Till this moment she had never seen or heard from d'Urberville since
her departure from Trantridge.

The rencounter came at a heavy moment, one of all moments calculated
to permit its impact with the least emotional shock.  But such was
unreasoning memory that, though he stood there openly and palpably a
converted man, who was sorrowing for his past irregularities, a fear
overcame her, paralyzing her movement so that she neither retreated
nor advanced.

To think of what emanated from that countenance when she saw it last,
and to behold it now! ...  There was the same handsome unpleasantness
of mien, but now he wore neatly trimmed, old-fashioned whiskers, the
sable moustache having disappeared; and his dress was half-clerical,
a modification which had changed his expression sufficiently to
abstract the dandyism from his features, and to hinder for a second
her belief in his identity.

To Tess's sense there was, just at first, a ghastly _bizarrerie_,
a grim incongruity, in the march of these solemn words of Scripture
out of such a mouth.  This too familiar intonation, less than four
years earlier, had brought to her ears expressions of such divergent
purpose that her heart became quite sick at the irony of the
contrast.

It was less a reform than a transfiguration.  The former curves of
sensuousness were now modulated to lines of devotional passion.
The lip-shapes that had meant seductiveness were now made to
express supplication; the glow on the cheek that yesterday could be
translated as riotousness was evangelized to-day into the splendour
of pious rhetoric; animalism had become fanaticism; Paganism,
Paulinism; the bold rolling eye that had flashed upon her form in
the old time with such mastery now beamed with the rude energy of a
theolatry that was almost ferocious.  Those black angularities which
his face had used to put on when his wishes were thwarted now did
duty in picturing the incorrigible backslider who would insist upon
turning again to his wallowing in the mire.

The lineaments, as such, seemed to complain.  They had been diverted
from their hereditary connotation to signify impressions for which
Nature did not intend them.  Strange that their very elevation was a
misapplication, that to raise seemed to falsify.

Yet could it be so?  She would admit the ungenerous sentiment no
longer.  D'Urberville was not the first wicked man who had turned
away from his wickedness to save his soul alive, and why should she
deem it unnatural in him?  It was but the usage of thought which had
been jarred in her at hearing good new words in bad old notes.  The
greater the sinner, the greater the saint; it was not necessary to
dive far into Christian history to discover that.

Such impressions as these moved her vaguely, and without strict
definiteness.  As soon as the nerveless pause of her surprise would
allow her to stir, her impulse was to pass on out of his sight.  He
had obviously not discerned her yet in her position against the sun.

But the moment that she moved again he recognized her.  The effect
upon her old lover was electric, far stronger than the effect of his
presence upon her.  His fire, the tumultuous ring of his eloquence,
seemed to go out of him.  His lip struggled and trembled under the
words that lay upon it; but deliver them it could not as long as she
faced him.  His eyes, after their first glance upon her face, hung
confusedly in every other direction but hers, but came back in a
desperate leap every few seconds.  This paralysis lasted, however,
but a short time; for Tess's energies returned with the atrophy of
his, and she walked as fast as she was able past the barn and onward.

As soon as she could reflect, it appalled her, this change in their
relative platforms.  He who had wrought her undoing was now on the
side of the Spirit, while she remained unregenerate.  And, as in the
legend, it had resulted that her Cyprian image had suddenly appeared
upon his altar, whereby the fire of the priest had been well nigh
extinguished.

She went on without turning her head.  Her back seemed to be endowed
with a sensitiveness to ocular beams--even her clothing--so alive
was she to a fancied gaze which might be resting upon her from the
outside of that barn.  All the way along to this point her heart
had been heavy with an inactive sorrow; now there was a change in
the quality of its trouble.  That hunger for affection too long
withheld was for the time displaced by an almost physical sense
of an implacable past which still engirdled her.  It intensified
her consciousness of error to a practical despair; the break of
continuity between her earlier and present existence, which she had
hoped for, had not, after all, taken place.  Bygones would never be
complete bygones till she was a bygone herself.

Thus absorbed, she recrossed the northern part of Long-Ash Lane at
right angles, and presently saw before her the road ascending whitely
to the upland along whose margin the remainder of her journey lay.
Its dry pale surface stretched severely onward, unbroken by a single
figure, vehicle, or mark, save some occasional brown horse-droppings
which dotted its cold aridity here and there.  While slowly breasting
this ascent Tess became conscious of footsteps behind her, and
turning she saw approaching that well-known form--so strangely
accoutred as the Methodist--the one personage in all the world she
wished not to encounter alone on this side of the grave.

There was not much time, however, for thought or elusion, and she
yielded as calmly as she could to the necessity of letting him
overtake her.  She saw that he was excited, less by the speed of his
walk than by the feelings within him.

"Tess!" he said.

She slackened speed without looking round.

"Tess!" he repeated.  "It is I--Alec d'Urberville."

She then looked back at him, and he came up.

"I see it is," she answered coldly.

"Well--is that all?  Yet I deserve no more!  Of course," he added,
with a slight laugh, "there is something of the ridiculous to your
eyes in seeing me like this.  But--I must put up with that. ...  I
heard you had gone away; nobody knew where.  Tess, you wonder why I
have followed you?"

"I do, rather; and I would that you had not, with all my heart!"

"Yes--you may well say it," he returned grimly, as they moved onward
together, she with unwilling tread.  "But don't mistake me; I beg
this because you may have been led to do so in noticing--if you did
notice it--how your sudden appearance unnerved me down there.  It was
but a momentary faltering; and considering what you have been to me,
it was natural enough.  But will helped me through it--though perhaps
you think me a humbug for saying it--and immediately afterwards I
felt that of all persons in the world whom it was my duty and desire
to save from the wrath to come--sneer if you like--the woman whom I
had so grievously wronged was that person.  I have come with that
sole purpose in view--nothing more."

There was the smallest vein of scorn in her words of rejoinder: "Have
you saved yourself?  Charity begins at home, they say."

"_I_ have done nothing!" said he indifferently. "Heaven, as I have
been telling my hearers, has done all.  No amount of contempt that
you can pour upon me, Tess, will equal what I have poured upon
myself--the old Adam of my former years!  Well, it is a strange
story; believe it or not; but I can tell you the means by which my
conversion was brought about, and I hope you will be interested
enough at least to listen.  Have you ever heard the name of the
parson of Emminster--you must have done do?--old Mr Clare; one of the
most earnest of his school; one of the few intense men left in the
Church; not so intense as the extreme wing of Christian believers
with which I have thrown in my lot, but quite an exception among the
Established clergy, the younger of whom are gradually attenuating the
true doctrines by their sophistries, till they are but the shadow of
what they were.  I only differ from him on the question of Church and
State--the interpretation of the text, 'Come out from among them and
be ye separate, saith the Lord'--that's all.  He is one who, I firmly
believe, has been the humble means of saving more souls in this
country than any other man you can name.  You have heard of him?"

"I have," she said.

"He came to Trantridge two or three years ago to preach on behalf of
some missionary society; and I, wretched fellow that I was, insulted
him when, in his disinterestedness, he tried to reason with me and
show me the way.  He did not resent my conduct, he simply said that
some day I should receive the first-fruits of the Spirit--that those
who came to scoff sometimes remained to pray.  There was a strange
magic in his words.  They sank into my mind.  But the loss of my
mother hit me most; and by degrees I was brought to see daylight.
Since then my one desire has been to hand on the true view to others,
and that is what I was trying to do to-day; though it is only lately
that I have preached hereabout.  The first months of my ministry have
been spent in the North of England among strangers, where I preferred
to make my earliest clumsy attempts, so as to acquire courage before
undergoing that severest of all tests of one's sincerity, addressing
those who have known one, and have been one's companions in the days
of darkness.  If you could only know, Tess, the pleasure of having a
good slap at yourself, I am sure--"

"Don't go on with it!" she cried passionately, as she turned away
from him to a stile by the wayside, on which she bent herself.  "I
can't believe in such sudden things!  I feel indignant with you for
talking to me like this, when you know--when you know what harm
you've done me!  You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure
on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with
sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of
that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming
converted!  Out upon such--I don't believe in you--I hate it!"

"Tess," he insisted; "don't speak so!  It came to me like a jolly new
idea!  And you don't believe me?  What don't you believe?"

"Your conversion.  Your scheme of religion."

"Why?"

She dropped her voice.  "Because a better man than you does not
believe in such."

"What a woman's reason!  Who is this better man?"

"I cannot tell you."

"Well," he declared, a resentment beneath his words seeming ready to
spring out at a moment's notice, "God forbid that I should say I am
a good man--and you know I don't say any such thing.  I am new to
goodness, truly; but newcomers see furthest sometimes."

"Yes," she replied sadly.  "But I cannot believe in your conversion
to a new spirit.  Such flashes as you feel, Alec, I fear don't last!"

Thus speaking she turned from the stile over which she had been
leaning, and faced him; whereupon his eyes, falling casually upon
the familiar countenance and form, remained contemplating her.  The
inferior man was quiet in him now; but it was surely not extracted,
nor even entirely subdued.

"Don't look at me like that!" he said abruptly.

Tess, who had been quite unconscious of her action and mien,
instantly withdrew the large dark gaze of her eyes, stammering with
a flush, "I beg your pardon!"  And there was revived in her the
wretched sentiment which had often come to her before, that in
inhabiting the fleshly tabernacle with which Nature had endowed her
she was somehow doing wrong.

"No, no!  Don't beg my pardon.  But since you wear a veil to hide
your good looks, why don't you keep it down?"

She pulled down the veil, saying hastily, "It was mostly to keep off
the wind."

"It may seem harsh of me to dictate like this," he went on; "but
it is better that I should not look too often on you.  It might be
dangerous."

"Ssh!" said Tess.

"Well, women's faces have had too much power over me already for me
not to fear them!  An evangelist has nothing to do with such as they;
and it reminds me of the old times that I would forget!"

After this their conversation dwindled to a casual remark now and
then as they rambled onward, Tess inwardly wondering how far he was
going with her, and not liking to send him back by positive mandate.
Frequently when they came to a gate or stile they found painted
thereon in red or blue letters some text of Scripture, and she
asked him if he knew who had been at the pains to blazon these
announcements.  He told her that the man was employed by himself and
others who were working with him in that district, to paint these
reminders that no means might be left untried which might move the
hearts of a wicked generation.

At length the road touched the spot called "Cross-in-Hand."  Of all
spots on the bleached and desolate upland this was the most forlorn.
It was so far removed from the charm which is sought in landscape by
artists and view-lovers as to reach a new kind of beauty, a negative
beauty of tragic tone.  The place took its name from a stone pillar
which stood there, a strange rude monolith, from a stratum unknown
in any local quarry, on which was roughly carved a human hand.
Differing accounts were given of its history and purport.  Some
authorities stated that a devotional cross had once formed the
complete erection thereon, of which the present relic was but the
stump; others that the stone as it stood was entire, and that it had
been fixed there to mark a boundary or place of meeting.  Anyhow,
whatever the origin of the relic, there was and is something
sinister, or solemn, according to mood, in the scene amid which it
stands; something tending to impress the most phlegmatic passer-by.

"I think I must leave you now," he remarked, as they drew near to
this spot.  "I have to preach at Abbot's-Cernel at six this evening,
and my way lies across to the right from here.  And you upset me
somewhat too, Tessy--I cannot, will not, say why.  I must go away and
get strength. ...  How is it that you speak so fluently now?  Who has
taught you such good English?"

"I have learnt things in my troubles," she said evasively.

"What troubles have you had?"

She told him of the first one--the only one that related to him.

D'Urberville was struck mute.  "I knew nothing of this till now!"
he next murmured.  "Why didn't you write to me when you felt your
trouble coming on?"

She did not reply; and he broke the silence by adding: "Well--you
will see me again."

"No," she answered.  "Do not again come near me!"

"I will think.  But before we part come here."  He stepped up to the
pillar.  "This was once a Holy Cross. Relics are not in my creed; but
I fear you at moments--far more than you need fear me at present; and
to lessen my fear, put your hand upon that stone hand, and swear that
you will never tempt me--by your charms or ways."

"Good God--how can you ask what is so unnecessary!  All that is
furthest from my thought!"

"Yes--but swear it."

Tess, half frightened, gave way to his importunity; placed her hand
upon the stone and swore.

"I am sorry you are not a believer," he continued; "that some
unbeliever should have got hold of you and unsettled your mind.  But
no more now.  At home at least I can pray for you; and I will; and
who knows what may not happen?  I'm off. Goodbye!"

He turned to a hunting-gate in the hedge and, without letting his
eyes again rest upon her, leapt over and struck out across the down
in the direction of Abbot's-Cernel.  As he walked his pace showed
perturbation, and by-and-by, as if instigated by a former thought,
he drew from his pocket a small book, between the leaves of which
was folded a letter, worn and soiled, as from much re-reading.
D'Urberville opened the letter.  It was dated several months before
this time, and was signed by Parson Clare.

The letter began by expressing the writer's unfeigned joy at
d'Urberville's conversion, and thanked him for his kindness in
communicating with the parson on the subject.  It expressed Mr
Clare's warm assurance of forgiveness for d'Urberville's former
conduct and his interest in the young man's plans for the future.
He, Mr Clare, would much have liked to see d'Urberville in the Church
to whose ministry he had devoted so many years of his own life, and
would have helped him to enter a theological college to that end; but
since his correspondent had possibly not cared to do this on account
of the delay it would have entailed, he was not the man to insist
upon its paramount importance.  Every man must work as he could best
work, and in the method towards which he felt impelled by the Spirit.

D'Urberville read and re-read this letter, and seemed to quiz himself
cynically.  He also read some passages from memoranda as he walked
till his face assumed a calm, and apparently the image of Tess no
longer troubled his mind.

She meanwhile had kept along the edge of the hill by which lay her
nearest way home.  Within the distance of a mile she met a solitary
shepherd.

"What is the meaning of that old stone I have passed?" she asked of
him.  "Was it ever a Holy Cross?"

"Cross--no; 'twer not a cross!  'Tis a thing of ill-omen, Miss.  It
was put up in wuld times by the relations of a malefactor who was
tortured there by nailing his hand to a post and afterwards hung.
The bones lie underneath.  They say he sold his soul to the devil,
and that he walks at times."

She felt the _petite mort_ at this unexpectedly gruesome information,
and left the solitary man behind her.  It was dusk when she drew near
to Flintcomb-Ash, and in the lane at the entrance to the hamlet she
approached a girl and her lover without their observing her.  They
were talking no secrets, and the clear unconcerned voice of the young
woman, in response to the warmer accents of the man, spread into the
chilly air as the one soothing thing within the dusky horizon, full
of a stagnant obscurity upon which nothing else intruded.  For a
moment the voices cheered the heart of Tess, till she reasoned that
this interview had its origin, on one side or the other, in the same
attraction which had been the prelude to her own tribulation.  When
she came close, the girl turned serenely and recognized her, the
young man walking off in embarrassment.  The woman was Izz Huett,
whose interest in Tess's excursion immediately superseded her own
proceedings.  Tess did not explain very clearly its results, and Izz,
who was a girl of tact, began to speak of her own little affair, a
phase of which Tess had just witnessed.

"He is Amby Seedling, the chap who used to sometimes come and help at
Talbothays," she explained indifferently.  "He actually inquired and
found out that I had come here, and has followed me.  He says he's
been in love wi' me these two years.  But I've hardly answered him."

Several days had passed since her futile journey, and Tess was
afield.  The dry winter wind still blew, but a screen of thatched
hurdles erected in the eye of the blast kept its force away from her.
On the sheltered side was a turnip-slicing machine, whose bright blue
hue of new paint seemed almost vocal in the otherwise subdued scene.
Opposite its front was a long mound or "grave", in which the roots
had been preserved since early winter.  Tess was standing at the
uncovered end, chopping off with a bill-hook the fibres and earth
from each root, and throwing it after the operation into the slicer.
A man was turning the handle of the machine, and from its trough
came the newly-cut swedes, the fresh smell of whose yellow chips
was accompanied by the sounds of the snuffling wind, the smart swish
of the slicing-blades, and the choppings of the hook in Tess's
leather-gloved hand.

The wide acreage of blank agricultural brownness, apparent where
the swedes had been pulled, was beginning to be striped in wales of
darker brown, gradually broadening to ribands.  Along the edge of
each of these something crept upon ten legs, moving without haste
and without rest up and down the whole length of the field; it was
two horses and a man, the plough going between them, turning up the
cleared ground for a spring sowing.

For hours nothing relieved the joyless monotony of things. Then, far
beyond the ploughing-teams, a black speck was seen.  It had come from
the corner of a fence, where there was a gap, and its tendency was
up the incline, towards the swede-cutters.  From the proportions of
a mere point it advanced to the shape of a ninepin, and was soon
perceived to be a man in black, arriving from the direction of
Flintcomb-Ash.  The man at the slicer, having nothing else to do with
his eyes, continually observed the comer, but Tess, who was occupied,
did not perceive him till her companion directed her attention to his
approach.

It was not her hard taskmaster, Farmer Groby; it was one in a
semi-clerical costume, who now represented what had once been the
free-and-easy Alec d'Urberville.  Not being hot at his preaching
there was less enthusiasm about him now, and the presence of the
grinder seemed to embarrass him.  A pale distress was already on
Tess's face, and she pulled her curtained hood further over it.

D'Urberville came up and said quietly--

"I want to speak to you, Tess."

"You have refused my last request, not to come near me!" said she.

"Yes, but I have a good reason."

"Well, tell it."

"It is more serious than you may think."

He glanced round to see if he were overheard.  They were at some
distance from the man who turned the slicer, and the movement of the
machine, too, sufficiently prevented Alec's words reaching other
ears.  D'Urberville placed himself so as to screen Tess from the
labourer, turning his back to the latter.

"It is this," he continued, with capricious compunction.  "In
thinking of your soul and mine when we last met, I neglected to
inquire as to your worldly condition.  You were well dressed, and I
did not think of it.  But I see now that it is hard--harder than it
used to be when I--knew you--harder than you deserve.  Perhaps a good
deal of it is owning to me!"

She did not answer, and he watched her inquiringly, as, with bent
head, her face completely screened by the hood, she resumed her
trimming of the swedes.  By going on with her work she felt better
able to keep him outside her emotions.

"Tess," he added, with a sigh of discontent,--"yours was the very
worst case I ever was concerned in!  I had no idea of what had
resulted till you told me.  Scamp that I was to foul that innocent
life!  The whole blame was mine--the whole unconventional business
of our time at Trantridge.  You, too, the real blood of which I am
but the base imitation, what a blind young thing you were as to
possibilities!  I say in all earnestness that it is a shame for
parents to bring up their girls in such dangerous ignorance of the
gins and nets that the wicked may set for them, whether their motive
be a good one or the result of simple indifference."

Tess still did no more than listen, throwing down one globular root
and taking up another with automatic regularity, the pensive contour
of the mere fieldwoman alone marking her.

"But it is not that I came to say," d'Urberville went on.  "My
circumstances are these.  I have lost my mother since you were at
Trantridge, and the place is my own.  But I intend to sell it, and
devote myself to missionary work in Africa.  A devil of a poor hand
I shall make at the trade, no doubt.  However, what I want to ask
you is, will you put it in my power to do my duty--to make the only
reparation I can make for the trick played you: that is, will you be
my wife, and go with me? ...  I have already obtained this precious
document.  It was my old mother's dying wish."

He drew a piece of parchment from his pocket, with a slight fumbling
of embarrassment.

"What is it?" said she.

"A marriage licence."

"O no, sir--no!" she said quickly, starting back.

"You will not?  Why is that?"

And as he asked the question a disappointment which was not entirely
the disappointment of thwarted duty crossed d'Urberville's face.  It
was unmistakably a symptom that something of his old passion for her
had been revived; duty and desire ran hand-in-hand.

"Surely," he began again, in more impetuous tones, and then looked
round at the labourer who turned the slicer.

Tess, too, felt that the argument could not be ended there.
Informing the man that a gentleman had come to see her, with whom she
wished to walk a little way, she moved off with d'Urberville across
the zebra-striped field.  When they reached the first newly-ploughed
section he held out his hand to help her over it; but she stepped
forward on the summits of the earth-rolls as if she did not see him.

"You will not marry me, Tess, and make me a self-respecting man?" he
repeated, as soon as they were over the furrows.

"I cannot."

"But why?"

"You know I have no affection for you."

"But you would get to feel that in time, perhaps--as soon as you
really could forgive me?"

"Never!"

"Why so positive?"

"I love somebody else."

The words seemed to astonish him.

"You do?" he cried.  "Somebody else?  But has not a sense of what is
morally right and proper any weight with you?"

"No, no, no--don't say that!"

"Anyhow, then, your love for this other man may be only a passing
feeling which you will overcome--"

"No--no."

"Yes, yes!  Why not?"

"I cannot tell you."

"You must in honour!"

"Well then ... I have married him."

"Ah!" he exclaimed; and he stopped dead and gazed at
her.

"I did not wish to tell--I did not mean to!" she pleaded.  "It is a
secret here, or at any rate but dimly known.  So will you, PLEASE
will you, keep from questioning me?  You must remember that we are
now strangers."

"Strangers--are we?  Strangers!"

For a moment a flash of his old irony marked his face; but he
determinedly chastened it down.

"Is that man your husband?" he asked mechanically, denoting by a sign
the labourer who turned the machine.

"That man!" she said proudly.  "I should think not!"

"Who, then?"

"Do not ask what I do not wish to tell!" she begged, and flashed her
appeal to him from her upturned face and lash-shadowed eyes.

D'Urberville was disturbed.

"But I only asked for your sake!" he retorted hotly.  "Angels of
heaven!--God forgive me for such an expression--I came here, I swear,
as I thought for your good.  Tess--don't look at me so--I cannot
stand your looks!  There never were such eyes, surely, before
Christianity or since!  There--I won't lose my head; I dare not.
I own that the sight of you had waked up my love for you, which, I
believed, was extinguished with all such feelings.  But I thought
that our marriage might be a sanctification for us both.  'The
unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving
wife is sanctified by the husband,' I said to myself.  But my plan
is dashed from me; and I must bear the disappointment!"

He moodily reflected with his eyes on the ground.

"Married.  Married! ...  Well, that being so," he added, quite
calmly, tearing the licence slowly into halves and putting them in
his pocket; "that being prevented, I should like to do some good to
you and your husband, whoever he may be.  There are many questions
that I am tempted to ask, but I will not do so, of course, in
opposition to your wishes.  Though, if I could know your husband, I
might more easily benefit him and you.  Is he on this farm?"

"No," she murmured.  "He is far away."

"Far away?  From YOU?  What sort of husband can he be?"

"O, do not speak against him!  It was through you!  He found out--"

"Ah, is it so! ...  That's sad, Tess!"

"Yes."

"But to stay away from you--to leave you to work like this!"

"He does not leave me to work!" she cried, springing to the defence
of the absent one with all her fervour.  "He don't know it!  It is by
my own arrangement."

"Then, does he write?"

"I--I cannot tell you.  There are things which are private to
ourselves."

"Of course that means that he does not.  You are a deserted wife, my
fair Tess--"

In an impulse he turned suddenly to take her hand; the buff-glove was
on it, and he seized only the rough leather fingers which did not
express the life or shape of those within.

"You must not--you must not!" she cried fearfully, slipping her hand
from the glove as from a pocket, and leaving it in his grasp.  "O,
will you go away--for the sake of me and my husband--go, in the name
of your own Christianity!"

"Yes, yes; I will," he said abruptly, and thrusting the glove back to
her he turned to leave.  Facing round, however, he said, "Tess, as
God is my judge, I meant no humbug in taking your hand!"

A pattering of hoofs on the soil of the field, which they had not
noticed in their preoccupation, ceased close behind them; and a voice
reached her ear:

"What the devil are you doing away from your work at this time o'
day?"

Farmer Groby had espied the two figures from the distance, and had
inquisitively ridden across, to learn what was their business in his
field.

"Don't speak like that to her!" said d'Urberville, his face
blackening with something that was not Christianity.

"Indeed, Mister!  And what mid Methodist pa'sons have to do with
she?"

"Who is the fellow?" asked d'Urberville, turning to Tess.

She went close up to him.

"Go--I do beg you!" she said.

"What!  And leave you to that tyrant?  I can see in his face what a
churl he is."

"He won't hurt me.  HE'S not in love with me.  I can leave at
Lady-Day."

"Well, I have no right but to obey, I suppose.  But--well, goodbye!"

Her defender, whom she dreaded more than her assailant, having
reluctantly disappeared, the farmer continued his reprimand, which
Tess took with the greatest coolness, that sort of attack being
independent of sex.  To have as a master this man of stone, who would
have cuffed her if he had dared, was almost a relief after her former
experiences.  She silently walked back towards the summit of the
field that was the scene of her labour, so absorbed in the interview
which had just taken place that she was hardly aware that the nose of
Groby's horse almost touched her shoulders.

"If so be you make an agreement to work for me till Lady-Day, I'll
see that you carry it out," he growled.  "'Od rot the women--now
'tis one thing, and then 'tis another.  But I'll put up with it no
longer!"

Knowing very well that he did not harass the other women of the
farm as he harassed her out of spite for the flooring he had once
received, she did for one moment picture what might have been the
result if she had been free to accept the offer just made her of
being the monied Alec's wife.  It would have lifted her completely
out of subjection, not only to her present oppressive employer, but
to a whole world who seemed to despise her.  "But no, no!" she said
breathlessly; "I could not have married him now!  He is so unpleasant
to me."

That very night she began an appealing letter to Clare, concealing
from him her hardships, and assuring him of her undying affection.
Any one who had been in a position to read between the lines would
have seen that at the back of her great love was some monstrous
fear--almost a desperation--as to some secret contingencies which
were not disclosed.  But again she did not finish her effusion; he
had asked Izz to go with him, and perhaps he did not care for her at
all.  She put the letter in her box, and wondered if it would ever
reach Angel's hands.

After this her daily tasks were gone through heavily enough, and
brought on the day which was of great import to agriculturists--the
day of the Candlemas Fair.  It was at this fair that new engagements
were entered into for the twelve months following the ensuing
Lady-Day, and those of the farming population who thought of changing
their places duly attended at the county-town where the fair was
held.  Nearly all the labourers on Flintcomb-Ash farm intended
flight, and early in the morning there was a general exodus in the
direction of the town, which lay at a distance of from ten to a dozen
miles over hilly country.  Though Tess also meant to leave at the
quarter-day, she was one of the few who did not go to the fair,
having a vaguely-shaped hope that something would happen to render
another outdoor engagement unnecessary.

It was a peaceful February day, of wonderful softness for the time,
and one would almost have thought that winter was over.  She had
hardly finished her dinner when d'Urberville's figure darkened the
window of the cottage wherein she was a lodger, which she had all to
herself to-day.

Tess jumped up, but her visitor had knocked at the door, and she
could hardly in reason run away.  D'Urberville's knock, his walk up
to the door, had some indescribable quality of difference from his
air when she last saw him.  They seemed to be acts of which the doer
was ashamed.  She thought that she would not open the door; but, as
there was no sense in that either, she arose, and having lifted the
latch stepped back quickly.  He came in, saw her, and flung himself
down into a chair before speaking.

"Tess--I couldn't help it!" he began desperately, as he wiped his
heated face, which had also a superimposed flush of excitement.  "I
felt that I must call at least to ask how you are.  I assure you I
had not been thinking of you at all till I saw you that Sunday; now I
cannot get rid of your image, try how I may!  It is hard that a good
woman should do harm to a bad man; yet so it is.  If you would only
pray for me, Tess!"

The suppressed discontent of his manner was almost pitiable, and yet
Tess did not pity him.

"How can I pray for you," she said, "when I am forbidden to believe
that the great Power who moves the world would alter His plans on my
account?"

"You really think that?"

"Yes.  I have been cured of the presumption of thinking otherwise."

"Cured?  By whom?"

"By my husband, if I must tell."

"Ah--your husband--your husband!  How strange it seems!  I remember
you hinted something of the sort the other day.  What do you really
believe in these matters, Tess?" he asked.  "You seem to have no
religion--perhaps owing to me."

"But I have.  Though I don't believe in anything supernatural."

D'Urberville looked at her with misgiving.

"Then do you think that the line I take is all wrong?"

"A good deal of it."

"H'm--and yet I've felt so sure about it," he said uneasily.

"I believe in the SPIRIT of the Sermon on the Mount, and so did my
dear husband...  But I don't believe--"

Here she gave her negations.

"The fact is," said d'Urberville drily, "whatever your dear husband
believed you accept, and whatever he rejected you reject, without the
least inquiry or reasoning on your own part.  That's just like you
women.  Your mind is enslaved to his."

"Ah, because he knew everything!" said she, with a triumphant
simplicity of faith in Angel Clare that the most perfect man could
hardly have deserved, much less her husband.

"Yes, but you should not take negative opinions wholesale from
another person like that.  A pretty fellow he must be to teach you
such scepticism!"

"He never forced my judgement!  He would never argue on the subject
with me!  But I looked at it in this way; what he believed, after
inquiring deep into doctrines, was much more likely to be right than
what I might believe, who hadn't looked into doctrines at all."

"What used he to say?  He must have said something?"

She reflected; and with her acute memory for the letter of Angel
Clare's remarks, even when she did not comprehend their spirit, she
recalled a merciless polemical syllogism that she had heard him
use when, as it occasionally happened, he indulged in a species of
thinking aloud with her at his side.  In delivering it she gave also
Clare's accent and manner with reverential faithfulness.

"Say that again," asked d'Urberville, who had listened with the
greatest attention.

She repeated the argument, and d'Urberville thoughtfully murmured the
words after her.

"Anything else?" he presently asked.

"He said at another time something like this"; and she gave another,
which might possibly have been paralleled in many a work of the
pedigree ranging from the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_ to Huxley's
_Essays_.

"Ah--ha!  How do you remember them?"

"I wanted to believe what he believed, though he didn't wish me to;
and I managed to coax him to tell me a few of his thoughts.  I can't
say I quite understand that one; but I know it is right."

"H'm.  Fancy your being able to teach me what you don't know
yourself!"

He fell into thought.

"And so I threw in my spiritual lot with his," she resumed.  "I
didn't wish it to be different.  What's good enough for him is good
enough for me."

"Does he know that you are as big an infidel as he?"

"No--I never told him--if I am an infidel."

"Well--you are better off to-day that I am, Tess, after all!  You
don't believe that you ought to preach my doctrine, and, therefore,
do no despite to your conscience in abstaining.  I do believe I ought
to preach it, but, like the devils, I believe and tremble, for I
suddenly leave off preaching it, and give way to my passion for you."

"How?"

"Why," he said aridly; "I have come all the way here to see you
to-day!  But I started from home to go to Casterbridge Fair, where
I have undertaken to preach the Word from a waggon at half-past two
this afternoon, and where all the brethren are expecting me this
minute.  Here's the announcement."

He drew from his breast-pocket a poster whereon was printed the day,
hour, and place of meeting, at which he, d'Urberville, would preach
the Gospel as aforesaid.

"But how can you get there?" said Tess, looking at the clock.

"I cannot get there!  I have come here."

"What, you have really arranged to preach, and--"

"I have arranged to preach, and I shall not be there--by reason of my
burning desire to see a woman whom I once despised!--No, by my word
and truth, I never despised you; if I had I should not love you now!
Why I did not despise you was on account of your being unsmirched in
spite of all; you withdrew yourself from me so quickly and resolutely
when you saw the situation; you did not remain at my pleasure; so
there was one petticoat in the world for whom I had no contempt,
and you are she.  But you may well despise me now!  I thought I
worshipped on the mountains, but I find I still serve in the groves!
Ha! ha!"

"O Alec d'Urberville! what does this mean?  What have I done!"

"Done?" he said, with a soulless sneer in the word.  "Nothing
intentionally.  But you have been the means--the innocent means--of
my backsliding, as they call it.  I ask myself, am I, indeed, one of
those 'servants of corruption' who, 'after they have escaped the
pollutions of the world, are again entangled therein and overcome'--
whose latter end is worse than their beginning?"  He laid his hand on
her shoulder.  "Tess, my girl, I was on the way to, at least, social
salvation till I saw you again!" he said freakishly shaking her, as
if she were a child.  "And why then have you tempted me?  I was firm
as a man could be till I saw those eyes and that mouth again--surely
there never was such a maddening mouth since Eve's!"  His voice sank,
and a hot archness shot from his own black eyes.  "You temptress,
Tess; you dear damned witch of Babylon--I could not resist you as
soon as I met you again!"

"I couldn't help your seeing me again!" said Tess, recoiling.

"I know it--I repeat that I do not blame you.  But the fact remains.
When I saw you ill-used on the farm that day I was nearly mad to
think that I had no legal right to protect you--that I could not have
it; whilst he who has it seems to neglect you utterly!"

"Don't speak against him--he is absent!" she cried in much
excitement.  "Treat him honourably--he has never wronged you!  O
leave his wife before any scandal spreads that may do harm to his
honest name!"

"I will--I will," he said, like a man awakening from a luring dream.
"I have broken my engagement to preach to those poor drunken boobies
at the fair--it is the first time I have played such a practical
joke.  A month ago I should have been horrified at such a
possibility.  I'll go away--to swear--and--ah, can I! to keep away."
Then, suddenly: "One clasp, Tessy--one!  Only for old friendship--"

"I am without defence. Alec!  A good man's honour is in my keeping--
think--be ashamed!"

"Pooh!  Well, yes--yes!"

He clenched his lips, mortified with himself for his weakness.  His
eyes were equally barren of worldly and religious faith.  The corpses
of those old fitful passions which had lain inanimate amid the lines
of his face ever since his reformation seemed to wake and come
together as in a resurrection.  He went out indeterminately.

Though d'Urberville had declared that this breach of his engagement
to-day was the simple backsliding of a believer, Tess's words, as
echoed from Angel Clare, had made a deep impression upon him, and
continued to do so after he had left her.  He moved on in silence, as
if his energies were benumbed by the hitherto undreamt-of possibility
that his position was untenable.  Reason had had nothing to do with
his whimsical conversion, which was perhaps the mere freak of a
careless man in search of a new sensation, and temporarily impressed
by his mother's death.

The drops of logic Tess had let fall into the sea of his enthusiasm
served to chill its effervescence to stagnation.  He said to himself,
as he pondered again and again over the crystallized phrases that she
had handed on to him, "That clever fellow little thought that, by
telling her those things, he might be paving my way back to her!"

It is the threshing of the last wheat-rick at Flintcomb-Ash farm. The
dawn of the March morning is singularly inexpressive, and there is
nothing to show where the eastern horizon lies.  Against the twilight
rises the trapezoidal top of the stack, which has stood forlornly
here through the washing and bleaching of the wintry weather.

When Izz Huett and Tess arrived at the scene of operations only a
rustling denoted that others had preceded them; to which, as the
light increased, there were presently added the silhouettes of two
men on the summit.  They were busily "unhaling" the rick, that
is, stripping off the thatch before beginning to throw down the
sheaves; and while this was in progress Izz and Tess, with the
other women-workers, in their whitey-brown pinners, stood waiting
and shivering, Farmer Groby having insisted upon their being on
the spot thus early to get the job over if possible by the end of
the day.  Close under the eaves of the stack, and as yet barely
visible, was the red tyrant that the women had come to serve--a
timber-framed construction, with straps and wheels appertaining--
the threshing-machine which, whilst it was going, kept up a
despotic demand upon the endurance of their muscles and nerves.

A little way off there was another indistinct figure; this one black,
with a sustained hiss that spoke of strength very much in reserve.
The long chimney running up beside an ash-tree, and the warmth which
radiated from the spot, explained without the necessity of much
daylight that here was the engine which was to act as the _primum
mobile_ of this little world.  By the engine stood a dark, motionless
being, a sooty and grimy embodiment of tallness, in a sort of trance,
with a heap of coals by his side: it was the engine-man.  The
isolation of his manner and colour lent him the appearance of a
creature from Tophet, who had strayed into the pellucid smokelessness
of this region of yellow grain and pale soil, with which he had
nothing in common, to amaze and to discompose its aborigines.

What he looked he felt.  He was in the agricultural world, but not of
it.  He served fire and smoke; these denizens of the fields served
vegetation, weather, frost, and sun.  He travelled with his engine
from farm to farm, from county to county, for as yet the steam
threshing-machine was itinerant in this part of Wessex.  He spoke in
a strange northern accent; his thoughts being turned inwards upon
himself, his eye on his iron charge, hardly perceiving the scenes
around him, and caring for them not at all: holding only strictly
necessary intercourse with the natives, as if some ancient doom
compelled him to wander here against his will in the service of his
Plutonic master.  The long strap which ran from the driving-wheel of
his engine to the red thresher under the rick was the sole tie-line
between agriculture and him.

While they uncovered the sheaves he stood apathetic beside his
portable repository of force, round whose hot blackness the morning
air quivered.  He had nothing to do with preparatory labour.  His
fire was waiting incandescent, his steam was at high pressure, in
a few seconds he could make the long strap move at an invisible
velocity.  Beyond its extent the environment might be corn, straw,
or chaos; it was all the same to him.  If any of the autochthonous
idlers asked him what he called himself, he replied shortly, "an
engineer."

The rick was unhaled by full daylight; the men then took their
places, the women mounted, and the work began.  Farmer Groby--or, as
they called him, "he"--had arrived ere this, and by his orders Tess
was placed on the platform of the machine, close to the man who fed
it, her business being to untie every sheaf of corn handed on to her
by Izz Huett, who stood next, but on the rick; so that the feeder
could seize it and spread it over the revolving drum, which whisked
out every grain in one moment.

They were soon in full progress, after a preparatory hitch or two,
which rejoiced the hearts of those who hated machinery.  The work
sped on till breakfast time, when the thresher was stopped for half
an hour; and on starting again after the meal the whole supplementary
strength of the farm was thrown into the labour of constructing the
straw-rick, which began to grow beside the stack of corn.  A hasty
lunch was eaten as they stood, without leaving their positions, and
then another couple of hours brought them near to dinner-time; the
inexorable wheel continuing to spin, and the penetrating hum of the
thresher to thrill to the very marrow all who were near the revolving
wire-cage.

The old men on the rising straw-rick talked of the past days
when they had been accustomed to thresh with flails on the oaken
barn-floor; when everything, even to winnowing, was effected by
hand-labour, which, to their thinking, though slow, produced better
results.  Those, too, on the corn-rick talked a little; but the
perspiring ones at the machine, including Tess, could not lighten
their duties by the exchange of many words.  It was the ceaselessness
of the work which tried her so severely, and began to make her
wish that she had never some to Flintcomb-Ash.  The women on the
corn-rick--Marian, who was one of them, in particular--could stop to
drink ale or cold tea from the flagon now and then, or to exchange
a few gossiping remarks while they wiped their faces or cleared the
fragments of straw and husk from their clothing; but for Tess there
was no respite; for, as the drum never stopped, the man who fed
it could not stop, and she, who had to supply the man with untied
sheaves, could not stop either, unless Marian changed places with
her, which she sometimes did for half an hour in spite of Groby's
objections that she was too slow-handed for a feeder.

For some probably economical reason it was usually a woman who was
chosen for this particular duty, and Groby gave as his motive in
selecting Tess that she was one of those who best combined strength
with quickness in untying, and both with staying power, and this may
have been true.  The hum of the thresher, which prevented speech,
increased to a raving whenever the supply of corn fell short of the
regular quantity.  As Tess and the man who fed could never turn their
heads she did not know that just before the dinner-hour a person had
come silently into the field by the gate, and had been standing under
a second rick watching the scene and Tess in particular.  He was
dressed in a tweed suit of fashionable pattern, and he twirled a gay
walking-cane.

"Who is that?" said Izz Huett to Marian.  She had at first addressed
the inquiry to Tess, but the latter could not hear it.

"Somebody's fancy-man, I s'pose," said Marian laconically.

"I'll lay a guinea he's after Tess."

"O no.  'Tis a ranter pa'son who's been sniffing after her lately;
not a dandy like this."

"Well--this is the same man."

"The same man as the preacher?  But he's quite different!"

"He hev left off his black coat and white neckercher, and hev cut off
his whiskers; but he's the same man for all that."

"D'ye really think so?  Then I'll tell her," said Marian.

"Don't.  She'll see him soon enough, good-now."

"Well, I don't think it at all right for him to join his preaching to
courting a married woman, even though her husband mid be abroad, and
she, in a sense, a widow."

"Oh--he can do her no harm," said Izz drily.  "Her mind can no more
be heaved from that one place where it do bide than a stooded waggon
from the hole he's in.  Lord love 'ee, neither court-paying, nor
preaching, nor the seven thunders themselves, can wean a woman when
'twould be better for her that she should be weaned."

Dinner-time came, and the whirling ceased; whereupon Tess left her
post, her knees trembling so wretchedly with the shaking of the
machine that she could scarcely walk.

"You ought to het a quart o' drink into 'ee, as I've done," said
Marian.  "You wouldn't look so white then.  Why, souls above us,
your face is as if you'd been hagrode!"

It occurred to the good-natured Marian that, as Tess was so tired,
her discovery of her visitor's presence might have the bad effect of
taking away her appetite; and Marian was thinking of inducing Tess
to descend by a ladder on the further side of the stack when the
gentleman came forward and looked up.

Tess uttered a short little "Oh!"  And a moment after she said,
quickly, "I shall eat my dinner here--right on the rick."

Sometimes, when they were so far from their cottages, they all did
this; but as there was rather a keen wind going to-day, Marian and
the rest descended, and sat under the straw-stack.

The newcomer was, indeed, Alec d'Urberville, the late Evangelist,
despite his changed attire and aspect.  It was obvious at a glance
that the original _Weltlust_ had come back; that he had restored
himself, as nearly as a man could do who had grown three or four
years older, to the old jaunty, slapdash guise under which Tess
had first known her admirer, and cousin so-called.  Having decided
to remain where she was, Tess sat down among the bundles, out of
sight of the ground, and began her meal; till, by-and-by, she heard
footsteps on the ladder, and immediately after Alec appeared upon the
stack--now an oblong and level platform of sheaves.  He strode across
them, and sat down opposite of her without a word.

Tess continued to eat her modest dinner, a slice of thick pancake
which she had brought with her.  The other workfolk were by this
time all gathered under the rick, where the loose straw formed a
comfortable retreat.

"I am here again, as you see," said d'Urberville.

"Why do you trouble me so!" she cried, reproach flashing from her
very finger-ends.

"I trouble YOU?  I think I may ask, why do you trouble me?"

"Sure, I don't trouble you any-when!"

"You say you don't?  But you do!  You haunt me.  Those very eyes that
you turned upon me with such a bitter flash a moment ago, they come
to me just as you showed them then, in the night and in the day!
Tess, ever since you told me of that child of ours, it is just as if
my feelings, which have been flowing in a strong puritanical stream,
had suddenly found a way open in the direction of you, and had all at
once gushed through.  The religious channel is left dry forthwith;
and it is you who have done it!"

She gazed in silence.

"What--you have given up your preaching entirely?" she asked.  She
had gathered from Angel sufficient of the incredulity of modern
thought to despise flash enthusiasm; but, as a woman, she was
somewhat appalled.

In affected severity d'Urberville continued--

"Entirely.  I have broken every engagement since that afternoon I was
to address the drunkards at Casterbridge Fair.  The deuce only knows
what I am thought of by the brethren.  Ah-ha!  The brethren!  No
doubt they pray for me--weep for me; for they are kind people in
their way.  But what do I care?  How could I go on with the thing
when I had lost my faith in it?--it would have been hypocrisy of
the basest kind!  Among them I should have stood like Hymenaeus and
Alexander, who were delivered over to Satan that they might learn
not to blaspheme.  What a grand revenge you have taken!  I saw you
innocent, and I deceived you.  Four years after, you find me a
Christian enthusiast; you then work upon me, perhaps to my complete
perdition!  But Tess, my coz, as I used to call you, this is only
my way of talking, and you must not look so horribly concerned.
Of course you have done nothing except retain your pretty face and
shapely figure.  I saw it on the rick before you saw me--that tight
pinafore-thing sets it off, and that wing-bonnet--you field-girls
should never wear those bonnets if you wish to keep out of danger."
He regarded her silently for a few moments, and with a short cynical
laugh resumed: "I believe that if the bachelor-apostle, whose deputy
I thought I was, had been tempted by such a pretty face, he would
have let go the plough for her sake as I do!"

Tess attempted to expostulate, but at this juncture all her fluency
failed her, and without heeding he added:

"Well, this paradise that you supply is perhaps as good as any other,
after all.  But to speak seriously, Tess."  D'Urberville rose and
came nearer, reclining sideways amid the sheaves, and resting upon
his elbow.  "Since I last saw you, I have been thinking of what
you said that HE said.  I have come to the conclusion that there
does seem rather a want of common-sense in these threadbare old
propositions; how I could have been so fired by poor Parson Clare's
enthusiasm, and have gone so madly to work, transcending even him, I
cannot make out!  As for what you said last time, on the strength of
your wonderful husband's intelligence--whose name you have never told
me--about having what they call an ethical system without any dogma,
I don't see my way to that at all."

"Why, you can have the religion of loving-kindness and purity at
least, if you can't have--what do you call it--dogma."

"O no!  I'm a different sort of fellow from that!  If there's nobody
to say, 'Do this, and it will be a good thing for you after you are
dead; do that, and if will be a bad thing for you,' I can't warm up.
Hang it, I am not going to feel responsible for my deeds and passions
if there's nobody to be responsible to; and if I were you, my dear,
I wouldn't either!"

She tried to argue, and tell him that he had mixed in his dull
brain two matters, theology and morals, which in the primitive days
of mankind had been quite distinct.  But owing to Angel Clare's
reticence, to her absolute want of training, and to her being a
vessel of emotions rather than reasons, she could not get on.

"Well, never mind," he resumed.  "Here I am, my love, as in the old
times!"

"Not as then--never as then--'tis different!" she entreated.  "And
there was never warmth with me!  O why didn't you keep your faith,
if the loss of it has brought you to speak to me like this!"

"Because you've knocked it out of me; so the evil be upon your sweet
head!  Your husband little thought how his teaching would recoil upon
him!  Ha-ha--I'm awfully glad you have made an apostate of me all the
same!  Tess, I am more taken with you than ever, and I pity you too.
For all your closeness, I see you are in a bad way--neglected by one
who ought to cherish you."

She could not get her morsels of food down her throat; her lips
were dry, and she was ready to choke.  The voices and laughs of the
workfolk eating and drinking under the rick came to her as if they
were a quarter of a mile off.

"It is cruelty to me!" she said.  "How--how can you treat me to this
talk, if you care ever so little for me?"

"True, true," he said, wincing a little.  "I did not come to reproach
you for my deeds.  I came Tess, to say that I don't like you to be
working like this, and I have come on purpose for you.  You say you
have a husband who is not I.  Well, perhaps you have; but I've never
seen him, and you've not told me his name; and altogether he seems
rather a mythological personage.  However, even if you have one, I
think I am nearer to you than he is.  I, at any rate, try to help you
out of trouble, but he does not, bless his invisible face!  The words
of the stern prophet Hosea that I used to read come back to me.
Don't you know them, Tess?--'And she shall follow after her lover,
but she shall not overtake him; and she shall seek him, but shall
not find him; then shall she say, I will go and return to my first
husband; for then was it better with me than now!' ...  Tess, my trap
is waiting just under the hill, and--darling mine, not his!--you know
the rest."

Her face had been rising to a dull crimson fire while he spoke; but
she did not answer.

"You have been the cause of my backsliding," he continued, stretching
his arm towards her waist; "you should be willing to share it, and
leave that mule you call husband for ever."

One of her leather gloves, which she had taken off to eat her
skimmer-cake, lay in her lap, and without the slightest warning she
passionately swung the glove by the gauntlet directly in his face.
It was heavy and thick as a warrior's, and it struck him flat on the
mouth.  Fancy might have regarded the act as the recrudescence of
a trick in which her armed progenitors were not unpractised.  Alec
fiercely started up from his reclining position.  A scarlet oozing
appeared where her blow had alighted, and in a moment the blood began
dropping from his mouth upon the straw.  But he soon controlled
himself, calmly drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and mopped
his bleeding lips.

She too had sprung up, but she sank down again. "Now, punish me!" she
said, turning up her eyes to him with the hopeless defiance of the
sparrow's gaze before its captor twists its neck.  "Whip me, crush
me; you need not mind those people under the rick!  I shall not cry
out.  Once victim, always victim--that's the law!"

"O no, no, Tess," he said blandly.  "I can make full allowance for
this.  Yet you most unjustly forget one thing, that I would have
married you if you had not put it out of my power to do so.  Did I
not ask you flatly to be my wife--hey?  Answer me."

"You did."

"And you cannot be.  But remember one thing!"  His voice hardened
as his temper got the better of him with the recollection of his
sincerity in asking her and her present ingratitude, and he stepped
across to her side and held her by the shoulders, so that she shook
under his grasp.  "Remember, my lady, I was your master once!  I will
be your master again.  If you are any man's wife you are mine!"

The threshers now began to stir below.

"So much for our quarrel," he said, letting her go.  "Now I shall
leave you, and shall come again for your answer during the afternoon.
You don't know me yet!  But I know you."

She had not spoken again, remaining as if stunned.  D'Urberville
retreated over the sheaves, and descended the ladder, while the
workers below rose and stretched their arms, and shook down the beer
they had drunk.  Then the threshing-machine started afresh; and amid
the renewed rustle of the straw Tess resumed her position by the
buzzing drum as one in a dream, untying sheaf after sheaf in endless
succession.

In the afternoon the farmer made it known that the rick was to be
finished that night, since there was a moon by which they could see
to work, and the man with the engine was engaged for another farm on
the morrow.  Hence the twanging and humming and rustling proceeded
with even less intermission than usual.

It was not till "nammet"-time, about three o-clock, that Tess raised
her eyes and gave a momentary glance round.  She felt but little
surprise at seeing that Alec d'Urberville had come back, and was
standing under the hedge by the gate.  He had seen her lift her
eyes, and waved his hand urbanely to her, while he blew her a kiss.
It meant that their quarrel was over.  Tess looked down again, and
carefully abstained from gazing in that direction.

Thus the afternoon dragged on.  The wheat-rick shrank lower, and the
straw-rick grew higher, and the corn-sacks were carted away.  At six
o'clock the wheat-rick was about shoulder-high from the ground.  But
the unthreshed sheaves remaining untouched seemed countless still,
notwithstanding the enormous numbers that had been gulped down by
the insatiable swallower, fed by the man and Tess, through whose two
young hands the greater part of them had passed.  And the immense
stack of straw where in the morning there had been nothing, appeared
as the faeces of the same buzzing red glutton.  From the west sky
a wrathful shine--all that wild March could afford in the way of
sunset--had burst forth after the cloudy day, flooding the tired and
sticky faces of the threshers, and dyeing them with a coppery light,
as also the flapping garments of the women, which clung to them like
dull flames.

A panting ache ran through the rick.  The man who fed was weary, and
Tess could see that the red nape of his neck was encrusted with dirt
and husks.  She still stood at her post, her flushed and perspiring
face coated with the corndust, and her white bonnet embrowned by it.
She was the only woman whose place was upon the machine so as to be
shaken bodily by its spinning, and the decrease of the stack now
separated her from Marian and Izz, and prevented their changing
duties with her as they had done.  The incessant quivering, in
which every fibre of her frame participated, had thrown her into a
stupefied reverie in which her arms worked on independently of her
consciousness.  She hardly knew where she was, and did not hear Izz
Huett tell her from below that her hair was tumbling down.

By degrees the freshest among them began to grow cadaverous and
saucer-eyed.  Whenever Tess lifted her head she beheld always the
great upgrown straw-stack, with the men in shirt-sleeves upon it,
against the gray north sky; in front of it the long red elevator
like a Jacob's ladder, on which a perpetual stream of threshed straw
ascended, a yellow river running uphill, and spouting out on the top
of the rick.

She knew that Alec d'Urberville was still on the scene, observing
her from some point or other, though she could not say where.  There
was an excuse for his remaining, for when the threshed rick drew
near its final sheaves a little ratting was always done, and men
unconnected with the threshing sometimes dropped in for that
performance--sporting characters of all descriptions, gents with
terriers and facetious pipes, roughs with sticks and stones.

But there was another hour's work before the layer of live rats at
the base of the stack would be reached; and as the evening light in
the direction of the Giant's Hill by Abbot's-Cernel dissolved away,
the white-faced moon of the season arose from the horizon that lay
towards Middleton Abbey and Shottsford on the other side.  For the
last hour or two Marian had felt uneasy about Tess, whom she could
not get near enough to speak to, the other women having kept up their
strength by drinking ale, and Tess having done without it through
traditionary dread, owing to its results at her home in childhood.
But Tess still kept going: if she could not fill her part she would
have to leave; and this contingency, which she would have regarded
with equanimity and even with relief a month or two earlier, had
become a terror since d'Urberville had begun to hover round her.

The sheaf-pitchers and feeders had now worked the rick so low that
people on the ground could talk to them.  To Tess's surprise Farmer
Groby came up on the machine to her, and said that if she desired to
join her friend he did not wish her to keep on any longer, and would
send somebody else to take her place.  The "friend" was d'Urberville,
she knew, and also that this concession had been granted in obedience
to the request of that friend, or enemy.  She shook her head and
toiled on.

The time for the rat-catching arrived at last, and the hunt began.
The creatures had crept downwards with the subsidence of the rick
till they were all together at the bottom, and being now uncovered
from their last refuge, they ran across the open ground in all
directions, a loud shriek from the by-this-time half-tipsy Marian
informing her companions that one of the rats had invaded her
person--a terror which the rest of the women had guarded against by
various schemes of skirt-tucking and self-elevation.  The rat was
at last dislodged, and, amid the barking of dogs, masculine shouts,
feminine screams, oaths, stampings, and confusion as of Pandemonium,
Tess untied her last sheaf; the drum slowed, the whizzing ceased,
and she stepped from the machine to the ground.

Her lover, who had only looked on at the rat-catching, was promptly
at her side.

"What--after all--my insulting slap, too!" said she in an
underbreath.  She was so utterly exhausted that she had not strength
to speak louder.

"I should indeed be foolish to feel offended at anything you say or
do," he answered, in the seductive voice of the Trantridge time.
"How the little limbs tremble!  You are as weak as a bled calf, you
know you are; and yet you need have done nothing since I arrived.
How could you be so obstinate?  However, I have told the farmer that
he has no right to employ women at steam-threshing.  It is not proper
work for them; and on all the better class of farms it has been given
up, as he knows very well.  I will walk with you as far as your
home."

"O yes," she answered with a jaded gait.  "Walk wi' me if you will!
I do bear in mind that you came to marry me before you knew o' my
state.  Perhaps--perhaps you are a little better and kinder than I
have been thinking you were.  Whatever is meant as kindness I am
grateful for; whatever is meant in any other way I am angered at.
I cannot sense your meaning sometimes."

"If I cannot legitimize our former relations at least I can assist
you.  And I will do it with much more regard for your feelings than
I formerly showed.  My religious mania, or whatever it was, is over.
But I retain a little good nature; I hope I do.  Now, Tess, by
all that's tender and strong between man and woman, trust me!  I
have enough and more than enough to put you out of anxiety, both
for yourself and your parents and sisters.  I can make them all
comfortable if you will only show confidence in me."

"Have you seen 'em lately?" she quickly inquired.

"Yes.  They didn't know where you were.  It was only by chance that I
found you here."

The cold moon looked aslant upon Tess's fagged face between the twigs
of the garden-hedge as she paused outside the cottage which was her
temporary home, d'Urberville pausing beside her.

"Don't mention my little brothers and sisters--don't make me break
down quite!" she said.  "If you want to help them--God knows they
need it--do it without telling me.  But no, no!" she cried.  "I will
take nothing from you, either for them or for me!"

He did not accompany her further, since, as she lived with the
household, all was public indoors.  No sooner had she herself
entered, laved herself in a washing-tub, and shared supper with the
family than she fell into thought, and withdrawing to the table under
the wall, by the light of her own little lamp wrote in a passionate
mood--

   MY OWN HUSBAND,--

   Let me call you so--I must--even if it makes you angry to
   think of such an unworthy wife as I.  I must cry to you
   in my trouble--I have no one else!  I am so exposed to
   temptation, Angel.  I fear to say who it is, and I do not
   like to write about it at all.  But I cling to you in a way
   you cannot think!  Can you not come to me now, at once,
   before anything terrible happens?  O, I know you cannot,
   because you are so far away!  I think I must die if you do
   not come soon, or tell me to come to you.  The punishment
   you have measured out to me is deserved--I do know that--
   well deserved--and you are right and just to be angry with
   me.  But, Angel, please, please, not to be just--only a
   little kind to me, even if I do not deserve it, and come 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!

   Angel, I live entirely for you.  I love you too much to
   blame you for going away, and I know it was necessary you
   should find a farm.  Do not think I shall say a word of
   sting or bitterness.  Only come back to me.  I am desolate
   without you, my darling, O, so desolate! I do not mind
   having to work: but if you will send me one little line,
   and say, "I am coming soon," I will bide on, Angel--O, so
   cheerfully!

   It has been so much my religion ever since we were married
   to be faithful to you in every thought and look, that even
   when a man speaks a compliment to me before I am aware, it
   seems wronging you.  Have you never felt one little bit of
   what you used to feel when we were at the dairy?  If you
   have, how can you keep away from me?  I am the same women,
   Angel, as you fell in love with; yes, the very same!--not
   the one you disliked but never saw.  What was the past to me
   as soon as I met you?  It was a dead thing altogether.  I
   became another woman, filled full of new life from you.  How
   could I be the early one?  Why do you not see this?  Dear,
   if you would only be a little more conceited, and believe
   in yourself so far as to see that you were strong enough to
   work this change in me, you would perhaps be in a mind to
   come to me, your poor wife.

   How silly I was in my happiness when I thought I could trust
   you always to love me!  I ought to have known that such as
   that was not for poor me.  But I am sick at heart, not only
   for old times, but for the present.  Think--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.

   People still say that I am rather pretty, Angel (handsome is
   the word they use, since I wish to be truthful).  Perhaps I
   am what they say.  But I do not value my good looks; I only
   like to have them because they belong to you, my dear, and
   that there may be at least one thing about me worth your
   having.  So much have I felt this, that when I met with
   annoyance on account of the same, I tied up my face in a
   bandage as long as people would believe in it.  O Angel, I
   tell you all this not from vanity--you will certainly know
   I do not--but only that you may come to me!

   If you really cannot come to me, will you let me come to
   you?  I am, as I say, worried, pressed to do what I will
   not do.  It cannot be that I shall yield one inch, yet I am
   in terror as to what an accident might lead to, and I so
   defenceless on account of my first error. I cannot say more
   about this--it makes me too miserable.  But if I break down
   by falling into some fearful snare, my last state will be
   worse than my first.  O God, I cannot think of it!  Let me
   come at once, or at once come to me!

   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.

   The daylight has nothing to show me, since you are not here,
   and I don't like to see the rooks and starlings in the
   field, because I grieve and grieve to miss you who used to
   see them with me.  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!--

   Your faithful heartbroken

   TESS

The appeal duly found its way to the breakfast-table of the quiet
Vicarage to the westward, in that valley where the air is so soft and
the soil so rich that the effort of growth requires but superficial
aid by comparison with the tillage at Flintcomb-Ash, and where to
Tess the human world seemed so different (though it was much the
same).  It was purely for security that she had been requested by
Angel to send her communications through his father, whom he kept
pretty well informed of his changing addresses in the country he
had gone to exploit for himself with a heavy heart.

"Now," said old Mr Clare to his wife, when he had read the envelope,
"if Angel proposes leaving Rio for a visit home at the end of next
month, as he told us that he hoped to do, I think this may hasten his
plans; for I believe it to be from his wife."  He breathed deeply at
the thought of her; and the letter was redirected to be promptly sent
on to Angel.

"Dear fellow, I hope he will get home safely," murmured Mrs Clare.
"To my dying day I shall feel that he has been ill-used.  You should
have sent him to Cambridge in spite of his want of faith and given
him the same chance as the other boys had.  He would have grown out
of it under proper influence, and perhaps would have taken Orders
after all.  Church or no Church, it would have been fairer to him."

This was the only wail with which Mrs Clare ever disturbed her
husband's peace in respect to their sons.  And she did not vent this
often; for she was as considerate as she was devout, and knew that
his mind too was troubled by doubts as to his justice in this matter.
Only too often had she heard him lying awake at night, stifling sighs
for Angel with prayers.  But the uncompromising Evangelical did not
even now hold that he would have been justified in giving his son,
an unbeliever, the same academic advantages that he had given to the
two others, when it was possible, if not probable, that those very
advantages might have been used to decry the doctrines which he had
made it his life's mission and desire to propagate, and the mission
of his ordained sons likewise.  To put with one hand a pedestal
under the feet of the two faithful ones, and with the other to exalt
the unfaithful by the same artificial means, he deemed to be alike
inconsistent with his convictions, his position, and his hopes.
Nevertheless, he loved his misnamed Angel, and in secret mourned
over this treatment of him as Abraham might have mourned over the
doomed Isaac while they went up the hill together.  His silent
self-generated regrets were far bitterer than the reproaches which
his wife rendered audible.

They blamed themselves for this unlucky marriage.  If Angel had never
been destined for a farmer he would never have been thrown with
agricultural girls.  They did not distinctly know what had separated
him and his wife, nor the date on which the separation had taken
place.  At first they had supposed it must be something of the nature
of a serious aversion.  But in his later letters he occasionally
alluded to the intention of coming home to fetch her; from which
expressions they hoped the division might not owe its origin to
anything so hopelessly permanent as that.  He had told them that she
was with her relatives, and in their doubts they had decided not to
intrude into a situation which they knew no way of bettering.

The eyes for which Tess's letter was intended were gazing at this
time on a limitless expanse of country from the back of a mule which
was bearing him from the interior of the South-American Continent
towards the coast.  His experiences of this strange land had been
sad.  The severe illness from which he had suffered shortly after
his arrival had never wholly left him, and he had by degrees almost
decided to relinquish his hope of farming here, though, as long as
the bare possibility existed of his remaining, he kept this change
of view a secret from his parents.

The crowds of agricultural labourers who had come out to the country
in his wake, dazzled by representations of easy independence, had
suffered, died, and wasted away.  He would see mothers from English
farms trudging along with their infants in their arms, when the child
would be stricken with fever and would die; the mother would pause
to dig a hole in the loose earth with her bare hands, would bury the
babe therein with the same natural grave-tools, shed one tear, and
again trudge on.

Angel's original intention had not been emigration to Brazil but a
northern or eastern farm in his own country.  He had come to this
place in a fit of desperation, the Brazil movement among the English
agriculturists having by chance coincided with his desire to escape
from his past existence.

During this time of absence he had mentally aged a dozen years.
What arrested him now as of value in life was less its beauty than
its pathos.  Having long discredited the old systems of mysticism,
he now began to discredit the old appraisements of morality.  He
thought they wanted readjusting.  Who was the moral man?  Still more
pertinently, who was the moral woman?  The beauty or ugliness of
a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and
impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among
things willed.

How, then, about Tess?

Viewing her in these lights, a regret for his hasty judgement began
to oppress him.  Did he reject her eternally, or did he not?  He
could no longer say that he would always reject her, and not to say
that was in spirit to accept her now.

This growing fondness for her memory coincided in point of time
with her residence at Flintcomb-Ash, but it was before she had felt
herself at liberty to trouble him with a word about her circumstances
or her feelings.  He was greatly perplexed; and in his perplexity as
to her motives in withholding intelligence, he did not inquire.  Thus
her silence of docility was misinterpreted.  How much it really said
if he had understood!--that she adhered with literal exactness to
orders which he had given and forgotten; that despite her natural
fearlessness she asserted no rights, admitted his judgement to be in
every respect the true one, and bent her head dumbly thereto.

In the before-mentioned journey by mules through the interior of the
country, another man rode beside him. Angel's companion was also an
Englishman, bent on the same errand, though he came from another part
of the island.  They were both in a state of mental depression, and
they spoke of home affairs.  Confidence begat confidence.  With that
curious tendency evinced by men, more especially when in distant
lands, to entrust to strangers details of their lives which they
would on no account mention to friends, Angel admitted to this man
as they rode along the sorrowful facts of his marriage.

The stranger had sojourned in many more lands and among many more
peoples than Angel; to his cosmopolitan mind such deviations from the
social norm, so immense to domesticity, were no more than are the
irregularities of vale and mountain-chain to the whole terrestrial
curve.  He viewed the matter in quite a different light from Angel;
thought that what Tess had been was of no importance beside what she
would be, and plainly told Clare that he was wrong in coming away
from her.

The next day they were drenched in a thunder-storm. Angel's companion
was struck down with fever, and died by the week's end.  Clare waited
a few hours to bury him, and then went on his way.

The cursory remarks of the large-minded stranger, of whom he knew
absolutely nothing beyond a commonplace name, were sublimed by his
death, and influenced Clare more than all the reasoned ethics of the
philosophers.  His own parochialism made him ashamed by its contrast.
His inconsistencies rushed upon him in a flood.  He had persistently
elevated Hellenic Paganism at the expense of Christianity; yet in
that civilization an illegal surrender was not certain disesteem.
Surely then he might have regarded that abhorrence of the un-intact
state, which he had inherited with the creed of mysticism, as at
least open to correction when the result was due to treachery.  A
remorse struck into him.  The words of Izz Huett, never quite stilled
in his memory, came back to him.  He had asked Izz if she loved him,
and she had replied in the affirmative.  Did she love him more than
Tess did?  No, she had replied; Tess would lay down her life for him,
and she herself could do no more.

He thought of Tess as she had appeared on the day of the wedding.
How her eyes had lingered upon him; how she had hung upon his words
as if they were a god's!  And during the terrible evening over the
hearth, when her simple soul uncovered itself to his, how pitiful her
face had looked by the rays of the fire, in her inability to realize
that his love and protection could possibly be withdrawn.

Thus from being her critic he grew to be her advocate.  Cynical
things he had uttered to himself about her; but no man can be always
a cynic and live; and he withdrew them.  The mistake of expressing
them had arisen from his allowing himself to be influenced by general
principles to the disregard of the particular instance.

But the reasoning is somewhat musty; lovers and husbands have gone
over the ground before to-day.  Clare had been harsh towards her;
there is no doubt of it.  Men are too often harsh with women they
love or have loved; women with men.  And yet these harshnesses are
tenderness itself when compared with the universal harshness out
of which they grow; the harshness of the position towards the
temperament, of the means towards the aims, of to-day towards
yesterday, of hereafter towards to-day.

The historic interest of her family--that masterful line of
d'Urbervilles--whom he had despised as a spent force, touched his
sentiments now.  Why had he not known the difference between the
political value and the imaginative value of these things?  In
the latter aspect her d'Urberville descent was a fact of great
dimensions; worthless to economics, it was a most useful ingredient
to the dreamer, to the moralizer on declines and falls.  It was a
fact that would soon be forgotten--that bit of distinction in poor
Tess's blood and name, and oblivion would fall upon her hereditary
link with the marble monuments and leaded skeletons at Kingsbere.  So
does Time ruthlessly destroy his own romances.  In recalling her face
again and again, he thought now that he could see therein a flash of
the dignity which must have graced her grand-dames; and the vision
sent that _aura_ through his veins which he had formerly felt, and
which left behind it a sense of sickness.

Despite her not-inviolate past, what still abode in such a woman as
Tess outvalued the freshness of her fellows.  Was not the gleaning
of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer?

So spoke love renascent, preparing the way for Tess's devoted
outpouring, which was then just being forwarded to him by his father;
though owing to his distance inland it was to be a long time in
reaching him.

Meanwhile the writer's expectation that Angel would come in response
to the entreaty was alternately great and small.  What lessened it
was that the facts of her life which had led to the parting had
not changed--could never change; and that, if her presence had not
attenuated them, her absence could not.  Nevertheless she addressed
her mind to the tender question of what she could do to please him
best if he should arrive.  Sighs were expended on the wish that she
had taken more notice of the tunes he played on his harp, that she
had inquired more curiously of him which were his favourite ballads
among those the country-girls sang.  She indirectly inquired of Amby
Seedling, who had followed Izz from Talbothays, and by chance Amby
remembered that, amongst the snatches of melody in which they had
indulged at the dairyman's, to induce the cows to let down their
milk, Clare had seemed to like "Cupid's Gardens", "I have parks, I
have hounds", and "The break o' the day"; and had seemed not to care
for "The Tailor's Breeches" and "Such a beauty I did grow", excellent
ditties as they were.

To perfect the ballads was now her whimsical desire. She practised
them privately at odd moments, especially "The break o' the day":

   Arise, arise, arise!
   And pick your love a posy,
   All o' the sweetest flowers
   That in the garden grow.
   The turtle doves and sma' birds
   In every bough a-building,
   So early in the May-time
   At the break o' the day!

It would have melted the heart of a stone to hear her singing these
ditties whenever she worked apart from the rest of the girls in this
cold dry time; the tears running down her cheeks all the while at the
thought that perhaps he would not, after all, come to hear her, and
the simple silly words of the songs resounding in painful mockery of
the aching heart of the singer.

Tess was so wrapt up in this fanciful dream that she seemed not to
know how the season was advancing; that the days had lengthened, that
Lady-Day was at hand, and would soon be followed by Old Lady-Day, the
end of her term here.

But before the quarter-day had quite come, something happened which
made Tess think of far different matters.  She was at her lodging as
usual one evening, sitting in the downstairs room with the rest of
the family, when somebody knocked at the door and inquired for Tess.
Through the doorway she saw against the declining light a figure
with the height of a woman and the breadth of a child, a tall, thin,
girlish creature whom she did not recognize in the twilight till the
girl said "Tess!"

"What--is it 'Liza-Lu?" asked Tess, in startled accents.  Her sister,
whom a little over a year ago she had left at home as a child, had
sprung up by a sudden shoot to a form of this presentation, of which
as yet Lu seemed herself scarce able to understand the meaning.
Her thin legs, visible below her once-long frock, now short by her
growing, and her uncomfortable hands and arms revealed her youth and
inexperience.

"Yes, I have been traipsing about all day, Tess," said Lu, with
unemotional gravity, "a-trying to find 'ee; and I'm very tired."

"What is the matter at home?"

"Mother is took very bad, and the doctor says she's dying, and as
father is not very well neither, and says 'tis wrong for a man of
such a high family as his to slave and drave at common labouring
work, we don't know what to do."

Tess stood in reverie a long time before she thought of asking
'Liza-Lu to come in and sit down.  When she had done so, and 'Liza-Lu
was having some tea, she came to a decision.  It was imperative that
she should go home.  Her agreement did not end till Old Lady-Day, the
sixth of April, but as the interval thereto was not a long one she
resolved to run the risk of starting at once.

To go that night would be a gain of twelve-hours; but her sister
was too tired to undertake such a distance till the morrow.  Tess
ran down to where Marian and Izz lived, informed them of what had
happened, and begged them to make the best of her case to the farmer.
Returning, she got Lu a supper, and after that, having tucked the
younger into her own bed, packed up as many of her belongings as
would go into a withy basket, and started, directing Lu to follow
her next morning.

Tess is disturbed greatly by Alec d'Urberville's appearance once again, now as an evangelic minister. He has taken on the appearance of a common person, not like his appearance earlier as man of wealth. Alec stops his sermon when he sees Tess. He tells Tess of his conversion and his mother's recent death. He apologizes for his past once he learns what happened to Tess after she left Trantridge, and he makes Tess swear never to tempt him again. Alec finds Tess working in the field at Flintcomb-Ash the next morning and asks her to marry him. She refuses. He tells her that she is a deserted wife and that her husband will not return. Alec leaves her and returns the same afternoon to ask her to leave with him again. She does not, and he blames her for his regression to his former self. In a later visit, Alec repeats his pleas for Tess' hand and she slaps his with a heavy work glove. He returns that same afternoon and offers to take Tess away from the hard labor on the farm. He also offers to help her family, which is Tess' one weak spot. Tess leaves Alec to begin an impassioned letter to Angel to urge him to come to her at once. The letter reaches the Clares in Emminster who forward it to Angel. Angel has had his share of misfortune as well, becoming ill in the wild of Brazil and having buried a fellow farmer who had died from disease. He feels remorse for his treatment of Tess, now having a change of heart from his previous position. When Tess nears the end of her time at Flintcomb-Ash, her sister, Liza Lu arrives to tell her that both of her parents are ill and that Tess must come home. Tess immediately leaves for Marlott that evening.

Alec begins his conversion from a fervent minister to his old self when he sees Tess. He blames her for his "backsliding" and proposes that she leave the farm at Flintcomb to marry him. She rebuffs him several times but is worn down by his persistence. Her weak point is his mentioning that he could provide for her family if she would be his live-in love. Alec says "I have enough and more than enough to put you out of anxiety, both for yourself and your parents and sisters." Tess objects vehemently saying, "'If you want to help them -- God knows they need it -- do it without telling me." Tess' doubts as to Alec's sincerity about being a minister are confirmed when he renounces his calling to pursue Tess once again. Thus, Hardy demonstrates the shallowness of recent converts when compared to the simple beliefs of a simple country girl. In a turn of curious events, when Alec first sees Tess, they both walk and converse until they come to a roadside marker called "Cross-in Hand." Alec assumes that the marker denotes a former boundary or meeting place. Tess later learns that the marker is not a "Holy Cross," but a symbol of man who had sold his soul to Satan -- "It was put up in wuld times by relations of a malefactor who was tortured there by nailing his hand to a post and afterwards hung. The bones lie underneath. They say he sold his soul to the devil, and that he walks at times." That Hardy would include such a marker and tale indicates that he wants readers to gain some understanding from it. And so a careful reader must wonder at its significance. Thus the cross becomes not a religious symbol, but a perverse reminder of a man  and the promise he exacted from Tess not to tempt him anymore -- "put your hand upon that stone hand, and swear that you will never tempt me -- by your charms or ways." But, in fact, he cannot resist her. Glossary mien a way of carrying and conducting oneself; manner. dandyism the condition of being or qualities of a dandy, a man who pays too much attention to his clothes and appearance. bizarrerie something strange, weird, singular, odd . lineaments the features of the body, usually of the face, esp. with regard to their outlines. Cyprian image the goddess of love in an ancient world, Venus and Aphrodite, was associated with Cyprus, but the legend mentioned has not been convincingly identified. "the wrath to come" an echo of Matthew 3:7. Petite mort shudder or chill; a premonition of death; a "little death" . "The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife . . . " in 1 Corinthians, 7:13-14, Paul advises wives not to leave husbands who lack belief. "Sermon on the Mount" from Matthew 5-7. "from the Dictionnaire Philosophique to Huxley's Essays" The Dictionnaire is a collection of essays published in the eighteenth century by Voltaire, who was antagonistic to Christianity; Thomas Henry Huxley , a respected scientist and supporter of Darwinian theory, published many essays, including Essays on Some Controverted Questions . "I worshipped on the mountains . . . " from 2 Kings 17-23. "servants of corruption" from 2 Peter 2:19-20. "witch of Babylon" from Revelation 17, there are references to the Whore of Babylon. Primum mobile the outermost sphere of the world in Ptolemaic cosmography, which caused the movement of the heavens . pellucid transparent or translucent; clear; easy to understand. Tophet a place mentioned in the Bible where children were burned; it became identified in Judaism with an underworld where wickedness was punished after death; a synonym for hell that came into Middle English from Hebrew. "Plutonic master" Pluto, or Hades, god of the underworld, had the power to condemn people to hell. autochthonous characteristic of any of the earliest known inhabitants of a place. Stodded waggon  a wagon that is stuck. "the seven thunders" from Revelation 10:3-4. Hagrode  ridden by witches, troubled by nightmares. Weltlust desire for worldly things and pleasures . Hymenaeus and Alexander in this sentence Alec is echoing Paul in 1 Timothy 1:18-20, where he mentions these figures as examples of those who have lost faith. perdition the loss of the soul; damnation; hell. expostulate to reason with a person earnestly, objecting to that person's actions or intentions; remonstrate . Bachelor-apostle St. Paul; Alec is echoing Luke 9:62. "And she shall follow after her lover . . . " from Hosea 2:7. nammet-time  time for a snack at mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Faeces feces, excrement. cadaverous of or like a cadaver; esp., pale, ghastly, or gaunt and haggard. "grapes of Ephraim" from Judges 8:1-3.