woods, and they plan to run away from England. They come across an old empty mansion, climb in the window and remain overnight after the housekeeper closes the windows and leaves


The night was strangely solemn and still.  In the small hours she
whispered to him the whole story of how he had walked in his sleep
with her in his arms across the Froom stream, at the imminent risk of
both their lives, and laid her down in the stone coffin at the ruined
abbey.  He had never known of that till now.

"Why didn't you tell me next day?" he said.  "It might have prevented
much misunderstanding and woe."

"Don't think of what's past!" said she.  "I am not going to think
outside of now.  Why should we!  Who knows what to-morrow has in
store?"

But it apparently had no sorrow.  The morning was wet and foggy, and
Clare, rightly informed that the caretaker only opened the windows
on fine days, ventured to creep out of their chamber and explore the
house, leaving Tess asleep.  There was no food on the premises, but
there was water, and he took advantage of the fog to emerge from the
mansion and fetch tea, bread, and butter from a shop in a little
place two miles beyond, as also a small tin kettle and spirit-lamp,
that they might get fire without smoke.  His re-entry awoke her; and
they breakfasted on what he had brought.

They were indisposed to stir abroad, and the day passed, and the
night following, and the next, and next; till, almost without their
being aware, five days had slipped by in absolute seclusion, not a
sight or sound of a human being disturbing their peacefulness, such
as it was.  The changes of the weather were their only events, the
birds of the New Forest their only company.  By tacit consent they
hardly once spoke of any incident of the past subsequent to their
wedding-day.  The gloomy intervening time seemed to sink into chaos,
over which the present and prior times closed as if it never had
been.  Whenever he suggested that they should leave their shelter,
and go forwards towards Southampton or London, she showed a strange
unwillingness to move.

"Why should we put an end to all that's sweet and lovely!" she
deprecated.  "What must come will come."  And, looking through the
shutter-chink: "All is trouble outside there; inside here content."

He peeped out also.  It was quite true; within was affection, union,
error forgiven: outside was the inexorable.

"And--and," she said, pressing her cheek against his, "I fear that
what you think of me now may not last.  I do not wish to outlive your
present feeling for me. I would rather not.  I would rather be dead
and buried when the time comes for you to despise me, so that it may
never be known to me that you despised me."

"I cannot ever despise you."

"I also hope that.  But considering what my life has been, I cannot
see why any man should, sooner or later, be able to help despising
me....  How wickedly mad I was!  Yet formerly I never could bear to
hurt a fly or a worm, and the sight of a bird in a cage used often to
make me cry."

They remained yet another day.  In the night the dull sky cleared,
and the result was that the old caretaker at the cottage awoke early.
The brilliant sunrise made her unusually brisk; she decided to open
the contiguous mansion immediately, and to air it thoroughly on such
a day.  Thus it occurred that, having arrived and opened the lower
rooms before six o'clock, she ascended to the bedchambers, and was
about to turn the handle of the one wherein they lay.  At that moment
she fancied she could hear the breathing of persons within.  Her
slippers and her antiquity had rendered her progress a noiseless one
so far, and she made for instant retreat; then, deeming that her
hearing might have deceived her, she turned anew to the door and
softly tried the handle.  The lock was out of order, but a piece of
furniture had been moved forward on the inside, which prevented her
opening the door more than an inch or two.  A stream of morning light
through the shutter-chink fell upon the faces of the pair, wrapped in
profound slumber, Tess's lips being parted like a half-opened flower
near his cheek.  The caretaker was so struck with their innocent
appearance, and with the elegance of Tess's gown hanging across a
chair, her silk stockings beside it, the pretty parasol, and the
other habits in which she had arrived because she had none else, that
her first indignation at the effrontery of tramps and vagabonds gave
way to a momentary sentimentality over this genteel elopement, as it
seemed.  She closed the door, and withdrew as softly as she had come,
to go and consult with her neighbours on the odd discovery.

Not more than a minute had elapsed after her withdrawal when Tess
woke, and then Clare.  Both had a sense that something had disturbed
them, though they could not say what; and the uneasy feeling which
it engendered grew stronger.  As soon as he was dressed he narrowly
scanned the lawn through the two or three inches of shutter-chink.

"I think we will leave at once," said he.  "It is a fine day. And I
cannot help fancying somebody is about the house.  At any rate, the
woman will be sure to come to-day."

She passively assented, and putting the room in order, they took up
the few articles that belonged to them, and departed noiselessly.
When they had got into the Forest she turned to take a last look at
the house.

"Ah, happy house--goodbye!" she said.  "My life can only be a
question of a few weeks.  Why should we not have stayed there?"

"Don't say it, Tess!  We shall soon get out of this district
altogether.  We'll continue our course as we've begun it, and keep
straight north.  Nobody will think of looking for us there.  We shall
be looked for at the Wessex ports if we are sought at all.  When we
are in the north we will get to a port and away."

Having thus persuaded her, the plan was pursued, and they kept a
bee-line northward.  Their long repose at the manor-house lent them
walking power now; and towards mid-day they found that they were
approaching the steepled city of Melchester, which lay directly in
their way.  He decided to rest her in a clump of trees during the
afternoon, and push onward under cover of darkness.  At dusk Clare
purchased food as usual, and their night march began, the boundary
between Upper and Mid-Wessex being crossed about eight o'clock.

To walk across country without much regard to roads was not new
to Tess, and she showed her old agility in the performance.  The
intercepting city, ancient Melchester, they were obliged to pass
through in order to take advantage of the town bridge for crossing a
large river that obstructed them.  It was about midnight when they
went along the deserted streets, lighted fitfully by the few lamps,
keeping off the pavement that it might not echo their footsteps.
The graceful pile of cathedral architecture rose dimly on their left
hand, but it was lost upon them now.  Once out of the town they
followed the turnpike-road, which after a few miles plunged across an
open plain.

Though the sky was dense with cloud, a diffused light from some
fragment of a moon had hitherto helped them a little.  But the moon
had now sunk, the clouds seemed to settle almost on their heads, and
the night grew as dark as a cave.  However, they found their way
along, keeping as much on the turf as possible that their tread might
not resound, which it was easy to do, there being no hedge or fence
of any kind.  All around was open loneliness and black solitude, over
which a stiff breeze blew.

They had proceeded thus gropingly two or three miles further when
on a sudden Clare became conscious of some vast erection close in
his front, rising sheer from the grass.  They had almost struck
themselves against it.

"What monstrous place is this?" said Angel.

"It hums," said she.  "Hearken!"

He listened.  The wind, playing upon the edifice, produced a booming
tune, like the note of some gigantic one-stringed harp.  No other
sound came from it, and lifting his hand and advancing a step or
two, Clare felt the vertical surface of the structure.  It seemed to
be of solid stone, without joint or moulding.  Carrying his fingers
onward he found that what he had come in contact with was a colossal
rectangular pillar; by stretching out his left hand he could feel a
similar one adjoining.  At an indefinite height overhead something
made the black sky blacker, which had the semblance of a vast
architrave uniting the pillars horizontally.  They carefully entered
beneath and between; the surfaces echoed their soft rustle; but they
seemed to be still out of doors.  The place was roofless.  Tess drew
her breath fearfully, and Angel, perplexed, said--

"What can it be?"

Feeling sideways they encountered another tower-like pillar, square
and uncompromising as the first; beyond it another and another.  The
place was all doors and pillars, some connected above by continuous
architraves.

"A very Temple of the Winds," he said.

The next pillar was isolated; others composed a trilithon; others
were prostrate, their flanks forming a causeway wide enough for a
carriage; and it was soon obvious that they made up a forest of
monoliths grouped upon the grassy expanse of the plain.  The couple
advanced further into this pavilion of the night till they stood in
its midst.

"It is Stonehenge!" said Clare.

"The heathen temple, you mean?"

"Yes.  Older than the centuries; older than the d'Urbervilles!  Well,
what shall we do, darling?  We may find shelter further on."

But Tess, really tired by this time, flung herself upon an oblong
slab that lay close at hand, and was sheltered from the wind by a
pillar.  Owing to the action of the sun during the preceding day, the
stone was warm and dry, in comforting contrast to the rough and chill
grass around, which had damped her skirts and shoes.

"I don't want to go any further, Angel," she said, stretching out her
hand for his.  "Can't we bide here?"

"I fear not.  This spot is visible for miles by day, although it does
not seem so now."

"One of my mother's people was a shepherd hereabouts, now I think of
it.  And you used to say at Talbothays that I was a heathen.  So now
I am at home."

He knelt down beside her outstretched form, and put his lips upon
hers.

"Sleepy are you, dear?  I think you are lying on an altar."

"I like very much to be here," she murmured.  "It is so solemn and
lonely--after my great happiness--with nothing but the sky above my
face.  It seems as if there were no folk in the world but we two;
and I wish there were not--except 'Liza-Lu."

Clare though she might as well rest here till it should get a little
lighter, and he flung his overcoat upon her, and sat down by her
side.

"Angel, if anything happens to me, will you watch over 'Liza-Lu for
my sake?" she asked, when they had listened a long time to the wind
among the pillars.

"I will."

"She is so good and simple and pure.  O, Angel--I wish you would
marry her if you lose me, as you will do shortly.  O, if you would!"

"If I lose you I lose all!  And she is my sister-in-law."

"That's nothing, dearest.  People marry sister-laws continually about
Marlott; and 'Liza-Lu is so gentle and sweet, and she is growing
so beautiful.  O, I could share you with her willingly when we are
spirits!  If you would train her and teach her, Angel, and bring her
up for your own self! ...  She had all the best of me without the bad
of me; and if she were to become yours it would almost seem as if
death had not divided us...  Well, I have said it.  I won't mention
it again."

She ceased, and he fell into thought.  In the far north-east sky he
could see between the pillars a level streak of light.  The uniform
concavity of black cloud was lifting bodily like the lid of a pot,
letting in at the earth's edge the coming day, against which the
towering monoliths and trilithons began to be blackly defined.

"Did they sacrifice to God here?" asked she.

"No," said he.

"Who to?"

"I believe to the sun.  That lofty stone set away by itself is in the
direction of the sun, which will presently rise behind it."

"This reminds me, dear," she said.  "You remember you never would
interfere with any belief of mine before we were married?  But I knew
your mind all the same, and I thought as you thought--not from any
reasons of my own, but because you thought so.  Tell me now, Angel,
do you think we shall meet again after we are dead?  I want to know."

He kissed her to avoid a reply at such a time.

"O, Angel--I fear that means no!" said she, with a suppressed sob.
"And I wanted so to see you again--so much, so much!  What--not even
you and I, Angel, who love each other so well?"

Like a greater than himself, to the critical question at the critical
time he did not answer; and they were again silent.  In a minute or
two her breathing became more regular, her clasp of his hand relaxed,
and she fell asleep.  The band of silver paleness along the east
horizon made even the distant parts of the Great Plain appear dark
and near; and the whole enormous landscape bore that impress of
reserve, taciturnity, and hesitation which is usual just before day.
The eastward pillars and their architraves stood up blackly against
the light, and the great flame-shaped Sun-stone beyond them; and the
Stone of Sacrifice midway.  Presently the night wind died out, and
the quivering little pools in the cup-like hollows of the stones lay
still.  At the same time something seemed to move on the verge of the
dip eastward--a mere dot.  It was the head of a man approaching them
from the hollow beyond the Sun-stone.  Clare wished they had gone
onward, but in the circumstances decided to remain quiet.  The figure
came straight towards the circle of pillars in which they were.

He heard something behind him, the brush of feet.  Turning, he saw
over the prostrate columns another figure; then before he was aware,
another was at hand on the right, under a trilithon, and another on
the left.  The dawn shone full on the front of the man westward, and
Clare could discern from this that he was tall, and walked as if
trained.  They all closed in with evident purpose.  Her story then
was true!  Springing to his feet, he looked around for a weapon,
loose stone, means of escape, anything.  By this time the nearest
man was upon him.

"It is no use, sir," he said.  "There are sixteen of us on the Plain,
and the whole country is reared."

"Let her finish her sleep!" he implored in a whisper of the men as
they gathered round.

When they saw where she lay, which they had not done till then, they
showed no objection, and stood watching her, as still as the pillars
around.  He went to the stone and bent over her, holding one poor
little hand; her breathing now was quick and small, like that of a
lesser creature than a woman.  All waited in the growing light, their
faces and hands as if they were silvered, the remainder of their
figures dark, the stones glistening green-gray, the Plain still a
mass of shade.  Soon the light was strong, and a ray shone upon her
unconscious form, peering under her eyelids and waking her.

"What is it, Angel?" she said, starting up.  "Have they come for me?"

"Yes, dearest," he said.  "They have come."

"It is as it should be," she murmured.  "Angel, I am almost glad--yes,
glad!  This happiness could not have lasted.  It was too much.  I
have had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me!"

She stood up, shook herself, and went forward, neither of the men
having moved.

"I am ready," she said quietly.

It begins to rain and the couple remains blissfully alone in the deserted mansion for five days. When the weather clears the housekeeper returns and spies them asleep. They leave and arrive in the dark at Stonehenge, the ancient sacred site. Tess lies on a rock that Angel declares to be an altar and begs him to marry Liza-Lu after her death. Angel remains quiet and Tess sleeps. He awakes to the sound of the authorities surrounding them and asks them not to wake her. She wakes, relieved that soon she will be dead: "I am ready"


The city of Wintoncester, that fine old city, aforetime capital
of Wessex, lay amidst its convex and concave downlands in all the
brightness and warmth of a July morning.  The gabled brick, tile, and
freestone houses had almost dried off for the season their integument
of lichen, the streams in the meadows were low, and in the sloping
High Street, from the West Gateway to the mediaeval cross, and from
the mediaeval cross to the bridge, that leisurely dusting and sweeping
was in progress which usually ushers in an old-fashioned market-day.

From the western gate aforesaid the highway, as every Wintoncestrian
knows, ascends a long and regular incline of the exact length of a
measured mile, leaving the houses gradually behind.  Up this road
from the precincts of the city two persons were walking rapidly,
as if unconscious of the trying ascent--unconscious through
preoccupation and not through buoyancy.  They had emerged upon this
road through a narrow, barred wicket in a high wall a little lower
down.  They seemed anxious to get out of the sight of the houses and
of their kind, and this road appeared to offer the quickest means
of doing so.  Though they were young, they walked with bowed heads,
which gait of grief the sun's rays smiled on pitilessly.

One of the pair was Angel Clare, the other a tall budding
creature--half girl, half woman--a spiritualized image of Tess,
slighter than she, but with the same beautiful eyes--Clare's
sister-in-law, 'Liza-Lu.  Their pale faces seemed to have shrunk
to half their natural size.  They moved on hand in hand, and never
spoke a word, the drooping of their heads being that of Giotto's
"Two Apostles".

When they had nearly reached the top of the great West Hill the
clocks in the town struck eight.  Each gave a start at the notes,
and, walking onward yet a few steps, they reached the first
milestone, standing whitely on the green margin of the grass, and
backed by the down, which here was open to the road.  They entered
upon the turf, and, impelled by a force that seemed to overrule their
will, suddenly stood still, turned, and waited in paralyzed suspense
beside the stone.

The prospect from this summit was almost unlimited.  In the valley
beneath lay the city they had just left, its more prominent buildings
showing as in an isometric drawing--among them the broad cathedral
tower, with its Norman windows and immense length of aisle and nave,
the spires of St Thomas's, the pinnacled tower of the College, and,
more to the right, the tower and gables of the ancient hospice,
where to this day the pilgrim may receive his dole of bread and ale.
Behind the city swept the rotund upland of St Catherine's Hill;
further off, landscape beyond landscape, till the horizon was lost
in the radiance of the sun hanging above it.

Against these far stretches of country rose, in front of the other
city edifices, a large red-brick building, with level gray roofs,
and rows of short barred windows bespeaking captivity, the whole
contrasting greatly by its formalism with the quaint irregularities
of the Gothic erections.  It was somewhat disguised from the road in
passing it by yews and evergreen oaks, but it was visible enough up
here.  The wicket from which the pair had lately emerged was in the
wall of this structure.  From the middle of the building an ugly
flat-topped octagonal tower ascended against the east horizon, and
viewed from this spot, on its shady side and against the light, it
seemed the one blot on the city's beauty.  Yet it was with this blot,
and not with the beauty, that the two gazers were concerned.

Upon the cornice of the tower a tall staff was fixed.  Their eyes
were riveted on it.  A few minutes after the hour had struck
something moved slowly up the staff, and extended itself upon the
breeze.  It was a black flag.

"Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean
phrase, had ended his sport with Tess.  And the d'Urberville knights
and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing.  The two speechless
gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and
remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued
to wave silently.  As soon as they had strength, they arose, joined
hands again, and went on.

In the final chapter, Angel and Liza-Lu, now a couple, watch as a black flag is raised on a tower signaling Tess's death: "justice was done. they joined hands again and went on".

. Although she is still alive, in the final and shortest section, it seems as if Tess is already dead. While most of the novel has been narrated from Tess's perspective, the final section is told from Angel's perspective, and since he knows nothing of what has happed to Tess in his absence, the reader is left just as much in the dark, having never seen Tess leave with Alec. She just appears at Sandbourne without a second seduction scene, as expected. Indeed, at this point even the minor characters have more agency than Tess. Angel hears from her mother that Tess is no longer at Marlott. Mrs. Brooks is central to the murder scene. When Angel arrives at Sandbourne, Tess is a "different woman," dressed in cashmere, living in the lap of luxury--a far, far remove from the Tess shivering and starving at Flintcomb-Ash. It is as if she has come so far under Alec's spell that she has lost her "self. It takes Angel's renewed presence to force Tess into taking action against Alec. And act she does. Seeing Angel once more ignites in Tess a storm of pent-up emotion that results in Alec's death. For once she manages to break out of the fragile female role and kills her lover violently with a phallic knife--but readers never see her act and it is the minor nosey character Mrs. Brooks who reports the murder. At the end of the novel, Tess and Angel are finally equal. As they make their escape, there is no more hesitancy about their socially inferior or superior backgrounds. Finally, they are just themselves and cannot worry about how society will judge them. Angel has undergone great mental anguish that has resulted in conversion and forgiveness, and physical pain that has left him weakened, aged, and not at all handsome. Tess similarly has undergone privations beyond endurance and doesn't owe anyone an apology. In the old mansion in the woods they stand as equals and finally experience a joyous honeymoon. However, as Hardy makes clear in his title "Phase the Fifth, the woman pays" Tess must mount the scaffold alone while Angel walks off with a new Tess. hat of Alec d'Urberville, who leaves his selfish self behind to be replaced, albeit temporarily, with a man of the cloth bent on saving others. But this man of the cloth is a sham. Hardy compares him with "the Other," otherwise known as Satan, who tempts Eve in the garden paradise. And, just as he did years before, Alec seduces Tess. However, Alec appears to love Tess, who has some kind of hold on him. Why else the transformation into a man of God when she leaves, and why else the return to the man-of-old upon her return. Throughout the novel, Hardy paints a picture of, as the title denotes, "a pure woman," and the tenuous position of such a woman, without a man's protection, in nineteenth-century Britain. Because of her fall from maidenhood Tess can only live as a man's mistress but never as his wife. Alec no doubt wanted Tess to remain with him, but he never asked her to marry him. Hardy provides no explanation for this because to his readers it would not be credible for a lower-class servant to marry an upper-class man with a noble name, even though that name is a sham. The upper-class Angel can marry Tess, but he has to justify this decision by pointing out how virtuous she is and how she will benefit him monetarily in his future as a farmer. Tess, however, is never Angel's wife in the physical sense of the word until the end of the novel. when the couple lives outside society's boundaries in the woods. Despite all the maneuverings of his characters, Hardy holds fast to his idea that fate ultimately controls all. Tess attempts to get Angel's attention by visiting his parents to ask for help and support. However, fate would have it that Angel's brothers just happen to be talking of their errant brother's marriage and they pass a veiled Tess. Had Tess spoken to the Clare family, chances are that she never would have encountered Alec, and certainly, if she had, not had the necessity to return to him in desperation. Hardy would thus have us believe that the course of our life, and thus our decisions, is predestined