\RTHUR M. 
 BROWN 
 
 .. 
 
5^. 
 
LI B HAHY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UN I VLR.SITY 
 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 
 x823 
 
 V.I 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/tessofdurbervill01hard 
 
TESS 
 
 Of the 
 
 D'URBERVILLES 
 
T. 
 
 ESS 
 
 OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 A PURE WOMAN 
 
 FAITHFULLY PRESENTED BY 
 
 THOMAS HARDY 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I 
 
 . . . Poor wounded name ! My bosom as a bed 
 Shall lodge thee.' — W. Shakspeare. 
 
 
 ALL RIGHTS 
 RESERVED 
 
JAMES R. OSGOOD, 
 M'lLVAINE and CO., 
 
 45 
 Albemarle Street 
 
 London, 
 
 i8qi 
 
v/.t 
 
 EXPLANATORY NOTE 
 
 1 HE main portion of the following story appeared 
 
 — with slight modifications — in the Graphic newspaper ; 
 
 other chapters, more especially addressed to adult readers, 
 
 in the Fortnightly Review and the National Observer, as 
 
 episodic sketches. My thanks are tendered to the editors 
 
 and proprietors of those periodicals for enabling me now 
 
 to piece the trunk and limbs of the novel together, and 
 
 print it complete,, as originally written two years ago. 
 
 I will just add that the story is sent out in all sincerity 
 
 of purpose, as representing on the whole a true sequence of 
 
 things ; and I would ask any too genteel reader who cannot 
 
 endure to have it said what everybody thinks and feels, to 
 
 remember a well-worn sentence of St. Jerome's : If an 
 
 offence come out of the truth, better is it that the offence 
 
 come than that the truth be concealed. 
 
 T. H. 
 
 November, 1891. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PHASE THE FIRST 
 The Maiden, I -XI 
 
 PHASE THE SECOND 
 
 Maiden no More, XII-XV 
 
 143 
 
 PHASE THE THIRD 
 
 The Rally, XVI -XX . . . . 199 
 
PHASE THE FIRST 
 
 THE MAIDEN 
 
 VOL. I 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 PHASE THE FIRST 
 THE MAIDEN 
 
 ON an evening in the latter part of May a 
 middle-aged man was walking homeward from 
 Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining 
 Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor. The pair of 
 legs that carried him were rickety, and there was 
 a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to 
 the left of a straight line. He occasionally gave 
 a smart nod, as if in confirmation of some opinion, 
 though he was not thinking of anything in par- 
 ticular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon 
 his arm, the nap of his hat was ruffled, a patch 
 being quite worn away at its brim where his thumb 
 came in taking it off. Presently he was met by 
 an elderly parson astride on a gray mare, who, as 
 he rode, hummed a wandering tune. 
 
 3 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 ' Good night t'ye,' said the man with the 
 basket. 
 
 1 Good night, Sir John,' said the parson. 
 
 The pedestrian, after another pace or two, 
 halted, and turned round. 
 
 1 Now, sir, begging your pardon ; we met last 
 market-day on this road about this time, and I 
 said " Good night," and you made reply " Good 
 night. Sir John" as now.' 
 
 1 I did,' said' the parson. 
 
 1 And once before that — near a month ago.' 
 
 ' I may have.' 
 
 ' Then what might your meaning be in calling 
 me " Sir John " these different times, when I be 
 plain Jack Durbeyfield, the haggler ? ' 
 
 The. parson rode a step or two nearer. 
 
 1 It was only my whim,' he said ; and, after 
 a moment's hesitation : ' It was on account of a 
 discovery I made some little time ago, whilst I 
 was hunting up pedigrees for the new county 
 history. I am Parson' Tringham, the antiquary, 
 of Stagfoot Lane. Don't you really know, 
 Durbeyfield, that you are the direct lineal repre- 
 sentative of the ancient and knightly family of 
 the D'Urbervilles, who derive their descent from 
 
 4 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 Sir Pagan D'Urberville, that renowned knight who 
 came from Normandy with William the Con- 
 queror, as appears by Battle Abbey roll ? ' 
 
 ' Never heard it before.' 
 
 1 Well, it's true. Throw up your chin a 
 moment, so that I may catch the profile of 
 your face better. Yes, that's the D'Urberville 
 nose and chin — a little debased. Your ancestor 
 was one of the twelve knights who assisted 
 the Lord of Estremavilla in Normandy in his 
 conquest of Glamorganshire. Branches of your 
 family held manors over all this part of Eng- 
 land ; their names appear in the Pipe Rolls in 
 the time of King Stephen. In the reign of 
 King John one of them was rich enough to 
 give a manor to the Knights Hospitallers ; and 
 in Edward the Second's time your forefather 
 Brian was summoned to Westminster to attend 
 the great Council there. You declined a little 
 in Oliver Cromwell's time, but to no serious 
 extent, and in Charles the Second's reign you 
 were made Knights of the Royal Oak for your 
 loyalty. There have been generations of Sir 
 Johns among you, and if knighthood were 
 hereditary, like a baronetcy, as it practically 
 
 5 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 was in old times, when men were knighted from 
 father to son, you would be Sir John now.' 
 
 1 You don't say so ! ' murmured Durbeyfield. 
 
 ' In short,' concluded the parson, decisively 
 smacking his leg with his switch, ' there's hardly 
 such another family in England.' 
 
 1 Daze my eyes, and isn't there ? ' said Durbey- 
 field. ' And here have I been knocking about, 
 year after year, from pillar to post, as if I was no 
 more than the commonest feller in the parish. . . . 
 And how long hev this news about me been 
 knowed, Pa'son Tringham ? ' 
 
 The clergyman explained that, as far as he 
 was aware, it had quite died out of knowledge, 
 and could hardly be said to be known at all. 
 His own investigations had begun on a day in 
 the preceding spring when, having been engaged 
 in tracing the vicissitudes of the D'Urberville 
 family, he had observed Durbeyfield's name on 
 his waggon, and had thereupon been led to 
 make inquiries, till he had no doubt on the 
 subject. 
 
 1 At first I resolved not to disturb you with 
 such a useless piece of information,' said he. 
 ' However, our impulses are too strong for our 
 
 6 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 judgment sometimes. I thought you might per- 
 haps know something of it all the while.' 
 
 1 Well, I have heard once or twice, 'tis true, 
 that my family had seen better days afore they 
 came to Blackmoor. But I took no notice o't, 
 thinking it to mean that we had once kept two 
 horses where we now keep only one. I've got a 
 wold silver spoon, and a wold graven seal at 
 home, too ; but, Lord, what's a graven seal ? . . . 
 And to think that I and these noble D'Urbervilles 
 was one flesh all the time. 'Twas said that my 
 gr't-grandfer had secrets, and didn't care to talk 
 of where he came from. . . . And where do we 
 raise our smoke, now, parson, if I may make so 
 bold ; I mean, where do we D'Urbervilles live ? ' 
 
 ' You don't live anywhere. You are extinct — 
 as a county family.' 
 
 1 That's bad.' 
 
 1 Yes — what the mendacious family chronicles 
 call extinct in the male line — that is, gone down 
 — gone under.' 
 
 ' Then where do we lie ? ' 
 
 ' At Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill : rows and rows 
 of you in your vaults, with your effigies under 
 Purbeck-marble canopies.' 
 
 7 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 'And where be our family mansions and 
 estates ? ' 
 
 1 You haven't any.' 
 
 ' Oh ? No lands neither ? ' 
 
 ' None ; though you once had 'em in abund- 
 ance, as I said, for your family consisted of 
 numerous branches. In this county there was 
 a seat of yours at Kingsbere, and another at 
 Sherton, and another at Millpond, and another 
 at Lullstead, and another at Wellbridge.' 
 
 ' And shall we ever come into our own again ? ' 
 
 1 Ah — that I can't tell ! ' 
 
 ' And what had I better do about it, sir ? ' 
 asked Durbeyfield, after a pause. 
 
 1 Oh — nothing, nothing ; except chasten your- 
 self with the thought of "how T are the mighty fallen." 
 It is a fact of some interest to the local historian 
 and genealogist, nothing more. There are several 
 families among the cottagers of this county of 
 almost equal lustre. Good-night' 
 
 ' But you'll turn back and have a quart of 
 beer wi' me on the strength o't, Pa'son Tring- 
 ham ? There's a very pretty brew in tap at The 
 Pure Drop — though, to be sure, not so good as at 
 Rolliver's.' 
 
 8 
 
THE, MAIDEN 
 
 1 No, thank you — not this evening, Durbey- 
 field. You've had enough already.' Concluding 
 thus, the parson rode on his way, with doubts as to 
 his discretion in retailing this curious bit of lore. 
 
 When he was gone, Durbeyfield walked a few 
 steps in a profound reverie, and then sat down 
 upon the grassy bank by the roadside, depositing 
 his basket before him. In a few minutes a youth 
 appeared in the distance, walking in the same direc- 
 tion as that which had been pursued by Durbey- 
 field. The latter, on seeing him, held up his 
 hand, and the lad quickened his pace, and came 
 near. 
 
 1 Boy, take up that basket ! I want 'ee to go 
 on an errand for me.' 
 
 The lath -like stripling frowned. 'Who be 
 you, then, John Durbeyfield, to order me about 
 and call me " boy "? You know my name as well 
 as I know yours ! ' 
 
 1 Do you, do you ? That's the secret — that's 
 the secret ! Now obey my orders, and take the 
 message I'm going to charge 'ee wi'. . . . Well, 
 Fred, I don't mind telling you that the secret 
 is that I'm one of a noble race — it has been just 
 discovered by me this present afternoon, P.M.' 
 
 9 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 And as he made the announcement, Durbeyfield, 
 declining from his sitting position, luxuriously 
 stretched himself out upon the bank ambng the 
 daisies. 
 
 The lad stood before Durbeyfield, and contem- 
 plated his length from crown to toe. 
 
 ' Sir John D'Urberville — that's who I am/ 
 continued the prostrate man. ' That is if knights 
 were baronets — which they be. 'Tis recorded in 
 history all about me. Dost know of such a place, 
 lad, as Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill ? ' 
 
 ' Yes. I've been there to Greenhill" Fair.' 
 
 1 Well, under the church of that city there 
 lie ' 
 
 ' 'Tisn't a city, the place I mean ; leastwise 
 'twasn't when I was there — 'twas a little one- 
 eyed, blinking sort o' place.' 
 
 ' Never you mind the place, boy, that's not the 
 question before us. Under the church of that 
 parish lie my ancestors — hundreds of 'em — in 
 coats of mail and jewels, in great lead coffins 
 weighing tons and tons. There's not a man in 
 the county o' South -Wessex that's got grander 
 and nobler skellingtons in his family than I.' 
 
 1 Oh ? ' 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 1 Now take up that basket, and go on to 
 Marlott, and when you come to The Pure Drop 
 Inn, tell 'em to send a horse and carriage to me 
 immediately, to carry me home. And in the 
 bottom o' the carriage they be to put a noggin 
 o' rum in a small bottle, and chalk it up to my 
 account. And when you've done that go on to 
 my house with the basket, and tell my wife to 
 put away that washing, because she needn't finish 
 it, and wait till I come home, as I've news to tell 
 her.' 
 
 As the lad stood in a dubious attitude, 
 Durbeyfield put his hand in his pocket, and 
 produced a shilling, one of the comparatively 
 few that he possessed. 
 
 1 Here's for your labour, lad.' 
 
 This made a difference in the young man's 
 estimate of the position. 
 
 1 Yes, Sir John. Thank you. Anything else 
 I can do for 'ee, Sir John ? ' 
 
 ' Tell 'em at home that I should like for 
 supper, — well, lamb's fry if they can get it ; and 
 if they can't, black-pot ; and if they can't get 
 that, well, chitterlings will do.' 
 
 < Yes, Sir John.' 
 
 ii 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 The boy took up the basket, and as he set out 
 the notes of a brass band were heard from the 
 direction of the village. 
 
 'What's that?' said Durbeyfield. 'Not on 
 account o' I ? ' 
 
 ( Tis the women's club-walking, Sir John. 
 Why, your daughter is one o' the members.' 
 
 • To be sure — I'd quite forgot it in my thoughts 
 of greater things ! Well, vamp on to Marlott, 
 will 'ee, and order that carriage, and maybe I'll 
 drive round and inspect the club.' 
 
 The lad departed, and Durbeyfield lay waiting 
 on the grass and daisies in the evening sun. Not 
 a soul passed that way for a long while, and the 
 faint notes of the band were the only human 
 sounds audible within the rim of blue hills. 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 II 
 
 1 HE village of Marlott lay amid the north- 
 eastern undulations of the beautiful Vale of 
 Blakemore or Blackmoor aforesaid, an engirdled 
 and secluded region, for the most part untrodden 
 as yet by tourist or landscape painter, though 
 within a four hours' journey from London. 
 
 It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made 
 by viewing it from the summits of the hills that 
 surround it — except perhaps during the droughts 
 of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses 
 in bad weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction 
 with its narrow, tortuous, and miry ways. 
 
 This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in 
 which the fields are never brown and the springs 
 never dry, is bounded on the south by the bold 
 chalk ridge that embraces the prominences of 
 Hambledon Hill, Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, 
 
 J 3 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 Dogbury, High Stoy, and Bubb Down. The 
 traveller from the coast, who, after plodding north- 
 ward for a score of miles over calcareous downs 
 and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the verge of one 
 of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted 
 to behold, extended like a map beneath him, a 
 country differing absolutely from that which he 
 has passed through. Behind him the hills are 
 open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as 
 to give an unenclosed character to the landscape, 
 the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, 
 the atmosphere colourless. Here, in the valley, 
 the world seems to be constructed upon a smaller 
 and more delicate scale ; the fields are mere 
 paddocks, so reduced that from this height their 
 hedgerows appear a network of dark green threads 
 overspreading the paler green of the grass. The 
 atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged 
 with azure that what artists call the middle dis- 
 tance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon 
 beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Arable 
 lands are few and limited ; with but slight excep- 
 tions the prospect is a broad rich mass of grass 
 and trees, mantling minor hills and dales within 
 the major. Such is the Vale of Blackmoor. 
 
 14 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 The district is of historic, no less than of 
 topographical interest. The Vale was known in 
 former times as the Forest of White Hart, from 
 a curious legend of King Henry III.'s reign, in 
 which the killing by a certain Thomas de la Lynd 
 of a beautiful white hart which the king had run 
 down and spared, was made the occasion of a 
 heavy fine. In those days, and till comparatively 
 recent times, the country was densely wooded. 
 Even now, traces of its earlier condition are to be 
 found in the old oak copses and irregular belts of 
 timber that yet survive upon its slopes, and the 
 hollow-trunked trees that shade so many of its 
 pastures. 
 
 The forests have departed, but some old customs 
 of their shades remain. Many, however, linger 
 only in a metamorphosed or disguised form. The 
 May-Day dance, for instance, was to be discerned 
 on the afternoon under notice, in the guise of the 
 club revel, or ' club- walking,' as it was there 
 called. 
 
 It was an interesting event to the younger 
 inhabitants of Marlott, though its real interest was 
 not observed by the participators in the ceremony. 
 Its singularity lay less in the retention of a cus- 
 
 i5 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 torn of walking in procession and dancing on each 
 anniversary than in the members being solely 
 women. In men's clubs such celebrations were, 
 though expiring, less uncommon ; but either the 
 natural shyness of the softer sex, or a sarcastic 
 attitude on the part of male relatives, had denuded 
 such women's clubs as remained (if any other did) 
 of this their glory and consummation. The club 
 of Marlott alone lived to uphold the local Cerealia. 
 It had walked for hundreds of years, and it walked 
 still. 
 
 The banded ones were all dressed in white 
 gowns — a gay survival from Old Style days, when 
 cheerfulness and May-time were synonyms — days 
 before the habit of taking long views had reduced 
 emotions to a monotonous average. Their first 
 exhibition of themselves was in a processional 
 march of two and two round the parish. Ideal 
 and real clashed slightly as the sun lit up their 
 figures against the green hedges and creeper-laced 
 house-fronts ; for, though the whole troop wore 
 white garments, no two whites were alike among 
 them. Some approached pure blanching ; some 
 had a bluish pallor ; some worn by the older 
 characters (which had possibly lain by folded for 
 
 16 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 many a year) inclined to a cadaverous tint, and 
 to a Georgian style. 
 
 In addition to the distinction of a white frock, 
 every woman and girl carried in her right hand 
 a peeled willow-wand, and in her left a bunch of 
 white flowers. The peeling of the former, and 
 the selection of the latter, had been an operation 
 of personal care. 
 
 There were a few middle-aged and even elderly 
 women in the train, their silver-wiry hair and 
 wrinkled faces, scourged by time and trouble, 
 having almost a grotesque, certainly a pathetic, 
 appearance in such a jaunty situation. In a true 
 view, perhaps, there was more to be gathered and 
 told of each anxious and experienced one, to 
 whom the years were drawing nigh when she 
 should say, ' I have no pleasure in them,' than of 
 her juvenile comrades. But let the elder be 
 passed over here for those under whose bodices 
 the life throbbed quick and warm. 
 
 The young girls formed, indeed, the majority 
 of the band, and their heads of luxuriant hair 
 reflected in the sunshine every tone of gold, and 
 black, and brown. Some had beautiful eyes, 
 others a beautiful nose, others a beautiful mouth 
 
 vol. i 17 c 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 and figure : few, if any, had all. A difficulty of 
 arranging their lips in this crude exposure to 
 public scrutiny, an inability to balance their 
 heads, and to dissociate self-consciousness from 
 their features, was apparent in them, and showed 
 that they were genuine country girls, unaccustomed 
 to many eyes. 
 
 And as each and all of them were warmed 
 without by the sun, so each had a private little 
 sun for her soul to bask in ; some dream, some 
 affection, some hobby, at least some remote and 
 distant hope which, though perhaps starving to 
 nothing, still lived on, as hopes will. Thus they 
 were all cheerful, and many of them merry. 
 
 They came round by The Pure Drop Inn, and 
 were turning out of the high road to pass through 
 a wicket-gate into the meadows, when one of the 
 women said — 
 
 1 The Lord - a - Lord ! Why, Tess Durbey- 
 field, if there isn't thy father riding home in a 
 carriage ! ' 
 
 A young member of the band turned her head 
 at the exclamation. She was a fine and hand- 
 some girl — not handsomer than some others, 
 possibly — but her mobile peony mouth and large 
 
 18 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 innocent eyes added eloquence to colour and shape. 
 She wore a red ribbon in her hair, and was the 
 only one of the white company who could boast 
 of such a pronounced adornment. As she looked 
 round Durbeyfield was seen moving along the road 
 in a chaise belonging to The Pure Drop, driven by 
 a frizzle-headed brawny damsel, with her gown- 
 sleeves rolled above her elbows. This was the 
 cheerful servant of that establishment, who, in her 
 part of factotum, turned groom and ostler at times. 
 Durbeyfield, leaning back, and with his eyes closed 
 luxuriously, was waving his hand above his head, 
 and singing in a slow recitative — 
 
 ( I' ve-got-a-great - family - vault - at - Kingsbere — 
 and-knighted-forefathers-in-lead-coffins-there ! ' 
 
 The clubbists tittered, except the girl called 
 Tess — in whom a slow heat seemed to rise at the 
 sense that her father was making himself foolish 
 in their eyes. 
 
 1 He's tired, that's all,' she said hastily, ' and 
 he has got a lift home, because our own horse has 
 to rest to-day.' 
 
 ( Bless thy simplicity, Tess,' said her com- 
 panions. ' He's got his market - nitch. Haw- 
 haw ! ' 
 
 19 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 1 Look here ; I won't walk another inch with 
 ye, if you say any jokes about him ! ' Tess cried, 
 and the colour upon her cheeks spread over her 
 face and neck. Her eyes grew moist, and her 
 glance drooped to the ground. Perceiving that 
 they had really pained her they said no more, 
 and order again prevailed. Tess's pride would 
 not allow her to turn her head again, to learn 
 what her father's meaning was, if he had any ; 
 and thus she moved on with the whole body to 
 the enclosure where there was to be dancing on 
 the green. By the time the spot was reached she 
 had recovered her equanimity, and tapped her 
 neighbour with her wand and talked as usual. 
 
 Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a 
 mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience. 
 The dialect was on her tongue to some extent, 
 despite the village school : the characteristic in- 
 tonation of that dialect for this district being the 
 voicing approximately rendered by the syllable 
 UR, probably as rich an utterance as any to be 
 found in human speech. The pouted - up deep 
 red mouth to which this syllable was native had 
 hardly as yet settled into its definitive shape, and 
 her lower lip had a way of thrusting the middle 
 
 20 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 of her top one upward, when they closed together 
 after a word. 
 
 Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect 
 still. As she walked along to-day, for all her 
 bouncing handsome womanliness, you could some- 
 times see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth 
 sparkling from her eyes ; and even her fifth would 
 flit over the curves of her mouth now and then. 
 
 Yet few knew, and still fewer considered this. 
 A small minority, mainly strangers, would look long 
 at her in casually passing by, and grow moment- 
 arily fascinated by her freshness, and wonder if 
 they would ever see her again : but to almost 
 everybody she was a fine and picturesque country 
 girl, and no more. 
 
 Nothing was seen or heard further of Durbey- 
 field in his triumphal chariot under the conduct 
 of the ostleress, and the club having entered the 
 allotted space, dancing began. As there were no 
 men in the company the girls danced at first with 
 each other, but when the hour for the close of 
 labour drew on, the masculine inhabitants of the 
 village, together with other idlers and pedestrians, 
 gathered round the spot, and appeared inclined to 
 negotiate for a partner. 
 
 21 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 Among these on - lookers were three young 
 men of a superior class, carrying small knapsacks 
 strapped to their shoulders, and stout sticks in 
 their hands. Their general likeness to each other, 
 and their consecutive ages, would almost have 
 suggested that they might be, what in fact they 
 were, brothers. The eldest wore the white tie, 
 high waistcoat, and thin - brimmed hat of the 
 regulation curate ; the second was the normal 
 undergraduate ; the appearance of the third and 
 youngest would hardly have been sufficient to 
 characterize him ; there was an uncribbed, un- 
 cabined aspect in his eyes and attire, implying 
 that he had hardly as yet found the entrance 
 to his professional groove. That he was a de- 
 sultory tentative student of something and every- 
 thing might only have been predicated of him. 
 
 These three brethren told casual acquaintance 
 that they were spending their Whitsun holidays 
 in a walking tour through the Vale of Blackmoor, 
 their course being south-westerly from the town 
 of Shaston on the north-east. 
 
 They leant over the gate by the highway, and 
 inquired as to the meaning of the dance and the 
 white - frocked maids. The two elder of the 
 
 22 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 brothers were plainly not intending to linger 
 more than a moment, but the spectacle of a bevy 
 of girls dancing without male partners seemed to 
 amuse the third, and make him in no hurry to 
 move on. He unstrapped his knapsack, put it, 
 with his stick, on the hedge-bank, and opened the 
 gate. 
 
 I What are you going to do, Angel ? ' asked 
 the eldest. 
 
 I I am inclined to go and have a fling with 
 them. Why not all of us — just for a minute or 
 two — it will not detain us long ? ' 
 
 'No — no; nonsense!' said the first. ' Dancing 
 in public with a troop of country hoydens — sup- 
 pose we should be seen ! Come along, or it will 
 be dark before we get to Stourcastle, and there's 
 no place we can sleep at nearer than that ; besides, 
 we must get through another chapter of A Counter- 
 blast to Agnosticism before we turn in, now I have 
 taken the trouble to bring the book.' 
 
 1 All right — I'll overtake you and Cuthbert in 
 five minutes ; don't stop ; I give my word that I 
 will, Felix.' 
 
 The two elder reluctantly left him and walked 
 on, taking their brother's knapsack to relieve 
 
 23 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 him in following, and the youngest entered the 
 field. 
 
 1 This is a thousand pities,' he said gallantly, 
 to two or three of the girls nearest him, as soon 
 as there was a pause in the dance. ■ Where are 
 your partners, my dears ? ' 
 
 1 They've not left off work yet,' answered one 
 of the boldest. ' They'll be here by and by. Till 
 then, will you be one, sir ? ' 
 
 1 Certainly. But what's one among so many ! ' 
 
 ' Better than none. 'Tis melancholy work 
 facing and footing it to one of your own sort, and 
 no clasping and colling at all. Now, pick and 
 choose.' 
 
 1 'Ssh — don't be so for'ard ! ' said a shyer girl. 
 
 The young man, thus invited, glanced them 
 over, and attempted some discrimination ; but, as 
 the group were all so new to him, he could not 
 very well exercise it. He took almost the first 
 that came to hand, which was not the speaker, as 
 she had expected ; nor did it happen to be Tess 
 Durbeyfield. Pedigree, ancestral skeletons, monu- 
 mental record, the D'Urberville lineaments, did 
 not help Tess in her life's battle as yet, even to 
 the extent of attracting to her a dancing-partner 
 
 24 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 over the heads of the commonest peasantry. So 
 much for Norman blood unaided by Victorian 
 lucre. 
 
 The name of the eclipsing girl, whatever it 
 was, has not been handed down ; but she was 
 envied by all as the first who enjoyed the luxury 
 of a masculine partner that evening. Yet such 
 was the force of example that the village young 
 men, who had not hastened to enter the gate 
 while no intruder was in the way, now dropped 
 in quickly, and soon the couples became leavened 
 with rustic youths to a marked extent, till at 
 length the plainest woman in the club was no 
 longer compelled to foot it on the masculine side 
 of the figure. 
 
 The church clock struck, when suddenly the 
 student said that he must leave — he had been 
 forgetting himself — he had to join his com- 
 panions. As he fell out of the dance his eyes 
 lighted on Tess Durbeyfield, whose own large 
 orbs wore, to tell the truth, the faintest aspect of 
 reproach that he had not chosen her. He, too, 
 was sorry then that, owing to her backwardness, 
 he had not observed her ; and, with that in his 
 mind, he left the pasture. 
 
 25 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 On account of his long delay he started in a 
 flying-run down the lane westward, and had soon 
 passed the hollow and mounted the next rise. 
 He had not yet overtaken his brothers, but he 
 paused to take breath, and looked back. He 
 could see the white figures of the girls in the 
 green enclosure whirling about as they had 
 whirled when he was among them. They seemed 
 to have quite forgotten him already. 
 
 All of them, except, perhaps, one. This white 
 figure stood apart by the hedge alone. From her 
 position he knew it to be the pretty maiden with 
 whom he had not danced. Trifling as the matter 
 was, he yet instinctively felt that she was hurt by 
 his oversight. He wished that he had asked her ; 
 he wished that he had inquired her name. She 
 was so modest, so expressive, she had looked so 
 soft in her thin white gown that he felt he had 
 acted stupidly. 
 
 However, it could not be helped, and turning, 
 and bending himself to a rapid walk, he dismissed 
 the subject from his mind. 
 
 26 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 III 
 
 J\S for Tess Durbeyfield, she did not so easily 
 dislodge the incident from her consideration. She 
 had no spirit to dance again for a long time, 
 though she might have had plenty of partners ; 
 but, ah ! they did not speak so nicely as the 
 strange young man had done. It was not till 
 the rays of the sun had absorbed the young 
 stranger's retreating figure on the hill that she 
 shook off her temporary sadness and answered 
 her would-be partner in the affirmative. 
 
 She remained with her comrades till dusk, and 
 participated with a certain zest in the dancing ; 
 though, being heart-whole as yet, she enjoyed 
 treading a measure purely for its own sake ; little 
 divining when she saw ' the soft torments, the 
 bitter sweets, the pleasing pains, and the agree- 
 able distresses ' of those girls who had been 
 
 27 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 wooed and won, what she herself was capable 
 of in that kind. The struggles and wrangles of 
 the lads for her hand in a jig were an excitement 
 to her no more ; and when they became fierce 
 she rebuked them. 
 
 She might have stayed even later, but the 
 incident of her father's odd appearance and 
 manner returned upon the girl's mind to make 
 her anxious, and wondering what had become 
 of him she dropped away from the dancers and 
 bent her steps towards the end of the village at 
 which the parental cottage lay. 
 
 While yet many score yards off, other rhythmic 
 sounds than those she had quitted became audible 
 to her ; sounds that she knew well — so well. 
 They were a regular series of thumpings from 
 the interior of the house, occasioned by the 
 violent rocking of a cradle upon a stone floor, 
 to which movement a feminine voice kept time 
 by singing, in a vigorous gallopade, the favourite 
 ditty of ' The Spotted Cow ' — 
 
 I saw her lie do — own in yon — der green gro — ove ; 
 Come, love ! and I'll tell you where ! 
 
 The cradle-rocking and the song would cease 
 28 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 simultaneously for a moment, and an exclamation 
 at highest vocal pitch would take the place of the 
 melody. 
 
 ' God bless thy diment eyes ! And thy waxen 
 cheeks ! And thy cherry mouth ! And thy 
 Cubit's lags! And every bit o' thy blessed body !' 
 
 After this invocation the rocking and the 
 singing would recommence, and the ' Spotted 
 Cow' proceed as before. So matters stood when 
 Tess opened the door, and paused upon the mat 
 within it surveying the scene. 
 
 The interior, in spite of the melody, struck 
 upon the girl's senses with an unspeakable dreari- 
 ness. From the holiday gaieties of the day — 
 the white gowns, the nosegays, the willow- 
 wands, the whirling movements on the green, the 
 flash of gentle sentiment towards the stranger — 
 to the yellow melancholy of this one -candled 
 spectacle, what a step ! Besides the jar of con- 
 trast there came to her a chill self-reproach that 
 she had not returned sooner, to help her mother 
 in these domesticities, instead of indulging herself 
 out-of-doors. 
 
 There stood her mother amid the group of 
 children, as Tess had left her, hanging over the 
 
 29 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 Monday washing-tub, which had now, as always, 
 lingered on to the end of the week. Out of that 
 tub had come the day before — Tess felt it with 
 a dreadful sting of remorse — the very white frock 
 upon her back which she had so carelessly greened 
 about the skirt on the damping grass — which had 
 been wrung up and ironed by her mother's own 
 hands. 
 
 As usual, Mrs. Durbeyfield was balanced on 
 one foot beside the tub, the other being engaged 
 in the aforesaid business of rocking her youngest 
 child. The cradle -rockers had done hard duty 
 for so many years, under the weight of so many 
 children, on that flagstone floor, that they were 
 worn nearly flat, in consequence of which a huge 
 jerk accompanied each swing of the cot, flinging 
 the baby from side to side like a weaver's shuttle, 
 as Mrs. Durbeyfield, excited by her song, trod the 
 rocker with all the spring that was left in her 
 after a long day's seething in the suds. 
 
 Nick-knock, nick-knock, went the cradle ; the 
 candle -flame stretched itself tall, and began jig- 
 ging up and down ; the water dribbled from her 
 mother's elbows, and the song galloped on to the 
 end of the verse, Mrs. Durbeyfield regarding her 
 
 3° 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 daughter the while. Even now, when burdened 
 with a young family, Joan Durbeyfield was a 
 passionate lover of tune. No ditty floated into 
 Blackmoor Vale from the outer world but Tess's 
 mother caught up its notation in a week. 
 
 There still faintly beamed from the woman's 
 features something of the freshness, and even 
 the prettiness, of her youth ; rendering it evident 
 that the personal charms which Tess could boast 
 of were in main part her mother's gift, and there- 
 fore unknightly, unhistorical. 
 
 1 I'll rock the cradle for 'ee, mother/ said the 
 daughter gently. ' Or I'll take off my best frock 
 and help you wring up ? I thought you had 
 finished long ago.' 
 
 Her mother bore Tess no ill-will for leaving 
 the housework to her single-handed efforts for so 
 long ; indeed, she seldom upbraided her thereon 
 at any time, feeling but slightly the lack of Tess's 
 assistance whilst her chief plan for relieving 
 herself of her diurnal labours lay in postponing 
 them. To-night, however, she was even in a 
 blither mood than usual. There was a dreami- 
 ness, a preoccupation, an exaltation, in the maternal 
 look which the girl could not understand. 
 
 3 1 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 'Well, I'm glad you've come/ her mother said, 
 as soon as the last note had passed out of her. 
 * I want to go and fetch your father ; but what's 
 more'n that, I want to tell 'ee what have hap- 
 pened. You'll be fess enough, my poppet, when 
 th'st know ! ' (Mrs. Durbeyfield still habitually 
 spoke the dialect ; her daughter, who had passed 
 the Sixth Standard in the National School under 
 a London-trained mistress, used it only when 
 excited by joy, surprise, or grief.) 
 
 1 Since I've been away?' Tess asked. 
 
 'Ay!' 
 
 1 Had it anything to do with father's making 
 such a mommet of himself in the carriage this 
 afternoon ? Why did he ? I felt inclined to sink 
 into the ground with shame ! ' 
 
 1 That was all a part of the larry ! We've 
 been found to be the greatest gentlefolk in the 
 whole county — reaching all back long before 
 Oliver Grumble's time — to the days of the Pagan 
 Turks — with monuments, and vaults, and crests, 
 and 'scutcheons, and the Lord knows what all. 
 In Charles's days we was made Knights o' the 
 Royal Oak, our real name being D'Urberville ! 
 . . . Don't that make your bosom plim ? 'Twas 
 
 32 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 on this account that your father rode home in 
 the carriage ; not because he'd been drinking, as 
 people supposed.' 
 
 ' I'm glad of that. Will it do us any good, 
 mother ? ' 
 
 ' Oh yes ! Tis thoughted that great things 
 may come o't. No doubt a mampus of folk of our 
 own rank will be down here in their carriages 
 as soon as 'tis known. Your father learnt it on 
 his way home from Stourcastle, and has been 
 telling me the whole pedigree of the matter.' 
 
 1 Where is father now ? ' asked Tess suddenly. 
 
 Her mother gave irrelevant information by 
 way of answer. 
 
 ' He called to see the doctor to-day in Stour- 
 castle. It is not consumption at all, it seems. 
 It is fat round his heart, he says. There, it is 
 like this.' Joan Durbeyfield, as she spoke, curved 
 a sodden thumb and forefinger to the shape of 
 the letter C, and used the other forefinger as a 
 pointer. ' " At the present moment," he says to 
 your father, "your heart is enclosed all round 
 there, and all round there ; this space is still 
 open," he says. " As soon as it meets, so," ' — Mrs. 
 Durbeyfield closed her fingers into a circle com- 
 vol. i 33 v 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 plete — '"off you will go like a shadder, Mr. 
 Durbeyfield," he says. " You mid last ten 
 years ; you mid go off in ten months, or ten 
 days." ' 
 
 Tess looked alarmed. Her father possibly to 
 go behind the eternal cloud so soon, notwith- 
 standing this sudden greatness ! 
 
 1 But where is father ? ' she asked again. 
 
 Her mother put on a deprecating look. ' Now 
 don't you be bursting out angry ! The poor 
 man — he felt so weak after his uplifting at 
 the news — that he went up to Rolliver's half an 
 hour ago. He do want to get up his strength 
 for his journey to-morrow with that load of bee- 
 hives, which must be delivered, family or no. 
 He'll have to start shortly after twelve to-night, 
 as the distance is so long.' 
 
 1 Get up his strength ! ' said Tess impetuously, 
 the tears welling to her eyes. ' O my God ! 
 Go to a public-house to get up his strength ! 
 And you as well agreed as he, mother ! ' 
 
 Her rebuke and her mood seemed to fill the 
 whole room, and to impart a cowed look to the 
 furniture, and candle, and children playing about, 
 and to her mother's face. 
 
 34 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 1 No,' said the latter touchily, ' I am not 
 agreed. I have been waiting for 'ee to bide 
 and keep house while I go to fetch him.' 
 
 ' I'll go. 5 
 
 ' Oh no, Tess. You see, it would be no use.' 
 
 Tess did not expostulate. She knew what 
 her mother's objection meant. Mrs. Durbeyfield's 
 jacket and bonnet were already hanging slily 
 upon a chair by her side, in readiness for this 
 contemplated jaunt, the reason for which the 
 matron deplored more than its necessity. 
 
 ' And take the Complete Fortune - Teller' to 
 the outhouse,' she continued, rapidly wiping her 
 hands, and donning the garments. 
 
 The Complete Fortune - Teller was an old 
 thick volume, which lay on a table at her elbow, 
 so worn by pocketing that the margins had 
 reached the edge of the type. Tess took it up, 
 and her mother started. 
 
 This going to hunt up her shiftless husband at 
 the inn was one of Mrs. Durbeyfield's still extant 
 enjoyments in the muck and muddle of rearing 
 children. To discover him at Rolliver's, to sit 
 there for an hour or two by his side and dismiss 
 all thought and care of the children during the 
 
 35 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 interval, made her happy. A sort of halo, an 
 occidental glow, came over life then. Troubles 
 and other realities took on themselves a meta- 
 physical impalpability, sinking to minor cerebral 
 phenomena for quiet contemplation, in place of 
 standing as pressing concretions which chafe body 
 and soul. The youngsters, not immediately 
 within sight, seemed rather bright and desirable 
 appurtenances than otherwise ; the incidents of 
 daily life were not without humorousness and 
 jollity in their aspect there. She felt a little as 
 she had used to feel when she sat by her now 
 wedded husband in the same spot during his 
 wooing, shutting her eyes to his defects of 
 character, and regarding him only in his ideal 
 presentation as a lover. 
 
 Tess, being left alone with the younger children, 
 went first to the outhouse with the fortune-telling 
 book, and stuffed it into the thatch. A curious 
 fetishistic fear of this grimy volume on the part 
 of her mother prevented her ever allowing it to 
 stay in the house all night, and hither it was 
 brought back whenever it had been consulted. 
 Between the mother, with her fast - perishing 
 lumber of superstitions, folk-lore, dialect, and 
 
 36 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 orally transmitted ballads, and the daughter, with 
 her trained National teachings and Standard 
 knowledge under an infinitely Revised Code, 
 there was a gap of two hundred years as 
 ordinarily understood. When they were together 
 the Jacobean and the Victorian ages were juxta- 
 posed. 
 
 Returning along the garden path Tess mused 
 on what the mother could have wished to ascer- 
 tain from the book on this particular day. She 
 guessed the recent discovery to bear upon it, but 
 did not divine that it solely concerned herself. 
 Dismissing this, however, she busied herself with 
 sprinkling the linen dried during the daytime, in 
 company with her nine-year-old brother Abraham, 
 and her sister Eliza - Louisa of twelve, called 
 ' 'Liza-Lu,' the youngest ones being put to bed. 
 There was an interval of four years between Tess 
 and the next of the family, the two who had filled 
 the gap having died in their infancy, and this 
 lent her a deputy-maternal attitude when she was 
 alone with her juniors. Next in juvenility to 
 Abraham came two more girls, Hope and 
 Modesty ; then a boy of three, and then the baby, 
 who had just completed his first year. 
 
 37 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 All these young souls were passengers in the 
 Durbeyfield ship — entirely dependent on the 
 judgment of the two Durbeyfield adults for their 
 pleasures, their necessities, their health, even their 
 existence. If the heads of the Durbeyfield house- 
 hold chose to sail into difficulty, disaster, starvation, 
 disease, degradation, death, thither were these 
 half-dozen little captives under hatches compelled 
 to sail with them — six helpless creatures, who 
 had never been asked if they wished for life on 
 any terms, much less if they wished for it on 
 such hard conditions as were involved in being of 
 the shiftless house of Durbeyfield. Some people 
 would like to know whence the poet whose 
 philosophy is in these days deemed as profound 
 and trustworthy as his verse is pure and breezy, 
 gets his authority for speaking of ' Nature's holy 
 plan.' 
 
 It grew later, and neither father nor mother 
 reappeared. Tess looked out of the door, and 
 took a mental journey through Marlott. The 
 village was shutting its eyes. Candles and lamps 
 were being put out everywhere : she could 
 inwardly behold the extinguisher and the ex- 
 tended hand. 
 
 38 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 Her mother's fetching simply meant one more 
 to fetch. Tess began to perceive that a man in 
 indifferent health, who proposed to start on a 
 journey before one in the morning, ought not to 
 be at an inn at this late hour celebrating his 
 ancient blood. 
 
 1 Abraham/ she said to her little brother, ' do 
 you put on your hat — you baint afraid ? — and go 
 up to Rolliver's, and see what has become of 
 father and mother.' 
 
 The boy jumped promptly from his seat, and 
 opened the door, and the night swallowed him up. 
 Half an hour passed yet again ; neither man, 
 woman, nor child returned. Abraham, like his 
 parents, seemed to have been limed and caught 
 by the ensnaring inn. 
 
 4 1 must go myself,' she said. 
 
 'Liza-Lu then went to bed, and Tess, locking 
 them all in, started on her way up the dark and 
 crooked lane or street not made for hasty pro- 
 gress ; a street laid out before inches of land had 
 value, and when one-handed clocks sufficiently 
 subdivided the day. 
 
 39 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERYILLES 
 
 IV 
 
 lvOLLIVER'S inn, the single alehouse at this 
 end of the long and broken village, could only 
 boast of an off-license ; hence, as nobody could 
 legally drink on the premises, the amount of overt 
 accommodation for consumers was strictly limited 
 to a little board about six inches wide and two 
 yards long, fixed to the garden palings by pieces 
 of wire, so as to form a ledge. On this board 
 thirsty strangers deposited their cups as they 
 stood in the road and drank, and threw the dregs 
 on the dusty ground to the pattern of Polynesia, 
 and wished they could have a restful seat inside. 
 
 Thus the strangers. But there were also local 
 customers who felt the same wish ; and where 
 there's a will there's a way. 
 
 In a large bedroom upstairs, the window of 
 which was thickly curtained with a great woollen 
 
 40 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 shawl lately discarded by the landlady Mrs. 
 Rolliver, were gathered on this evening nearly a 
 dozen persons, all seeking vinous bliss ; all old 
 inhabitants of the nearer end of Marlott, and 
 frequenters of this retreat. Not only did the 
 distance to The Pure Drop, the fully -licensed 
 tavern at the farther part of the dispersed village, 
 render its accommodation practically unavailable 
 for dwellers at this end ; but the far more serious 
 question, the quality of the liquor, confirmed the 
 prevalent opinion that it was better to drink with 
 Rolliver in a corner of the housetop than with the 
 other landlord in a wide house. 
 
 A gaunt four-post bedstead which stood in the 
 room afforded sitting-space for several persons 
 gathered round three of its sides ; a couple more 
 men had elevated themselves on a chest of drawers; 
 another rested on the oak-carved ' cwoffer ' ; two 
 on the wash-stand ; another on the stool ; and 
 thus all were, somehow, seated at their ease. The 
 stage of mental comfort to which they had arrived 
 at this hour was one wherein their souls expanded 
 beyond their skins, spreading their personalities 
 warmly through the room. In this process the 
 chamber and its furniture grew more and more 
 
 4i 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 dignified and luxurious ; the shawl hanging at the 
 window took upon itself the richness of tapestry ; 
 the brass handles of the chest of drawers were 
 as golden knockers ; and the carved bed-posts 
 seemed to have some kinship with the magnificent 
 pillars of Solomon's temple. 
 
 Mrs. Durbeyfield, having quickly walked hither- 
 ward after parting from Tess, opened the front door, 
 crossed the downstairs room, which was in deep 
 gloom, and then unfastened the stair-door like one 
 whose fingers knew the tricks of the latches well. 
 Her ascent of the crooked staircase was a slower 
 process, and her face, as it rose into the light 
 above the last stair, encountered the gaze of all 
 the party assembled in the bedroom. 
 
 ( Being a few private friends I've asked 
 
 in to keep up club-walking at my own expense,' 
 the landlady exclaimed at the sound of footsteps, 
 as glibly as a child repeating the Catechism, while 
 she peered over the stairs. ' Oh, 'tis you, Mrs. 
 Durbeyfield — Lard — how you frightened me ! — I 
 thought it might be some gaffer sent by Gover'- 
 ment.' 
 
 Mrs. Durbeyfield was welcomed with glances 
 and nods by the remainder of the conclave, and 
 
 42 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 turned to where her husband sat. He was hum- 
 ming absently to himself, in a low tone : ' I be as 
 good as some folks here and there ! I've got a 
 great family vault at Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill, and 
 finer skellingtons than any man in the counties o' 
 Wessex ! ' 
 
 ( I've something to tell 'ee that's come into my 
 head about that — a grand project!' whispered 
 his cheerful wife. ' Here, John, don't 'ee see me ? ' 
 She nudged him, while he, looking through her as 
 through a window-pane, went on with his re- 
 citative. 
 
 ' Hush ! Don't 'ee sing so loud, my good man,' 
 said the landlady ; ' in case any member of the 
 Gover'ment should be passing, and take away my 
 licends.' 
 
 1 He's told 'ee what's happened to us, I sup- 
 pose ? ' asked Mrs. Durbeyfield. 
 
 'Yes — in a way. D'ye think there's any 
 money hanging by it ? ' 
 
 1 Ah, that's the secret,' said Joan Durbeyfield 
 sagely. ' However, 'tis well to be kin to a coach, 
 even if you don't ride in en.' She dropped her 
 public voice, and continued in a low tone to her 
 husband : ' I've been thinking since you brought the 
 
 43 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 news that there's a great rich lady out by Trant- 
 ridge, on the edge o' The Chase, of the name of 
 D'Urberville.' 
 
 ' Hey — what's that ? ' said Sir John. 
 
 She repeated the information. ' That lady 
 must be our relation,' she said. ' And my project 
 is to send Tess to claim kin.' 
 
 ' There is a lady of the name, now you mention 
 it,' said Durbeyfield. * Pa'son Tringham didn't 
 think of that. But she's nothing beside we — a 
 junior branch of us, no doubt, long since King 
 Norman's day.' 
 
 While this question was being discussed 
 neither of the pair noticed, in their preoccupation, 
 that little Abraham had crept into the room, and 
 was awaiting an opportunity of asking them to 
 return. 
 
 ' She is rich, and she'd be sure to take notice 
 o' the maid,' continued Mrs. Durbeyfield ; ' and 
 'twill be a very good thing. I don't see why two 
 branches of one family should not be on visiting 
 terms.' 
 
 ' Yes ; and we'll all claim kin ! ' said Abraham 
 brightly from under the bedstead. ' And we'll all 
 go and see her when Tess has gone to live with 
 
 44 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 her ; and we'll ride in her coach and wear black 
 clothes ! ' 
 
 * How do you come here, child ? What 
 nonsense be ye talking ! Go away, and play on 
 the stairs till father and mother be ready ! . . . 
 Well, Tess ought to go to this other member 
 of our family. She'd be sure to win the lady — 
 Tess would ; and likely enough 'twould lead to 
 some noble gentleman marrying her. In short, I 
 know it.' 
 
 ' How ? ' 
 
 1 I tried her fate in the Fortune-Teller, and it 
 brought out that very thing. . . . You should ha' 
 seen how pretty she looked to-day ; her skin is 
 as sumple as a duchess's.' 
 
 ' What says the maid herself to going ? ' 
 
 ' I've not asked her. She don't know there is 
 any such lady relation yet. But it would certainly 
 put her in the way of a grand marriage, and she 
 won't refuse to go.' 
 
 1 Tess is queer.' 
 
 1 But she's tractable at bottom. Leave her to me.' 
 
 Though this conversation had been private, 
 sufficient of its import reached the understandings 
 of those around to suggest to them that the Dur- 
 
 45 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 beyfields had weightier concerns to talk of now 
 than common folks had, and that Tess, their pretty 
 eldest daughter, had fine prospects in store. 
 
 ' Tess is a fine figure o' fun, as I said to myself 
 to-day when I zeed her vamping round parish with 
 the rest,' observed one of the elderly boozers in an 
 undertone. ' But Joan Durbeyfield must mind 
 that she don't get green malt in flower.' It was 
 a local phrase which had a peculiar meaning, and 
 there was no reply. 
 
 The conversation became inclusive, and pre- 
 sently other footsteps were heard crossing the 
 room below. 
 
 ' Being a few private friends asked in to- 
 night to keep up club-walking at my own expense.' 
 The landlady had rapidly re-used the formula she 
 kept on hand for intruders before she recognised 
 that the newcomer was Tess. 
 
 Even to her mother's gaze the girl's young 
 features looked sadly out of place amid the 
 alcoholic vapours which floated here as no unsuit- 
 able medium for wrinkled middle-age ; and hardly 
 was a reproachful flash from Tess's dark eyes 
 needed to make her father and mother rise from 
 their seats, hastily finish their ale, and descend 
 
 46 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 the stairs behind her, Mrs. Rolliver's caution fol- 
 lowing their footsteps. 
 
 ' No noise, please, if ye'll be so good, my 
 dears ; or I mid lose my licends, and be sum- 
 mons'd, and I don't know what all ! 'Night t'ye ! ' 
 
 They went home together, Tess holding one 
 arm of her father, and Mrs. Durbeyfield the other. 
 He had, in truth, drunk very little — not a fourth 
 of the quantity which a systematic tippler could 
 carry to church on a Sunday morning without a 
 hitch in his eastings or genuflections ; but the 
 weakness of Sir John's constitution made moun- 
 tains of his petty sins in this kind. On reaching 
 the fresh air he was sufficiently unsteady to 
 incline the row of three at one moment as if they 
 were marching to London, and at another as if 
 they were marching to Bath — which produced a 
 comical effect, frequent enough in families on 
 nocturnal homegoings ; and, like most comical 
 effects, not quite so comic after all. The two 
 women valiantly disguised these forced excursions 
 and countermarches as well as they could from 
 Durbeyfield their cause, and from Abraham, and 
 from themselves ; and so they approached by 
 degrees their own door, the head of the family 
 
 47 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 bursting suddenly into his former refrain as he 
 drew near, as if to fortify his soul at sight of the 
 smallness of his present residence — 
 
 ' I've got a fam — ily vault at Kingsbere ! ' 
 
 1 Hush — don't be so silly, Jacky,' said his wife. 
 1 Yours is not the only family that was of 'count in 
 wold days. Look at the Anktells, and Horseys, 
 and the Tringhams themselves — gone to seed 
 a'most as much as you — though you was bigger 
 folks than they, that's true. Thank God, I was 
 never of no family, and have nothing to be 
 ashamed of in that way ! ' 
 
 ' Don't you be so sure o' that. From your 
 nater 'tis my belief you've disgraced yourselves 
 more than any o' us, and was kings and queens 
 outright at one time.' 
 
 Tess turned the subject by saying what was far 
 more prominent in her own mind at the moment 
 than thoughts of her ancestry — 
 
 1 I am afraid father won't be able to take 
 the journey with the beehives to-morrow so early.' 
 
 1 I ? I shall be all right in an hour or two/ 
 said Durbeyfield. 
 
 It was eleven o'clock before the family were 
 4 8 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 all in bed, and two o'clock next morning was the 
 latest hour for starting with the beehives if they 
 were to be delivered to the retailers in Caster- 
 bridge before the Saturday market began, the way 
 thither lying by bad roads over a distance of be- 
 tween twenty and thirty miles, and the horse and 
 waggon being of the slowest. At half-past one Mrs. 
 Durbeyfield came into the large bedroom where 
 Tess and all her little brothers and sisters slept. 
 
 1 The poor man can't go,' she said to her 
 eldest daughter, whose great eyes had opened the 
 moment her mother's hand touched the door. 
 
 Tess sat up in bed, lost in a vague interspace 
 between a dream and this information. 
 
 1 But somebody must go,' she replied. ' It is 
 late for the hives already. Swarming will soon 
 be over for the year ; and if we put off taking 
 'em till next week's market the call for 'em will 
 be past, and they'll be thrown on our hands.' 
 
 Mrs. Durbeyfield looked unequal to the emer- 
 gency. ' Some young feller, perhaps, would go ? 
 One of them who were so much after dancing 
 with 'ee yesterday,' she presently suggested. 
 
 ' Oh no — I wouldn't have it for the world ! ' 
 declared Tess proudly. ' And letting everybody 
 vol. i 49 e 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 know the reason — such a thing to be ashamed of! 
 I think / could go if Abraham could go with me 
 to keep me company,' 
 
 1 Her mother at length agreed to this arrange- 
 ment. Little Abraham was aroused from his 
 deep sleep in a corner of the same apartment, 
 and made to put on his clothes while still mentally 
 in the other world. Meanwhile Tess had hastily 
 dressed herself; and the twain, lighting a lantern, 
 went out to the stable. The rickety little waggon 
 was already laden, and the girl led out the horse 
 Prince, only a degree less rickety than the vehicle. 
 
 The poor creature looked wonderingly round 
 at the night, at the lantern, at their two figures, 
 as if he could not believe that at that hour, when 
 every living thing was intended to be at shelter 
 and at rest, he was called upon to go out and 
 labour. They put a stock of candle-ends into 
 the lantern, hung the latter to the off-side of the 
 road, and directed the horse onward, walking at 
 his shoulder at first during the uphill portion of 
 the way, in order not to overload an animal of so 
 little vigour. To cheer themselves as well as 
 they could, they made an artificial morning with 
 the lantern, some bread and butter, and their own 
 
 5° 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 conversation, the real morning being far from 
 come. Abraham, as he more fully awoke (for he 
 had moved in a sort of trance so far), began to 
 talk of the strange shapes assumed by the various 
 dark objects against the sky ; of this tree that 
 looked like a raging tiger springing from a lair ; 
 of that which resembled a giant's head. 
 
 When they had passed the little town of 
 Stourcastle, dumbly somnolent under its thick 
 brown thatch, they reached higher ground. Still 
 higher, on their left, the elevation called Bulbarrow 
 or Bealbarrow, well-nigh the highest in South 
 Wessex, swelled into the sky, engirdled by its 
 earthen trenches. From hereabout the long road 
 declined gently for a great distance onward. They 
 mounted in front of the waggon, and Abraham 
 grew reflective. 
 
 ( Tess ! ' he said in a preparatory tone, after a 
 silence. 
 
 1 Yes, Abraham.' 
 
 ' Bain't you glad that we've become gentle- 
 folk ? ' 
 
 ' Not particular glad.' 
 
 1 But you be glad that you are going to marry 
 a gentleman ? ' 
 
 5i 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 ' What ? ' said Tess, lifting her face. 
 
 • That our great relation will help 'ee to marry 
 a gentleman.' 
 
 1 1 ? Our great relation ? We have no such 
 relation. What has put that into your head ? ' 
 
 ' I heard 'em talking about it up at Rolliver's 
 when I went to find father. There's a rich lady 
 of our family out at Trantridge, and mother said 
 that if you claimed kin with the lady, she'd put 
 'ee in the way of marrying a gentleman.' 
 
 His sister became abruptly still, and lapsed 
 into a pondering silence. Abraham talked on, 
 rather for the pleasure of utterance than for 
 audition, so that his sister's abstraction was of no 
 account. He leant back against the hives, and 
 with upturned face made observations on the 
 stars, whose cold pulses were beating amid the 
 black hollows above, in serene dissociation from 
 these two wisps of human life. He asked how 
 far away those twinklers were, and whether God 
 was on the other side of them. But ever and 
 anon his childish prattle recurred to what im- 
 pressed his imagination even more deeply than 
 the wonders of creation. If Tess were made rich 
 by marrying a gentleman, would she have money 
 
 52 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 enough to buy a spy-glass so large that it would 
 draw the stars as near to her as Nettlecombe- 
 Tout? 
 
 The renewed subject, which seemed to have 
 impregnated the whole family, filled Tess with 
 impatience. 
 
 1 Never mind that now ! ' she exclaimed. 
 
 : Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess ? ' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' All like ours ? ' 
 
 ' I don't know ; but I think so. They some- 
 times seem to be like the apples on our stubbard- 
 tree. Most of them splendid and sound — a few 
 blighted.' 
 
 'Which do we live on — a splendid one or a 
 blighted one ? ' 
 
 ' A blighted one.' 
 
 ''Tis very unlucky that we didn't pitch on a 
 sound one, when there were so many more of 
 'em!' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' Is it like that really, Tess ? ' said Abraham, 
 turning to her much impressed, on reconsideration 
 of this rare information. ' How would it have 
 been if we had pitched on a sound one ? ' 
 
 53 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 ! Well, father wouldn't have coughed and 
 creeped about as he does, and wouldn't have 
 got too tipsy to go this journey ; and mother 
 wouldn't have been always washing, and never 
 getting finished.' 
 
 ' And you would have been a rich lady ready- 
 made, and not have had to be made rich by 
 marrying a gentleman ? ' 
 
 'Oh, Aby, don't — don't talk of that any 
 more ! ' 
 
 Left to his reflections, Abraham soon grew 
 drowsy. Tess was not skilful in the manage- 
 ment of a horse, but she thought that she could 
 take upon herself the entire conduct of the load 
 for the present, and allow Abraham to go to sleep 
 if he wished to do so. She made him a sort of 
 nest in front of the hives, in such a manner that 
 he could not fall, and, taking the rope-reins into 
 her own hands, jogged on as before. 
 
 Prince required but slight attention, lacking 
 energy for superfluous movements of any sort. 
 With no longer a companion to distract her, Tess 
 fell more deeply into reverie than ever, her back 
 leaning against the hives. The mute procession 
 past her of trees and hedges became attached to 
 
 54 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 fantastic scenes outside reality, and the occasional 
 heave of the wind became the sigh of some 
 immense sad soul, conterminous with the universe 
 in space, and with history in time. 
 
 Then, examining the mesh of events in her 
 own life, she seemed to see the vanity of her 
 father's pride ; the gentlemanly match awaiting 
 herself in her mother's fancy ; to see him as a 
 grimacing personage, laughing at her poverty, 
 and her shrouded knightly ancestry. Everything 
 grew more and more extravagant, and she no 
 longer knew how time passed. A sudden jerk 
 shook her in her seat, and Tess awoke from the 
 sleep into which she, too, had fallen. 
 
 They were a long way farther on than when 
 she had lost consciousness, and the waggon had 
 stopped. A hollow groan, unlike anything she 
 had ever heard in her life, came from the front, 
 followed by a shout of ' Hoi, there ! ' 
 
 The lantern hanging at her waggon had gone 
 out, but another was shining in her face — much 
 brighter than her own had been. Something 
 terrible had happened. The harness was en- 
 tangled with an object which blocked the way. 
 
 In consternation Tess jumped down, and dis- 
 55 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 covered the dreadful truth. The groan had 
 proceeded from her father's poor horse Prince. 
 The morning mail-cart, with its two noiseless 
 wheels, speeding along these lanes like an arrow, 
 as it always did, had driven into her slow and 
 unlighted equipage. The pointed shaft of the 
 cart had entered the breast of the unhappy 
 Prince like a sword, and from the wound his 
 life's blood was spouting in a stream, and falling 
 with a hiss into the road. 
 
 In her despair Tess sprang forward and put 
 her hand upon the hole, with the only result 
 that she became splashed from face to skirt 
 with the crimson drops. Then she stood help- 
 lessly looking on. Prince also stood firm and 
 motionless as long as he could ; till he suddenly 
 sank down in a heap. 
 
 By this time the mail-cart man had joined her, 
 and began dragging and unharnessing the hot 
 form of Prince. But he was already dead, and 
 seeing that nothing more could be done imme- 
 diately the mail-cart man returned to his own 
 animal, which was uninjured. 
 
 ' You was on the wrong side, 5 he said. ' I am 
 bound to go on with the mail-bags, so that the 
 
 56 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 best thing for you to do is to bide here with 
 your load. I'll send somebody to help you as 
 soon as I can. It will soon be daylight, and you 
 have nothing to fear.' 
 
 He mounted and sped on his way ; while Tess 
 stood and waited. The atmosphere turned pale, 
 the birds shook themselves in the hedges, arose, 
 and twittered ; the lane showed all its white 
 features, and Tess showed hers, still whiter. The 
 huge pool of blood in front of her was already 
 assuming the iridescence of coagulation ; and 
 when the sun rose a million prismatic hues 
 were reflected from it. Prince lay alongside 
 still and stark ; his eyes half open, the hole in 
 his chest looking scarcely large enough to have 
 let out all that had animated him. 
 
 ( 'Tis all my doing — all mine ! ' the distracted 
 girl cried, gazing intently at the spectacle. ' No 
 excuse for me — none. What will father and 
 mother live on now ? Aby, Aby ! ' She shook 
 the child, who had slept soundly through the 
 whole disaster. ' We can't go on with our load 
 — Prince is killed ! ' 
 
 When Abraham realized all, the furrows of fifty 
 years were extemporized on his young face. 
 
 57 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 1 Why, I danced and laughed only yesterday ! ' 
 she went on to herself. ' To think that I was 
 such a fool ! ' 
 
 ' Tis because we be on a blighted star, and 
 not a sound one, isn't it, Tess ? ' murmured Abra- 
 ham through his tears. 
 
 In stagnant blankness they waited through 
 an interval which seemed endless. At length 
 a sound, and an approaching object, proved to 
 them that the driver of the mail-cart had been 
 as good as his word. A farmer's man from 
 near Stourcastle came up, leading a strong cob. 
 He was harnessed to the waggon of beehives 
 in the place of Prince, and the load taken on 
 towards Casterbridge. 
 
 The evening of the same day saw the empty 
 waggon reach again the spot of the accident. 
 Prince had lain there in the ditch since the 
 morning; but the place of the blood -pool was 
 still visible in the middle of the road, though 
 scratched and scraped over by passing vehicles. 
 All that was left of Prince was now hoisted into 
 the waggon he had formerly hauled, and with his 
 hoofs in the air, and his shoes shining in the setting 
 sunlight, he retraced the dozen miles to Marlott. 
 
 53 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 Tess had gone back earlier. How to break the 
 news was more than she could think. It was a 
 relief to her tongue to find from the faces of her 
 parents that they already knew of their loss, 
 though this did not lessen the self-reproach which 
 she continued to heap upon herself for her negli- 
 gence in falling asleep. 
 
 But the very shiftlessness of the household 
 rendered the misfortune a less terrifying one to 
 them than it would have been to a striving 
 family, though in the present case it meant 
 ruin, and in the other it would only have meant 
 inconvenience. In the Durbeyfield countenances 
 there was nothing of the red wrath that would 
 have burnt upon the girl from parents more 
 ambitious for her welfare. Nobody blamed Tess 
 as she blamed herself. 
 
 When it was discovered that the knacker and 
 tanner would give only a very few shillings for 
 Prince's carcase because of his decrepitude, Durbey- 
 field rose to the occasion. 
 
 1 No,' said he stoically, ' I won't sell his old 
 body. When we D'Urbervilles was knights in 
 the land, we didn't sell our chargers for cat's 
 meat. Let 'em keep their shillings ! He has 
 
 59 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 served me well in his lifetime, and I won't part 
 from him now.' 
 
 He worked harder the next day in digging 
 a grave for Prince in the garden than he had 
 worked for months to grow a crop for his 
 family. When the hole was ready, Durbey- 
 field and his wife tied a rope round the horse 
 and dragged him up the path towards it, the 
 children following. Abraham and 'Liza - Lu 
 sobbed, Hope and Modesty discharged their 
 griefs in loud blares which echoed from the 
 walls ; and when Prince was tumbled in they 
 gathered round the grave. The bread-winner 
 had been taken away from them ; what would 
 they do ? 
 
 ' Is he gone to heaven ? ' asked Abraham, 
 between the sobs. 
 
 Then Durbeyfield began to shovel in the 
 earth, and the children cried anew. All except 
 Tess. Her face was dry and pale, as though 
 she regarded herself in the light of a murderess. 
 
 60 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 V 
 
 1 HE higgling business, which had mainly 
 depended on the ^ horse, became disorganized 
 forthwith. Distress, if not penury, loomed in the 
 distance. Durbeyfield was what was locally 
 called a slack -twisted fellow ; he had good 
 strength to work at times ; but none of the times 
 could be relied on to coincide with the hours of 
 requirement ; and, having been unaccustomed to 
 the regular toil of the day-labourer, he was not 
 particularly persistent when they did so coincide. 
 
 Tess, meanwhile, as the one who had dragged 
 them into this quagmire, was silently wondering 
 what she could do to help them out of it ; and 
 then her mother broached her scheme. 
 
 ' We must take the ups wi' the downs, Tess,' said 
 she ; ' and never could your high blood have been 
 discovered at a more necessary moment. You 
 
 61 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 must try your friends. Do you know that there is 
 a very rich Mrs. D'Urberville living out on the edge 
 of The Chase, who must be our relation ? You 
 must go to her and claim kin, and ask for some 
 assistance in our trouble.' 
 
 1 1 shouldn't care to do that,' says Tess. ' If 
 there is such a lady, 'twould be enough for us if 
 she were friendly — not to expect her to give us 
 help.' 
 
 ' You could win her round to do anything, my 
 dear. Besides, perhaps there's more in it than 
 you know of. I've heard what I've heard.' 
 
 The oppressive sense of the harm she had 
 done led Tess to be more deferential than she 
 might otherwise have been to the maternal wish ; 
 but she could not understand why her mother 
 should find such satisfaction in contemplating an 
 enterprise of, to her, such doubtful profit. Her 
 mother might have made inquiries, and have dis- 
 covered that this Mrs. D'Urberville was a lady of 
 unequalled virtues and charity. But Tess's pride 
 made the part of poor relation one of particular 
 distaste to her. 
 
 1 I'd rather try to get work,' she murmured. 
 
 1 Durbeyfield, you can settle it,' said his wife, 
 62 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 turning to where he sat in the background. ' If 
 you say she ought to go, she will go.' 
 
 1 I don't like my children going and making 
 themselves beholden to strange kin,' murmured 
 he. ' I'm the head of the noblest branch of the 
 family, and I ought to keep myself up.' 
 
 His reasons for staying away were worse to 
 Tess than her own objection to going. ' Well, as 
 I killed the horse, mother,' she said mournfully, 
 ' I suppose I ought to do something. I don't 
 mind going and seeing her, but you must leave 
 it to me about asking for help. And don't go 
 thinking about her making a match for me — it is 
 silly.' 
 
 I Very well said, Tess ! ' observed her father 
 sententiously. 
 
 ' Who said I had such a thought ? ' asked 
 Joan. 
 
 I I fancy it is in your mind, mother. But I'll go.' 
 Rising early next day, she walked to the hill- 
 town called Shaston, and there took advantage of 
 a van which twice in the week ran from Shaston 
 eastward to Chaseborough, passing near Trant- 
 ridge, the parish in which the vague and 
 mysterious Mrs., D'Urberville had her residence. 
 
 t>3 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 Tess Durbeyfield's route on this memorable 
 morning lay amid the north-eastern undulations 
 of the Vale in which she had been born, and in 
 which her life had unfolded. The Vale of Black- 
 moor was to her the world, and its inhabitants 
 the races thereof. From the gates and stiles of 
 Marlott she had looked down its length in the 
 wondering days of infancy, and what had been 
 mystery to her then was not much less than 
 mystery to her now. She had seen daily from 
 her chamber-window towers, villages, faint white 
 mansions ; above all the town of Shaston standing 
 majestically on its height ; its windows shining 
 like lamps in the evening sun. She had hardly 
 ever visited it, only a small tract even of the Vale 
 and its environs being known to her by close 
 inspection. Much less had she been far outside 
 the valley. Every contour of the surrounding 
 hills was as personal to her as that of her relatives' 
 faces ; but for what lay beyond her judgment was 
 dependent on the teaching of the village school, 
 where she had held a leading place at the time of 
 her leaving, a year or two before this date. 
 
 In those early days she had been much loved 
 by others of her own sex and age, and had used 
 
 64 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 to be seen about the village as one of three — all 
 nearly of the same year — walking home from 
 school side by side, Tess being the middle one — 
 in a pink print pinafore, of a finely reticulated 
 pattern, worn over a stuff frock that had lost its 
 original colour for a nondescript tertiary — march- 
 ing on upon long stalky legs, in tight stockings 
 which had little ladder-like holes at the knees, 
 torn by kneeling in the roads and banks in search 
 of vegetable and mineral treasures ; her then 
 earth-coloured hair hanging like pot-hooks ; the 
 arms of the two outside girls resting round the 
 waist of Tess ; her arms on the shoulders of the 
 two supporters. 
 
 As Tess grew older, and began to see how 
 matters stood, she felt Malthusian vexation with 
 her mother for thoughtlessly giving her so many 
 little sisters and brothers, when it was such a 
 trouble to nurse those that had already come. 
 Her mother's intelligence was that of a happy 
 child : Joan Durbeyfield was simply an additional 
 one, and that not the eldest, to her own long 
 family of nine when all were living. 
 
 However, Tess became humanely beneficent 
 towards the small ones, and to help them as much 
 
 vol. i 65 f 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 as possible she used, as soon as she left school, 
 to lend a hand at haymaking or harvesting on 
 neighbouring farms ; or, by preference, at milking 
 or butter-making processes, which she had learnt 
 when her father had owned cows ; and being deft- 
 fingered it was a kind of work in which she 
 excelled. 
 
 Every day seemed to throw upon her young 
 shoulders more of the family burdens, and that 
 Tess should be the representative of the Durbey- 
 fields at the D'Urberville mansion came as a thing 
 of course. In this instance it must be admitted 
 that the Durbeyfields were putting their fairest 
 side outward. 
 
 She alighted from the van at Trantridge Cross, 
 and ascended on foot a hill in the direction of the 
 district known as The Chase, on the borders of 
 which, as she had been informed, Mrs. D'Urber- 
 ville's seat, The Slopes, would be found. It was 
 not a manorial home in the ordinary sense, with 
 fields, and pastures, and a grumbling farmer, out 
 of which a living had to be dragged by the owner 
 and his family by hook or by crook. It was 
 more, far more ; a country house, built for enjoy- 
 ment pure and simple, with not an acre of 
 
 66 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 troublesome land attached to it beyond what was 
 required for residential purposes, and a little fancy 
 farm kept in hand by the owner, and tended by a 
 bailiff. 
 
 The warm red brick lodge came first in sight, 
 up to its eaves in dense evergreens. Tess thought 
 this was the mansion itself till, passing through 
 the side wicket with some trepidation, and onward 
 to a point at which the drive took a turn, the 
 house proper stood in full view. It was of recent 
 erection — indeed almost new — and of the same 
 rich crimson colour that formed such a contrast 
 with the evergreens of the lodge. Far behind the 
 bright brick corner of the house — which rose like 
 a red geranium against the subdued colours 
 around — stretched the soft azure landscape of 
 The Chase — a truly venerable tract of forest land, 
 one of the few remaining woodlands in England 
 of undoubted primaeval date, wherein Druidical 
 mistletoe was still found on aged oaks, and where 
 enormous yew-trees, not planted by the hand of 
 man, grew as they had grown when they were 
 pollarded for bows. All this sylvan antiquity, 
 however, though visible from The Slopes, was 
 outside the immediate boundaries of the estate. 
 
 67 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 Everything on this snug property was bright, 
 thriving, and well kept; acres of glass-houses 
 stretched down the inclines to the copses at their 
 feet. Everything looked like money — like the last 
 coin issued from the Mint. The stables, partly 
 screened by Austrian pines and evergreen oaks, and 
 fitted with every late appliance, were as dignified as 
 Chapels-of-Ease, and on the extensive lawn stood 
 an ornamental tent, its door being towards her. 
 
 Simple Tess Durbeyfield stood at gaze, in a 
 half-paralysed attitude, on the edge of the gravel 
 sweep. Her feet had brought her onward to this 
 point before she had quite realized where she was ; 
 and now all was contrary to her expectation. 
 
 1 1 thought we were an old family ; but this is 
 all new ! ' she said, in her girlish artlessness. She 
 wished that she had not fallen in so readily with 
 her mother's plans for ' claiming kin,' and had 
 endeavoured to gain assistance nearer home. 
 
 The D'Urbervilles — or Stoke- D'Urbervilles, 
 as they at first called themselves — who owned all 
 this, were a somewhat unusual family to find in 
 such an old-fashioned part of the country. Parson 
 Tringham had spoken truly when he said that 
 
 68 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 our shambling John Durbeyfield was the only 
 really lineal representative of the old D'Urberville 
 family existing in the county, or near it ; he 
 might have added, what he knew very well, that 
 the Stoke-D'Urbervilles were no more D'Urber- 
 villes of the true tree than he was himself. Yet 
 it must be admitted that this family formed a 
 very good stock whereon to regraft a name which 
 sadly wanted such renovation. 
 
 When old Mr. Simon Stoke, latterly deceased, 
 had made his fortune as an honest merchant (some 
 said money-lender) in the North, he decided to 
 settle as a county man in the South of England, 
 out of hail of his business district ; and in doing 
 this he felt the necessity of recommencing with a 
 name not quite so well remembered there, and 
 less commonplace than the two original bald 
 stark words. Conning for an hour in the British 
 Museum the pages of works devoted to extinct, 
 half-extinct, obscured, and ruined families apper- 
 taining to the quarter of England in which he 
 proposed to settle, he considered that D 'Urberville 
 looked and sounded as well as any of them : and 
 D'Urberville accordingly was annexed to his own 
 name for himself and his heirs eternally. Yet 
 
 6 9 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 he was not an extravagant- minded man in this, 
 and in constructing his family tree on the new- 
 basis was reasonable in framing his intermarriages 
 and connecting links, never inserting a single title 
 above a rank of strict moderation. 
 
 Of this work of imagination poor Tess and 
 her parents were naturally in ignorance — much to 
 their own discomfiture ; indeed, the very possi- 
 bility of such annexations was unknown to them ; 
 who supposed that, though to be well-favoured 
 might be the gift of fortune, a family name came 
 by nature. 
 
 Tess still stood hesitating like a bather about 
 to make his plunge, hardly knowing whether to 
 retreat or to persevere, when a figure came forth 
 from the dark triangular door of the tent. It was 
 that of a tall young man, smoking. 
 
 He had an almost swarthy complexion, with 
 full lips, badly moulded, though red and smooth, 
 above which was a well-groomed black moustache 
 with curled points, though his age could not be 
 more than three- or four-and-twenty. Despite the 
 touches of barbarism in his contours, there was a 
 singular force in the gentleman's face, and in his 
 bold rolling eye. 
 
 70 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 ' Well, my big Beauty, what can I do for you ? ' 
 said he, coming forward. And perceiving that 
 she stood quite confounded : ' Never mind me. 
 I am Mr. D'Urberville. Have you come to see 
 me or my mother? ' 
 
 This embodiment of a D'Urberville and a name- 
 sake differed even more from what Tess had 
 expected than the house and grounds had differed. 
 She had dreamed of an aged and dignified face, 
 the sublimation of all distinctively D'Urberville 
 lineaments, furrowed with incarnated memories 
 representing in hieroglyphic the centuries of her 
 family and England's history. But she screwed 
 herself up to the work in hand, since she could 
 not get out of it, and answered — 
 
 ' I came to see your mother, sir.' 
 
 1 I am afraid you cannot see her — she is an 
 invalid,' replied the present representative of the 
 spurious house ; for this was Mr. Alec, the only 
 son of the lately deceased gentleman. ' Cannot I 
 answer your purpose ? What is the business you 
 wish to see her about ? ' 
 
 1 It isn't business — it is — I can hardly say 
 what ! ' 
 
 1 Pleasure ? ' 
 
 7i 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 ' Oh no. Why, sir, if I tell you, it will seem — ' 
 
 Tess's sense of a certain ludicrousness in her 
 errand was now so strong that, notwithstanding 
 her awe of him, and her general discomfort at 
 being here, her rosy lips curved towards a smile, 
 much to the attraction of the swarthy Alexander. 
 
 ' It is so very foolish,' she stammered ; ' I fear 
 I can't tell you ! ' 
 
 ' Never mind ; I like foolish things. Try 
 again, my dear,' said he kindly. 
 
 1 Mother asked me to come,' Tess continued ; 
 ' and, indeed, I was inclined to do so myself like- 
 wise. But I did not think it would be like this. 
 I came, sir, to tell you that we be of the same 
 family as you.' 
 
 1 Ho ! Poor relations ? ' 
 
 1 Yes.' 
 
 ' Stokes ? ' 
 
 'No; D'Urbervilles.' 
 
 1 Ay, ay ; I mean D'Urbervilles.' 
 
 ' Our names are corrupted to Durbeyfield ; but 
 we have several proofs that we be D'Urbervilles. 
 Antiquarians say we are, — and — and we have an 
 old seal, and a very old silver spoon, round in the 
 bowl, like a little ladle, with a ramping lion on 
 72 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 the handle, and a castle over him. But it is so 
 old that mother uses it to stir the pea-soup.' 
 
 * A castle argent is certainly my crest,' said he 
 blandly. 
 
 1 And so mother said we ought to make our- 
 selves beknown to you — as we've lost our horse 
 by a bad accident, and are the oldest branch o' 
 the family.' 
 
 * Very kind of your mother, I'm sure. And I, 
 for one, don't regret her step.' Alec looked at 
 Tess as he spoke, in a way that made her blush 
 a little. ' And so, my pretty girl, you've come on 
 a friendly visit to us, as relations ? ' 
 
 1 I suppose I have,' faltered Tess, looking un- 
 comfortably at the mansion. 
 
 ' Well — there's no harm in it. Where do you 
 live ? What are you ? ' 
 
 She gave him brief particulars ; and, after 
 further inquiries, told him that she was intending 
 to go back by the same carrier who had brought her. 
 
 'It is a long while before he returns past 
 Trantridge Cross. Supposing we walk round the 
 grounds to pass the time, my pretty Coz ? ' 
 
 Tess wished to abridge her visit as much as 
 possible ; but the young man was pressing, and 
 
 73 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 she consented to accompany him. He conducted 
 her about the lawns, and flower-beds, and con- 
 servatories ; and thence to the fruit-garden, where 
 he asked her if she liked strawberries. 
 
 1 Yes,' said Tess, * when they come.' 
 
 ' They are already here.' D'Urberville began 
 gathering specimens of the fruit for her, handing 
 them back to her as he stooped ; and, presently, 
 selecting a specially fine product of the ' British 
 Queen ' variety, he stood up and held it by the 
 stem to her mouth. 
 
 ' No — no ! ' she said quickly, putting her fingers 
 between his hand and her lips. ' I would rather 
 take it in my own hand.' 
 
 1 Nonsense ! ' he insisted ; and in a slight dis- 
 tress she parted her lips and took it in. 
 
 They had spent some time wandering desul- 
 torily thus, Tess eating in an abstracted half- 
 hypnotised state whatever D'Urberville offered 
 her. When she could consume no more of the 
 strawberries he filled her little basket with them ; 
 and then the two passed round to the rose-trees, 
 whence he gathered blossoms and gave her to put 
 in her bosom. She obeyed, still like one in a 
 dream, and when she could affix no more he himself 
 
 74 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 tucked a bud or two into her hat, and heaped her 
 basket with others in the prodigality of his bounty. 
 At last, looking at his watch, he said, ' Now, by 
 the time you have had something to eat, it will 
 be time for you to leave, if you want to catch the 
 carrier to Shaston. Come here, and I'll see what 
 grub I can find.' 
 
 Stoke-D'Urberville took her back to the lawn 
 and into the tent, where he left her, soon re- 
 appearing with a basket of light luncheon, which 
 he put before her himself. It was evidently the 
 gentleman's wish not to be disturbed in this plea- 
 sant tete-a-tete by the servantry. 
 
 ' Do you mind my smoking ? ' he asked. 
 
 * Oh, not at all, sir.' 
 
 He watched her pretty and unconscious munch- 
 ing through the skeins of smoke that pervaded 
 the tent, and Tess Durbeyfield did not divine, as 
 she innocently looked down at the roses in her 
 bosom, that there behind the blue narcotic haze 
 sat the 'tragic mischief of her drama — he who 
 was to be the blood-red ray in the spectrum of her 
 young life. She had an attribute which amounted 
 to a disadvantage just now ; and it was this that 
 caused Alec D'Urberville's eyes to rivet themselves 
 
 75 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 upon her. It was a luxuriance of aspect, a fulness 
 of growth, which made her appear more of a woman 
 than she really was. She had inherited the feature 
 from her mother without the quality it denoted. 
 It had troubled her mind occasionally, till her 
 companions had said that it was a fault which 
 time would cure. 
 
 She soon had finished her lunch. * Now I am 
 going home, sir,' she said, rising. 
 
 ' And what do they call you ? ' he asked, as he 
 accompanied her along the drive till they were out 
 of sight of the house. 
 
 ' Tess Durbeyfield, down at Marlott' 
 
 I And you say your people have lost their 
 horse ? ' 
 
 ' I — killed him ! ' she answered, her eyes filling 
 with tears as she gave particulars of Prince's death. 
 ' And I don't know what to do for father on account 
 of it!' 
 
 I I must think if I cannot do something. My 
 mother must find a berth for you. But, Tess, no 
 nonsense about " D'Urberville " ; — " Durbeyfield " 
 only, you know — quite another name.' 
 
 ' I wish for no better, sir,' said she with some- 
 thing of dignity. 
 
 76 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 For a moment — only for a moment — when 
 they were in the turning of the drive, between 
 the tall rhododendrons and conifers, before the 
 lodge became visible, he inclined his face towards 
 her as if — but, no ! he thought better of it, and let 
 her go. 
 
 Thus the thing began. Had she perceived this 
 meeting's import she might have asked why she was 
 doomed to be seen and marked and coveted that 
 day by the wrong man, and not by a certain other 
 man, the exact and true one in all respects — as 
 nearly as human mutuality can be exact and true ; 
 yet to him at this time she was but a transient 
 impression, half forgotten. 
 
 In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged 
 plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, 
 the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for 
 loving. Nature does not often say ' See ! ' to her 
 poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to 
 happy doing ; or reply ' Here ! ' to a body's cry of 
 ' Where ? ' till the hide-and-seek has become an 
 irksome outworn game. We may wonder whether 
 at the acme and summit of the human progress 
 these anachronisms will become corrected by a 
 finer intuition, a closer interaction of the social 
 
 77 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 machinery than that which now jolts us round 
 and along ; but such completeness is not to be 
 prophesied, or even conceived as possible. Enough 
 that in the present case, as in millions, the two 
 halves of an approximately perfect whole did not 
 confront each other at the perfect moment ; part 
 and counterpart wandered independently about the 
 earth in the stupidest manner for a while, till the 
 late time came. Out of which maladroit delay 
 sprang anxieties, disappointments, shocks, cata- 
 strophes — what was called a strange destiny. 
 
 When D'Urberville got back to the tent he sat 
 down astride on a chair reflecting, with a pleased 
 gleam in his face. Then he broke into a loud 
 laugh. 
 
 ' Well, I'm damned ! What a funny thing ! 
 Ha-ha-ha ! And what a charming girl ! ' 
 
 78 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 VI 
 
 1 ESS went down the hill to Trantridge Cross, 
 and inattentively waited to take her seat in the 
 van returning from Chaseborough to Shaston. 
 She did not know what the other occupants said 
 to her as she entered, though she answered them ; 
 and when they had started anew she rode along 
 with an inward and not an outward eye. 
 
 One among her fellow-travellers addressed her 
 more pointedly than any had spoken before : 
 ' Why, you be quite a posy ! And such roses in 
 early June ! ' 
 
 Then she became aware of the spectacle she 
 presented to their surprised vision : roses at her 
 breast ; roses in her hat ; roses and strawberries 
 in her basket to the brim. She blushed, and said 
 confusedly that the flowers had been given to 
 her. When the passengers were not looking she 
 
 79 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 stealthily removed the more prominent blooms 
 from her hat and placed them in the basket, 
 where she covered them with her handkerchief. 
 Then she fell to reflecting again, and in looking 
 downwards a thorn of the rose remaining in her 
 breast accidentally pricked her chin. Like all the 
 cottagers of Blackmoor Vale, Tess was steeped in 
 fancies and prefigurative superstitions ; she thought 
 this an ill omen — the first she had noticed that 
 day. 
 
 The van travelled only so far as Shaston, and 
 there were several miles of pedestrian descent 
 from that mountain-town into the vale to Marlott. 
 Her mother had advised her to stay here for the 
 night, at the house of a cottage-woman they knew, 
 if she should feel too tired to come on ; and this 
 Tess did, not descending to her home till the 
 following afternoon. 
 
 When she entered the house she perceived in 
 a moment from her mother's triumphant manner 
 that something had occurred in the interim. 
 
 1 Oh yes ; I know all about it ! I told 'ee it 
 would be all right, and now 'tis proved ! ' 
 
 ' Since I've been away ? What has ? ' said 
 Tess rather wearily. 
 
 80 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 Her mother surveyed the girl up and down 
 with arch approval, and went on banteringly : ' So 
 you've brought 'em round ! ' 
 
 ' How do you know, mother ? ' 
 
 ' I've had a letter.' 
 
 Tess then remembered that there would have 
 been just time for this. 
 
 1 They say — Mrs. D'Urberville says — that she 
 wants you to look after a little poultry-farm which 
 is her hobby. But this is only her artful way of 
 getting you there without raising your hopes. 
 She's going to acknowledge 'ee as kin — that's the 
 meaning o't.' 
 
 ' But I didn't see her.' 
 
 I You zid somebody, I suppose ? ' 
 
 I I saw her son.' 
 
 ' And did he acknowledge 'ee ? ' 
 
 ' Well — he called me Coz.' 
 
 ' An' I knew it ! Jacky — he called her Coz ! ' 
 cried Joan to her husband. ' Well, he spoke to 
 his mother, of course, and she do want 'ee there.' 
 
 ' But I don't know that I am apt at managing 
 fowls,' said the dubious Tess. 
 
 ' Then I don't know who is apt. You've be'n 
 born in the business, and brought up in it. They 
 vol. i 8 1 G 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 that be born in a business always know more about 
 it than any 'prentice. Besides, that's only just a 
 show of something for you to do, that you midn't 
 feel dependent.' 
 
 ' I don't altogether think I ought to go,' said 
 Tess thoughtfully. ' Who wrote the letter ? Will 
 you let me look at it ? ' 
 
 ' Mrs. D'Urberville wrote it. Here it is.' 
 
 The letter was in the third person, and briefly 
 informed Mrs. Durbeyfield that her daughter's 
 services would be useful to that lady in the 
 management of her poultry-farm, that a comfort- 
 able room would be provided for her if she could 
 come, and that the emolument would be on a 
 liberal scale if they liked her. 
 
 < Oh— that's all ! » said Tess. 
 
 1 You couldn't expect her to throw her arms 
 round 'ee, an' to kiss and to coll 'ee all at once.' 
 
 Tess looked out of the window. 
 
 ' 1 would rather stay here with father and you,' 
 she said, nervously reflecting. 
 
 ' But why ? ' 
 
 ' I'd rather not tell you why, mother ; indeed, 
 I don't quite know why.' 
 
 A week afterwards she came in one evening 
 82 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 from an unavailing search for some light occupa- 
 tion in the immediate neighbourhood. Her idea 
 had been to get together sufficient money during 
 the summer to purchase another horse. Hardly 
 had she crossed the threshold before one of the 
 children danced across the room, saying, ( The 
 gentleman has been here ! ' 
 
 Her mother hastened to explain, smiles break- 
 ing from every inch of her person. Mrs. D'Urber- 
 ville's son had called on horseback, having been 
 riding by chance in the direction of Marlott. He 
 had wished to know, finally, in the name of his 
 mother, if Tess could really come to manage the 
 old lady's fowl - farm or not ; the lad who had 
 hitherto superintended the birds having proved 
 untrustworthy. ' Mr. D'Urberville says you must 
 be a good girl if you are at all as you appear ; he 
 knows you must be worth your weight in gold. 
 He is very much interested in 'ee — truth to tell.' 
 
 Tess seemed for the moment really pleased to hear 
 that she had won such high opinion from a stranger 
 when, in her own esteem, she had sunk so low. 
 
 ! It is very good of him to think that,' she mur- 
 mured ; ' and if I was quite sure how it would be 
 living there, I would go in a moment.' 
 
 83 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 I He is a mighty handsome man !' 
 
 I I don't think so,' said Tess coldly. 
 
 ' Weil, there's your chance, whether or no ; and 
 I'm sure he wears a beautiful diamond ring ! ' 
 
 1 Yes,' said little Abraham, brightly, from the 
 window-bench ; ' and I seed it ! and it did twinkle 
 when he put his hand up to his mistarshers. 
 Mother, why did our noble relation keep on 
 putting his hand up to his mistarshers ? ' 
 
 ' Hark at that child ! ' cried Mrs. Durbeyfield, 
 with parenthetic admiration. 
 
 1 Perhaps to show his diamond ring/ murmured 
 Sir John, dreamily, from his chair. 
 
 ' I'll think it over,' said Tess, leaving the 
 room. 
 
 { Well, she's made a conquest o' the junior 
 branch of us, straight off, 5 continued the matron 
 to her husband, ' and she's a fool if she don't 
 follow it up.' 
 
 ( I don't quite like my children going away 
 from home,' said the higgler. ' As the head of 
 the family, the rest ought to come to me.' 
 
 1 But do let her go, Jacky,' coaxed his poor 
 witless wife. ' He's struck wi' her — you can see 
 that. He called her Coz ! He'll marry her, most 
 
 84 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 likely, and make a lady of her ; and then she'll 
 be what her forefathers was. 5 
 
 John Durbeyfield had more conceit than 
 energy or health, and this supposition was 
 pleasant to him. 
 
 ' Well, perhaps, that's what young Mr. D'Urber- 
 ville means,' he admitted : ' and he really may 
 have serious thoughts about improving his blood 
 by linking on to the old line. Tess, the little 
 rogue ! And has she really paid 'em a visit to 
 such an end as this ? ' 
 
 Meanwhile Tess was walking thoughtfully 
 among the gooseberry-bushes in the garden, and 
 over Prince's grave. When she came in her 
 mother pursued her advantage. 
 
 I Well, what be you going to do ? ' she asked. 
 
 I I wish I had seen Mrs. D'Urberville,' said Tess. 
 • I think you mid as well settle it. Then 
 
 you'll see her soon enough.' 
 
 Her father coughed in his chair. 
 
 ( I don't know what to say ! ' answered the girl 
 restlessly. ' It is for you to decide. I killed the 
 old horse, and I suppose I ought to do something 
 to get ye a new one. But — but — I don't quite 
 like Mr. D'Urberville ! ' 
 
 85 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 The children, who had made use of this idea 
 of Tess being taken up by their wealthy kinsfolk 
 (as they imagined the other family to be) as a 
 species of dolorifuge after the death of the horse, 
 began to cry at Tess's reluctance, and teased and 
 reproached her for hesitating. 
 
 ( Tess won't go — o — o and be made a 
 la — a — dy of ! — no, she says she wo — o — on't ! ' 
 they wailed, with square mouths. ' And we 
 shan't have a nice new horse, and lots o' golden 
 money to buy fairlings ! And Tess won't look 
 pretty in her best cloze no mo — o — ore ! ' 
 
 Her mother chimed in to the same tune : a 
 certain way she had of making her labours in the 
 house seem heavier than they were by prolonging 
 them indefinitely, also weighed in the argument. 
 Her father alone preserved an attitude of neu- 
 trality. 
 
 1 1 will go,' said Tess at last. 
 
 Her mother could not repress her conscious- 
 ness of the nuptial Vision conjured up by the 
 girl's consent. 
 
 ' That's right ! For such a pretty girl, it is a 
 fine opportunity ! ' 
 
 Tess smiled crossly. 
 
 86 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 ' I hope it is an opportunity for earning money. 
 It is no other kind of opportunity. You had better 
 say nothing of that silly sort to the neighbours.' 
 
 Mrs. Durbeyfield did not promise. She was 
 not quite sure that she did not feel proud enough, 
 after the visitor's remarks, to say a good deal. 
 
 Thus it was arranged ; and the young girl 
 wrote, agreeing to be ready to set out on any day 
 on which she might be required. She was duly 
 informed that Mrs. D'Urberville was glad of her 
 decision, and that a spring -cart should be sent 
 to meet her and her luggage at the top of the 
 Vale on the day after the morrow, when she must 
 hold herself prepared to start. Mrs. D'Urber- 
 ville's handwriting seemed rather masculine. 
 
 ' A cart ? ' murmured Joan Durbeyfield doubt- 
 ingly. ' It might have been a carriage for her 
 own kin !' 
 
 Having at last taken her course, Tess was less 
 restless and abstracted, going about her business 
 with some self-assurance in the thought of acquir- 
 ing another horse for her father by an occupation 
 which would not be onerous. She had hoped to 
 be a teacher at the school, but the fates seemed 
 to decide otherwise. Being mentally older than 
 
 87 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 her mother she did not regard Mrs. Durbeyfield's 
 matrimonial hopes for her in a serious aspect for 
 a moment. The light-minded woman had been 
 discovering good matches for her daughter almost 
 from the year of her birth. 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 VII 
 
 wN the morning appointed for her departure 
 Tess was awake before dawn — at the marginal 
 minute of the dark when the grove is still mute, 
 save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear- 
 voiced conviction that he at least knows the 
 correct time of day, the rest preserving silence 
 as if equally convinced that he is mistaken. She 
 remained upstairs packing till breakfast-time, and 
 then came down in her ordinary weekday clothes, 
 her Sunday apparel being carefully folded in her 
 box. 
 
 Her mother expostulated. ' You will never set 
 out to see your folks without dressing up more 
 the dand than that ? ' 
 
 1 But I am going to work ! ' said Tess. 
 
 ( Well, yes/ said Mrs. Durbeyfield ; and, in a 
 private tone, ' at first there may be a little pre- 
 
 89 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 tence o't. . . . But I think it will be wiser of 'ee 
 to put your best side outward,' she added. 
 
 ' Very well ; I suppose you know best,' replied 
 Tess with calm abandonment. 
 
 And to please her parent the girl put herself 
 quite in Joan's hands, saying serenely — ' Do what 
 you like with me, mother.' 
 
 Mrs. Durbeyfield was only too delighted at 
 this tractability. First she fetched a great basin, 
 and washed Tess's hair with such thoroughness 
 that when dried and brushed it looked twice as 
 much as at other times. She tied it with a 
 broader pink ribbon than usual. Then she put 
 upon her the white frock that Tess had worn at 
 the club-walking, the airy fulness of which, sup- 
 plementing her enlarged coiffure^ imparted to her 
 developing figure an amplitude which belied her 
 age, and might cause her to be estimated as a 
 woman when she was not much more than a child. 
 
 ' I declare there's a hole in my stocking-heel ! ' 
 said Tess. 
 
 1 Never mind holes in your stockings — they 
 don't speak ! When I was a maid, so long as I 
 had a pretty bonnet the devil might ha' found me 
 in heels.' 
 
 90 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 Her mother's pride in the girl's appearance led 
 her to step back, like a painter from his easel, and 
 survey her work as a whole. 
 
 'You must see yourself!' she cried. 'It is 
 much better than you was t'other day.' 
 
 As the looking-glass was only large enough to 
 reflect a very small portion of Tess's person at 
 one time, Mrs. Durbeyfield hung a black cloak 
 outside the casement, and so made a large re- 
 flector of the panes, as it is the wont of bedecking 
 cottagers to do. After this she went downstairs 
 to her husband, who was sitting in the lower 
 room. 
 
 ' I'll tell 'ee what 'tis, Durbeyfield,' said she 
 exultingly ; ' he'll never have the heart not to 
 love her. But whatever you do, don't say too 
 much to Tess of his fancy for her, and this chance 
 she has got. She is such an odd maid that it 
 mid set her against him, or against going there, 
 even now. If all goes well, I shall certainly be 
 for making some return to that pa'son at Stagfoot 
 Lane for telling us — dear, good man ! ' 
 
 However, as the moment for the girl's setting 
 out drew nigh, when the first excitement of the 
 dressing had passed off, a slight misgiving found 
 
 9i 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 place in Joan Durbeyfield's mind. It prompted 
 the matron to say that she would walk a little 
 way — as far as to the point where the acclivity 
 from the valley began its first steep ascent to the 
 outer world. At the top Tess was going to be 
 met with the spring - cart sent by the Stoke- 
 D'Urbervilles, and her box had already been 
 wheeled ahead towards this summit by a lad 
 with trucks, to be in readiness. 
 
 Seeing their mother put on her bonnet the 
 younger children clamoured to go with her. 
 
 ' I do want to walk a little-ways wi' Sissy, now 
 she's going to marry our gentleman-cousin, and 
 wear fine cloze ! ' 
 
 1 Now,' said Tess, flushing and turning quickly, 
 1 I'll hear no more o' that ! Mother, how could 
 you ever put such stuff into their heads ? ' 
 
 1 Going to work, my dears, for our rich rela- 
 tion, and help get enough money for a new horse,' 
 said Mrs. Durbeyfield pacifically. 
 
 ' Good-bye, father,' said Tess, with a lumpy 
 throat. 
 
 'Good-bye, my maid,' said Sir John, raising 
 his head from his breast as he suspended his nap, 
 induced by a slight excess this morning in honour 
 
 92 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 of the occasion. ' Well, I hope my young friend 
 will like such a comely specimen of his own blood. 
 And tell'n, Tess, that being reduced, quite, from 
 our former grandeur, I'll sell him the title — yes, 
 sell it — and at no onreasonable figure.' 
 
 ' Not for less than a thousand pound ! ' cried 
 Lady Durbeyfield. 
 
 'Tell'n — I'll take a thousand pound. Well, 
 I'll take less, when I come to think o't. He'll 
 adorn it better than a poor broken-down feller 
 like myself can. Tell'n he shall hae it for a 
 hundred. But I won't stand upon trifles — tell'n 
 he shall hae it for fifty — for twenty pound ! Yes, 
 twenty pound — that's the lowest. Dammy, family 
 honour is family honour, and I won't take a penny 
 less ! ' 
 
 Tess's eyes were too full and her voice too 
 choked to utter the bitter sentiments that were in 
 her. She turned quickly, and went out. 
 
 So the girls and their mother all walked to- 
 gether, a child on each side of Tess, holding her 
 hand, and looking at her meditatively from time 
 to time, as at one who was about to do great 
 things ; her mother just behind ; the group form- 
 ing a picture of honest beauty flanked by inno- 
 
 93 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 cence, and backed by simple-souled vanity. They 
 followed the way till they reached the beginning 
 of the ascent, on the crest of which the vehicle 
 from Trantridge was to receive her, this limit 
 having been fixed to save the horse the labour 
 of the last slope. Far away behind the first hills 
 the cliff- like dwellings of Shaston broke the line 
 of the ridge. Nobody was visible in the elevated 
 road which skirted the ascent save the lad whom 
 they had sent on before them, sitting on the 
 handle of the barrow that contained all Tess's 
 worldly possessions. 
 
 ' Bide here a bit, and the cart will soon come, 
 no doubt,' said Mrs. Durbeyfield. ' Yes, I see it 
 yonder ! ' 
 
 It had come — appearing suddenly from behind 
 the forehead of the nearest upland, and stopping 
 beside the boy with the barrow. Her mother 
 and the children thereupon decided to go no 
 farther, and bidding them a hasty good-bye Tess 
 bent her steps up the hill. 
 
 They saw her white shape draw near to the 
 spring-cart, on which her box was already placed. 
 But before she had quite reached it another 
 vehicle shot out from a clump of trees on the 
 
 94 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 summit, came round the bend of the road there, 
 passed the luggage-cart, and halted beside Tess, 
 who turned as if in great surprise. 
 
 Her mother perceived, for the first time, that 
 the second vehicle was not a humble conveyance 
 like the first, but a spick-and-span gig or dog-cart, 
 highly varnished and equipped. The driver was 
 a young man of three- or four-and-twenty, with 
 a cigar between his teeth ; wearing a dandy 
 cap, drab jacket, breeches of the same hue, white 
 neckcloth, stick-up collar, and brown driving- 
 gloves — in short, he was the handsome, horsey 
 young buck who had visited Joan a week or two 
 before to get her answer about Tess. 
 
 Mrs. Durbeyfield clapped her hands like a 
 child. Then she looked down, then stared again. 
 Could she be deceived as to the meaning of this ? 
 
 ' Is dat the gentleman -kinsman who'll make 
 Sissy a lady ? ' asked the youngest child. 
 
 Meanwhile the muslined form of Tess could 
 be seen standing still, undecided, beside this 
 turn-out, whose owner was talking to her. Her 
 seeming indecision was, in fact, more than in- 
 decision : it was misgiving. She would have 
 preferred the humble cart. The young man 
 
 95 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 dismounted, and appeared to urge her to 
 ascend. She turned her face down the hill to 
 her relatives, and regarded the little group. 
 Something seemed to quicken her to a determi- 
 nation ; possibly the thought that she had killed 
 Prince. She suddenly stepped up ; he mounted 
 beside her, and immediately whipped on the 
 horse. In a moment they had passed the slow 
 cart with the box, and disappeared behind the 
 shoulder of the hill. 
 
 Directly Tess was out of sight, and the in- 
 terest of the matter as a drama was at an end, 
 the little ones' eyes filled with tears. The 
 youngest child said, ' I wish poor, poor Tess 
 wasn't gone away to be a lady ! ' and, lowering 
 the corners of his lips, burst out crying. The 
 new point of view was infectious, and the next 
 child did likewise, and then the next, till the 
 whole three of them wailed loud. 
 
 There were tears also in Joan Durbeyfield's 
 eyes as she turned to go home. But by the 
 time she had got back to the village she was 
 passively trusting to the favour of accident. 
 However, in bed that night she sighed, and her 
 husband asked her what was the matter. 
 
 96 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 * Oh, I don't know exactly,' she said. ' I was 
 thinking that perhaps it would ha' been better if 
 Tess had not gone.' 
 
 1 Oughtn't ye to have thought of that before ? ' 
 
 1 Well, 'tis a chance for the maid Still, if 
 
 'twere the doing again, I wouldn't let her go till 
 I had found out whether the gentleman is really 
 a good-hearted young man and interested in her 
 as his kinswoman.' 
 
 'Yes, you ought, perhaps, to ha' done that,' 
 snored Sir John. 
 
 Joan Durbeyfield always managed to find con- 
 solation somewhere : ' Well, as one of the genuine 
 stock, she ought to make her way with 'en, if she 
 plays her trump card aright. And if he don't 
 marry her afore he will after. For that he's all 
 afire wi' love for her any eye can see.' 
 
 1 What's her trump card ? Her D'Urberville 
 blood, you mean ? ' 
 
 1 No, stupid ; her face — as 'twas mine.' 
 
 vol. i 97 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 VIII 
 
 HAVING mounted beside her, Alec D'Urber- 
 ville drove rapidly along the crest of the first hill, 
 chatting compliments to Tess as they went, the 
 cart with her box being left far behind. Rising 
 still, an immense landscape stretched around them 
 on every side ; behind, the green valley of her birth, 
 before, a gray country of which she knew nothing 
 except from her first brief visit to Trantridge. 
 Thus they reached the verge of an incline down 
 which the road stretched in a long straight 
 descent of nearly a mile. 
 
 Ever since the accident with her father's horse 
 Tess Durbeyfield, courageous as she naturally was, 
 had been exceedingly timid on wheels ; the least 
 irregularity of motion startled her. She began to 
 get uneasy at a certain recklessness in her con- 
 ductor's driving. 
 
 98 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 ' You will go down slowly, sir, I suppose ? ' she 
 said with attempted unconcern. 
 
 D'Urberville looked round upon her, nipped 
 his cigar with the tips of his large white centre- 
 teeth, and allowed his lips to smile slowly of 
 themselves. 
 
 ' Why, Tess,' he answered, after another whiff 
 or two, ' it isn't a brave bouncing girl like you 
 who asks that ? Why, I always go down at full 
 gallop. There's nothing like it for raising your 
 spirits.' 
 
 1 But perhaps you need not now ? ' 
 
 1 Ah,' he said, shaking his head, ' there are two 
 to be reckoned with. It is not me alone. Tib 
 has to be considered, and she has a very queer 
 temper.' 
 
 ' Who ? ' 
 
 1 Why, this mare. I fancy she looked round 
 at me in a very grim way just then. Didn't you 
 notice it ? ' 
 
 ' Don't try to frighten me, sir,' said Tess stiffly. 
 
 1 Well, I don't. If any living man can manage 
 this horse I can : — I won't say any living man 
 can do it — but if such has the power, I am he.' 
 
 ' Why do you have such a horse ? ' 
 99 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 1 Ah, well may you ask it ! It was my fate, I 
 suppose. Tib has killed one chap ; and just after 
 I bought her she nearly killed me. And then, 
 take my word for it, I nearly killed her. But 
 she's queer still, very queer ; and one's life is 
 hardly safe behind her sometimes.' 
 
 They were just beginning to descend ; and it 
 was evident that the horse, whether of her own 
 will or of his (the latter being the more likely) 
 knew so well the reckless performance expected 
 of her that she hardly required a hint from 
 behind. 
 
 Down, down, they sped, the wheels humming 
 like a top, the dog-cart rocking right and left, its 
 axis acquiring a slightly oblique set in relation to 
 the line of progress ; the figure of the horse rising 
 and falling in undulations before them. Some- 
 times a wheel was off the ground, it seemed, for 
 many yards ; sometimes a stone was sent spinning 
 over the hedge, and flinty sparks from the horse's 
 hoofs outshone the daylight. The fore part of the 
 straight road enlarged with their advance, the two 
 banks dividing like a splitting stick ; and one 
 rushed past at each shoulder. 
 
 The wind blew through Tess's white muslin 
 ioo 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 to her very skin, and her washed hair flew out 
 behind. She was determined to show no open 
 fear, but she clutched D'Urberville's rein-arm. 
 
 1 Don't touch my arm ! We shall be thrown 
 out if you do ! Hold on round my waist ! ' 
 
 She grasped his waist, and so they reached the 
 bottom. 
 
 1 Safe, thank God, in spite of your folly ! ' said 
 she, her face on fire. 
 
 ' Tess — fie! that's temper!' said D'Urber- 
 ville. 
 
 1 Tis truth.' 
 
 ' Well, you need not let go your hold of me 
 so thanklessly the moment you feel yourself out 
 of danger.' 
 
 She had not considered what she had been 
 doing ; whether he were man or woman, stick 
 or stone, in her involuntary hold on him. Re- 
 covering her reserve she sat without replying, 
 and thus they reached the summit of another 
 declivity. 
 
 ' Now then, again ! ' said D'Urberville. 
 
 'No, no!' said Tess. ' Show more sense, do, 
 please.' 
 
 ' But when people find themselves on one of 
 
 IOI 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 the highest points in the county, they must get 
 down again/ he retorted. 
 
 He loosened rein, and away they went a 
 second time. D'Urberville turned his face to 
 her as they rocked, and said, in playful raillery : 
 ' Now then, put your arms round my waist again, 
 as you did before, my beauty.' 
 
 ' Never ! ' said Tess independently, holding on 
 as well as she could without touching him. 
 
 1 Let me put one little kiss on those holmberry 
 lips, Tess ; or even on that warmed cheek, and 
 I'll stop — on my honour, I will ! ' 
 
 Tess, surprised beyond measure, slid farther 
 back still on her seat, at which he urged the 
 horse anew, and rocked her the more. 
 
 1 Will nothing else do ? ' she cried at length, in 
 desperation, her large eyes staring at him like 
 those of a wild animal. This dressing her up so 
 prettily by her mother had apparently been to 
 lamentable purpose. 
 
 ' Nothing, dear Tess,' he replied. 
 
 1 Oh, I don't know — very well ; I don't mind ! ' 
 she panted miserably. 
 
 He drew rein, and as they slowed he was on 
 the point of imprinting the desired salute, when, 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 as if hardly yet aware of her own modesty, she 
 dodged aside. His arms being occupied with the 
 reins there was left him no power to prevent her 
 manoeuvre. 
 
 'Now, damn it — I'll break both our necks!' 
 swore her capriciously passionate companion. ( So 
 you can go from your word like that, you young 
 witch, can you ? ' 
 
 ' Very well/ said poor Tess, ' I'll not move 
 since you be so determined ! But I — thought 
 you would be kind to me, and protect me, as my 
 kinsman ! ' 
 
 1 Kinsman be hanged ! Now ! ' 
 
 ' But I don't want anybody to kiss me, sir ! ' 
 she implored, a big tear beginning to roll down 
 her face, and the corners of her mouth trembling 
 in her attempts not to cry. ' And I wouldn't ha' 
 come if I had known ! ' 
 
 He was inexorable, and she sat still, and 
 D'Urberville gave her the kiss of mastery. No 
 sooner had he done so than she flushed with 
 shame, took out her handkerchief, and wiped the 
 spot on her cheek that had been touched by his 
 lips. His ardour was nettled at the sight, for the 
 act on her part had been unconsciously done. 
 103 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 ' You are mighty sensitive for a farm girl ! ' 
 said the young man. 
 
 Tess made no reply to this remark, of which, 
 indeed, she did not quite comprehend the drift, 
 unheeding the snub she had administered by her 
 instinctive rub upon her cheek. She had, in fact, 
 undone the kiss, as far as such a thing was 
 physically possible. With a dim sense that he 
 was vexed she looked steadily ahead as they 
 trotted on for a further half- hour, till she saw, to 
 her consternation, that there was yet another 
 descent to be undergone. 
 
 1 You shall be made sorry for that ! ' he 
 resumed, his injured tone still remaining, as he 
 flourished the whip anew. ' Unless, that is, you 
 agree willingly to let me do it again, and no 
 handkerchief.' 
 
 She sighed. ' Very well, sir ! ' she said. ' Oh 
 — let me get my hat ! ' 
 
 At the moment of speaking her hat had blown 
 off into the road, their present speed on the 
 upland being by no means slow. D'Urberville 
 pulled up, and said he would get it for her, but 
 Tess was down on the other side. 
 
 She turned back and picked up the article. 
 104 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 ' You look prettier with it off, upon my soul, if 
 that's possible,' he said, contemplating her over 
 the back of the vehicle. ' Now then, up again ! 
 What's the matter ? ' 
 
 The hat was in place and tied, but Tess had 
 not stepped forward. 
 
 'No, sir,' she said, revealing the red and ivory 
 of her mouth in defiant triumph; 'not again, if I 
 know it ! ' 
 
 1 What — you won't get up beside me ? ' 
 
 ' No ; I shall walk.' 
 
 ' Tis five or six miles yet to Trantridge.' 
 
 1 I don't care if 'tis dozens. Besides, the cart 
 is behind.' 
 
 ' You artful hussy ! Now, tell me — didn't you 
 make that hat blow off on purpose? I'll swear 
 you did ! ' 
 
 Her guarded silence confirmed his suspicion. 
 
 Then D'Urberville cursed and swore at her, 
 and called her everything he could think of for 
 the trick. Turning the horse suddenly he tried 
 to drive back upon her, and so hem her in 
 between the gig and the hedge. But he could 
 not do this short of injuring her. 
 
 ' You ought to be ashamed of yourself for 
 io 5 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 using such wicked words ! ' cried Tess with spirit, 
 from the top of the hedge into which she had 
 scrambled. ' I don't like you at all ! I hate and 
 detest you ! I'll go back to mother, I will ! ' 
 
 D'Urberville's bad temper cleared up at sight 
 of hers ; and he laughed heartily. 
 
 'Well, I like you all the better,' he said. 
 1 Come, let there be peace. I'll never do it again 
 against your will. My life upon it now ! ' 
 
 Still Tess could not be induced to remount. 
 She did not, however, object to his keeping his 
 gig alongside her ; and in this manner, at a slow 
 pace, they advanced towards the village of Trant- 
 ridge. From time to time D'Urberville exhibited 
 a sort of fierce distress at the sight of the tramp- 
 ing he had driven her to by his misdemeanour. 
 She might in truth have safely trusted him now ; 
 but he had forfeited her confidence for the time, 
 and she kept on the ground, progressing thought- 
 fully, as if wondering whether it would be wiser to 
 return home. Her resolve, however, had been 
 taken, and it seemed vacillating even to childish- 
 ness to abandon it now, unless for graver reasons. 
 How could she face her parents, get back her 
 box, and disconcert the whole scheme for the 
 106 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 rehabilitation of her family on such sentimental 
 grounds ? 
 
 A few minutes later the chimneys of The 
 Slopes appeared in view, and in a snug nook to 
 the right the poultry-farm and cottage of Tess's 
 destination. 
 
 107 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 IX 
 
 1 HE community of fowls to which Tess had 
 been appointed as supervisor, purveyor, nurse, 
 surgeon, and friend, made their headquarters in 
 an old thatched cottage standing in an enclosure 
 that had once been a garden, but was now a 
 trampled and sanded square. The house was 
 overrun with ivy, its chimney being enlarged by 
 the boughs of the parasite to the aspect of a 
 ruined tower. The lower rooms were entirely 
 given over to the birds, who walked about them 
 with a proprietary air, as though the place had 
 been built by and for themselves, and not by and 
 for certain dusty copyholders who now lay east 
 and west in the churchyard. The descendants of 
 these bygone owners felt it almost as a slight to 
 their family when the house which had so much 
 of their affection, had cost so much of their fore- 
 108 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 fathers' money, and had been in their possession 
 for several generations before the D'Urbervilles 
 came and built here, was indifferently turned into 
 a fowl-house by Mrs. Stoke-D'Urberville as soon 
 as the property fell into hand according to law. 
 ' 'Twas good enough for Christians in grandfather's 
 time,' they said. 
 
 The rooms wherein dozens of infants had 
 wailed at their nursing now resounded with the 
 tapping of nascent chicks. Distracted hens in 
 coops occupied spots where formerly stood chairs 
 supporting sedate agriculturists. The chimney- 
 corner and once blazing hearth was now filled 
 with inverted beehives, in which the hens laid 
 their eggs ; while out of doors the plots that each 
 succeeding householder had carefully shaped with 
 his spade were torn by the cocks in wildest 
 fashion. 
 
 The garden in which the cottage stood was 
 surrounded by a wall, and could only be entered 
 through a door. 
 
 When Tess had occupied herself about an hour 
 
 the next morning in altering and improving the 
 
 arrangements, according to her skilled ideas as the 
 
 daughter of a professed poulterer, the door in the 
 
 109 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 wall opened and a servant in white cap and 
 apron entered. She had come from the manor- 
 house. 
 
 ' Mrs. D'Urberville wants the fowls as usual,' 
 she said ; but perceiving that Tess did not quite 
 understand, she explained, ' Mis'ess is a old lady, 
 and blind.' 
 
 ( Blind ! ' said Tess. 
 
 Almost before her misgiving at the news could 
 find time to shape itself she took, under her com- 
 panion's direction, two of the most beautiful of 
 the Hamburghs in her arms, and followed the 
 maidservant, who had likewise taken two, to the 
 adjacent mansion, which, though ornate and im- 
 posing, showed traces everywhere on this side 
 that some occupant of its chambers could bend 
 to the love of dumb creatures — feathers floating 
 within view of the front, and hen-coops standing 
 on the grass. 
 
 In a sitting-room on the ground-floor, ensconced 
 in an armchair with her back to the light, was the 
 owner and mistress of the estate, a white-haired 
 woman of not more than sixty, or even less, 
 wearing a large cap. She had the mobile face 
 frequent in those whose sight has decayed by 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 stages, has been laboriously striven after, and 
 reluctantly let go, rather than the stagnant mien 
 apparent in persons long sightless or born blind. 
 Tess walked up to this lady with her feathered 
 charges — one sitting on each arm. 
 
 ' Ah, you are the young woman come to look 
 after my birds ? ' said Mrs. D'Urberville, recognis- 
 ing a new footstep. ' I hope you will be kind to 
 them. My bailiff tells me you are quite the 
 proper person. Well, where are they ? Ah, this 
 is Strut ! But he is hardly so lively to-day, is 
 he ? He is alarmed at being handled by a 
 stranger, I suppose. And Phena too — yes, they 
 are a little frightened — aren't you, dears ? But 
 they will soon get used to you.' 
 
 While the old lady had been speaking Tess 
 and the other maid, in obedience to her gestures, 
 had placed the fowls severally in her lap, and she 
 had felt them over from head to tail, examining 
 their beaks, their combs, the manes of the cocks, 
 their wings, and their claws. Her touch enabled 
 her to recognise them in a moment, and to 
 discover if a single feather were crippled or 
 draggled. She handled their crops, and knew 
 what they had eaten, and if too little or too much ; 
 in 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 her face enacting a vivid pantomime of the 
 criticisms passing in her mind. 
 
 The birds that the two girls had brought in 
 were duly returned to the yard, and the process 
 was repeated till all the pet cocks and hens had 
 been submitted to the old woman — Hamburghs, 
 Bantams, Cochins, Brahmas, Dorkings, and such 
 other sorts as were in fashion just then — her 
 perception of each visitor being seldom at fault as 
 she received the bird upon her knees. 
 
 It reminded Tess of a Confirmation, in which 
 Mrs. D'Urberville was the bishop, the fowls the 
 young people presented, and herself and the maid- 
 servant the parson and curate of the parish 
 bringing them up. At the end of the ceremony 
 Mrs. D'Urberville abruptly asked Tess, wrinkling 
 and twitching her face into undulations, ' Can you 
 whistle ? ' 
 
 ' Whistle, ma'am ? ' 
 
 1 Yes, whistle tunes.' 
 
 Tess could whistle, like most other country 
 girls, though the accomplishment was one which 
 she did not care to profess in genteel company. 
 However, she blandly admitted that such was the 
 fact. 
 
 112 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 1 Then you will have to practise it every 
 day. I had a lad who did it very well, but he 
 has left. I want you to whistle to my bull- 
 finches ; as I cannot see them I like to hear 
 them, and we teach 'em airs that way. Tell 
 her where the cages are, Elizabeth. You must 
 begin to-morrow, or they will go back in their 
 piping. They have been neglected these several 
 days.' 
 
 ' Mr. D'Urberville whistled to 'em this morning, 
 ma'am,' said Elizabeth. 
 
 1 He ! Pooh ! ' 
 
 The old lady's face creased into furrows of 
 repugnance, and she made no further reply. 
 
 Thus the reception of Tess by her fancied 
 kinswoman terminated, and the birds were taken 
 back to their quarters. The girl's surprise at 
 Mrs. D'Urberville's manner was not great ; for 
 since seeing the size of the house she had ex- 
 pected no more. But she was far from being 
 aware that the old lady had never heard a word 
 of the so-called kinship. She gathered that no 
 great affection flowed between the blind woman 
 and her son. But in that, too, she was mistaken. 
 Mrs. D'Urberville was not the first mother com- 
 vol. i 113 1 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 pelled to love her offspring resentfully, and to be 
 bitterly fond. 
 
 In spite of the unpleasant initiation of the day 
 before, Tess inclined to the freedom and novelty 
 of her new position in the morning when the sun 
 shone, now that she was once installed there ; and 
 she was curious to test her powers in the unex- 
 pected direction asked of her, so as to ascertain her 
 chance of retaining her post. As soon as she 
 was alone within the walled garden she sat her- 
 self down on a coop, and seriously screwed up 
 her mouth for the long- neglected practice. She 
 found her former ability to have degenerated 
 to the production of a hollow sepulchral rush of 
 wind through the lips, and no clear note at all. 
 
 She remained fruitlessly blowing and blowing, 
 wondering how she could have so grown out of 
 the art which had come by nature, till she became 
 aware of a movement among the ivy -boughs 
 which cloaked the garden-wall no less than the 
 cottage. Looking that way she beheld a form 
 springing from the coping to the plot. It was 
 Alec D'Urberville, whom she had not set eyes on 
 since he had conducted her the day before to 
 114 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 the door of the gardener's cottage where she had 
 lodgings. 
 
 I Upon my honour ! ' cried he, ' there was never 
 before such a beautiful thing in Nature or Art as 
 you look, " Cousin " Tess [" Cousin " had a faint 
 ring of mockery]. I have been watching you 
 from over the wall — sitting like /w-patience on a 
 monument, and pouting up that pretty red mouth 
 to whistling shape, and whooing and whooing, 
 and privately swearing, and never being able to 
 produce a note. Why, you are quite cross 
 because you can't do it.' 
 
 I I am cross, but I didn't swear.' 
 
 ' Ah ! I understand why you are trying — 
 those bullies ! My mother wants you to carry on 
 their musical education. How selfish of her ! As 
 if attending to these curst cocks and hens here 
 were not enough work for any girl. I would 
 flatly refuse, if I were you.' 
 
 ' But she wants me particularly to do it, and 
 to be ready by to-morrow morning.' 
 
 1 Does she ? Well then — I'll give you a lesson 
 or two.' 
 
 ' Oh no, you won't ! ' said Tess, withdrawing 
 towards the door. 
 
 "5 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 ' Nonsense ; I don't want to touch you. See 
 — I'll stand on this side of the wire-netting, and 
 you can keep on the other ; so you may feel quite 
 safe. Now, look here ; you screw up your lips 
 too harshly. There 'tis — so.' 
 
 He suited the action to the word, and whistled 
 a line of ( Take, O take those lips away.' But the 
 allusion was lost upon Tess. 
 
 1 Now try,' said D'Urberville. 
 
 She attempted to look reserved ; her face put 
 on its utmost phase of sculptural severity. But 
 he persisted in his demand, and at last, to get rid 
 of him, she did put up her lips as directed, laugh- 
 ing distressfully, however, before she could succeed 
 in producing a clear note, and then blushing with 
 vexation that she had laughed. 
 
 He encouraged her with ' Try again ! ' 
 
 Tess was quite serious, painfully serious by 
 this time ; and she tried — ultimately and unex- 
 pectedly emitting a real round sound. The 
 momentary pleasure of success got the better of 
 her ; her eyes enlarged, and she involuntarily 
 smiled in his face. 
 
 ' That's it ! Now I have started you — you'll 
 go on beautifully. There — I said I would not 
 116 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 come near you ; and, in spite of such temptation 
 as never before fell to mortal man, I'll keep my 
 word. . . . Tess, do you think my mother a queer 
 old soul ? ' 
 
 ' I don't know much of her yet' 
 
 ' You'll find her so ; she must be, to make you 
 learn to whistle to her bullfinches. I am rather 
 out of her books just now, but you will be quite 
 in favour if you treat her live-stock well. Good 
 morning. If you meet with any difficulties and 
 want help here, don't go to the bailiff, come to me.' 
 
 It was in the economy of this regime that Tess 
 Durbeyfield had undertaken to fill a place. Her 
 first day's experiences were fairly typical of those 
 which followed through many succeeding days. 
 A familiarity with Alec D'Urberville's presence — 
 which that young man carefully cultivated in her 
 by playful dialogue, and by jestingly calling her 
 his cousin when they were alone — removed most 
 of her original shyness of him, without, however, 
 implanting any feeling which could engender 
 shyness of a new and tenderer kind. But she 
 was more pliable under his hands than a mere 
 companionship would have made her, owing to 
 117 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 her inevitable dependence upon his mother, and, 
 through her comparative helplessness, upon him. 
 
 She soon found that whistling to the bullfinches 
 in Mrs. D'Urberville's room was no such onerous 
 business when she had regained the art, for she 
 had caught from her musical mother numerous 
 airs that suited those songsters admirably. A 
 far more satisfactory time than when she practised 
 in the garden was this whistling by the cages 
 each morning. Unrestrained by the young man's 
 presence she threw up her mouth, put her lips 
 near the bars, and piped away in easeful grace 
 to the attentive listeners. 
 
 Mrs. D'Urberville slept in a large four-post 
 bedstead hung with heavy damask curtains, and 
 the bullfinches occupied the same apartment, 
 where they flitted about freely at certain hours, 
 and made little spots on the furniture. Once 
 while Tess was at the window where the cages 
 were ranged, giving her lesson as usual, she 
 thought she heard a rustling behind the bed. 
 The old lady was not present, and turning round 
 the girl had an impression that the toes of a 
 pair of boots were visible below the fringe of 
 the curtains. Thereupon her whistling became 
 118 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 so disjointed that the listener, if such there 
 were, must have discovered her suspicion of his 
 presence. She searched the curtains every 
 morning after that, but never found anybody 
 within them. Alec D'Urberville had evidently 
 thought better of his freak to terrify her by an 
 ambush of that kind. 
 
 119 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 X 
 
 JtLVERY village has its idiosyncrasy, its con- 
 stitution, its own code of morality. The levity 
 of some of the younger women in and about 
 Trantridge was marked, and was perhaps symp- 
 tomatic of the choice spirit who ruled The Slopes 
 in that vicinity. The place had also a more 
 abiding defect ; it drank hard. The staple con- 
 versation on the farms around was on the 
 uselessness of saving money ; and smockfrocked 
 arithmeticians, leaning on their ploughs or hoes, 
 would enter into calculations of great nicety to 
 prove that parish relief was a fuller provision 
 for a man in his old age than any which could 
 result from savings out of their wages during a 
 whole lifetime. 
 
 The chief pleasure of these philosophers lay in 
 going every Saturday night, when work was done, 
 
 120 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 to Chaseborough, a decayed market-town two or 
 three miles distant ; and, returning in the small 
 hours of the next morning, to spend Sunday in 
 sleeping off the dyspeptic effects of the curious 
 compounds sold to them as beer by the mono- 
 polizers of the once independent inns. 
 
 For a long time Tess did not join in the 
 weekly pilgrimages. But under pressure from 
 matrons not much older than herself — for 
 marriage before means was the rule here as 
 elsewhere — Tess at length consented to go. 
 Her first experience of the journey afforded her 
 more enjoyment than she had expected, the 
 hilariousness of the others being quite contagious 
 after her monotonous attention to the poultry- 
 farm all the week. She went again and again. 
 Being graceful and interesting, standing moreover 
 on the momentary threshold of womanhood, her 
 appearance drew down upon her some sly regards 
 from loungers in the streets of Chaseborough ; 
 hence, though sometimes her journey to the town 
 was made independently, she always searched for 
 her fellows at nightfall, to have the protection of 
 their companionship homeward. 
 
 This had gone on for a month or two when a 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 Saturday came in early September, on which a 
 fair and a market coincided ; and the pilgrims 
 from Trantridge sought double delights at the 
 inns on that account. It was long past sunset, 
 and Tess waited for the troop till she was quite 
 weary. While she stood at a corner by the 
 tavern in which they sat she heard a footstep, 
 and looking round saw the red coal of a cigar. 
 D'Urberville was standing there also. He beckoned 
 to her, and she reluctantly went to him. 
 
 1 My Pretty, what are you doing here at this 
 time of night ? ' 
 
 She was so tired after her long day and her 
 walk that she confided her trouble to him. 
 
 ' I have been waiting ever so long, sir, to have 
 their company home, because the road is rather 
 strange to me at night. But I really think I will 
 wait no longer.' 
 
 * Do not. I have only a saddle - horse here 
 to-day ; but come to the " Flower-de-Luce," and 
 I'll hire a trap, and drive you home with me/ 
 
 Tess had never quite got over her original 
 mistrust of him, and, with all their tardiness, she 
 preferred to walk home with the work-folk. So 
 she answered that she was much obliged to him, 
 
 122 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 but on second thoughts would not trouble him. 
 4 1 have said that I will wait for 'em, and they 
 will expect me to now.' 
 
 ' Very well, silly ! Please yourself.' 
 As soon as he had re-lit a cigar and walked 
 away the Trantridge villagers within began also 
 to recollect how time was flying, and prepared to 
 leave in a body. Their bundles and baskets were 
 gathered up, and half an hour later, when the 
 clock -chime sounded a quarter past eleven, they 
 were straggling along the lane which led up the 
 hill towards their homes. 
 
 It was a three-mile walk, along a dry white road, 
 made whiter to-night by the light of the moon. 
 
 Tess soon perceived as she walked in the 
 flock, sometimes with this one, sometimes with 
 that, that the fresh night air was producing 
 staggerings and serpentine courses among the 
 men who had partaken too freely ; some of the 
 more careless women also were wandering in 
 their gait — to wit, a dark virago, Car Darch, 
 dubbed Queen of Spades, till lately a favourite 
 of D'Urberville's ; Nancy, her sister, nicknamed 
 the Queen of Diamonds ; and a young married 
 123 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 woman who had already tumbled down. Yet how- 
 ever terrestrial and lumpy their appearance just 
 now to the mean unglamoured eye, to themselves 
 the case was different. They followed the road 
 with a knowledge that they were soaring along in 
 a supporting medium, possessed of original and 
 profound thoughts, themselves and surrounding 
 nature forming an organism of which all the parts 
 harmoniously and joyously interpenetrated each 
 other. They were as sublime as the moon and 
 stars above them, and the moon and stars were 
 as ardent as they. 
 
 Tess, however, had undergone such painful 
 experiences in this kind in her father's house, 
 that the discovery of their condition spoilt the 
 pleasure she was beginning to feel in the moon- 
 light journey. Yet she stuck to the party, for 
 reasons above given. 
 
 In the open highway they had progressed in 
 scattered order ; but now their route was through 
 a field-gate, and the foremost finding a difficulty 
 in opening it they closed up together. 
 
 This leading pedestrian was Car the Queen of 
 Spades, who carried a wicker -basket containing 
 her mother's groceries, her own draperies, and 
 124 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 other purchases for the week. The basket being 
 large and heavy, Car had placed it for conveni- 
 ence of porterage on the top of her head, where 
 it rode on in jeopardized balance as she walked 
 with arms akimbo. 
 
 1 Well — whatever is that a-creeping down thy 
 back, Car Darch ? ' said one of the group suddenly. 
 
 All looked at Car. Her gown was a light 
 cotton print, and from the back of her head a 
 kind of rope could be seen descending to some 
 distance below her waist like a Chinaman's queue. 
 
 1 Tis her hair falling down,' said another. 
 
 No ; it was not her hair : it was a black stream 
 of something oozing from her basket, and it 
 glistened like a slimy snake in the cold still rays 
 of the moon. 
 
 ' 'Tis treacle,' said an observant matron. 
 
 Treacle it was. Car's poor old grandmother 
 had a weakness for the sweet stuff. Honey she 
 had in plenty out of her own hives, but treacle was 
 what her soul desired, and Car had been about to 
 give her a treat of surprise. Hastily lowering the 
 basket the dark girl found that the vessel con- 
 taining the liquid had been smashed within. 
 
 By this time there had arisen a shout of 
 125 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 laughter at the extraordinary appearance of Car's 
 back, which irritated the dark queen into getting 
 rid of the disfigurement by the first sudden means 
 available, and independently of the help of the 
 scoffers. She rushed excitedly into the field they 
 were about to cross, and flinging herself flat on her 
 back upon the grass, began to wipe her gown as well 
 as she could by gyrating horizontally on the herb- 
 age and dragging herself over it upon her elbows. 
 
 The laughter rang louder ; they clung to the 
 gate, to the posts, rested on their staves, in the 
 weakness engendered by their convulsions at the 
 spectacle of Car. Our heroine, who had hitherto 
 held her peace, at this wild moment could not 
 help joining in with the rest. 
 
 It was a misfortune — in more ways than one. 
 No sooner did the dark queen hear the soberer 
 richer note of Tess among those of the other 
 work-people than a long smouldering sense of 
 rivalry inflamed her to madness. She sprang to 
 her feet and closely faced the object of her dislike. 
 
 1 How darest th' laugh at me, hussy!' she cried. 
 
 ' I couldn't really help it when t'others did,' 
 apologized Tess, still tittering. 
 
 ' Ah, th'st think th' beest everybody, dostn't, 
 126 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 because th' beest first favourite with He just now ! 
 But stop a bit, my lady, stop a bit ! I'm as good 
 as two of such ! Look here — here's at 'ee ! ' 
 
 To Tess's horror the dark queen began strip- 
 ping off the bodice of her gown — which for the 
 added reason of its ridiculed condition she was 
 only too glad to be free of — till she had bared her 
 plump neck, shoulders, and arms to the moonshine, 
 under which they looked as luminous and beauti- 
 ful as some Praxitelean creation, in their possession 
 of the faultless rotundities of a lusty country girl. 
 She closed her fists and squared up at Tess. 
 
 ' Indeed, then, I shall not fight ! ' said the latter 
 majestically ; ' and if I had known you was of that 
 sort, I wouldn't have so let myself down as to 
 come with such a whorage as this is ! ' 
 
 The rather too inclusive speech brought down 
 a torrent of vituperation from other quarters upon 
 fair Tess's unlucky head, particularly from the 
 Queen of Diamonds, who having stood in 
 the relations to D'Urberville that Car had also 
 been suspected of, united with the latter against 
 the common enemy. Several other women also 
 chimed in, with an animus which none of them 
 would have been so fatuous as to show but for 
 127 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 the rollicking evening they had passed. There- 
 upon, finding Tess unfairly browbeaten, the 
 husbands and lovers tried to make peace by 
 defending her ; but the result of that attempt 
 was directly to increase the war. 
 
 Tess was indignant and ashamed. She no 
 longer minded the loneliness of the way and the 
 lateness of the hour ; her one object was to get 
 away from the whole crew as soon as possible. 
 She knew well enough that the better among 
 them would repent of their passion next day. 
 They were all now inside the field, and she was 
 edging about to rush off alone when a horseman 
 emerged almost silently from the corner of the 
 hedge that screened the road, and Alec D'Urber- 
 ville looked round upon them. 
 
 ' What the devil is all this row about, work- 
 folk ?' he asked. 
 
 The explanation was not readily forthcoming ; 
 and, in truth, he did not require any. Having 
 heard their voices while yet some way off he had 
 ridden creepingly forward, and learnt enough to 
 satisfy himself. 
 
 Tess was standing apart from the rest, near the 
 gate. He bent over towards her. ' Jump up 
 
 123 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 behind me,' he whispered, ' and we'll get shot of 
 the screaming cats in a jiffy ! ' 
 
 She felt almost ready to faint, so vivid was her 
 sense of the crisis. At almost any other moment 
 of her life she would have refused such proffered 
 aid and company, as she had refused them several 
 times before ; and now the loneliness would not 
 of itself have forced her to do otherwise. But 
 coming as the invitation did at the particular 
 juncture when fear and indignation at these 
 adversaries could be transformed by a spring of 
 the foot into a triumph over them, she abandoned 
 herself to her impulse, put her toe upon his instep, 
 and leapt into the saddle behind him. The pair 
 were speeding away into the distant gray by the 
 time that the contentious revellers became aware 
 of what had happened. 
 
 The Queen of Spades forgot the stain on her 
 bodice, and stood beside the Queen of Diamonds 
 and the new-married, staggering young woman — 
 all with a gaze of fixity in the direction in which 
 the horse's tramp was diminishing into silence on 
 the road. 
 
 ' What be ye looking at ? ' asked a man who 
 had not observed the incident. 
 
 vol. i 129 k 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 1 Ho-ho-ho ! ' laughed dark Car. 
 
 1 Hee-hee-hee ! ' laughed the tippling bride, as 
 she steadied herself on the arm of her fond hus- 
 band. 
 
 ' Heu-heu-heu ! ' laughed dark Car's mother, 
 stroking her moustache as she explained laconi- 
 cally : ' Out of the frying-pan into the fire ! ' 
 
 And then these children of the open air, whom 
 even excess of alcohol could scarce injure per- 
 manently, betook themselves to the field-path ; 
 and as they went there moved onward with them, 
 around the shadow of each one's head, an opalized 
 circle of glory, formed by the moon's rays upon 
 the glistening sheet of dew. Each pedestrian 
 could see no halo but his or her own, which never 
 deserted the head-shadow, whatever its vulgar un- 
 steadiness might be ; but adhered to it, and per- 
 sistently beautified it ; till the erratic motions 
 seemed an inherent part of the irradiation, and 
 the fumes of their breathing a component of the 
 night's mist ; and the spirit of the scene, and of 
 the moonlight, and of Nature, seemed harmoni- 
 ously to mingle with the spirit of wine. 
 
 130 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 XI 
 
 I HE twain cantered along for some time with- 
 out speech, Tess as she clung to him still panting 
 in her triumph, yet in other respects dubious. She 
 had perceived that the horse was not the spirited 
 one he sometimes rode, and felt no alarm on that 
 score, though her seat was precarious enough. She 
 asked him to slow the animal to a walk, which 
 Alec accordingly did. 
 
 ' Neatly done, was it not, dear Tess,' he said 
 by and by. 
 
 1 Yes ! ' said she. ' I am sure I ought to be 
 much obliged to you.' 
 
 ' And are you ? ' 
 
 She did not reply. 
 
 * Tess, why do you always dislike my kissing 
 you ? ' 
 
 ' I suppose because I don't love you/ 
 
 131 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 ' You are quite sure ? ' 
 
 ' I am angry with you sometimes ! ' 
 
 ' Ah, I half feared as much. 5 Nevertheless, 
 Alec did not object to that confession. He knew 
 that anything was better than frigidity. ' Why 
 haven't you told me when I have made 'you 
 angry ? ' 
 
 1 You know very well why. Because I cannot 
 help myself here.' 
 
 ' I haven't offended you often by love-making.' 
 
 1 You have sometimes.' 
 
 ' How many times ? ' 
 
 ' You know as well as I — too many times. 
 
 1 Every time I have tried ? ' 
 
 She was silent, and the horse ambled along for 
 a considerable distance, till a faint luminous fog, 
 which had hung in the hollows all the evening, 
 became general and enveloped them. It seemed 
 to hold the moonlight in suspension, rendering it 
 more pervasive than in clear air. Whether on 
 this account, or from absent-mindedness, or from 
 sleepiness, she did not perceive that they had 
 long ago passed the point at which the lane to 
 Trantridge branched from the highway, and that 
 her conductor had not taken the Trantridge track. 
 132 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 She was inexpressibly weary. She had risen 
 at five o'clock every morning of that week, had 
 been on foot the whole of each day, and on this 
 evening had in addition walked the three miles to 
 Chaseborough, waited three hours for her neigh- 
 bours without eating or drinking, her impatience 
 to start them preventing either ; she had then 
 walked a mile of the way home, and had under- 
 gone the excitement of the quarrel, till it was now 
 nearly one o'clock. Only once, however, was she 
 overcome by actual drowsiness. In that moment 
 of oblivion she sank gently against him. 
 
 D'Urberville withdrew his feet from the stirrups, 
 turned sideways on the saddle, and enclosed her 
 waist with his arm to support her. 
 
 This immediately put her on the defensive, and 
 with one of those sudden impulses of reprisal to 
 which she was liable she gave him a little push 
 from her. In his ticklish position he nearly lost 
 his balance and only just avoided rolling over into 
 the road, the horse, though a powerful one, being 
 fortunately the quietest he rode. 
 
 ' That is devilish unkind ! ' he said. ' I mean 
 no harm — only to keep you from falling.' 
 
 She pondered suspiciously ; till, thinking that 
 i33 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 this might after all be true, she relented, and said 
 quite humbly, ' I beg your pardon, sir.' 
 
 1 1 won't pardon you unless you show some con- 
 fidence in me. Good God ! ' he burst out, ' what 
 am I, to be repulsed so by a mere chit like you ? 
 For near three mortal months have you trifled 
 with my feelings, eluded me, and snubbed me ; 
 and I won't stand it ! ' 
 
 ( I'll leave you to-morrow, sir.' 
 1 No, you will not leave me to-morrow ! Will 
 you, I ask once more, show your belief in me 
 by letting me encircle you with my arm ? Come, 
 between us two and nobody else, now. We know 
 each other well ; and you know that I love you, 
 and think you are the prettiest girl in the world, 
 which you are. May I treat you as a lover ? ' 
 
 She drew a quick pettish breath of objection, 
 writhing uneasily on her seat, looked far ahead, 
 and murmured, ' I don't know — I wish — how can 
 
 I say yes or no when ' 
 
 He settled the matter by clasping his arm 
 round her as he desired, and Tess expressed no 
 further negative. Thus they sidled onward till 
 it struck her they had been advancing for an 
 unconscionable time — far longer than was usually 
 i34 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 occupied by the short journey from Chaseborough, 
 even at this walking pace, and that they were no 
 longer on hard road, but in a mere trackway. 
 
 1 Why, where be we ? ' she exclaimed. 
 
 ' Passing by a wood.' 
 
 ' A wood — what wood ? Surely we are quite 
 out of the road ? ' 
 
 ' A bit of the Chase — the oldest wood in 
 England. It is a lovely night, and why should 
 we not prolong our ride a little ? ' 
 
 1 How could you be so treacherous !' said Tess, 
 between archness and real dismay, and getting rid 
 of his arm by pulling open his fingers one by one, 
 though at the risk of slipping off herself. ' Just 
 when I've been putting such trust in you, and 
 obliging you to please you, because I thought I 
 had wronged you by that push ! Please set me 
 down, and let me walk home.' 
 
 1 You cannot walk home, even if the air were 
 clear. We are miles away from Trantridge, if I 
 must tell you, and in this growing fog you might 
 wander for hours among these trees.' 
 
 1 Never mind that,' she coaxed. ' Put me 
 down, I beg you. I don't mind where it is ; only 
 let me get down, sir, please ! ' 
 i35 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 ' Very well, then, I will — on one condition. 
 Having brought you here to this out-of-the-way 
 place, I feel myself responsible for your safe-con- 
 duct home, whatever you may yourself feel about 
 it. As to your getting to Trantridge without 
 assistance, it is quite impossible ; for, to tell the 
 truth, owing to this fog, which so disguises every- 
 thing, I don't quite know where we are myself. 
 Now, if you will promise to wait beside the horse 
 while I walk through the bushes till I come to 
 some road or house, and ascertain exactly our 
 whereabouts, I'll deposit you here willingly. 
 When I come back I'll give you full directions, 
 and if you insist upon walking you may ; or you 
 may ride — at your pleasure.' 
 
 She accepted these terms, and slid off on the 
 near side, though not till he had stolen a hearty 
 kiss. He sprang down on the other side. 
 
 1 1 suppose I must hold the horse ? ' said 
 she. 
 
 ' Oh no ; it's not necessary,' replied Alec, patting 
 the panting creature. ' He's had enough of it for 
 to-night.' 
 
 He turned the horse's head into the bushes, 
 hitched him on to a bough, and pulling off a light 
 
 136 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 dust-coat that he wore, spread it upon the thick 
 leaves. 
 
 I Now, you sit there,' he said. ' That will keep 
 away the damp. Just give an eye to the horse — 
 it will be quite sufficient' 
 
 He took a few steps away from her, but, re- 
 turning, said, ' By the bye, Tess, your father has a 
 new cob to-day. Somebody gave it to him.' 
 
 ' Somebody ? You ! ' 
 
 D'Urberville nodded. 
 
 ' Oh how very good of you that is ! ' she ex- 
 claimed, with a painful sense of the awkwardness 
 of having to thank him just then. 
 
 ' And the children have some toys.' 
 
 I I didn't know — you ever sent them anything ! ' 
 she murmured, much moved. ' I almost wish you 
 had not — yes, I almost wish it ! ' 
 
 ' Why, dear ? ' 
 
 ' It — hampers me so.' 
 
 ' Tessy — don't you love me ever so little now ? ' 
 
 ' I'm grateful,' she reluctantly admitted. ' But 
 
 I fear I do not ' The sudden vision of his 
 
 passion for herself as a factor in this result so 
 
 distressed her that, beginning with one slow tear, 
 
 and then following with another, she wept outright. 
 
 i37 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 1 Don't cry, dear, dear one ! Now sit down 
 here, and wait till I come.' She passively sat 
 down on the coat that he had spread, and shivered 
 slightly. ' Are you cold ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' Not very — a little.' 
 
 He touched her with his ringers, which sank 
 into her as into a billow. ' You have only that 
 puffy muslin dress on — how's that ? ' 
 
 ' It's my best summer one. 'Twas very warm 
 when I started, and I didn't know I was going to 
 ride, and that it would be night.' 
 
 1 Nights grow chilly in September. Let me 
 see.' He went to the horse, took a druggist's 
 bottle from a parcel on the saddle, and after some 
 trouble in opening it held it to her mouth un- 
 awares. Tess sputtered and coughed, and gasping 
 ' It will go on my pretty frock !' swallowed as he 
 poured, to prevent the catastrophe she feared. 
 
 1 That's it — now you'll feel warmer,' said 
 D'Urberville, as he restored the bottle to its place. 
 ' It is only a well-known cordial that my mother 
 ordered me to bring for household purposes, and 
 she won't mind me using some of it medicinally. 
 Now, my pretty, rest there ; I shall soon be back 
 again.' 
 
 138 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 He pulled the overcoat round her shoulders and 
 plunged into the webs of vapour which by this 
 time formed veils between the trees. She could 
 hear the rustling of the branches as he ascended 
 the adjoining slope, till his movements were no 
 louder than the hopping of a bird, and finally 
 died away. With the setting of the moon the 
 pale light lessened, and Tess became invisible as 
 she fell into reverie upon the leaves where he had 
 left her. 
 
 In the meantime Alec D'Urberville had pushed 
 on up the slope to clear his genuine doubt as to 
 the quarter of the Chase they were in. He had, 
 in fact, ridden quite at random for over an hour, 
 taking any turning that came to hand in order to 
 prolong companionship with her, and giving far 
 more attention to Tess's moonlit person than to 
 any wayside object. A little rest for the jaded 
 animal being desirable, he did not hasten his 
 search for landmarks. A clamber over the hill 
 into the adjoining vale brought him to the fence 
 of a highway whose aspect he recognised, which 
 settled the question of their whereabouts. D'Ur- 
 berville thereupon turned back ; but by this time 
 the moon had quite gone down, and partly on 
 139 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 account of f the fog the Chase was wrapped in 
 thick darkness, although morning was not far off. 
 He was obliged to advance with outstretched 
 hands to avoid contact with the boughs, and 
 discovered that to hit the exact spot from which 
 he had started was at first entirely beyond him. 
 Roaming up and down, round and round, he at 
 length heard a slight movement of the horse close 
 at hand ; and the sleeve of his overcoat unex- 
 pectedly caught his foot. 
 
 ' Tess ! ' said D'Urberville. 
 
 There was no answer. The obscurity was 
 now so great that he could see absolutely nothing 
 but a pale nebulousness at his feet, which repre- 
 sented the white muslin figure he had left upon 
 the dead leaves. Everything else was blackness 
 alike. D'Urberville stooped ; and heard a gentle 
 regular breathing. She was sleeping soundly. 
 
 Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. 
 Above them rose the primeval yews and oaks of 
 the Chase, in which were poised gentle roosting 
 birds in their last nap ; and around them the 
 hopping rabbits and hares. But where was Tess's 
 guardian angel ? where was Providence ? Perhaps, 
 like that other god of whom the ironical Tishbite 
 140 
 
THE MAIDEN 
 
 spoke, he was talking, or he was pursuing, or he 
 was in a journey, or peradventure he was sleeping 
 and was not to be awaked. 
 
 Already at that hour some sons of the forest 
 were stirring and striking lights in not very distant 
 cottages ; good and sincere hearts among them, 
 patterns of honesty and devotion and chivalry. 
 And powerful horses were stamping in their stalls, 
 ready to be let out into the morning air. But no 
 dart or thread of intelligence inspired these men 
 to harness and mount, or gave them by any 
 means the least inkling that their sister was in the 
 hands of the spoiler ; and they did not come that 
 way. 
 
 Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine 
 tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank 
 as snow as yet, there should have been traced 
 such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive ; 
 why so often the coarse appropriates the finer 
 thus, many thousand years of analytical philosophy 
 have failed to explain to our sense of order. One 
 may, indeed, admit the possibility of a retribution 
 lurking in the catastrophe. Doubtless some of 
 Tess D'Urberville's mailed ancestors rollicking 
 home from a fray had dealt the same wrong even 
 141 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 more ruthlessly upon peasant girls of their time. 
 But though to visit the sins of the fathers upon 
 the children may be a morality good enough for 
 divinities, it is scorned by average human nature ; 
 and it therefore does not mend the matter. 
 
 As Tess's own people down in those retreats 
 are never tired of saying among each other in 
 their fatalistic way : ' It was to be.' There lay 
 the pity of it. An immeasurable chasm was to 
 divide our heroine's personality thereafter from 
 that previous self of hers who stepped from her 
 mother's door to try her fortune at Trantridge 
 poultry-farm. 
 
 END OF PHASE THE FIRST 
 
 142 
 
PHASE THE SECOND 
 
 MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 143 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 PHASE THE SECOND 
 MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 XII 
 
 1 HE basket was heavy and the bundle was 
 large, but she lugged them along like a person 
 who did not find any especial burden in material 
 things. Occasionally she stopped to rest in a 
 mechanical way by some gate or post ; and then, 
 giving the baggage another hitch upon her full 
 round arm, went steadily on again. 
 
 It was a Sunday morning in late October, 
 about four months after Tess Durbeyfield's arrival 
 at Trantridge. The time was not long past 
 daybreak, and the yellow luminosity upon the 
 horizon behind her back lighted the ridge to- 
 wards which her face was set — the barrier of the 
 vale wherein she had of late been a stranger — 
 vol. i 145 L 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 which she would have to climb over to reach her 
 birthplace. The ascent was gradual on this side, 
 and the soil and scenery differed much from those 
 within Blakemore Vale. Even the character 
 and accent of the two peoples had shades of 
 difference, despite the amalgamating effects of a 
 roundabout railway ; so that, though less than 
 twenty miles from the place of her sojourn at 
 Trantridge, her native village had seemed a far- 
 away spot. The field-folk shut in there traded 
 northward and westward, travelled, courted, and 
 married northward and westward, thought north- 
 ward and westward ; those on this side mainly 
 directed their energies and attention to the east 
 and south. 
 
 The incline was the same down which 
 D'Urberville had driven with her so wildly on 
 that day in June. Tess went up the remainder 
 of its length without stopping, and on reaching 
 the edge of the escarpment gazed over the 
 familiar green world beyond, now half veiled in 
 mist. It was always beautiful from here ; it 
 was terribly beautiful to Tess to-day, for since 
 her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that 
 the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing. 
 146 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 Life was totally changed for her forthwith. Verily 
 another girl than the one she had been at home 
 was she who, bowed by the thought, stood still 
 here, and turned to look behind her. She could 
 not bear to look forward into the Vale. 
 
 Ascending by the long white road that Tess 
 herself had just laboured up, she saw a two-wheeled 
 vehicle, beside which walked a man, who held up 
 his hand to attract her attention. 
 
 She obeyed the signal to wait for him with 
 unspeculative repose, and in a few minutes man 
 and horse stopped beside her. 
 
 ' Why did you slip away by stealth like this ? ' 
 said D'Urberville, with upbraiding breathlessness ; 
 ' on a Sunday morning, too, when people were all 
 in bed ! I only discovered it by accident, and I 
 have been driving like the deuce to overtake you. 
 Just look at the mare. Why go off like this ? 
 You know that nobody wished to hinder your 
 going. And how unnecessary it has been for 
 you to toil along on foot, and encumber your- 
 self with this heavy load ! I have followed like 
 a madman, simply to drive you the rest of the 
 distance, if you won't come back.' 
 
 1 I shan't come back ' said she. 
 147 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 ' I thought you wouldn't — I said so. Well, 
 then, put up your baskets, and let me help you 
 on.' 
 
 She listlessly placed her basket and bundle 
 within the dog -cart, and stepped up, and they 
 sat side by side. She had no fear of him now, 
 and in the cause of her confidence her sorrow lay. 
 
 D'Urberville mechanically lit a cigar, and the 
 journey was continued with broken unemotional 
 conversation on the commonplace objects by the 
 wayside. He had quite forgotten his struggle 
 to kiss her when, in the early summer, they had 
 driven in the opposite direction along the same 
 road. She sat now, like a puppet, replying to 
 his remarks in monosyllables. After a space 
 they came in view of the clump of trees beyond 
 which the village of Marlott stood. It was only 
 then that her still face showed the least emotion, 
 a tear or two beginning to trickle down. 
 
 * What are you crying for ? ' he coldly asked 
 ' I was only thinking that I was born over 
 there,' murmured Tess. 
 
 ' Well — we must all be born somewhere.' 
 1 1 wish I had never been born — there or any- 
 where else ! ' 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 ' Pooh ! Well, if you didn't wish to come to 
 Trantridge why did you come ? ' 
 
 She did not reply. 
 
 'You didn't come for love of me, that I'll 
 swear.' 
 
 I Tis quite true. If I had gone for love o' 
 you, if I had ever really loved 'ee, if I loved you 
 still, I should not so loathe and hate myself for 
 my weakness as I do now ! ' 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. She resumed — 
 
 I I didn't understand your meaning till it was 
 too late.' 
 
 ' That's what every woman says.' 
 
 ' How can you dare to use those words ! ' she 
 cried, turning impetuously upon him, her eyes 
 flashing as the latent spirit (of which he was to 
 see more some day) awoke in her. ' My God ! I 
 could knock you out of the gig ! Did it never 
 strike your mind that what every woman says 
 some women may feel ? ' 
 
 1 Very well/ he said, laughing ; ' I am sorry to 
 wound you. I did wrong — I admit it' He 
 dropped into some little bitterness as he con- 
 tinued : ' Only you needn't be so everlastingly 
 flinging it in my face. I am ready to pay to the 
 149 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 uttermost farthing. You know you need not work 
 in the fields or the dairies again. You know 
 you may clothe yourself with the best, instead 
 of in the bald plain way you have lately affected, 
 as if you couldn't get a ribbon more than you 
 earn.' 
 
 Her lip lifted slightly, though there was little 
 scorn, as a rule, in her large and impulsive 
 nature. 
 
 1 I have said I will not take anything more 
 from you, and I will not — I cannot ! I should 
 be your creature to go on doing that, and I 
 won't ! ' 
 
 ' One would think you were a princess from 
 your manner, in addition to a true and original 
 D'Urberville — ha ! ha ! Well, Tess, dear, I can 
 say no more. I suppose I am a bad fellow — 
 a damn bad fellow. I was born bad, and I have 
 lived bad, and I shall die bad in all probability. 
 But, upon my lost soul, I won't be bad towards 
 you again, Tess. And if certain circumstances 
 should arise — you understand — in which you are 
 in the least need, the least difficulty, send me one 
 line, and you shall have by return whatever you 
 require. I may not be at Trantridge — I am 
 150 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 going to London for a time — I can't stand the 
 old woman. But all letters will be forwarded.' 
 
 She said that she did not wish him to drive 
 her farther, and they stopped just under the 
 clump of trees. D'Urberville alighted, and lifted 
 her down bodily in his arms, afterwards placing 
 her articles on the ground beside her. She 
 bowed to him slightly, her eye just lingering in 
 his ; and then she turned to take the parcels for 
 departure. 
 
 Alec D'Urberville removed his cigar, bent to- 
 wards her, and said — 
 
 'You are not going to turn away like that, 
 dear ? Come ! ' 
 
 ' If you wish/ she answered indifferently. ' See 
 how you've mastered me ! ' 
 
 She thereupon turned round and lifted her 
 face to his, and remained like a marble term while 
 he imprinted a kiss upon her cheek — half per- 
 functorily, half as if zest had not yet quite died 
 out. Her eyes vaguely rested upon the remotest 
 trees in the lane while the kiss was given, as though 
 she were nearly unconscious of what he did. 
 
 ' Now the other side, for old acquaintance' 
 sake.' 
 
 151 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 She turned her head in the same passive way, 
 as one might turn at the request of a sketcher or 
 hairdresser, and he kissed the other side, his lips 
 touching cheeks that were damp and smoothly chill 
 as the skin of the mushrooms growing around them. 
 
 ' You don't give me your mouth and kiss me 
 back. You never willingly do that — you'll never 
 love me, I fear.' 
 
 1 1 have said so, often. It is true. I have 
 never really and truly loved you, and I think I 
 never can.' She added mournfully, ' Perhaps, of 
 all things, a lie on this thing would do the most 
 good to me now ; but I have honour enough left, 
 little as 'tis, not to tell that lie. If I did love you 
 I may have the best o' causes for letting you know 
 it. But I don't' 
 
 He emitted a laboured breath, as if the scene 
 were getting rather oppressive to his heart, or to 
 his conscience, or to his gentility. 
 
 ' Well, you are absurdly melancholy, Tess. 
 I have no reason for flattering you now, and I 
 can say plainly that you need not be so sad. 
 You can hold your own for beauty against any 
 woman of these parts, gentle or simple ; I say it 
 to you as a practical man and well-wisher. If you 
 152 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 are wise you will show it to the world more than 
 you do before it fades. . . . And yet, Tess, will 
 you come back to me ? Upon my soul I don't 
 like to let you go like this ! ' 
 
 1 Never, never ! I made up my mind as soon 
 as I saw — what I ought to have seen sooner ; 
 and I won't come.' 
 
 1 Then good-morning, my four months' cousin 
 — good-bye ! ' 
 
 He leapt up lightly, arranged the reins, and 
 was gone between the tall red-berried hedges. 
 
 Tess did not look after him, but slowly wound 
 along the crooked lane. It was still early, and 
 though the sun's lower limb was just free of the 
 hill his rays, ungenial and peering, addressed the 
 eye rather than the touch as yet. There was 
 not a human soul near. Sad October and her 
 sadder self seemed the only two existences haunt- 
 ing that lane. 
 
 As she walked, however, some footsteps 
 approached behind her, the footsteps of a man ; 
 and owing to the briskness of his advance he 
 was close at her heels and had said ' Good- 
 morning ' before she had been long aware of his 
 propinquity. He appeared to be an artisan of 
 iS3 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 some sort, and carried a tin pot of red paint in 
 his hand. He asked in a business-like manner if 
 he should take her basket, which she permitted 
 him to do, walking beside him. 
 
 ' It is early to be astir this Sabbath morn/ he 
 said cheerfully. 
 
 1 Yes,' said Tess. 
 
 1 When most people are at rest from their 
 week's work.' 
 
 She also assented to this. 
 
 1 Though I do more real work to-day than all 
 the week besides.' 
 
 'Do you?' 
 
 ' All the week I work for the glory of man, and 
 on Sunday for the glory of God. That's more 
 real than the other — hey ? I have a little to do 
 here at this stile.' The man turned as he spoke 
 to an opening at the roadside leading into a 
 pasture. ' If you'll wait a moment,' he added, ' I 
 shall not be long.' 
 
 As he had her basket she could not well do 
 otherwise ; and she waited, observing him. He set 
 down her basket and the tin pot, and stirring the 
 paint with the brush that was in it began painting 
 large square letters on the middle board of the 
 i54 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 three composing the stile, placing a comma be- 
 tween each word, as if to give pause while that word 
 was driven well home to the reader's heart — 
 
 THY, DAMNATION, SLUMBERETH, NOT. 
 
 2 Pet. ii. 3. 
 
 Against the peaceful landscape, the pale, de- 
 caying tints of the copses, the blue air of the 
 horizon, and the lichened stile-boards, these star- 
 ing vermilion words shone forth. They seemed 
 to shout themselves out and make the atmosphere 
 ring. Some people might have cried ' Alas, poor 
 Theology ! ' at the hideous defacement — the last 
 grotesque phase of a creed which had served 
 mankind well in its time. But the words entered 
 Tess with accusatory horror. It was as if this 
 man had known her recent history ; yet he was 
 a total stranger. 
 
 Having finished his text he picked up her 
 basket, and she mechanically resumed her walk 
 beside him. 
 
 ' Do you believe what you paint ? ' she asked 
 in low tones. 
 
 ' Believe that tex ? Do I believe in my own 
 existence ! ' 
 
 i55 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 ' But/ said she tremulously, ' suppose your sin 
 was not of your own seeking ? ' 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 1 I cannot split hairs on that burning query,' 
 he said. ' I have walked hundreds of miles 
 during this past summer, painting these texes on 
 every wall, gate, and stile in the length and 
 breadth of this district. I leave their application 
 to the hearts of the people who read 'em.'. 
 
 ' I think they are horrible/ said Tess. ' Crush- 
 ing ! killing ! ' 
 
 ' That's what they are meant to be ! ' he re- 
 plied in a trade voice. ' But you should read 
 my hottest ones — them I kips for slums and 
 seaports. They'd make ye wriggle ! Not but 
 what this is a very good tex for the rural districts. 
 . . . Ah — there's a nice bit of blank wall up by 
 that barn standing to waste. I must put one 
 there. Will you wait, miss ? ' 
 
 ' No/ said she ; and taking her basket Tess 
 trudged on. A little way forward she turned her 
 head. The old gray wall began to advertise a 
 similar fiery lettering to the first, with a strange 
 and unwonted mien, as if distressed at duties it 
 had never before been called upon to perform. 
 156 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 It was with a sudden flush that she read and 
 realized what was to be the inscription he was 
 now half-way through — 
 
 THOU, SHALT, NOT, COMMIT 
 
 Her cheerful friend saw her looking, stopped 
 his brush, and shouted — 
 
 ' If you want to ask anything of the sort we 
 was talking about, there's a very earnest good 
 man going to preach a charity -sermon to-day 
 in the parish you are going to — Mr. Clare, of 
 Emminster. I'm not of his persuasion now, but 
 he's a good man, and he'll explain as well as any 
 parson I know. 'Twas he began the work in me.' 
 
 But Tess did not answer ; she throbbingly 
 resumed her walk, her eyes fixed on the ground. 
 ' Pooh — I don't believe any of it ! ' she said con- 
 temptuously when her flush had died away. 
 
 A plume of smoke soared up suddenly from 
 her father's chimney, the sight of which made her 
 heart ache. The aspect of the interior, when she 
 reached it, made her heart ache more. Her 
 mother, who had just come down stairs, turned 
 to greet her from the fireplace, where she was 
 i57 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 kindling barked -oak. twigs under the breakfast 
 kettle. The young children were still above, as 
 was also her father, it being Sunday morning, when 
 he felt justified in lying an additional half-hour. 
 
 1 Well ! — my dear Tess ! ' exclaimed her sur- 
 prised mother, jumping up and kissing the girl. 
 1 How be ye ? I didn't see you till you was in 
 upon me ! Have you come home to be married ?' 
 
 ' No, I have not come for that, mother.' 
 
 ' Then for a holiday ?' 
 
 1 Yes — for a holiday ; for a long holiday,' said 
 Tess. 
 
 1 What, isn't your cousin going to do the hand- 
 some thing ? ' 
 
 ' He's not my cousin, and he's not going to 
 marry me.' 
 
 Her mother eyed her narrowly. 
 
 ' Come, you have not told me all,' she said. 
 
 Then Tess told. 
 
 1 And yet th'st not got him to marry 'ee ! ' 
 reiterated her mother. ' Any woman would have 
 done it but you ! ' 
 
 ' Perhaps any woman would except me.' 
 
 1 It would have been something like a story to 
 come back with, if you had ! ' continued Mrs. 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 Durbeyfield, ready to burst into tears of vexation. 
 1 After all the talk about you and him which has 
 reached us here, who would have expected it to 
 end like this ! Why didn't ye think of doing 
 some good for your family instead o' thinking 
 only of yourself? See how I've got to teave and 
 slave, and your poor weak father with his heart 
 clogged like a dripping-pan. I did hope for 
 something to come out o' this ! To see what a 
 pretty pair you and he made that day when you 
 drove away together four months ago ! See what 
 he has given us — all, as we thought, because we 
 were his kin. But if he's not, it must have been 
 done because of his love for 'ee. And yet you've 
 not got him to marry ! ' 
 
 Get Alec D'Urberville in the mind to marry 
 her ! He marry her ! On matrimony he had 
 never once said a word. And what if he had ? 
 How she might have been impelled to answer him 
 by a crude snatching at social salvation she could 
 not say. But her poor foolish mother little knew 
 her feeling towards this man. Perhaps it was 
 unusual in the circumstances, unnatural, unac- 
 countable ; but there it was ; and this, as she had 
 said, was what made her detest herself. She had 
 i59 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 never cared for him, she did not care for him now. 
 She had dreaded him, winced before him, suc- 
 cumbed to him, and that was all. Hate him she 
 did not quite ; but he was dust and ashes to her, 
 and even for her name's sake she scarcely wished 
 to marry him. 
 
 ' You ought to have been more careful if you 
 didn't mean to get him to make you his wife ! ' 
 
 ' O mother, my mother ! ' cried the agonised 
 girl, turning passionately upon her parent as if 
 her poor heart would break. ' How could I be 
 expected to know ? I was a child when I left 
 this house four months ago. Why didn't you tell 
 me there was danger ? Why didn't you warn me ? 
 Ladies know what to guard against, because they 
 read novels that tell them of these tricks ; but I 
 never had the chance of discovering in that way, 
 and you did not help me !' 
 Her mother was subdued. 
 
 1 1 thought if I spoke of his fond feelings and 
 what they might lead to, you would dislike him 
 and lose your chance,' she murmured, wiping her 
 eyes with her apron. ' Well, we must make the 
 best of it, I suppose. Tis nater, after all, and 
 what pleases God.' 
 
 160 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 XIII 
 
 1 HE event of Tess Durbeyfield's return from 
 the house of her rich kinsfolk was rumoured 
 abroad, if rumour be not too large a word for a 
 space of a square mile. In the afternoon several 
 young girls of Marlott, former schoolfellows and 
 acquaintances of Tess, called to see her, arriving 
 dressed in their best starched and ironed, as 
 became visitors to a person who had made a 
 transcendent conquest (as they supposed), and 
 sat round the room looking at her with great 
 curiosity. For the fact that it was this said thirty- 
 first cousin, Mr. D'Urberville, who had fallen in 
 love with her, a gentleman not altogether local, 
 whose reputation as a reckless gallant and heart- 
 breaker was beginning to spread beyond the im- 
 mediate boundaries of Trantridge, lent Tess's 
 supposed position, by its fearsomeness, a far 
 vol. i 161 M 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 higher fascination than it would have exercised 
 if unhazardous. 
 
 Their interest was so deep that the younger 
 ones whispered when her back was turned — 
 
 ' How pretty she is ; and how that best frock 
 do set her off ! I believe it cost an immense deal, 
 and that it was a gift from him.' 
 
 Tess, who was reaching up to get the tea- 
 things from the corner - cupboard, did not hear 
 these commentaries. If she had heard them, she 
 might soon have set her friends right on the 
 matter. But her mother heard, and Joan's simple 
 vanity, having been denied the hope of a dashing 
 marriage, fed itself as well as it could upon the 
 sensation of a dashing flirtation. Upon the whole 
 she felt gratified, even though such a limited and 
 meretricious triumph should involve her daughter's 
 reputation ; it might end in marriage yet, and in 
 the warmth of her responsiveness to their admira- 
 tion she invited her visitors to stay to tea. 
 
 Their chatter, their laughter, their good- 
 humoured innuendoes, above all, their flashes and 
 flickerings of envy, revived Tess's spirits also ; 
 and, as the evening wore on, she caught the in- 
 fection of their excitement, and grew almost gay. 
 162 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 The marble hardness left her face, she moved 
 with something of her old bounding step, and 
 flushed in all her young beauty. 
 
 At moments, in spite of thought, she would 
 reply to their inquiries with a manner of superi- 
 ority, as if recognizing that her experiences in 
 the field of courtship had, indeed, been slightly 
 enviable. But so far was she from being, in the 
 words of Robert South, ' in love with her own 
 ruin,' that the illusion was transient as lightning ; 
 cold reason came back to mock her spasmodic 
 weakness ; the ghastliness of her momentary pride 
 would convict her, and recall her to reserved list- 
 lessness again. 
 
 And the despondency of the next morning's 
 dawn, when it was no longer Sunday, but Mon- 
 day ; and no best clothes ; and the laughing 
 visitors were gone, and she awoke alone in her 
 old bed, the innocent younger children breathing 
 softly around her. In place of the excitement of 
 her return, and the interest it had inspired, she 
 saw before her a long and stony highway which 
 she had to tread, without aid, and with little 
 sympathy. Her depression was then terrible, 
 and she could have hidden herself in a tomb. 
 163 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 In the course of a few weeks Tess revived 
 sufficiently to show herself so far as was neces- 
 sary to get to church one Sunday morn- 
 ing. She liked to hear the chanting — such 
 as it was — and the old Psalms, and to join 
 in the Morning Hymn. That innate love of 
 melody, which she had inherited from her ballad- 
 singing mother, gave the simplest music a power 
 over her which could wellnigh drag her heart 
 out of her bosom at times. 
 
 To be as much out of observation as possible 
 for reasons of her own, and to escape the gallant- 
 ries of the young men, she set out before the 
 chiming began, and took a back seat under the 
 gallery, close to the lumber, where only old men 
 and women came, and where the bier stood on 
 end among the churchyard tools. 
 
 Parishioners dropped in by twos and threes, 
 deposited themselves in rows before her, rested 
 three-quarters of a minute on their foreheads as 
 if they were praying, though they were not ; then 
 sat up, and looked around. When the chants 
 came on one of her favourites happened to be 
 chosen among the rest — the double chant ' Lang- 
 don ' — but she did not know what it was called, 
 164 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 though she would much have liked to know. 
 She thought, without exactly wording the thought, 
 how strange and godlike was a composer's power, 
 who from the grave could lead through sequences 
 of emotion, which he alone had felt at first, a girl 
 like her who had never heard of his name, and 
 never would have a clue to his personality. 
 
 The people who had turned their heads turned 
 them again as the service proceeded ; and at last 
 observing her they whispered to each other. She 
 knew what their whispers were about, grew sick 
 at heart, and felt that she could come to church 
 no more. 
 
 The bedroom which she shared with some of 
 the children formed her retreat more continually 
 than ever. Here, under her few square yards of 
 thatch, she watched winds, and snows, and rains, 
 gorgeous sunsets, and successive moons at their 
 full. So close kept she that at length almost 
 everybody thought she had gone away. 
 
 The only exercise that Tess took at this time 
 was after dark ; and it was then, when out in the 
 woods, that she seemed least solitary. She knew 
 how to hit to a hair's -breadth that moment of 
 evening when the light and the darkness are so 
 
 165 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 evenly balanced that the constraint of day and 
 the suspense of night neutralize each other, 
 leaving absolute mental liberty. It is then that 
 the plight of being alive becomes attenuated to 
 its least possible dimensions. She had no fear 
 of the shadows ; her sole idea seemed to be to 
 shun mankind — or rather that cold accretion 
 called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, 
 is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units. 
 
 On these lonely hills and dales her quiescent 
 glide was of a piece with the element she moved 
 in. Her flexuous and stealthy figure became an 
 integral part of the scene. At times her whim- 
 sical fancy would intensify natural processes 
 around her till they seemed a part of her own 
 story. Rather they became a part of it ; for the 
 world is only a psychological phenomenon, and 
 what they seemed they were. The midnight 
 airs and gusts, moaning amongst the tightly- 
 wrapped buds and bark of the winter twigs, were 
 formulae of bitter reproach. A wet day was the 
 expression of irremediable grief at her weakness in 
 the mind of some vague ethical being whom she 
 could not class definitely as the God of her child- 
 hood, and could not comprehend as any other. 
 166 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 But this encompassment of her own character- 
 ization, based on shreds of convention, peopled 
 by phantoms and voices antipathetic to her, was 
 a sorry and mistaken creation of Tess's fancy — 
 a cloud of moral hobgoblins by which she was 
 terrified without reason. It was they that were 
 out of harmony with the actual world, not she. 
 Walking among the sleeping birds in the hedges, 
 watching the skipping rabbits on a moonlit warren, 
 or standing under a pheasant -laden bough, she 
 looked upon herself as a figure of Guilt intruding 
 into the haunts of Innocence. But all the while 
 she was making a distinction where there was no 
 difference. Feeling herself in antagonism she was 
 quite in accord. She had been made to break a 
 necessary social law, but no law known to the 
 environment in which she fancied herself such an 
 anomaly. 
 
 167 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 XIV 
 
 IT was a hazy sunrise in August. The denser 
 nocturnal vapours, attacked by the warm beams, 
 were dividing and shrinking into isolated fleeces 
 within hollows and coverts, where they waited till 
 they should be dried away to nothing. 
 
 The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious 
 sentient, personal look, demanding the masculine 
 pronoun for its adequate expression. His present 
 aspect, coupled with the lack of all human forms 
 in the scene, explained the old-time heliolatries 
 in a moment. One could feel that a saner re- 
 ligion had never prevailed under the sky. The 
 luminary was a golden -haired, beaming -faced, 
 mild-eyed, God-like creature, gazing down in the 
 vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth 
 that was brimming with interest for him. 
 
 His light, a little later, broke through chinks 
 168 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 of cottage shutters, throwing stripes like red-hot 
 pokers upon cupboards, chests of drawers, and 
 other furniture within ; and awakening harvesters 
 who were not already astir. 
 
 But of all ruddy things that morning the 
 brightest were two broad arms of painted wood, 
 which rose from the margin of a yellow cornfield 
 hard by Marlott village. They, with two others 
 below, formed the revolving Maltese cross of the 
 reaping-machine, which had been brought to the 
 field on the previous evening to be ready for 
 operations this day. The paint with which they 
 were smeared, intensified in hue by the sunlight, 
 imparted to them a look of having been dipped in 
 liquid fire. 
 
 The field had already been ' opened ' ; that is 
 to say, a lane a few feet wide had been hand-cut 
 through the wheat along the whole circumference 
 of the field, for the first passage of the horses and 
 machine. 
 
 Two groups, one of men and lads, the other of 
 women, had come down the lane just at the hour 
 when the shadows of the eastern hedge-top struck 
 the west hedge midway, so that the heads of the 
 groups were enjoying sunrise while their feet were 
 169 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 still in the dawn. They disappeared from the 
 lane between the two stone posts which flanked 
 the nearest field-gate. 
 
 Presently there arose from within a ticking 
 like the love-making of the grasshopper. The 
 machine had begun, and a moving concatenation 
 was visible over the gate, a driver sitting upon 
 one of the hauling horses, and an attendant on 
 the seat of the implement. Along one side of 
 the field the whole wain went, the arms of the 
 mechanical reaper revolving slowly, till it passed 
 down the hill quite out of sight. In a minute it 
 came up on the other side of the field at the same 
 equable pace ; the glistening brass star in the 
 forehead of the fore horse catching the eye as it 
 rose into view over the stubble, then the bright 
 arms, and then the whole machine. 
 
 The narrow lane of stubble encompassing the 
 field grew wider with each circuit, and the stand- 
 ing corn was reduced to smaller area as the 
 morning wore on. Rabbits, hares, snakes, rats, 
 mice, retreated inwards as into a fastness, unaware 
 of the ephemeral nature of their refuge, and of the 
 doom that awaited them later in the day when, 
 their covert shrinking to a more and more horrible 
 170 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 narrowness, they were huddled together, friends 
 and foes, till the last few yards of upright wheat 
 fell also under the teeth of the unerring reaper, 
 and they were every one put to death by the 
 sticks and stones of the harvesters. 
 
 The reaping - machine left the fallen corn 
 behind it in little heaps, each heap being of 
 the quantity for a sheaf; and upon these the 
 active binders in the rear laid their hands — 
 mainly women, but some of them men in print 
 shirts, and trousers supported round their waists 
 by leather straps, rendering useless the two but- 
 tons behind, which twinkled and bristled with sun- 
 beams at every movement of each wearer, as if 
 they were a pair of eyes in the small of his back. 
 
 But those of the other sex were the most 
 interesting of this company of binders, by reason 
 of the charm which is acquired by woman when 
 she becomes part and parcel of outdoor nature, 
 and is not merely an object set down therein as 
 at ordinary times. A field-man is a personality 
 afield; a field -woman is a portion of the field; 
 she has somehow lost her own margin, imbibed 
 the essence of her surrounding, and assimilated 
 herself with it. 
 
 171 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 The women — or rather girls, for they were 
 mostly young — wore drawn cotton bonnets with 
 great flapping curtains to keep off the sun, and 
 gloves to prevent their hands being wounded by 
 the stubble. There was one wearing a pale pink 
 jacket, another in a cream-coloured tight-sleeved 
 gown, another in a petticoat as red as the arms 
 of the reaping-machine ; and others, older, in the 
 brown -rough ' wropper ' or over -all — the old- 
 established and most appropriate dress of the 
 field-woman, which the young ones were aban- 
 doning. This morning the eye returns involun- 
 tarily to the girl in the pink cotton jacket, she 
 being the most flexuous and finely-drawn figure 
 of them all. But her bonnet is pulled so far 
 over her brow that none of her face is disclosed 
 while she binds, though her complexion may be 
 guessed from a stray twine or two of dark brown 
 hair which extends below the curtain of her 
 bonnet. Perhaps one reason why she seduces 
 casual attention is that she never courts it, though 
 the other women often gaze around them. 
 
 Her binding proceeds with clock -like mono- 
 tony. From the sheaf last finished she draws a 
 handful of ears, patting their tips with her left 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 palm to bring them even. Then stooping low 
 she moves forward, gathering the corn with both 
 hands against her knees, and pushing her left 
 gloved hand under the bundle to meet the right 
 on the other side, holding the corn in an embrace 
 like that of a lover. She brings the ends of the 
 bond together, and kneels on the sheaf while she 
 ties it, beating back her skirts now and then 
 when lifted by the breeze. A bit of her naked 
 arm is visible between the buff leather of the 
 gauntlet and the sleeve of her gown ; and as the 
 day wears on its feminine smoothness becomes 
 scarified by the stubble, and bleeds. 
 
 At intervals she stands up to rest, and to re- 
 tie her disarranged apron, or to pull her bonnet 
 straight. Then one can see the oval face of a 
 handsome young woman with deep dark eyes and 
 long heavy clinging tresses, which seem to clasp 
 in a beseeching way anything they fall against. 
 The cheeks are paler, the teeth more regular, the 
 red lips thinner than is usual in a country-bred 
 girl. 
 
 It is Tess Durbeyfield, otherwise D'Urberville, 
 somewhat changed — the same, but not the same ; 
 at the present stage of her existence living as a 
 
 i73 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 stranger and an alien here, though it was no 
 strange land that she was in. After a long 
 seclusion she had come to a resolve, during the 
 week under notice, to undertake outdoor work in 
 her native village, the busiest season of the year in 
 the agricultural world having arrived, and nothing 
 that she could do within the house being so 
 remunerative for the time as harvesting in the 
 fields. 
 
 The movements of the other women were more 
 or less similar to Tess's, the whole bevy of them 
 drawing together like dancers in a quadrille at 
 the completion of a sheaf by each, every one 
 placing her sheaf on end against those of the 
 rest, till a shock, or ' stitch ' as it was here called, 
 of ten or a dozen was formed. 
 
 They went to breakfast, and came again, and 
 the work proceeded as before. As the hour of 
 eleven drew near a person watching her might have 
 noticed that Tess's glance flitted wistfully to the 
 brow of the hill every now and then, though she 
 did not pause in her sheafing. On the verge of 
 the hour the heads of a group of children, of ages 
 ranging from six to fourteen, rose above the 
 stubbly convexity of the hill. 
 174 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 The face of Tess flushed slightly, but still she 
 did not pause. 
 
 The eldest of the comers, a girl who wore a 
 triangular shawl, its corner draggling on the 
 stubble, carried in her arms what at first sight 
 seemed to be a doll, but proved to be an infant 
 in long clothes. Another brought some lunch. 
 The harvesters ceased working, took their pro- 
 visions, and sat down against one of the shocks. 
 Here they fell to, the men plying a stone jar 
 freely, and passing round a cup. 
 
 Tess Durbeyfield had been one of the last to 
 suspend her labours. She sat down at the end 
 of the shock, her face turned somewhat away 
 from her companions. When she had deposited 
 herself a man in a rabbit - skin cap and with a 
 red handkerchief tucked into his belt, held the 
 cup of ale over the top of the shock for her to 
 drink. But she did not accept his offer. As 
 soon as her lunch was spread she called up the 
 big girl her sister, and took the baby of her, who, 
 glad to be relieved of the burden, went away to 
 the next shock and joined the other children 
 playing there. Tess, with a curiously stealthy yet 
 courageous movement, and with a still rising 
 i7S 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 colour, unfastened her frock and began suckling 
 the child. 
 
 The men who sat nearest considerately turned 
 their faces towards the other end of the field, 
 some of them beginning to smoke ; one, with 
 absent-minded fondness, regretfully stroking the 
 jar that would no longer yield a stream. All 
 the women but Tess fell into animated talk, and 
 adjusted the disarranged knots of their hair. 
 
 When the infant had taken its fill the young 
 mother sat it upright in her lap, and looking into 
 the far distance dandled it with a gloomy in- 
 difference that was almost dislike ; then all of 
 a sudden she fell to violently kissing it some 
 dozens of times, as if she could never leave off, 
 the child crying at the vehemence of an onset 
 which strangely combined passionateness with 
 contempt. 
 
 ' She's fond of that there child, though she 
 mid pretend not to be, and say she wishes the 
 baby and her too were in the churchyard,' 
 observed the woman in the red petticoat. 
 
 ' She'll soon leave off saying that,' replied the 
 one in buff. ■ Lord, 'tis wonderful what a body 
 can get used to in time ! ' 
 176 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 1 Twas a thousand pities that it should have 
 happened to she, of all others. But 'tis always 
 the comeliest ! The plain ones be as safe as 
 churches — hey, Jenny ? ' The speaker turned to 
 one of the group who certainly was not ill-defined 
 as plain. 
 
 It was a thousand pities, indeed ; it was im- 
 possible for even an enemy to feel otherwise on 
 looking at Tess as she sat there, with her flower- 
 like mouth and large tender eyes, neither black nor 
 blue nor gray nor violet ; rather all those shades 
 together, and a hundred others, which could be 
 seen if one looked into their irises — shade behind 
 shade — tint beyond tint — round depths that had 
 no bottom ; an almost typical woman, but for the 
 slight incautiousness of character inherited from 
 her race. 
 
 A resolution which had surprised herself had 
 brought her into the fields this week for the first 
 time during many months. After wearing and 
 wasting her palpitating heart with every engine 
 of regret that lonely inexperience could devise, 
 common-sense had illumined her. She felt that 
 she would do well to be useful again — to taste 
 anew sweet independence at any price. The past 
 vol. i 177 n 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 was past ; whatever it had been it was no more 
 at hand. Whatever its consequences, time would 
 close over them ; they would all in a few years 
 be as if they had never been, and she herself 
 grassed down and forgotten. Meanwhile the 
 trees were just as green as before ; the birds 
 sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. 
 The familiar surroundings had not darkened 
 because of her grief, nor sickened because of her 
 pain. 
 
 She might have seen that what had bowed her 
 head so profoundly — the thought of the world's 
 concern at her situation — was founded on an illu- 
 sion. She was not an existence, an experience, 
 a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody 
 but herself. To all humankind besides Tess was 
 only a passing thought. Even to friends she was 
 no more than a frequently passing thought. If 
 she made herself miserable the livelong night 
 and day it was only this much to them — ' Ah, 
 she makes herself unhappy.' If she tried to be 
 cheerful, to dismiss all care, to take pleasure in 
 the daylight, the flowers, the baby, she could 
 only be this idea to them — ' Ah, she bears it 
 very well.' Alone in a desert island would she 
 178 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 have been wretched at what had happened to her ? 
 Not greatly. If she could have been but just 
 created, to discover herself as a spouseless mother, 
 with no experience of life except as the parent of 
 a nameless child, would the position have caused 
 her to despair? No, she would have taken it 
 calmly, and found pleasures therein. Most of the 
 misery had been generated by her conventional 
 aspect, and not by her innate sensations. 
 
 Whatever Tess's reasoning, some spirit had 
 induced her to dress herself up neatly as she had 
 formerly done, and come out into the fields, 
 harvest - hands being greatly in demand just 
 then. This was why she had borne herself with 
 dignity, and had looked people calmly in the 
 face at times, even when holding the baby in her 
 arms. 
 
 The harvest-men rose from the shock of corn, 
 and stretched their limbs, and extinguished their 
 pipes. The horses, which had been unharnessed 
 and fed, were again attached to the scarlet 
 machine. Tess, having quickly eaten her own 
 meal, beckoned to her eldest sister to come and 
 take away the baby, fastened her dress, put on 
 the buff gloves again, and stooped anew to draw 
 i79 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 a bond from the last completed sheaf for the 
 tying of the next. 
 
 In the afternoon and evening the proceedings 
 of the morning were continued, Tess staying on 
 till dusk with the body of harvesters. Then they 
 all rode home in one of the largest wagons, in the 
 company of a broad tarnished moon that had 
 risen from the ground to the eastwards, its 
 face resembling the outworn gold-leaf halo of 
 some worm-eaten Tuscan saint. Tess's female 
 companions sang songs, and showed themselves 
 very sympathetic and glad at her reappearance 
 out of doors, though they could not refrain from 
 mischievously throwing in a few verses of the 
 ballad about the maid who went to the merry 
 green wood and came back a changed person. 
 There are counterpoises and compensations in 
 life ; and the event which had made of her 
 a social warning had also for the moment made 
 her the most interesting personage in the village 
 to many. Their friendliness won her still 
 farther away from herself, their lively spirits 
 were contagious, and she became almost gay. 
 
 But now that her moral sorrows were passing 
 away a fresh one arose on the natural side of 
 1 80 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 her which knew no social law. When she 
 reached home it was to learn to her grief that 
 the baby had been suddenly taken ill since the 
 afternoon. Some such collapse had been prob- 
 able, so tender and puny was its frame ; but the 
 event came as a shock nevertheless. 
 
 The baby's offence against society in coming 
 into the world was forgotten by the girl-mother ; 
 her soul's desire was to continue that offence by 
 preserving the life of the child. However, it soon 
 grew clear that the hour of emancipation for that 
 little prisoner of the flesh was to arrive earlier 
 than her worst misgivings had conjectured. And 
 when she had discovered this she was plunged 
 into a misery which transcended that of the 
 child's simple loss. Her baby had not been 
 baptized. 
 
 Tess had drifted into a frame of mind which 
 accepted passively the consideration that if she 
 should have to burn for what she had done, burn 
 she must, and there was an end of it. Like all 
 village girls she was well grounded in the Holy 
 Scriptures, and had dutifully studied the histories 
 of Aholah and Aholibah, and knew the inferences 
 to be drawn therefrom. But when the same 
 181 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 question arose with regard to the baby, it had 
 a very different colour. Her darling was about 
 to die, and no salvation. 
 
 It was nearly bedtime, but she rushed down- 
 stairs and asked if she might send for the parson. 
 The moment happened to be one at which her 
 father's sense of the antique nobility of his family 
 was highest, and his sensitiveness to the smudge 
 which Tess had set upon that nobility most pro- 
 nounced, for he had just returned from his even- 
 ing booze at Rolliver's Inn. No parson should 
 come inside his door, he declared, prying into his 
 affairs just then, when, by her shame, it had 
 become more necessary than ever to hide them. 
 He locked the door and put the key in his 
 pocket. 
 
 The household went to bed, and, distressed 
 beyond measure, Tess retired also. She was con- 
 tinually waking as she lay, and in the middle of 
 the night found that the baby was still worse. 
 It was obviously dying — quietly and painlessly, 
 but none the less surely. 
 
 In her misery she rocked herself upon the 
 bed. The clock struck the solemn hour of one, 
 that hour when thought stalks outside reason, 
 182 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 and malignant possibilities stand rock -firm as 
 facts. She thought of the child consigned to the 
 nethermost corner of hell, as its double doom for 
 lack of baptism and lack of legitimacy ; saw the 
 arch-fiend tossing it with his three-pronged fork, 
 like the one they used for heating the oven on 
 baking days ; to which picture she added many 
 other quaint and curious details of torment taught 
 the young in this Christian country. The lurid 
 presentment so powerfully affected her imagina- 
 tion in the silence of the sleeping house that her 
 nightgown became damp with perspiration, and 
 the bedstead shook with each throb of her heart. 
 
 The infant's breathing grew more difficult, and 
 the mother's mental tension increased. It was 
 useless to devour the little thing with kisses ; she 
 could stay in bed no longer, and walked feverishly 
 about the room. 
 
 ' O merciful God, have pity ; have pity upon 
 my poor baby ! ' she cried. ' Heap as much 
 anger as you want to upon me, and welcome ; 
 but pity the child ! ' 
 
 She leant against the chest of drawers, and 
 murmured incoherent supplications for a long 
 while, till she suddenly started up. 
 
 183 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 1 Ah ! perhaps baby can be saved ! Perhaps 
 it will be just the same ! ' 
 
 She spoke so brightly that it seemed as though 
 her face might have shone in the gloom surround- 
 ing her. 
 
 She lit a candle, and went to a second and a 
 third bed under the wall, where she awoke her 
 little sisters and brothers, all of whom occupied 
 the same room. Pulling out the washing-stand 
 so that she could get behind it, she poured some 
 water from a jug, and made them kneel around, 
 putting their hands together with fingers exactly 
 vertical. While the children, scarcely awake, awe- 
 stricken at her manner, their eyes growing larger 
 and larger, remained in this position, she took the 
 baby from her bed — a child's child — so immature 
 as scarce to seem a sufficient personality to endow 
 its producer with the maternal title. Tess then 
 stood erect with the infant on her arm beside the 
 basin, the next sister held the Prayer-Book open 
 before her, as the clerk at church held it before 
 the parson ; and thus the emotional girl set about 
 baptizing her child. 
 
 Her figure looked singularly tall and imposing 
 as she stood in her long white nightgown, a thick 
 
 184 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 cable of twisted dark hair hanging straight down 
 her back to her waist. The kindly dimness of 
 the weak candle abstracted from her form and 
 features the little blemishes which sunlight might 
 have revealed — the stubble scratches upon her 
 wrists, and the weariness of her eyes — her high 
 enthusiasm having a transfiguring effect upon the 
 face which had been her undoing, showing it as a 
 thing of immaculate beauty, with an impress of 
 dignity which was almost regal. The little ones 
 kneeling round, their sleepy eyes blinking and 
 red, awaited her preparations full of a suspended 
 wonder which their physical heaviness at that hour 
 would not allow to become active. 
 
 The eldest of them said : 
 
 1 Be you really going to christen him, Tess ? ' 
 
 The girl-mother replied in a grave affirmative. 
 
 ' What's his name going to be ? ' 
 
 She had not thought of that, but a name came 
 into her head as she proceeded with the baptismal 
 service, and now she pronounced it : 
 
 ' SORROW, I baptize thee in the name of the 
 Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' 
 
 She sprinkled the water, and there was silence. 
 
 ' Say " Amen," children.' 
 185 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 The tiny voices piped in obedient response : 
 ' Amen ! ' 
 
 Tess went on : 
 
 ' We receive this child ' — and so forth — ' and 
 do sign him with the sign of the Cross.' 
 
 Here she dipped her hand into the basin, and 
 fervently drew an immense cross upon the baby 
 with her forefinger, continuing with the customary 
 sentences as to his manfully fighting against sin, 
 the world, and the devil, and being a faithful 
 soldier and servant unto his life's end. She duly 
 went on with the Lord's Prayer, the children lisp- 
 ing it after her in a thin gnat-like wail, till, at the 
 conclusion, raising their voices to clerk's pitch, 
 they again piped into the silence, ' Amen ! ' 
 
 Then their sister, with much augmented con- 
 fidence in the efficacy of this sacrament, poured 
 forth from the bottom of her heart the thanksgiv- 
 ing that follows, uttering it boldly and triumph- 
 antly in the stopt - diapason note which her 
 voice acquired when her heart was in her speech, 
 and which will never be forgotten by those who 
 knew her. The ecstasy of faith almost apotheo- 
 sised her ; it set upon her face a glowing irradia- 
 tion, and brought a red spot into the middle of 
 186 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 each cheek ; while the miniature candle -flame 
 inverted in her eye-pupils shone like a diamond. 
 The children gazed up at her with more and more 
 reverence, and no longer had a will for question- 
 ing. She did not look like Sissy to them now, 
 but as a being large, towering, and awful — a 
 divine personage with whom they had nothing 
 in common. 
 
 Poor Sorrow's campaign against sin, the world, 
 and the devil was doomed to be of limited bril- 
 liancy — luckily perhaps for himself, considering 
 his beginnings. In the blue of the morning that 
 fragile soldier and servant breathed his last, 
 and when the other children awoke they cried 
 bitterly, and begged Sissy to have another pretty 
 baby. 
 
 The calmness which had possessed Tess since 
 the christening remained with her in the infant's 
 loss. In the daylight, indeed, she felt her terrors 
 about his soul to have been somewhat exagger- 
 ated ; whether well founded or not she had no 
 uneasiness now, reasoning that if Providence would 
 not ratify such an act of approximation she, for 
 one, did not value the kind of heaven lost by the 
 irregularity — either for herself or for her child. 
 
 187 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 So passed away Sorrow the Undesired — that 
 intrusive creature, that bastard gift of shameless 
 Nature who respects not the civil law ; a waif to 
 whom eternal Time had been a matter of days 
 merely, who knew not that such things as years 
 and centuries ever were ; to whom the cottage 
 interior was the universe, the week's weather 
 climate, new-born babyhood human existence, 
 and the instinct to suck human knowledge. 
 
 Tess, who mused on the christening a good 
 deal, wondered if it were doctrinally sufficient to 
 secure a Christian burial for the child. Nobody 
 could tell this but the parson of the parish, and 
 he was a new-comer, and a very reserved man. 
 She went to his house after dusk, and stood by 
 the gate, but could not summon courage to go in. 
 The enterprise would have been abandoned if she 
 had not by accident met him coming homeward 
 as she turned away. In the gloom she did not 
 mind speaking freely. 
 
 ' I should like to ask you something, sir.' 
 
 He expressed his willingness to listen, and she 
 told the story of the baby's illness and the extem- 
 porized ordinance. 
 
 ' And now, sir,' she added earnestly, ' can you 
 188 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 tell me this — will it be just the same for him as 
 if you had baptized him ? ' 
 
 Having the natural feelings of a tradesman at 
 finding that a job he should have been called in 
 for had been unskilfully botched by his customers 
 among themselves, he was disposed to say no. 
 Yet the dignity of the girl, the strange tenderness 
 in her voice, combined to affect his nobler im- 
 pulses — or rather those that he had left in him 
 after ten years of endeavour to graft technical 
 belief on actual scepticism. The man and the 
 ecclesiastic fought within him, and the victory 
 fell to the man. 
 
 ' My dear girl/ he said, : it will be just the 
 same.' 
 
 ' Then will you give him a Christian burial ? ' 
 she asked quickly. 
 
 The Vicar felt himself cornered. 
 
 Hearing of the baby's illness, he had con- 
 scientiously come to the house after nightfall to 
 perform the rite, and, unaware that the refusal to 
 admit him had come from Tess's father and not 
 from Tess, he could not allow the plea of 
 necessity. 
 
 ' Ah — that's another matter,' he said. 
 189 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 ' Another matter — why ? ' asked Tess rather 
 warmly. 
 
 1 Well — I would willingly do so if only we two 
 were concerned. But I must not — for liturgical 
 reasons.' 
 
 ' Just for once, sir ! ' 
 
 ' Really I must not.' 
 
 ' O sir, for pity's sake ! ' She seized his hand 
 as she spoke. 
 
 He withdrew it, shaking his head. 
 
 ( Then I don't like you ! ' she burst out, ' and 
 I'll never come to your church no more ! ' 
 
 1 Don't talk so rashly, Tess.' 
 
 ' Perhaps it will be just the same to him if you 
 don't? . . . Will it be just the same? Don't for 
 God's sake speak as saint to sinner, but as you 
 yourself to me myself — poor me ! ' 
 
 How the Vicar reconciled his answer with the 
 strict notions he supposed himself to hold on 
 these subjects it is beyond a layman's power to 
 tell, though not to excuse. Somewhat moved, 
 he said in this case also — 
 
 ' It will be just the same.' 
 
 So the baby was carried in a small deal box, 
 under an ancient woman's shawl, to the church- 
 190 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 yard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at 
 the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the 
 sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment 
 where He lets the nettles grow, and where all 
 unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, 
 and others of the conjecturally damned are laid. 
 In spite of the untoward surroundings, however, 
 Tess bravely made a little cross of two laths and 
 a piece of string, and having bound it with 
 flowers, she stuck it up at the head of the grave 
 one evening when she could enter the churchyard 
 without being seen, putting at the foot also a 
 bunch of the same flowers in a little jar of water 
 to keep them alive. What matter was it that on 
 the outside of the jar the eye of mere observation 
 noted the words ' Keelwell's Marmalade ' ? The 
 eye of maternal affection did not see them in its 
 vision of higher things. 
 
 191 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 XV 
 
 DY experience/ says Roger Ascham, 'we find 
 out a short way by a long wandering.' Not 
 seldom that long wandering unfits us for farther 
 travel, and of what use is our experience to us 
 then ? Tess Durbeyfield's experience was of this 
 incapacitating kind. At last she had learned 
 what to do ; but who would now accept her 
 doing? 
 
 If before going to the D'Urbervilles' she had 
 rigorously moved under the guidance of sundry 
 gnomic texts and phrases known to her and to 
 the world in general, no doubt she would never 
 have been imposed on. But it had not been in 
 Tess's power — nor is it in anybody's power — to 
 feel the whole truth of golden opinions when 
 it is possible to profit by them. She — and how 
 many more — might have ironically said to God 
 192 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 with Saint Augustine, ' Thou hast counselled a 
 better course than Thou hast permitted.' 
 
 She remained in her father's house during 
 the winter months, plucking fowls, or cramming 
 turkeys and geese, or making clothes for her 
 sisters and brothers out of some finery which 
 D'Urberville had given her, and she had put by 
 with contempt. Apply to him she would not. 
 But she would often clasp her hands behind her 
 head and muse when she was supposed to be 
 working hard. 
 
 She philosophically noted dates as they came 
 past in the revolution of the year ; the disastrous 
 night of her life at Trantridge with its dark back- 
 ground of the Chase ; also the dates of the baby's 
 birth and death ; also her own birthday ; and every 
 other day individualized by incidents in which 
 she had taken some share. She suddenly thought 
 one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her 
 fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater 
 importance to her than those ; that of her own 
 death, when all these charms would have disap- 
 peared ; a day which lay sly and unseen among 
 all the other days of the year, giving no sign or 
 sound when she annually passed over it ; but not 
 vol. i 193 o 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 the less surely there. When was it ? Why did 
 she not feel the chill of each yearly encounter 
 with such a cold relation ? She had Jeremy 
 Taylor's thought that some time in the future 
 those who had known her would say, ' It is 
 the — th, the day that poor Tess Durbeyfield 
 died ' ; and there would be nothing singular to 
 their minds in the statement. Of that day, 
 doomed to be her terminus in time through all 
 the ages, she did not know the place in month, 
 week, season, or year. 
 
 Almost at a leap Tess thus changed from 
 simple girl to complex woman. Symbols of 
 reflectiveness passed into her face, and a note of 
 tragedy at times into her voice. Her eyes grew 
 larger and more eloquent. She became what 
 would have been called a fine creature ; her 
 aspect was fair and arresting ; her soul that of a 
 woman whom the turbulent experiences of the 
 last year or two had quite failed to demoralize. 
 But for the world's opinion those experiences 
 would have been simply a liberal education. 
 
 She had held so aloof of late that her trouble, 
 never generally known, was nearly forgotten in 
 Marlott. But it became evident to her that she 
 194 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 could never be really comfortable again in a 
 place which had seen the collapse of her family's 
 attempt to ' claim kin ' — and, through her, even 
 closer union — with the rich D'Urbervilles. At 
 least she could not be comfortable there till long 
 years should have obliterated her keen conscious- 
 ness of it. Yet even now Tess felt the pulse of 
 hopeful life still warm within her ; she might be 
 happy in some nook which had no memories. 
 To escape the past and all that appertained 
 thereto was to annihilate it, and to do that 
 she would have to get away. 
 
 Was once lost always lost really true of 
 chastity? she would ask herself. She might 
 prove it false if she could veil bygones. The re- 
 cuperative power which pervaded organic nature 
 was surely not denied to maidenhood alone. 
 
 She waited a long time without finding 
 opportunity for a new departure. A particularly 
 fine spring came round, -and the stir of germi- 
 nation was almost audible in the buds ; it moved 
 her, as it moved the wild animals, and made her 
 passionate to go. At last, one day in early May, 
 a letter reached her from an old friend of her 
 mother's, to whom she had addressed inquiries 
 i95 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 long before — a dairyman whom she had never 
 seen — that a skilful milkmaid was required at his 
 dairy-house, and that he would be glad to have 
 her for the summer months, if she had found 
 nothing to do in the interim. 
 
 It was not quite so far off as could have 
 been wished ; but it was probably far enough, 
 her radius of movement and repute having been 
 so small. To persons of limited spheres, miles 
 are as geographical degrees, parishes as counties, 
 counties as provinces and kingdoms. 
 
 On one point she was resolved : there should 
 be no more D'Urberville air-castles in the dreams 
 and deeds of her new life. She would be the 
 dairymaid Tess, and nothing more. Her mother 
 knew Tess's feeling on this point so well, though 
 no words had passed between them on the 
 subject, that she never alluded to the knightly 
 ancestry now. 
 
 Yet such is human inconsistency that one of 
 the interests of the new place to her was the 
 accidental virtue of its lying near her forefathers' 
 country (for they were not Blakemore men, though 
 her mother was Blakemore to the bone). The 
 dairy called Talbothays, for which she was bound, 
 196 
 
MAIDEN NO MORE 
 
 stood not remotely from some of the former 
 estates of the D'Urbervilles, near the great family 
 vaults of her granddames and their powerful hus- 
 bands. She would be able to look at them, and 
 think not only that D'Urberville, like Babylon, 
 had fallen, but that the individual innocence of 
 a humble descendant could lapse as silently. All 
 the while she wondered if any strange good thing 
 might come of her being in her ancestral land ; 
 and some spirit within her rose automatically as 
 the sap in the twigs. It was unexpended youth, 
 surging up anew after its temporary check, and 
 bringing with it hope, and the invincible instinct 
 towards self-delight. 
 
 END OF PHASE THE SECOND 
 
 197 
 
PHASE THE THIRD 
 THE RALLY 
 
 199 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 PHASE THE THIRD 
 THE RALLY 
 
 XVI 
 
 ON a thyme -scented, bird -singing morning in 
 May, between two and three years after the 
 return from Trantridge — two silent reconstructive 
 years for Tess Durbeyfield — she left her home for 
 the second time. 
 
 Having packed up her luggage so that it could 
 be sent to her later, she started in a hired trap for 
 the little town of Stourcastle, through which it 
 was necessary to pass on her journey, now in a 
 direction almost opposite to that of her first 
 adventuring. On the curve of the nearest hill 
 she looked back regretfully at Marlott and her 
 father's house, although she had been so anxious 
 to get away. 
 
 Her kindred dwelling there would probably 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 continue their daily lives as heretofore, with no 
 great diminution of pleasure in their conscious- 
 ness, although she would be far off, and they 
 deprived of her smile. In a few days the children 
 would engage in their games as merrily as ever 
 without the sense of any gap left by her de- 
 parture. This leaving of the younger children 
 she had decided was for the best ; were she to 
 remain they would probably gain less good by 
 her precepts than harm by her example. 
 
 She went through Stourcastle without pausing, 
 and onward to a junction of highways, where 
 she could await a carrier's van that ran to the 
 south-west ; for the railways which engirdled this 
 interior tract of country had never yet struck 
 across it. While waiting, however, there came 
 along a farmer in his spring-cart, driving approxi- 
 mately in the direction that she wished to pursue ; 
 though he was a stranger to her she accepted his 
 offer of a seat beside him, ignoring that its motive 
 was a mere tribute to her countenance. He was 
 going to Weatherbury, and by accompanying him 
 thither she could walk the remainder of the 
 distance instead of travelling in the van by way 
 of Casterbridge. 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 Tess did not stop at Weatherbury, after this 
 long drive, further than to make a slight nonde- 
 script meal at noon at a cottage to which the 
 farmer recommended her. Thence she started on 
 foot, basket in hand, to reach the wide upland of 
 heath dividing this district from the low-lying 
 meads of a farther valley in which the dairy 
 stood that was the aim and end of her day's 
 pilgrimage. 
 
 Tess had never before visited this part of the 
 country, and yet she felt akin to the landscape. 
 Not so very far to the left of her she could 
 discern a dark patch in the scenery, which inquiry 
 confirmed her in supposing to be trees, marking 
 the environs of Kingsbere — in the church of 
 which parish the bones of her ancestors — her 
 useless ancestors — lay entombed. 
 
 She had no admiration for them now ; she 
 almost hated them for the dance they had led 
 her ; not a thing of all that had been theirs did 
 she retain but the old seal and spoon. ' Pooh — 
 I have as much of mother as father in me !' she 
 said. ' All my prettiness comes from her, and she 
 was only a dairymaid.' 
 
 The journey over the intervening uplands and 
 203 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 lowlands of Egdon, when she reached them, was 
 a more troublesome walk than she had antici- 
 pated, the distance being actually but a few miles. 
 In two hours, after sundry wrong turnings, she 
 found herself on a summit commanding the long- 
 sought-for vale, the valley of the Great Dairies, 
 the valley in which milk and butter grew to 
 rankness, and were produced more profusely, if 
 less delicately, than at her home — the verdant 
 plain so well watered by the river Var or Froom. 
 It was intrinsically different from the Vale 
 of Little Dairies, Blackmoor Vale, which, save 
 during her disastrous sojourn at Trantridge, she 
 had exclusively known till now. The world was 
 drawn to a larger pattern here. The enclosures 
 numbered fifty acres instead of ten, the farm- 
 steads were more extended, the groups of cattle 
 formed tribes here about ; there only families. 
 These myriads of cows stretching under her eyes 
 from the far east to the far west outnumbered 
 any she had ever seen at one glance before. The 
 green lea was speckled as thickly with them as 
 a canvas by Van Alsloot or Sallaert with burghers. 
 The ripe hue of the red and dun kine absorbed the 
 evening sunlight, which the white-coated animals 
 204 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 returned to the eye in rays almost dazzling, 
 even at the distant elevation on which she stood. 
 
 The bird's-eye perspective before her was not 
 so luxuriantly beautiful, perhaps, as that other one 
 which she knew so well ; yet it was more cheer- 
 ing. It lacked the intensely blue atmosphere of 
 the rival vale, and its heavy soils and scents ; the 
 new air was clear, bracing, ethereal. The river 
 itself, which nourished the grass and cows of these 
 renowned dairies, flowed not like the streams in 
 Blackmoor. Those were slow, silent, often turbid ; 
 flowing over beds of mud into which the in- 
 cautious wader might sink and vanish unawares. 
 The Var waters were clear as the pure River 
 of Life shown to the Evangelist, rapid as the 
 shadow of a cloud, with pebbly shallows that 
 prattled to the sky all day long. There the water- 
 flower was the lily ; the crowfoot here. 
 
 Either the change in the quality of the air 
 from heavy to light, or the sense of being amid 
 new scenes where there were no invidious eyes 
 upon her, sent up her spirits wonderfully. Her 
 hopes mingled with the sunshine in an ideal 
 photosphere which surrounded her as she bounded 
 along against the soft south wind. She heard a 
 205 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 pleasant voice in every breeze, and in every bird's 
 note seemed to lurk a joy. 
 
 Her face had latterly changed with changing 
 states of mind, continually fluctuating between 
 beauty and ordinariness, according as the thoughts 
 were gay or grave. One day she was pink and 
 flawless ; another pale and tragical. When she 
 was pink she was feeling less than when pale ; 
 her more perfect beauty accorded with her less 
 elevated mood ; her more perfect mood with her 
 less perfect beauty. It was her best face physi- 
 cally that was now set against the south wind. 
 
 The irresistible, universal, automatic tendency 
 to find sweet pleasure somewhere, which pervades 
 all life, from the meanest to the highest, had at 
 length mastered Tess. Being even now only a 
 young woman of twenty, one who mentally and 
 sentimentally had not finished growing, it was 
 impossible that any event should have left upon 
 her an impression that was not at least capable 
 of transmutation. 
 
 And thus her spirits, and her thankfulness, and 
 
 her hopes, rose higher and higher. She tried 
 
 several ballads, but found them inadequate ; till, 
 
 recollecting the psalter that her eyes had so often 
 
 206 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 wandered over of a Sunday morning before she 
 had eaten of the tree of knowledge, she chanted : 
 1 ye Sun and Moon ... O ye Stars ... ye 
 Green Things upon the Earth ... ye Fowls of 
 the Air . . . Beasts and Cattle . . . Children of 
 Men . . . bless ye the Lord, praise Him and 
 magnify Him for ever!' 
 
 She suddenly stopped and murmured : ' But 
 perhaps I don't quite know the Lord as yet' 
 
 And probably the half- unconscious rhapsody 
 was a Fetichistic utterance in a Monotheistic 
 falsetto ; women whose chief companions are the 
 forms and forces of outdoor Nature retain in their 
 souls far more of the Pagan fantasy of their 
 remote forefathers than of the systematized religion 
 taught their race at later date. However, Tess 
 found at least approximate expression for her 
 feelings in the old Benedicite that she had lisped 
 from infancy ; and it was enough. Such high 
 contentment with such a slight and initial per- 
 formance as that of having started towards a 
 means of independent living was a part of the 
 Durbeyfield temperament. Tess really wished to 
 walk uprightly, while her father did nothing of 
 the kind ; but she resembled him in being con- 
 207 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 tent with immediate and small achievements, and 
 in having no mind for laborious effort towards 
 such petty social advancement as could alone be 
 effected by a family so heavily handicapped as 
 the once powerful D'Urbervilles were now. 
 
 There was, of course, the energy of her mother's 
 unexpended family, as well as the natural energy 
 of Tess's years, rekindled after the experience 
 which had so overwhelmed her for the time. Let 
 the truth be told — women do as a rule live 
 through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, 
 and again look about them with an interested eye. 
 While there's life there's hope is a conviction not 
 so entirely unknown to the ' betrayed ' as some 
 amiable theorists would have us believe. 
 
 Tess Durbeyfield, then, in good heart, and full 
 of zest for life, descended the Egdon slopes lower 
 and lower towards the dairy of her pilgrimage. 
 
 The marked difference, in the final particular, 
 between the rival vales now showed itself. The 
 secret of Blackmoor was best discovered from the 
 heights around ; to read aright the valley before 
 her it was necessary to descend into its midst. 
 When Tess had accomplished this feat she found 
 herself to be standing on a carpeted level, which 
 208 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 stretched to the east and west as far as the eye 
 could reach. 
 
 The river had stolen from the higher tracts 
 and brought in particles to the vale all this hori- 
 zontal land ; and now, exhausted, aged, and 
 attenuated, lay serpentining along through the 
 midst of its former spoils. 
 
 Not quite sure of her direction Tess stood still 
 upon the hemmed expanse of verdant flatness, 
 like a fly on a billiard-table of indefinite length, 
 and of no more consequence to the surroundings 
 than that fly. The sole effect of her presence 
 upon the placid valley so far had been to excite 
 the mind of a solitary heron, which, after descend- 
 ing to the ground not far from her path, stood 
 with neck erect, looking at her. 
 
 Suddenly there arose from all parts of the 
 lowland a prolonged and repeated call — 
 
 ' Waow ! waow ! waow ! ' 
 
 From the farthest east to the farthest west the 
 cries spread as if by contagion, accompanied in 
 some cases by the barking of a dog. It was not 
 the expression of the valley's consciousness that 
 beautiful Tess had arrived, but the ordinary an- 
 nouncement of milking-time — half- past four 
 
 vol. i 209 p 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 o'clock, when the dairymen set about getting in 
 the cows. 
 
 The red and white herd nearest at hand, which 
 had been phlegmatically waiting for the call, now 
 trooped towards the steading in the background, 
 their great bags of milk swinging under them as 
 they walked. Tess followed slowly in their rear, 
 and entered the barton by the open gate through 
 which they had entered before her. Long thatched 
 sheds stretched round the enclosure, their slopes 
 encrusted with vivid green moss, and their eaves 
 supported by wooden posts rubbed to a glossy 
 smoothness by the flanks of infinite cows and 
 calves of bygone years, now passed to an oblivion 
 almost inconceivable in its profundity. Between 
 the posts were ranged the milchers, each exhibit- 
 ing herself at the present moment to an eye in 
 the rear as a circle on two stalks, down the centre 
 of which a switch moved pendulum-wise ; while 
 the sun, lowering itself behind this patient row, 
 threw their shadows accurately inwards upon the 
 wall. Thus it threw shadows of these obscure 
 and unstudied figures every evening with as much 
 care over each contour as if it had been the profile 
 of a Court beauty on a palace wall ; copied them 
 
 210 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 as diligently as it had copied Olympian shapes 
 on marble facades long ago, or the outline of 
 Alexander, Caesar, and the Pharaohs. 
 
 They were the less restful cows that were 
 stalled. Those that would stand still of their own 
 free will were milked in the middle of the yard, 
 where many of such better behaved ones stood 
 waiting now — all prime milchers, such as were 
 seldom seen out of this valley, and not always 
 within it ; nourished by the succulent feed which 
 the water-meads supplied at this prime season of 
 the year. Those of them that were spotted with 
 white reflected the sunshine in dazzling brilliancy, 
 and the polished brass knobs on their horns glit- 
 tered with something of military display. Their 
 large-veined udders hung ponderous as sandbags, 
 the teats sticking out like the legs of a gipsy's 
 crock ; and as each animal lingered for her turn 
 to arrive the milk oozed forth and fell in drops 
 to the ground. 
 
 211 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 XVII 
 
 1 HE dairymaids and men had flocked down 
 from their cottages and out of the dairy-house 
 with the arrival of the cows from the meads ; the 
 maids walking in pattens, not on account of the 
 weather, but to keep their shoes above the mulch 
 of the barton. Each girl sat down on her three- 
 legged stool, her face sideways, her right cheek 
 resting against the cow, and looked musingly 
 along the animal's flank at Tess as she ap- 
 proached. The male milkers, with hat - brims 
 turned down, resting on their foreheads and 
 gazing on the ground, did not observe her. 
 
 One of these was a sturdy middle-aged man — 
 whose long white ' pinner ' was somewhat finer 
 and cleaner than the wraps of the others, and 
 whose jacket underneath had a presentable mar- 
 keting aspect — the master-dairyman, of whom she 
 212 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 was in quest, his double character as a working 
 milker and butter-maker here during six days, 
 and on the seventh as a man in shining broad- 
 cloth in his family pew at church, being so 
 marked as to have inspired a rhyme — 
 
 Dairyman Dick 
 All the week : — 
 On Sundays Mister Richard Crick. 
 
 Seeing Tess standing at gaze he went across 
 to her. 
 
 The majority of dairymen have a cross manner 
 at milking-time, but it happened that Mr. Crick 
 was glad to get a new hand — for the days were 
 busy ones now — and he received her warmly ; 
 inquiring for her mother and the rest of the 
 family — (though this as a matter of form mainly, 
 for in reality he had quite forgotten Mrs. Durbey- 
 field's existence till reminded of the fact by her 
 daughter's letter). 
 
 1 Oh — ay, I knowed yer mother very well,' he 
 said terminatively. ' And I heard of her mar- 
 riage. And a aged woman of ninety that used 
 to live nigh here, but is dead and gone long ago, 
 once told me that the family yer mother married 
 213 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 into in Blackmoor Vale came originally from 
 these parts, and that 'twere a old ancient race 
 that had all but perished off the earth — though 
 the new generations didn't know it. But, Lord, 
 I took no notice of the old woman's ramblings, 
 not I.' 
 
 ' Oh no — it is nothing,' said Tess. 
 
 Then the talk was of business only. 
 
 1 You can milk 'em clean, my maidy ? I don't 
 want my cows going azew at this time o' year.' 
 
 She reassured him on that point, and he sur- 
 veyed her up and down. She had been staying 
 indoors since the autumn, and her complexion 
 had grown delicate. 
 
 ' Quite sure you can stand it ? Tis comfort- 
 able enough here for rough folk ; but we don't 
 live in a cowcumber frame.' 
 
 She declared that she could stand it, and her 
 zest and willingness seemed to win him over. 
 
 ' Well, I suppose you'll want a dish o' tay, or 
 victuals of some sort, hey? Not yet? Well, do 
 as ye like about it. But faith, if 'twas I, I should 
 be as dry as a kex wi' travelling so far.' 
 
 1 I'll begin milking now, to get my hand in,' 
 said Tess. 
 
 214 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 She drank a little milk as temporary refresh- 
 ment — to the surprise — indeed, slight contempt — 
 of Dairyman Crick, to whose mind it had appar- 
 ently never occurred that milk was good as a 
 beverage. 
 
 1 Oh, if ye can swaller that, be it so,' he said 
 indifferently, while holding up the pail that she 
 sipped from. ' Tis what I haint touched for 
 years — not I. Rot the stuff; it would lie in my 
 innerds like lead. You can try your hand upon 
 she,' he pursued nodding to the nearest cow. 
 1 Not but what she do milk rather hard. We've 
 hard ones and we've easy ones, like other folks. 
 However, you'll find out that soon enough.' 
 
 When Tess had changed her bonnet for a 
 hood, and was really on her stool under the cow, 
 and the milk was squirting from her fists into the 
 pail, she appeared to feel that she really had laid 
 a new foundation for her future. The conviction 
 bred serenity, her pulse slowed, and she was able 
 to look about her. 
 
 The milkers formed quite a little battalion of 
 
 men and maids, the men operating on the hard- 
 
 teated animals, the maids on the kindlier natures. 
 
 It was a large dairy. There were more than a 
 
 2I 5 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 hundred milchers under Crick's management, all 
 told ; and of the herd the master-dairyman milked 
 six or eight with his own hands, unless away from 
 home. These were the cows that milked hardest 
 of all ; for his journey-milkmen being more or less 
 casually hired, he would not entrust this half-dozen 
 to their treatment, lest, from indifference, they 
 should not milk them clean ; nor to the maids, 
 lest they should fail in the same way for lack of 
 finger-grip ; with the result that in course of time 
 the cows would ' go azew ' — that is, dry up. It 
 was not the loss for the moment that made slack 
 milking so serious, but that with the decline of 
 demand there came decline, and ultimately cessa- 
 tion, of supply. 
 
 After Tess had settled down to her cow there 
 was for a time no talk in the barton, and not a 
 sound interfered with the purr of the milk-jets 
 into the numerous pails, except a momentary 
 exclamation to one of the beasts requesting her 
 to turn round or stand still. The only movements 
 were those of the milkers' hands up and down, 
 and the swing of the cows' tails. Thus they all 
 worked on, encompassed by the vast flat mead 
 which extended to either slope of the valley — a 
 216 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 level landscape compounded of old landscapes long 
 forgotten, and, no doubt, differing in character very 
 greatly from the landscape they composed now. 
 
 • To my thinking,' said the dairyman, rising 
 suddenly from a cow he had just finished off, 
 snatching up his three-legged stool in one hand 
 and the pail in the other, and moving on to the 
 next hard-yielder in his vicinity ; ' to my thinking, 
 the cows don't gie down their milk to-day as 
 usual. Upon my life, if Winker do begin keeping 
 back like this, she'll not be worth going under by 
 midsummer.' 
 
 ' Tis because there's a new hand come among 
 us,' said Jonathan Kail. ' I've noticed such things 
 afore.' 
 
 'To be sure. It may be so. I didn't think 
 o't.' 
 
 1 I've been told that it goes up into their horns 
 at such times,' said a dairymaid. 
 
 ' Well, as to going up into their horns,' replied 
 Dairyman Crick dubiously, as though even witch- 
 craft might be limited by anatomical possibilities, 
 * I couldn't say ; I certainly could not. But as 
 nott cows will keep it back as well as the horned 
 ones, I don't quite agree to it. Do ye know that 
 217 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 riddle about the nott cows, Jonathan ? Why 
 do nott cows give less milk in a year than 
 horned ? ' 
 
 1 1 don't ! ' interposed the milkmaid. ' Why do 
 they ? ' 
 
 ' Because there baint so many of 'em/ said the 
 dairyman. ' Howsomever, these gam'sters do cer- 
 tainly keep back their milk to-day. Folks, we 
 must lift up a stave or two — that's the only cure 
 for't' 
 
 Songs were often resorted to in dairies here- 
 about as an enticement to the cows when they 
 showed signs of withholding their usual yield ; 
 and the band of milkers at this request burst 
 into melody — in purely business-like tones, it is 
 true, and with no great spontaneity ; the result, 
 according to their own belief, being a decided 
 improvement during the song's continuance. 
 When they had gone through fourteen or fif- 
 teen verses of a cheerful ballad about a murderer 
 who was afraid to go to bed in the dark because 
 he saw certain brimstone flames around him, one 
 of the male milkers said — 
 
 1 1 wish singing on the stoop didn't use up so 
 much of a man's wind ! ' 
 
 218 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 ' You should get your harp, sir ; not but what 
 a fiddle is best.' 
 
 Tess, who had given ear to this, thought the 
 words were addressed to the dairyman, but she 
 was wrong. A reply, in the shape of ' Why ? ' 
 came as it were out of the belly of a dun cow 
 in the stalls ; it had been spoken by a milker 
 behind the animal, whom she had not hitherto 
 perceived. 
 
 1 Oh yes ; there's nothing like a fiddle,' said 
 the dairyman. ' Though I do think that bulls 
 are more moved by a tune than cows — at least 
 that's my experience. Once there was a old 
 aged man over at Mellstock — William Dewy by 
 name — one of the family that used to do a good 
 deal of business as tranters over there, Jonathan, 
 do ye mind ? — I knowed the man by sight as 
 well as I know my own brother, in a manner of 
 speaking. Well, this man was a coming home 
 along from a wedding where he had been playing 
 his fiddle, one fine moonlight night, and for 
 shortness' sake he took a cut across Forty-acres, a 
 field lying that way, where a bull was out to grass. 
 The bull seed William, and took after him, horns 
 aground, begad ; and though William runned his 
 219 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 best, and hadn't much drink in him (considering 
 'twas a wedding, and the folks well off), he 
 found he'd never reach the fence and get over in 
 time to save himself. Well, as a last thought, he 
 pulled out his fiddle as he runned, and struck up 
 a jig, turning to the bull, and backing towards 
 the corner. The bull softened down, and stood 
 still, looking hard at William Dewy, who fiddled 
 on and on ; till a sort of a smile stole over the 
 bull's face. But no sooner did William stop his 
 playing and turn to get over hedge than the bull 
 would stop his smiling and lower his horns to the 
 seat of William's breeches. Well, William had 
 to turn about and play on, willy-nilly ; and 'twas 
 only three o'clock in the world, and 'a knowed 
 that nobody would come that way for hours, and 
 he so leery and tired that 'a didn't know what 
 to do. When he had scraped till about four 
 o'clock he felt that he verily would have to give 
 over soon, and he said to himself, " There's only 
 this last tune between me and eternal welfare ! 
 Heaven save me, or I'm a done man." Well, then 
 he called to mind how he'd seed the cattle kneel 
 o' Christmas Eves in the dead o' the night. It 
 was not Christmas Eve then, but it came into his 
 220 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 head to play a trick upon the bull. So he broke 
 into the Tivity Hymn, just as at Christmas carol- 
 singing ; when, lo and behold, down went the bull 
 on his bended knees, in his ignorance, just as if 
 'twere the true 'Tivity night and hour. As soon 
 as his horned friend were down, William turned, 
 clinked off like a long-dog, and jumped safe over 
 hedge, before the praying bull had got on his feet 
 again to take after him. William used to say 
 that he'd seen a man look a fool a good many 
 times, but never such a fool as that bull looked 
 when he found his pious feelings had been played 
 upon, and 'twas not Christmas Eve. . . . Yes, 
 William Dewy, that was the man's name ; and I 
 can tell ye to a foot where he's a-lying in Mell- 
 stock Churchyard at this very moment — just 
 between the second yew-tree and the north 
 aisle.' 
 
 1 It's a curious story ; it carries us back to 
 mediaeval times, when faith was a living thing ! ' 
 
 The remark, singular for a dairy-yard, was 
 murmured by the voice behind the dun cow ; but 
 as nobody understood the reference no notice was 
 taken, except that the narrator seemed to think it 
 might imply scepticism as to his tale. 
 221 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 ( Well, 'tis quite true, sir, whether or no. I 
 knowed the man well.' 
 
 1 Oh yes ; I have no doubt of it,' said the 
 person behind the dun cow. 
 
 Tess's attention was thus attracted to the 
 dairyman's interlocutor, of whom she could see 
 but the merest patch, owing to his burying his head 
 so persistently in the flank of the milcher. She 
 could not understand why he should be addressed 
 as ' sir ' even by the dairyman himself. But no 
 explanation was discernible ; he remained under 
 the cow long enough to have milked three, utter- 
 ing a private ejaculation now and then, as if he 
 could not get on. 
 
 ' Take it gentle, sir ; take it gentle,' said the 
 dairyman. ' Tis knack, not strength, that does 
 it' 
 
 ' So I find,' said the other, standing up at last 
 and stretching his arms. ( I think I have finished 
 her, however, though she made my fingers ache.' 
 
 Tess could then see him at full length. He 
 wore the ordinary white pinner and leather 
 leggings of a dairy-farmer when milking, and 
 his boots were clogged with the mulch of the 
 yard ; but this was all his local livery. Beneath 
 
 222 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 it was something educated, reserved, subtle, sad, 
 differing. 
 
 But the details of his aspect were temporarily 
 thrust aside by the discovery that he was one 
 whom she had seen before. Such vicissitudes had 
 Tess passed through since that time that for a 
 moment she could not remember where she had 
 met him ; and then it flashed upon her that he was 
 the pedestrian who had joined in the club-dance 
 at Marlott — the passing stranger who had come 
 she knew not whence, had danced with others but 
 not with her, had slightingly left her, and gone on 
 his way with his friends. 
 
 The flood of memories brought back by this 
 revival of an incident anterior to her troubles 
 produced a momentary dismay lest, recognising 
 her also, he should by some means discover her 
 story. But it passed away when she found no 
 sign of remembrance in him. She saw by degrees 
 that since their first and only encounter his 
 mobile face had grown more thoughtful, and 
 had acquired a young man's shapely moustache 
 and beard — the latter of the palest straw colour 
 where it began upon his cheeks, and deepening 
 to a warm brown farther from its root. Under 
 223 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 his linen milking-pinner he wore a dark velveteen 
 jacket, cord breeches and gaiters, and a starched 
 white shirt. Without the milking -gear nobody 
 could have guessed what he was. He might 
 with equal probability have been an eccentric 
 landowner or a gentlemanly ploughman. That he 
 was but a novice at dairy-work she had realized 
 in a moment, from the time he had spent upon 
 the milking of one cow. 
 
 Meanwhile many of the milkmaids had said to 
 one another of the new-comer, ' How pretty she 
 is ! ' with something of real generosity and admira- 
 tion, though with a half hope that the auditors 
 would deny the assertion — which, strictly speaking, 
 they might have done, prettiness being an inexact 
 definition of what struck the eye in Tess. When 
 the milking was finished for the evening they 
 straggled indoors, where Mrs. Crick, the dairy- 
 man's wife — who was too respectable to go out 
 milking herself, and wore a hot stuff gown in 
 warm weather because the dairymaids wore prints 
 — was giving an eye to the leads and things. 
 
 Only two or three of the maids, Tess learnt, 
 slept in the dairy-house besides herself; most of 
 the helpers going to their homes. She saw nothing 
 224 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 at supper-time of the superior milker who had 
 commented on the story, and asked no questions 
 about him, the remainder of the evening being 
 occupied in arranging her place in the bed- 
 chamber. It was a large room over the milk- 
 house, some thirty feet long ; the sleeping-cots 
 of the other three indoor milkmaids being in the 
 same apartment. They were blooming young 
 women, and, except one, rather older than herself. 
 By bedtime Tess was thoroughly tired, and fell 
 asleep immediately. 
 
 But one of the girls who occupied an adjoining 
 bed was more wakeful than Tess, and would insist 
 upon relating to the latter various particulars of 
 the homestead into which she had just entered. 
 The girl's whispered words mingled with the 
 shades, and, to Tess's drowsy mind, they seemed 
 to be generated by the darkness in which they 
 floated. 
 
 1 Mr. Angel Clare — he that is learning milking, 
 and that plays the harp — never says much to us. 
 He is a pa'son's son, and is too much taken up wi' 
 his own thoughts to notice girls. He is the dairy- 
 man's pupil — learning farming in all its branches. 
 He has learnt sheep - farming at another place, 
 vol. i 225 Q 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 and he's now mastering dairy-work. . . . Yes, he 
 is quite the gentleman-born. His father is the 
 Reverent Mr. Clare at Emminster — a good many 
 miles from here.' 
 
 1 Oh — I have heard of him,' said her com- 
 panion, now awake. ' A very earnest clergyman, 
 is he not ? ' 
 
 ' Yes — that he is — the earnestest man in all 
 Wessex, they say — the last of the old Low 
 Church sort, they tell me — for all about here be 
 what they call High. All his sons, except our 
 Mr. Clare, be made pa'sons too.' 
 
 Tess had not at this hour the curiosity to ask 
 why the present Mr. Clare was not made a parson 
 like his brethren, and gradually fell asleep again, 
 the words of her informant coming to her along 
 with the smell of the cheeses in the adjoining 
 cheese-loft, and the measured dripping of the 
 whey from the wrings downstairs. 
 
 226 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 XVIII 
 
 ANGEL CLARE rises out of the past not 
 altogether as a distinct figure, but as an appre- 
 ciative voice, a long regard of fixed, abstracted 
 eyes, and a mobility of mouth somewhat too 
 small and delicately lined for a man's, though 
 with an unexpectedly firm close of the lower lip 
 now and then ; enough to do away with any 
 suggestion of indecision. Nevertheless, something 
 nebulous, preoccupied, vague, in his bearing and 
 regard, marked him as one who probably had no 
 very definite aim or concern about his material 
 future. Yet as a lad people had said of him that 
 he was one who might do anything if he tried. 
 
 He was the youngest son of his father, a poor 
 
 parson at the other end of the county, and had 
 
 arrived at Talbothay's Dairy as a six months' 
 
 pupil, after going the round of some other 
 
 227 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 farms, his object being to acquire a practical skill 
 in the various processes of farming, with a view 
 either to the Colonies, or the tenure of a home- 
 farm, as circumstances might decide. 
 
 His entry into the ranks of the agriculturists 
 and breeders was a step in the young man's career 
 which had been anticipated neither by himself nor 
 by others. 
 
 Mr. Clare the elder, whose first wife had died 
 and left him a daughter, married a second late 
 in life. This lady had somewhat unexpectedly 
 brought him three sons, so that between Angel, 
 the youngest, and his father the vicar there seemed 
 to be almost a missing generation. Of these boys 
 the aforesaid Angel, the child of his old age, was 
 the only son who had not taken a University 
 degree, though he was the single one of them 
 whose early promise might have done full justice 
 to an academical training. 
 
 Some three years before Angel's appearance 
 at the Marlott dance, on a day when he had left 
 school and was pursuing his studies at home, a 
 parcel came to the vicarage from the local book- 
 seller's, directed to the Reverend James Clare. 
 The vicar having opened it and found it to con- 
 228 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 tain a book, read a few pages ; whereupon he 
 jumped up from his seat and went straight to the 
 shop with the book under his arm. 
 
 1 Why has this been sent to my house ? ' he 
 asked peremptorily, holding up the volume. 
 
 1 It was ordered, sir.' 
 
 1 Not by me, or any one belonging to me, I 
 am happy to say.' 
 
 The shopkeeper looked into his order-book. 
 
 ' Oh, it has been misdirected, sir,' he said. ' It 
 was ordered by Mr. Angel Clare, and should have 
 been sent to him.' 
 
 Mr. Clare winced as if he had been struck. 
 He went home pale and dejected, and called 
 Angel into his study. 
 
 ' Look into this book, my boy,' he said. ' What 
 do you know about it ? ' 
 
 ' I ordered it,' said Angel simply. 
 
 ' What for ? ' 
 
 ' To read.' 
 
 1 How can you think of reading it ? ' 
 
 1 How can I ? Why — it is a system of philo- 
 sophy. There is no more moral, or even religious, 
 work published.' 
 
 ' Yes — moral enough ; I don't deny that. But 
 229 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 religious ! — and for you, who intend to be a 
 minister of the Gospel ! ' 
 
 ' Since you have alluded to the matter, father,' 
 said the son, with anxious thought upon his face, 
 ( I should like to say, once for all, that I should 
 prefer not to take Orders. I fear I could not 
 conscientiously do so. I love the Church as one 
 loves a parent. I shall always have the warmest 
 affection for her. There is no institution for 
 whose history I have a deeper admiration ; but 
 I cannot honestly be ordained her minister, as 
 my brothers are, while she refuses to liberate her 
 mind from an untenable redemptive theolatry.' 
 
 It had never occurred to the straightforward 
 and simple-minded Vicar that one of his own 
 flesh and blood could come to this ! He was 
 stultified, shocked, paralysed. And if Angel were 
 not going to enter the Church, what was the use 
 of sending him to Cambridge ? The University 
 as a step to anything but ordination seemed, to 
 this man of fixed ideas, a preface without a 
 volume. He was a man not merely religious, 
 but devout ; a firm believer — not as the phrase is 
 now elusively construed by theological thimble - 
 riggers in the Church and out of it, but in the 
 230 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 old and ardent sense of the Evangelical school : 
 one who could 
 
 Indeed opine 
 
 That the Eternal and Divine 
 
 Did, eighteen centuries ago 
 
 In very truth . . . 
 
 Angel's father tried argument, persuasion, 
 entreaty. 
 
 ' No, father ; I cannot underwrite Article Four 
 (leave alone the rest), taking it " in the literal and 
 grammatical sense" as required by the Declara- 
 tion ; and, therefore, I can't be a parson in the 
 present state of affairs,' said Angel. ' My whole 
 instinct in matters of religion is towards recon- 
 struction ; to quote your favourite Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, " the removing of those things that are 
 shaken, as of things that are made, that those 
 things which cannot be shaken may remain." ' 
 
 His father grieved so deeply that it made 
 Angel quite ill to see him. 
 
 ' What is the good of your mother and me 
 economizing and stinting ourselves to give you a 
 University education, if it is not to be used for 
 the honour and glory of God ? ' his father re- 
 peated. 
 
 231 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 ' Why, that it may be used for the honour and 
 glory of man, father.' 
 
 Perhaps if Angel had persevered he might 
 have gone to Cambridge like his brothers. But 
 the Vicar's view of that seat of learning as a 
 stepping-stone to Orders alone was quite a family 
 tradition ; and so rooted was the idea in his mind 
 that perseverance began to appear to the sensitive 
 son akin to an intent to misappropriate a trust, 
 and wrong the pious heads of the household, who 
 had been and were, as his father had hinted, com- 
 pelled to exercise much thrift to carry out this 
 uniform plan of education for the three young 
 men. 
 
 ' I will do without Cambridge,' said Angel at 
 last. ' I feel that I have no right to go there in 
 the circumstances.' 
 
 The effects of this decisive debate were not 
 long in showing themselves. He spent years 
 and years in desultory studies, undertakings, and 
 meditations ; he began to evince considerable in- 
 difference to social forms and observances. The 
 material distinctions of rank and wealth he in- 
 creasingly despised. Even the ' good old family ' 
 (to use a favourite phrase of a late local worthy) 
 232 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 had no aroma for him unless there were good 
 new resolutions in its representatives. As a 
 balance to these austerities, when he went to 
 London to see what the world was like, he was 
 carried off his head, and nearly entrapped by a 
 woman much older than himself, though luckily 
 he returned not greatly the worse for the ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Early association with country solitudes had 
 bred in him an unconquerable, and almost un- 
 reasonable, aversion to modern town life, and shut 
 him out from such success as he might have 
 aspired to by entering a mundane profession in 
 the impracticability of the spiritual one. But 
 something had to be done ; and having an ac- 
 quaintance who was starting on a thriving life as 
 a Colonial farmer, it occurred to Angel that this 
 might be a lead in the right direction. Farming, 
 either in the Colonies, America, or at home — 
 farming, at any rate, after becoming well qualified 
 for the business by a careful apprenticeship — that 
 was a calling which would probably afford an 
 independence without the sacrifice of what he 
 valued even more than a competency — intellectual 
 liberty. 
 
 233 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 So we find Angel Clare at six-and-twenty here 
 at Talbothays as a student of kine, and, as there 
 were no houses near at hand in which he could get 
 a comfortable lodging, a boarder at the dairyman's. 
 
 His room was an immense attic which ran the 
 whole length of the dairy-house. It could only 
 be reached by a ladder from the cheese-loft, and 
 had been closed up for a long time till he arrived 
 and selected it as his retreat. Here Clare had 
 plenty of space, and could often be heard by the 
 dairy-folk pacing up and down when the house- 
 hold had gone to rest. A portion was divided 
 off at one end by a curtain, behind which was his 
 bed, the outer part being furnished as a homely 
 sitting-room. 
 
 At first he lived up above entirely, reading a 
 good deal, and strumming upon an old harp 
 which he had bought at a sale. But he soon 
 preferred to read human nature by taking his 
 meals downstairs in the general dining-kitchen, 
 with the dairyman and his wife, and the maids 
 and men, who all together formed a lively as- 
 sembly ; for though but few milking hands slept 
 in the house, several joined the family at meals. 
 The longer Clare resided here the less objection 
 234 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 had he to his company, and the more did he like 
 to share quarters with them in common. 
 
 Much to his surprise he took, indeed, a real 
 delight in their companionship. The conventional 
 farm-folk of his imagination — personified by the 
 pitiable dummy known as Hodge — were obliterated 
 after a few days' residence. At close quarters no 
 Hodge was to be seen. At first, it is true, when 
 Clare's intelligence was fresh from a contrasting 
 society, these friends with whom he now hob- 
 nobbed seemed a little strange. Sitting down as 
 a level member of the dairyman's household 
 seemed at the outset an undignified proceeding. 
 The ideas, the modes, the surroundings, appeared 
 retrogressive and unmeaning. But with living on 
 there, day after day, the acute sojourner became 
 conscious of a new aspect in the spectacle. With- 
 out any objective change whatever, variety had 
 taken the place of monotonousness. His host 
 and his host's household, his men and his maids, 
 as they became intimately known to Clare began 
 to differentiate themselves as in a chemical pro- 
 cess. The thought of Pascal's was brought home 
 to him : ' A mesure qu'on a plus d'esprit, on 
 trouve qu'il y a plus d'hommes originaux. Les 
 235 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 gens du commun ne trouvent pas de difference 
 entre les hommes.' The typical and unvarying 
 Hodge ceased to exist. He had been disinte- 
 grated into a number of varied fellow-creatures — 
 beings of many minds, beings infinite in difference ; 
 some happy, many serene, a few depressed, one 
 here and there bright even to genius, some stupid, 
 others wanton, others austere ; some mutely Mil- 
 tonic, some potentially Cromwellian ; into men 
 who had private views of each other, as he had 
 of his friends ; who could applaud or condemn 
 each other, amuse or sadden themselves by the 
 contemplation of each other's foibles or vices ; 
 men every one of whom walked in his own indi- 
 vidual way the road to dusty death. 
 
 Unexpectedly he began to like the outdoor 
 life for its own sake, and for what it brought, 
 apart from its bearing on his own proposed career. 
 Considering his position he became wonderfully 
 free from the chronic melancholy which is taking 
 hold of the civilized races with the decline of 
 belief in a beneficent Power. For the first time 
 of late years he could read as his musings inclined 
 him, without any eye to cramming for a profes- 
 sion, since the few farming handbooks which he 
 236 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 deemed it desirable to master occupied him but 
 little time. 
 
 He grew away from old associations, and saw 
 something new in life and humanity. Secondarily, 
 he made close acquaintance with phenomena which 
 he had before known but darkly — the seasons in 
 their moods, morning and evening, night and noon 
 in their temperaments, winds in their several dis- 
 positions, trees, waters, and clouds, shades and 
 silences, ignes-fatui, constellations, and the voices 
 of inanimate things. 
 
 The early mornings were still sufficiently cool 
 to render a fire acceptable in the large room 
 wherein they breakfasted ; and, by Mrs. Crick's 
 orders, who insisted that he was too genteel 
 to mess at their table, it was Angel Clare's 
 custom to sit in the yawning chimney - corner 
 during the meal, his cup -and -saucer and plate 
 being placed on a hinged bracket at his elbow. 
 The light from the long, wide, mullioned window 
 opposite shone in upon his nook, and, assisted 
 by a secondary light of cold blue quality 
 which shone down the chimney, enabled him to 
 read there easily whenever disposed to do so. 
 237 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 Between Clare and the window was the table at 
 which his companions sat, their munching profiles 
 rising sharp against the panes ; while to the rear 
 was the milk -house door, through which were 
 visible the rectangular leads in rows, full to the 
 brim with the morning's milk. At the farther 
 end the great churn could be seen revolving, and 
 its slip-slopping heard — the moving power being 
 discernible through the window in the form of a 
 spiritless horse walking in a circle and driven by 
 a boy. 
 
 For several days after Tess's arrival Clare, 
 sitting abstractedly reading from some book, 
 periodical, or piece of music just come by post, 
 hardly noticed that she was present at table. 
 She talked so little, and the other maids talked 
 so much, that the babble did not strike him as 
 possessing a new note, and he was ever in the 
 habit of neglecting the particulars of an outward 
 scene for the general impression. One day, how- 
 ever, when he had been conning one of his music- 
 scores, and by force of imagination was hearing 
 the tune in his head, he lapsed into listlessness, 
 and the music-sheet rolled to the hearth. He 
 looked at the fire of logs, with its one flame 
 238 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 pirouetting on the top in a dying dance after the 
 breakfast-cooking and boiling, and it seemed to 
 jig to his inward tune ; also at the two chimney 
 crooks dangling down from the cross-bar, plumed 
 with soot which quivered to the same melody ; 
 also at the half-empty kettle whining an accom- 
 paniment. The conversation at the table mixed 
 in with his phantasmal orchestra till he thought : 
 1 What a fluty voice one of those milkmaids has ! 
 I suppose it is the new one.' 
 
 Clare looked round upon her, seated with the 
 others. 
 
 She was not looking towards him. Indeed, 
 owing to his long silence, his presence in the room 
 was almost forgotten. 
 
 ' I don't know about ghosts,' she was saying ; 
 1 but I do know that our souls can be made to go 
 outside our bodies when we are alive.' 
 
 The dairyman turned to her with his mouth 
 full, his eyes charged with serious inquiry, and his 
 great knife and fork (breakfasts were breakfasts 
 here) planted erect on the table, like the beginning 
 of a gallows. 
 
 1 What — really now ? And is it so, maidy ? ' 
 he said. 
 
 2 39 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 1 A very easy way to feel 'em go,' continued 
 Tess, ' is to lie on the grass at night and look 
 straight up at some big bright star ; and, by 
 fixing your mind upon it, you will soon find that 
 you are hundreds and hundreds o' miles away from 
 your body, which you don't seem to want at all' 
 
 The dairyman removed his hard gaze from 
 Tess, and fixed it on his wife. 
 
 1 Now that's a rum thing, Christianner — hey ? 
 To think o' the miles I've vamped o' nights these 
 last thirty year, courting, or trading, or for doctor, 
 or for nurse, and yet never had the least notion o' 
 that till now.' 
 
 The general attention being drawn to her, in- 
 cluding that of the dairyman's pupil, Tess flushed, 
 and remarking indifferently that it was only a 
 fancy, resumed her breakfast. 
 
 Clare continued to observe her. She soon 
 finished her eating, and having a consciousness 
 that Clare was regarding her, began to trace 
 imaginary patterns on the tablecloth with her 
 forefinger with the constraint of a domestic animal 
 that perceives itself to be watched. 
 
 'What a genuine daughter of Nature that 
 milkmaid is ! ' he said to himself. 
 240 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 And then he seemed to discern in her some- 
 thing that was familiar, something which carried 
 him back into a joyous and unforeseeing past, 
 before the necessity of taking thought had made 
 the heavens gray. He concluded that he had 
 beheld her before ; where he could not tell. A 
 casual encounter during some country ramble it 
 certainly had been, and he was not greatly curious 
 about it. But the circumstance was sufficient to 
 lead him to select Tess in preference to the other 
 pretty milkmaids when he wished to contemplate 
 contiguous womankind. 
 
 vol. i 241 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 XIX 
 
 IN general the cows were milked as they pre- 
 sented themselves, without fancy or choice. But 
 certain cows will show a fondness for a particular 
 pair of hands, sometimes carrying this predilection 
 so far as to refuse to stand at all except to their 
 favourite, the pail of a stranger being uncere- 
 moniously kicked over. 
 
 It was Dairyman Crick's rule to insist on 
 breaking down these partialities and aversions by 
 constant interchange, since, in the event of a milk- 
 man or maid going away from the dairy, he was 
 otherwise placed in a difficulty. The maids' 
 private aims, however, were the reverse of the 
 dairyman's rule, the daily selection by each damsel 
 of the eight or ten cows to which she had grown 
 accustomed rendering the operation on their will- 
 ing udders surprisingly easy and effortless. 
 
 242 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 Tess, like her compeers, soon discovered which 
 of the cows had a predilection for her style of 
 manipulation, and her fingers having become 
 delicate from the long domiciliary imprisonments 
 to which she had subjected herself at intervals 
 during the last two or three years, she would have 
 been glad to meet the milchers' views in this 
 respect. Out of the whole hundred-and-five there 
 were eight in particular — Dumpling, Fancy, Lofty, 
 Mist, Old Pretty, Young Pretty, Tidy, and Loud 
 — who, though the teats of one or two were as 
 hard as carrots, gave down to her with a readiness 
 that made her work on them a mere touch of 
 the fingers. Knowing, however, the dairyman's 
 wish, she endeavoured conscientiously to take the 
 animals just as they came, excepting the very 
 hard yielders which she could not yet manage. 
 
 But she soon found a curious correspondence 
 between the ostensibly chance position of the 
 cows and her wishes in this matter, till at length 
 she felt that their order could not be the result of 
 accident. The dairyman's pupil had lent a hand 
 in getting the cows together of late, and at the 
 fifth or sixth time she turned her eyes, as she rested 
 against the cow, full of sly inquiry upon him. 
 243 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 1 Mr. Clare, you have ranged the cows ! ' she 
 said, blushing ; and in making the accusation 
 symptoms of a smile lifted her upper lip gently 
 in the middle, in spite of her, so as to show the 
 tips of her teeth, the lower lip remaining severely 
 still. 
 
 1 Well, it makes no difference,' said he. ' You 
 will always be here to milk them.' 
 
 ' Do you think so ? I hope I shall ! But I 
 don't know. 1 
 
 She was angry with herself afterwards, thinking 
 that he, unaware of her grave reasons for liking 
 this seclusion, might have mistaken her meaning. 
 She had spoken so earnestly to him, as if his 
 presence were somehow a factor in her wish. Her 
 misgiving was such that at dusk, when the milk- 
 ing was over, she walked in the garden alone to 
 continue her regrets that she had disclosed to 
 him her discovery of his considerateness. 
 
 It was a typical summer evening in June, the 
 atmosphere being in such delicate equilibrium 
 and so transmissive that inanimate objects seemed 
 endowed with two or three senses, if not five. 
 There was no distinction between the near and the 
 far, and an auditor felt close to everything within 
 244 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 the horizon. The soundlessness impressed her 
 as a positive entity rather than as the mere nega- 
 tion of noise. It was broken by the notes of a 
 harp. 
 
 Tess had heard those notes in the attic above 
 her head. Dim, flattened, constrained by their 
 confinement, they had never appealed to her as 
 now, when they wandered in the still air with 
 a stark quality like that of nudity. To speak 
 absolutely, both instrument and execution were 
 poor ; but the relative is all, and as she listened 
 Tess, like a fascinated bird, could not leave the 
 spot. Far from leaving she drew up towards 
 the performer, keeping behind the hedge that he 
 might not guess her presence. 
 
 The outskirt of the garden in which Tess 
 found herself had been left uncultivated for some 
 years, and was now damp and rank with juicy 
 grass which sent up mists of pollen at a touch ; 
 and with tall blooming weeds emitting offensive 
 smells — weeds whose red and yellow and purple 
 hues formed a polychrome as dazzling as that of 
 cultivated flowers. She went stealthily as a cat 
 through this profusion of growth, gathering cuckoo- 
 spittle on her skirts, cracking snails that were 
 245 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 underfoot, staining her hands with thistle-milk and 
 slug-slime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms 
 sticky blights which, though snow-white on the 
 apple-tree trunks, made blood -red stains on her 
 skin ; thus she drew quite near to Clare, still 
 unobserved of him. 
 
 Tess was conscious of neither time nor space. 
 The exaltation which she had described as being 
 producible at will by gazing at a star, came now 
 without any determination of hers ; she undulated 
 upon the thin notes as upon billows, and their har- 
 monies passed like breezes through her, bringing 
 tears into her eyes. The floating pollen seemed 
 to be his notes made visible, and the damp- 
 ness of the garden the weeping of the garden's 
 sensibility. Though near nightfall, the rank- 
 smelling weed - flowers glowed as if they would 
 not close for intentness, and the waves of colour 
 mixed with the waves of sound. 
 
 The light which still shone was derived entirely 
 from a large hole in the western bank of cloud ; 
 it was like a piece of day left behind by accident, 
 dusk having closed in elsewhere. He concluded 
 his plaintive melody, a very simple performance, 
 demanding no great skill ; and she waited, think- 
 246 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 ing another might be begun. But, tired of play- 
 ing, he had desultorily come round the fence, and 
 was rambling up behind her. Tess, her cheeks on 
 fire, moved away furtively, as if hardly moving 
 at all. 
 
 Angel, however, saw her light summer gown, 
 and he spoke ; his low tones quite reaching her, 
 though he was some distance off. 
 
 I What makes you draw off in that way, Tess ?' 
 said he. ' Are you afraid ? ' 
 
 ' Oh no, sir . . . not of outdoor things ; 
 especially just now when the apple -blooth is 
 falling, and everything so green.' 
 
 ' But you have your indoor fears — eh ? ; 
 
 ' Well — yes, sir.' 
 
 'What of?' 
 
 I I couldn't quite say. : 
 
 ' The milk turning sour ? ; 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' Life in general ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, sir.' 
 
 ' Ah — so am I, very often. This hobble of 
 being alive is rather serious, don't you think 
 so?' 
 
 ' It is — now you put it that way, sir.' 
 247 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 1 All the same, I shouldn't have expected a 
 young girl like you to see it so just yet. How 
 is it you do ? ' 
 
 She maintained a hesitating silence. 
 
 ( Come, Tess, tell me in confidence.' 
 
 She thought that he meant what were the 
 aspects of things to her, and replied shyly — 
 
 ' The trees have inquisitive eyes, haven't 
 they? — that is, seem as if they had. And the 
 river says, — " Why do ye trouble me with 
 your looks ? " And you seem to see numbers 
 of to-morrows just all in a line, the first of 'em 
 the biggest and clearest, the others getting 
 smaller and smaller as they stand farther away ; 
 but they all seem very fierce and cruel and 
 as if they said, " I'm coming ! Beware o' me ! 
 Beware o' me ! " . . . But you can raise up 
 dreams with your music, and drive all such 
 horrid fancies away ! ' 
 
 He was surprised to find this young woman — 
 who though but a milkmaid had just that touch of 
 rarity about her which might make her the envied 
 of her housemates — shaping such sad imaginings. 
 She was expressing in her own native phrases — 
 assisted a little by her Sixth Standard training — 
 248 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 feelings which might almost have been called 
 those of the age — the ache of modernism. The 
 perception arrested him less when he reflected that 
 what are called advanced ideas are really in great 
 part but the latest fashion in definition — a more 
 accurate expression, by words in logy and ism, of 
 sensations which men and women have vaguely 
 grasped for centuries. 
 
 Still, it was strange that they should have 
 come to her while yet so young ; more than 
 strange ; it was impressive, interesting, pathetic. 
 Not guessing the cause, there was nothing to 
 remind him that experience is as to intensity, and 
 not as to duration. Tess's passing corporeal 
 blight had been her mental harvest. 
 
 Tess, on her part, could not understand why 
 a man of clerical family and good education, and 
 above physical want, should look upon it as a 
 plight to be alive. For the unhappy pilgrim 
 herself there was very good reason. But how 
 could this admirable and poetic man ever have 
 descended into the Valley of Humiliation, have 
 felt with the man of Uz — as she herself had 
 felt many a day and night two or three years 
 ago — ' My soul chooseth strangling and death 
 249 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 rather than my life. I loathe it ; I would not live 
 ahvay.' 
 
 It was true that he was at present out of his 
 class. But she knew that was only because, like 
 Peter the Great in a shipwright's yard, he was 
 studying what he wanted to know. He did not 
 milk cows because he was obliged to milk cows, 
 but because he was learning how to be a rich 
 and prosperous dairyman, landowner, agriculturist, 
 and breeder of cattle. He would become an 
 American or Australian Abraham, commanding 
 like a monarch his flocks and his herds, his 
 spotted and his ring-straked, his men-servants and 
 his maids. At times, nevertheless, it did seem 
 unaccountable to her that a decidedly bookish, 
 musical, thinking young man should have chosen 
 deliberately to be a farmer, and not a clergyman, 
 like his father and brothers. 
 
 Thus, neither having the clue to either's secret, 
 they were respectively puzzled at what each re- 
 vealed, and awaited new knowledge of each other's 
 character and moods without attempting to- pry 
 into each other's history. 
 
 Every day, every hour, brought to him one 
 250 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 more little stroke of her nature, and to her one 
 more of his. Tess was trying to lead a repressed 
 life, but she little recked the strength of her own 
 vitality. 
 
 At first Tess seemed to regard Angel Clare 
 as an intelligence rather than as a man. As 
 such she compared him with herself; and at 
 every discovery of the abundance of his illum- 
 inations, of the distance between her own 
 modest mental standpoint and the unmeasur- 
 able, Andean altitude of his, she became quite 
 dejected, disheartened from all further effort on 
 her own part whatever. 
 
 He observed her dejection one day, when he 
 had casually mentioned something to her about 
 pastoral life in ancient Greece. She was gather- 
 ing the buds called ' lords and ladies ' from the 
 bank while he spoke. 
 
 1 Why do you look so woebegone all of a 
 sudden ? ' he asked. 
 
 1 Oh, 'tis only — about my own self,' she said, 
 with a frail laugh of sadness, fitfully beginning to 
 peel ' a lady ' meanwhile. ' Just a sense of what 
 might have been with me ! My life looks as if 
 it had been wasted for want of chances ! When 
 251 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 I see what you know, what you have read, and 
 seen, and thought, I feel what- a nothing I am ! 
 I'm like the poor Queen of Sheba who lived in 
 the Bible. There is no more spirit in me.' 
 
 1 Bless my soul, don't go troubling about that ! 
 Why,' he said, with some enthusiasm, ' I should 
 be only too glad, my dear Tess, to help you to 
 anything in the way of history, or any line of 
 reading you would like to take up ' 
 
 1 It is a lady again,' interrupted she, holding 
 out the bud she had peeled. 
 
 'What?' 
 
 ' I meant that there are always more ladies 
 than lords when you come to peel them.' 
 
 ' Never mind about the lords and ladies. 
 Would you like to take up any course of study— - 
 history, for example ? ' 
 
 ' Well, sometimes I feel I don't want to know 
 anything more about it than I know already.' 
 
 ' Why not ? ' 
 
 ' Because what's the use of learning that I am 
 one of a long row only — finding out that there 
 is set down in some old book somebody just like 
 me, and to know that I shall only act her part ; 
 making me sad, that's all. The best is not to 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 remember that your nature and your past doings 
 have been just like thousands' and thousands', 
 and that your coming life and doings '11 be like 
 thousands' and thousands'.' 
 
 ' What, really, then, you don't want to learn 
 anything ? ' 
 
 1 I shouldn't mind learning why — why the sun 
 shines on the just and on the unjust alike,' she 
 answered, with a slight quaver in her voice. 
 ' But that is what books will not tell me.' 
 
 ' Tess, fie for such bitterness ! ' Of course he 
 spoke with a conventional sense of duty only, for 
 that sort of wondering had not been unknown to 
 himself in bygone days. And as he looked at 
 the unpractised mouth and lips, he thought that 
 such a daughter of the soil could only have 
 caught up the sentiment by rote. She went on 
 peeling the lords and ladies till Clare, regarding 
 for a moment the wave-like curl of her lashes 
 as they drooped with her bent gaze, lingeringly 
 went away. When he was gone she stood awhile, 
 thoughtfully peeling the last bud ; and then, 
 awakening from her reverie, flung it and all the 
 crowd of floral nobility impatiently on the ground, 
 in an ebullition of displeasure with herself for her 
 253 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 niaisertes, and with a quickening warmth in her 
 heart of hearts. 
 
 How stupid he must think her ! In an access 
 of hunger for his good opinion she bethought 
 herself of what she had latterly endeavoured to 
 forget, so unpleasant had been its issues — the 
 identity of her family with that of the knightly 
 D'Urbervilles. Barren attribute as it was, dis- 
 astrous as its discovery had been in many ways 
 to her, perhaps Mr. Clare, as a gentleman and a 
 student of history, would respect her sufficiently 
 to forget her childish conduct with the lords and 
 ladies if he knew that those Purbeck-marble and 
 alabaster people in Kingsbere Church really 
 represented her own lineal forefathers ; that she 
 was no spurious D'Urberville, compounded of 
 money and ambition like those at Trantridge, 
 but true D'Urberville to the bone. 
 
 But before venturing to make the revelation 
 dubious Tess indirectly sounded the dairyman as 
 to its possible effect upon Mr. Clare, by asking the 
 former if Mr. Clare had any great respect for old 
 county families when they had lost all their 
 money and land. 
 
 ' Mr. Clare,' said the dairyman emphatically, 
 254 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 1 is one of the most rebellest rozums you ever 
 
 knowed — not a bit like the rest of his family ; and 
 
 if there's one thing that he do hate more than 
 
 another 'tis the notion of what's called an old 
 
 family. He says that it stands to reason that old 
 
 families have done their spurt of work in past 
 
 days, and can't have anything left in 'em now. 
 
 There's the Billetts and the Drenkhards and the 
 
 Greys and the St. Quintins and the Hardys and 
 
 the Goulds, who used to own the lands for miles 
 
 down this valley ; you could buy 'em all up now for 
 
 an old song a'most. Why, our little Retty Priddle 
 
 here, you know, is one of the Paridelles — the old 
 
 family that used to own lots o' the lands out by 
 
 King's-Hintock now owned by the Earl o' Wessex, 
 
 afore even he or his was heard of. Well, Mr. Clare 
 
 found this out, and spoke quite scornful to the 
 
 poor girl for days. " Ah ! " he says to her, " you'll 
 
 never make a good dairymaid ! All your skill 
 
 was used up ages ago in Palestine, and you must 
 
 lie fallow for a thousand years to git strength for 
 
 more deeds ! " A boy came here t'other day 
 
 asking for a job, and said his name was Matt, 
 
 and when we asked him his surname he said 
 
 he'd never heard that 'a had any surname, and 
 
 2 55 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 when we asked why, he said he supposed his folks 
 hadn't been 'stablished long enough. "Ah! you're 
 the very boy I want ! " says Mr. Clare, jumping 
 up and shaking hands wi'en ; " I've great hopes 
 of you;" and gave him half-a-crown. Oh no! 
 he can't stomach old families ! ' 
 
 After hearing this caricature of Clare's 
 opinions, poor Tess was glad that she had not 
 said a word in a weak moment — even though 
 her family was so unusually old as almost to have 
 gone round the circle and become a new one. 
 Besides, another dairy-girl was as good as she, 
 it seemed, in that respect. She held her tongue 
 about the D'Urberville vault, and the Knight of 
 the Conqueror whose name she bore. The insight 
 afforded into Clare's character suggested to her 
 that it was largely owing to her supposed un- 
 traditional newness that she had won interest in 
 his eyes. 
 
 256 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 XX 
 
 1 HE season developed and matured. Another 
 year's instalment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, 
 thrushes, finches, and such ephemeral creatures, 
 took up their positions where only a year 
 ago others had stood in their place when these 
 were nothing more than germs and inorganic 
 particles. Rays from the sunrise drew forth 
 the buds and stretched them into long stalks, 
 lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, 
 and sucked out scents in invisible jets and 
 breathings. 
 
 Dairyman Crick's household of maids and 
 men lived on comfortably, placidly, even merrily. 
 Their position was perhaps the happiest of all 
 positions in the social scale, being above the line 
 at which neediness ends, and below the line at 
 which the convenances begin to cramp natural 
 vol. i 257 s 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 feeling, and the stress of threadbare modishness 
 makes too little of enough. 
 
 Thus passed the leafy time when arborescence 
 seems to be the one thing aimed at out of doors. 
 Tess and Clare unconsciously studied each other, 
 ever balanced on the edge of a passion, yet 
 apparently keeping out of it. All the while they 
 were converging, under an irresistible law, as surely 
 as two streams in one vale. 
 
 Tess had never in her recent life been so happy 
 as she was now, possibly never would be so happy 
 again. She was, for one thing, physically and 
 mentally suited among these new surroundings. 
 The sapling which had rooted down to a 
 poisonous stratum on the spot of its sowing had 
 been transplanted to a deeper soil. Moreover 
 she, and Clare also, stood as yet on the debat- 
 able land between predilection and love ; where 
 no profundities have been reached ; no reflections 
 have set in, awkwardly inquiring, ' Whither does 
 this new current tend to carry me ? What does 
 it mean to my future ? How does it stand to- 
 wards my past?' 
 
 Tess was the merest stray phenomenon to 
 Angel Clare as yet — a rosy warming apparition, 
 258 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 which had only just acquired the attribute of 
 persistence in his consciousness. So he allowed 
 his mind to be occupied with her, deeming his 
 preoccupation to be no more than a philosopher's 
 regard of an exceedingly novel, fresh, and interest- 
 ing specimen of womankind. 
 
 They met continually ; they could not help it. 
 They met daily in that strange and solemn 
 interval, the twilight of the morning, in the violet 
 or pink dawn ; for it was necessary to rise early, 
 so very early, here. Milking was done betimes ; 
 and before the milking came the skimming, which 
 began at a little past three. It usually fell to the 
 lot of some one or other of them to wake the rest, 
 the first being aroused by an alarm, clock ; and, 
 as Tess was the latest arrival, and they soon dis- 
 covered that she could be depended upon not to 
 sleep through the alarm as the others did, this 
 task was thrust most frequently upon her. No 
 sooner had the hour of three struck and whizzed, 
 than she left her room and ran to the dairyman's 
 door ; then up the ladder to Angel's, calling him 
 in a loud whisper; then woke her fellow -milk- 
 maids. By the time that Tess was dressed Clare 
 was downstairs and out in the humid air. The 
 259 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 remaining maids and the dairyman usually gave 
 themselves another turn on the • pillow, and did 
 not appear till a quarter of an hour later. 
 
 The gray half-tones of daybreak are not the 
 gray half-tones of the day's close, though the 
 degree of their shade may be the same. In the 
 twilight of the morning light seems active, dark- 
 ness passive ; in the twilight of evening it is the 
 darkness which is active and crescent, and the 
 light which is the drowsy reverse. 
 
 Being so often — possibly not always by chance 
 — the first two persons to get up at the dairy- 
 house, they seemed to themselves the first persons 
 up of all the world. In these early days of her 
 residence here Tess did not skim, going out of 
 doors at once after rising, where he was generally 
 awaiting her. The spectral, half- compounded, 
 aqueous light which pervaded the open mead, 
 impressed them with a feeling of isolation, as if 
 they were Adam and Eve. At this dim inceptive 
 stage of the day Tess seemed to Clare to exhibit 
 a dignified largeness both of disposition and 
 physique, an almost regnant power, possibly be- 
 cause he knew that at that preternatural time 
 hardly any woman so well endowed in person 
 
 260 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 as she was likely to be walking in the open air 
 within the boundaries of his horizon ; very few 
 in all England. Fair women are usually asleep 
 at midsummer dawns. She was close at hand, 
 and the rest were nowhere. 
 
 The mixed, singular, luminous gloom in which 
 they walked along together to the spot where the 
 cows lay, often made him think of the Resurrection 
 hour. He little thought that the Magdalen might 
 be at his side. Whilst all the landscape was in 
 neutral shade his companion's face, which was the 
 focus of his eyes, rising above the mist stratum, 
 seemed to have a sort of phosphorescence upon 
 it. She looked ghostly, as if she were merely a 
 soul at large. In reality her face, without appear- 
 ing to do so, had caught the cold gleam of day 
 from the north-east ; his own face, though he did 
 not think of it, wore the same aspect to her. 
 
 It was then, as has been said, that she im- 
 pressed him most deeply. She was no longer 
 the milkmaid, but a visionary essence of woman 
 — a whole sex condensed into one typical form. 
 He called her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanci- 
 ful names half teasingly, which she did not like 
 because she did not understand them. 
 261 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 ' Call me Tess,' she would say askance ; and 
 he did. 
 
 Then it would grow lighter, and her features 
 would become simply feminine ; they had changed 
 from those of a divinity who could confer bliss to 
 those of a being who craved it 
 
 At these non- human hours they could get 
 quite close to the waterfowl. Herons came, with 
 a great bold noise as of opening doors and shut- 
 ters, out of the boughs of a plantation which they 
 frequented at the side of the mead ; or, if already 
 on the spot, hardily maintained their standing in 
 the water as the pair walked by, watching them 
 by moving their heads round in a slow, horizontal, 
 passionless wheel, like the turn of puppets by 
 clockwork. 
 
 They could then see the faint summer fogs in 
 layers, woolly, level, and apparently no thicker 
 than counterpanes, spread about the meadows in 
 detached remnants of small extent. On the gray 
 moisture of the grass were marks where the cows 
 had lain through the night — dark-green islands of 
 dry herbage the size of their carcases, in the 
 general sea of dew. From each island proceeded 
 a serpentine trail, by which the cow had rambled 
 262 
 
THE RALLY 
 
 away to feed after getting up, at the end of which 
 trail they found her ; the snoring breath from her 
 nostrils, when she recognised them, making an 
 intenser little fog of her own amid the prevailing 
 one. Then they drove the animals back to the 
 barton, or sat down to milk them on the spot, as 
 the case might require. 
 
 Or perhaps the summer fog was more general, 
 and the meadows lay like a white sea, out of 
 which the scattered trees rose like dangerous 
 rocks. Birds would soar through it into the 
 upper radiance, and hang on the wing sunning 
 themselves, or alight on the wet rails subdividing 
 the mead, which now shone like glass rods. 
 Minute diamonds of moisture from the mist 
 hung, too, upon Tess's eyelashes, and drops upon 
 her hair, like seed pearls. When the day grew 
 quite strong and commonplace these dried off 
 her ; moreover, Tess then lost her strange and 
 ethereal beauty ; her teeth, lips, and eyes scin- 
 tillated in the sunbeams, and she was again the 
 dazzlingly fair dairymaid only, who had to hold 
 her own against the other women of the world. 
 
 About this time they would hear Dairyman 
 Crick's voice, lecturing the non-resident milkers 
 263 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES 
 
 for arriving late, and speaking sharply to old 
 Deborah Fyander for not washing her hands. 
 
 ' For Heaven's sake, pop thy hands under the 
 pump, Deb ! Upon my soul, if the London folk 
 only knowed of thee and thy slovenly ways, they'd 
 swaller their milk and butter more mincing than 
 they do a'ready ; and that's saying a good deal.' 
 
 The milking progressed, till towards the end 
 Tess and Clare, in common with the rest, could 
 hear the heavy breakfast-table dragged out from 
 the wall in the kitchen by Mrs. Crick, this being 
 the invariable preliminary to each meal ; the same 
 horrible scrape accompanying its return journey 
 when the table had been cleared. 
 
 END OF VOL. I 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. 
 
 

&1