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

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

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

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

"A comely maid that," said the other.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the meantime the lovers were driving onward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I do not, Tessy, really."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Now, Tess!"

He silenced her by a kiss.

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

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

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

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

She impulsively whispered to him--

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

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

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

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

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

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

The cock crew again--straight towards Clare.

"Well!" said the dairyman.

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

The cock crew again.

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

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

Angel and Tess leave the farm to do some Christmas shopping. They encounter a man from Trantridge who makes disparaging remark about Tess. Angel immediately punches him, and the man apologizes, saying he made a mistake about Tess's identity. Angel pays his medical expenses. Back at the farm, Tess writes a confessional letter to Angel, telling him of her past and slips it under his door. The following morning, he treats her no differently, and she believes he has forgiven her. However, on the morning of their wedding Tess discovers that she inadvertently slipped the letter under both the door and the carpet and that Angel still knows nothing of her past. She attempts to tell him: "for she you love is not my real self, but one in my image; the one I might have been". But he quiets her and tells her to tell him after they are married. Surrounded by well-wishers from the farm, Tess Durbeyfield marries Angel Clare and asks her new husband to kiss the love-struck milkmaids goodbye. A rooster crows three times before they leave the farm


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

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

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

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

"What's the matter?" said he.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How vexing!" said Tess.

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

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

Tess looked a little flustered as she took it.

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

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

The note was for Clare, in the following words:

   MY DEAR SON--

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

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

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

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

"Are they mine?" she asked incredulously.

"They are, certainly," said he.

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

Suddenly he said with enthusiasm--

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

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

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

"Ought it?" said Tess.

"Yes," said he.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, yes, sir."

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

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

"Dear me;--what--"

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

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

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

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

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

"And Izz?" asked Tess.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"O yes!  I am sure that--"

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

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

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

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

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

She pressed his hand tightly for an answer.

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

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

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

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

"It can hardly be more serious, dearest."

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

She sat down again.

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

END OF PHASE THE FOURTH

Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays

Tess and Angel stay their first night as man and wife in the shoddy old d'Urberville mansion, where portraits of earlier d'Urberville women spook Tess. Angel, who is pleased to have a wife of noble lineage, notices that despite the terrifying countenances of the framed women, they bear a resemblance to his new wife. A package arrives from Angel's father. It contains diamond heirloom jewelry for a shocked Tess who looks more brilliant than the diamonds to her admiring new husband after she puts them on. However, almost immediately a man arrives late with their luggage and explains he was delayed by the suicide of Retty the milkmaid. Marian, another lovelorn milkmaid has also taken to drink. The newlyweds attempt to shake off the disastrous news, and Angel confesses to Tess about an earlier sexual indiscretion with a stranger. Deeply relieved, Tess finally confesses her own past to Angel without flinching, safe in the knowledge that he will forgive her because her "crime" with Alec d'Urberville is "just the same".

. Angel's family doesn't know what to make of their son's choice for a wife. Despite the rationality behind his decision--a farm woman is worth more to him than one familiar with the niceties of upper-class Victorian society-- they, especially his mother, are snobs and worry about their social standing and their position in the church. They immediately characterize Tess as low class and suggest Angel marry Mercy Chance instead. In addition, they are appalled that Angel's manners have deteriorated during the time he has spent away. Perhaps he has been contaminated by Tess who is sure to lower their social standing in the eyes of their neighbors. Both of Angel's brothers have entered the church and are also displeased with his choice of a common woman. Intellectuals, they are emotionally frozen. While Angel seems removed from his family, such training has also worked its way deep into his psyche and this will become increasing apparent. Is he saying one thing--that he totally accepts and loves Tess despite her lack of social and financial standing--or is he also a snob and a hypocrite. He has given up the church to live a more humble existence on the land, but his actions in the future bear watching. Consider that although Angel has earlier claimed to dislike ancient families, he is happy to learn of Tess's lineage and prompts her to use d'Urberville instead of Durbeyfield: "he could take her on a visit to his parents and impart the knowledge while triumphantly producing her as worthy of such an ancient line". In short, Angel, like Tess, is not what he seems. Tess idealizes him entirely and sees him as a pagan god wandering around in the fertile fields--a man of Nature in search of a natural woman: "It seemed natural enough to him now that Tess was again in sight to choose a mate from unrestrained Nature and not from the abodes of Art". But, Tess takes on Angel's gestures and mimics his words and thus becomes less of what he makes her out to be, or indeed what he says he wants her to be. In the Victorian era, women's sexuality was denied, and they took on the role of Angel of the House, above men spiritually, and the moral guide of their children. A true lady merely tolerated sex for procreation. Tess's denial of Angel's advances makes Tess appear even more pure: "I know you to be the most honest, most spotless creature that ever lived". However, Angel fails to see Tess as a living breathing human, and when anyone is placed this high, down is the only direction they can move. While Tess does make several attempts to tell Angel the truth about her past, in fairness she chooses not to tell him out of fear that she will lose him. Yes, writing him the letter and attempting to tell him immediately before the wedding count as sincere efforts, but in reality, she held back the truth and married him: "I can't bear to let anyone have him but me. Yet it is a wrong to him, and may kill him when he knows. Tess uses her mother's advice to justify her actions and chooses not to risk losing Angel. To Tess's credit, however, she decides to tell her new husband the truth, even though at this point she could have continued to withhold it


Her narrative ended; even its re-assertions and secondary
explanations were done.  Tess's voice throughout had hardly risen
higher than its opening tone; there had been no exculpatory phrase of
any kind, and she had not wept.

But the complexion even of external things seemed to suffer
transmutation as her announcement progressed.  The fire in the grate
looked impish--demoniacally funny, as if it did not care in the least
about her strait.  The fender grinned idly, as if it too did not
care.  The light from the water-bottle was merely engaged in a
chromatic problem.  All material objects around announced their
irresponsibility with terrible iteration.  And yet nothing had
changed since the moments when he had been kissing her; or rather,
nothing in the substance of things.  But the essence of things had
changed.

When she ceased, the auricular impressions from their previous
endearments seemed to hustle away into the corner of their brains,
repeating themselves as echoes from a time of supremely purblind
foolishness.

Clare performed the irrelevant act of stirring the fire; the
intelligence had not even yet got to the bottom of him.  After
stirring the embers he rose to his feet; all the force of her
disclosure had imparted itself now.  His face had withered.  In the
strenuousness of his concentration he treadled fitfully on the floor.
He could not, by any contrivance, think closely enough; that was the
meaning of his vague movement.  When he spoke it was in the most
inadequate, commonplace voice of the many varied tones she had heard
from him.

"Tess!"

"Yes, dearest."

"Am I to believe this?  From your manner I am to take it as true.
O you cannot be out of your mind!  You ought to be!  Yet you are
not...  My wife, my Tess--nothing in you warrants such a supposition
as that?"

"I am not out of my mind," she said.

"And yet--"  He looked vacantly at her, to resume with dazed senses:
"Why didn't you tell me before? Ah, yes, you would have told me, in a
way--but I hindered you, I remember!"

These and other of his words were nothing but the perfunctory babble
of the surface while the depths remained paralyzed.  He turned away,
and bent over a chair.  Tess followed him to the middle of the room,
where he was, and stood there staring at him with eyes that did not
weep.  Presently she slid down upon her knees beside his foot, and
from this position she crouched in a heap.

"In the name of our love, forgive me!" she whispered with a dry
mouth.  "I have forgiven you for the same!"

And, as he did not answer, she said again--

"Forgive me as you are forgiven!  _I_ forgive YOU, Angel."

"You--yes, you do."

"But you do not forgive me?"

"O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case!  You were one
person; now you are another.  My God--how can forgiveness meet such
a grotesque--prestidigitation as that!"

He paused, contemplating this definition; then suddenly broke into
horrible laughter--as unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell.

"Don't--don't!  It kills me quite, that!" she shrieked.  "O have
mercy upon me--have mercy!"

He did not answer; and, sickly white, she jumped up.

"Angel, Angel! what do you mean by that laugh?" she cried out.  "Do
you know what this is to me?"

He shook his head.

"I have been hoping, longing, praying, to make you happy!  I have
thought what joy it will be to do it, what an unworthy wife I shall
be if I do not!  That's what I have felt, Angel!"

"I know that."

"I thought, Angel, that you loved me--me, my very self!  If it is
I you do love, O how can it be that you look and speak so?  It
frightens me!  Having begun to love you, I love you for ever--in all
changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself.  I ask no more.
Then how can you, O my own husband, stop loving me?"

"I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you."

"But who?"

"Another woman in your shape."

She perceived in his words the realization of her own apprehensive
foreboding in former times.  He looked upon her as a species of
imposter; a guilty woman in the guise of an innocent one.  Terror was
upon her white face as she saw it; her cheek was flaccid, and her
mouth had almost the aspect of a round little hole. The horrible
sense of his view of her so deadened her that she staggered, and he
stepped forward, thinking she was going to fall.

"Sit down, sit down," he said gently.  "You are ill; and it is
natural that you should be."

She did sit down, without knowing where she was, that strained look
still upon her face, and her eyes such as to make his flesh creep.

"I don't belong to you any more, then; do I, Angel?" she asked
helplessly.  "It is not me, but another woman like me that he loved,
he says."

The image raised caused her to take pity upon herself as one who was
ill-used.  Her eyes filled as she regarded her position further; she
turned round and burst into a flood of self-sympathetic tears.

Clare was relieved at this change, for the effect on her of what had
happened was beginning to be a trouble to him only less than the
woe of the disclosure itself.  He waited patiently, apathetically,
till the violence of her grief had worn itself out, and her rush of
weeping had lessened to a catching gasp at intervals.

"Angel," she said suddenly, in her natural tones, the insane, dry
voice of terror having left her now.  "Angel, am I too wicked for
you and me to live together?"

"I have not been able to think what we can do."

"I shan't ask you to let me live with you, Angel, because I have
no right to!  I shall not write to mother and sisters to say we be
married, as I said I would do; and I shan't finish the good-hussif'
I cut out and meant to make while we were in lodgings."

"Shan't you?"

"No, I shan't do anything, unless you order me to; and if you go away
from me I shall not follow 'ee; and if you never speak to me any more
I shall not ask why, unless you tell me I may."

"And if I order you to do anything?"

"I will obey you like your wretched slave, even if it is to lie down
and die."

"You are very good.  But it strikes me that there is a want of
harmony between your present mood of self-sacrifice and your past
mood of self-preservation."

These were the first words of antagonism.  To fling elaborate
sarcasms at Tess, however, was much like flinging them at a dog or
cat.  The charms of their subtlety passed by her unappreciated, and
she only received them as inimical sounds which meant that anger
ruled.  She remained mute, not knowing that he was smothering his
affection for her.  She hardly observed that a tear descended slowly
upon his cheek, a tear so large that it magnified the pores of the
skin over which it rolled, like the object lens of a microscope.
Meanwhile reillumination as to the terrible and total change that her
confession had wrought in his life, in his universe, returned to him,
and he tried desperately to advance among the new conditions in which
he stood.  Some consequent action was necessary; yet what?

"Tess," he said, as gently as he could speak, "I cannot stay--in this
room--just now. I will walk out a little way."

He quietly left the room, and the two glasses of wine that he had
poured out for their supper--one for her, one for him--remained on
the table untasted.  This was what their _agape_ had come to.  At
tea, two or three hours earlier, they had, in the freakishness of
affection, drunk from one cup.

The closing of the door behind him, gently as it had been pulled
to, roused Tess from her stupor.  He was gone; she could not stay.
Hastily flinging her cloak around her she opened the door and
followed, putting out the candles as if she were never coming back.
The rain was over and the night was now clear.

She was soon close at his heels, for Clare walked slowly and without
purpose.  His form beside her light gray figure looked black,
sinister, and forbidding, and she felt as sarcasm the touch of the
jewels of which she had been momentarily so proud.  Clare turned at
hearing her footsteps, but his recognition of her presence seemed
to make no difference to him, and he went on over the five yawning
arches of the great bridge in front of the house.

The cow and horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain
having been enough to charge them, but not enough to wash them away.
Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick
transit as she passed; she would not have known they were shining
overhead if she had not seen them there--the vastest things of the
universe imaged in objects so mean.

The place to which they had travelled to-day was in the same
valley as Talbothays, but some miles lower down the river; and the
surroundings being open, she kept easily in sight of him.  Away from
the house the road wound through the meads, and along these she
followed Clare without any attempt to come up with him or to attract
him, but with dumb and vacant fidelity.

At last, however, her listless walk brought her up alongside him, and
still he said nothing.  The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great
after enlightenment, and it was mighty in Clare now.  The outdoor air
had apparently taken away from him all tendency to act on impulse;
she knew that he saw her without irradiation--in all her bareness;
that Time was chanting his satiric psalm at her then--

   Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee
      shall hate;
   Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate.
   For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain;
   And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown
      shall be pain.

He was still intently thinking, and her companionship had now
insufficient power to break or divert the strain of thought.  What a
weak thing her presence must have become to him!  She could not help
addressing Clare.

"What have I done--what HAVE I done!  I have not told of anything
that interferes with or belies my love for you.  You don't think I
planned it, do you?  It is in your own mind what you are angry at,
Angel; it is not in me.  O, it is not in me, and I am not that
deceitful woman you think me!"

"H'm--well.  Not deceitful, my wife; but not the same.  No, not the
same.  But do not make me reproach you.  I have sworn that I will
not; and I will do everything to avoid it."

But she went on pleading in her distraction; and perhaps said things
that would have been better left to silence.

"Angel!--Angel!  I was a child--a child when it happened!  I knew
nothing of men."

"You were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit."

"Then will you not forgive me?"

"I do forgive you, but forgiveness is not all."

"And love me?"

To this question he did not answer.

"O Angel--my mother says that it sometimes happens so!--she knows
several cases where they were worse than I, and the husband has not
minded it much--has got over it at least.  And yet the woman had not
loved him as I do you!"

"Don't, Tess; don't argue.  Different societies, different manners.
You almost make me say you are an unapprehending peasant woman, who
have never been initiated into the proportions of social things.
You don't know what you say."

"I am only a peasant by position, not by nature!"

She spoke with an impulse to anger, but it went as it came.

"So much the worse for you.  I think that parson who unearthed your
pedigree would have done better if he had held his tongue.  I cannot
help associating your decline as a family with this other fact--of
your want of firmness.  Decrepit families imply decrepit wills,
decrepit conduct.  Heaven, why did you give me a handle for despising
you more by informing me of your descent!  Here was I thinking you a
new-sprung child of nature; there were you, the belated seedling of
an effete aristocracy!"

"Lots of families are as bad as mine in that!  Retty's family were
once large landowners, and so were Dairyman Billett's.  And the
Debbyhouses, who now are carters, were once the De Bayeux family.
You find such as I everywhere; 'tis a feature of our county, and I
can't help it."

"So much the worse for the county."

She took these reproaches in their bulk simply, not in their
particulars; he did not love her as he had loved her hitherto, and
to all else she was indifferent.

They wandered on again in silence.  It was said afterwards that a
cottager of Wellbridge, who went out late that night for a doctor,
met two lovers in the pastures, walking very slowly, without
converse, one behind the other, as in a funeral procession, and the
glimpse that he obtained of their faces seemed to denote that they
were anxious and sad.  Returning later, he passed them again in the
same field, progressing just as slowly, and as regardless of the hour
and of the cheerless night as before.  It was only on account of his
preoccupation with his own affairs, and the illness in his house,
that he did not bear in mind the curious incident, which, however, he
recalled a long while after.

During the interval of the cottager's going and coming, she had said
to her husband--

"I don't see how I can help being the cause of much misery to you all
your life.  The river is down there.  I can put an end to myself in
it.  I am not afraid."

"I don't wish to add murder to my other follies," he said.

"I will leave something to show that I did it myself--on account of
my shame.  They will not blame you then."

"Don't speak so absurdly--I wish not to hear it.  It is nonsense
to have such thoughts in this kind of case, which is rather one
for satirical laughter than for tragedy.  You don't in the least
understand the quality of the mishap.  It would be viewed in the
light of a joke by nine-tenths of the world if it were known. Please
oblige me by returning to the house, and going to bed."

"I will," said she dutifully.

They had rambled round by a road which led to the well-known ruins of
the Cistercian abbey behind the mill, the latter having, in centuries
past, been attached to the monastic establishment.  The mill still
worked on, food being a perennial necessity; the abbey had perished,
creeds being transient.  One continually sees the ministration of the
temporary outlasting the ministration of the eternal.  Their walk
having been circuitous, they were still not far from the house, and
in obeying his direction she only had to reach the large stone bridge
across the main river and follow the road for a few yards.  When she
got back, everything remained as she had left it, the fire being
still burning.  She did not stay downstairs for more than a minute,
but proceeded to her chamber, whither the luggage had been taken.
Here she sat down on the edge of the bed, looking blankly around,
and presently began to undress.  In removing the light towards the
bedstead its rays fell upon the tester of white dimity; something was
hanging beneath it, and she lifted the candle to see what it was.
A bough of mistletoe.  Angel had put it there; she knew that in an
instant. This was the explanation of that mysterious parcel which it
had been so difficult to pack and bring; whose contents he would not
explain to her, saying that time would soon show her the purpose
thereof.  In his zest and his gaiety he had hung it there.  How
foolish and inopportune that mistletoe looked now.

Having nothing more to fear, having scarce anything to hope, for that
he would relent there seemed no promise whatever, she lay down dully.
When sorrow ceases to be speculative, sleep sees her opportunity.
Among so many happier moods which forbid repose this was a mood which
welcomed it, and in a few minutes the lonely Tess forgot existence,
surrounded by the aromatic stillness of the chamber that had once,
possibly, been the bride-chamber of her own ancestry.

Later on that night Clare also retraced his steps to the house.
Entering softly to the sitting-room he obtained a light, and with the
manner of one who had considered his course he spread his rugs upon
the old horse-hair sofa which stood there, and roughly shaped it to
a sleeping-couch.  Before lying down he crept shoeless upstairs, and
listened at the door of her apartment.  Her measured breathing told
that she was sleeping profoundly.

"Thank God!" murmured Clare; and yet he was conscious of a pang of
bitterness at the thought--approximately true, though not wholly
so--that having shifted the burden of her life to his shoulders, she
was now reposing without care.

He turned away to descend; then, irresolute, faced round to her
door again.  In the act he caught sight of one of the d'Urberville
dames, whose portrait was immediately over the entrance to Tess's
bedchamber.  In the candlelight the painting was more than
unpleasant.  Sinister design lurked in the woman's features, a
concentrated purpose of revenge on the other sex--so it seemed to
him then.  The Caroline bodice of the portrait was low--precisely as
Tess's had been when he tucked it in to show the necklace; and again
he experienced the distressing sensation of a resemblance between
them.

The check was sufficient.  He resumed his retreat and descended.

His air remained calm and cold, his small compressed mouth indexing
his powers of self-control; his face wearing still that terrible
sterile expression which had spread thereon since her disclosure.
It was the face of a man who was no longer passion's slave, yet who
found no advantage in his enfranchisement.  He was simply regarding
the harrowing contingencies of human experience, the unexpectedness
of things.  Nothing so pure, so sweet, so virginal as Tess had seemed
possible all the long while that he had adored her, up to an hour
ago; but

       The little less, and what worlds away!

He argued erroneously when he said to himself that her heart was not
indexed in the honest freshness of her face; but Tess had no advocate
to set him right.  Could it be possible, he continued, that eyes
which as they gazed never expressed any divergence from what the
tongue was telling, were yet ever seeing another world behind her
ostensible one, discordant and contrasting?

He reclined on his couch in the sitting-room, and extinguished the
light.  The night came in, and took up its place there, unconcerned
and indifferent; the night which had already swallowed up his
happiness, and was now digesting it listlessly; and was ready to
swallow up the happiness of a thousand other people with as little
disturbance or change of mien.

Angel is devastated by Tess's confession of her seduction and the subsequent birth of her son. Indeed, he breaks into "horrible laughter--as unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell". He leaves the mansion in the middle of the night, with Tess following on his heels. After offering to kill herself, Tess returns distraught to the house to sleep alone in her bridal bed: Angel follows later and sleeps on the downstairs sofa


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

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

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

"Breakfast is ready!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It is true."

"Every word?"

"Every word."

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

"It is true."

"Is he living?" Angel then asked.

"The baby died."

"But the man?"

"He is alive."

A last despair passed over Clare's face.

"Is he in England?"

"Yes."

He took a few vague steps.

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

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

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

Her voice grew husky.

"A last way?"

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

"How?"

"By divorcing me."

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

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

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

"What--you cannot?"

"Indeed I cannot."

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

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

"You were mistaken," he said.

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

"The courage to do what?"

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

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

"Of putting an end to myself."

"When?"

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

"Where?"

"Under your mistletoe."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ssh!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How punctual!" he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I shall be home punctually."

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

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

"Yes," said Tess absently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     "But what can you do?"

     "I can go home."

     Clare had not thought of that.

     "Are you sure?" he inquired.

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

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

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

     "Then it shall be so."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The following morning Angel prepares breakfast and leaves to go to the flour mill: "the pair, in truth, were but the ashes of their former selves". Tess suggests divorce but he says it is impossible. She suggests returning home, and he agrees