by Thomas Hardy
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 comfortable room would be provided for her if she could come, and that the wages would be on a liberal scale if they liked her.
“Oh—that’s all!” said Tess.
“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.
“I would rather stay here with Father and you,” she said.
“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 from an unavailing search for some light occupation 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’s been here!”
Her mother hastened to explain, smiles breaking from every inch of her person. Mrs. d‘Urberville’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 murmured; “and if I was quite sure how it would be living there, I would go anywhen.”
“He is a mighty handsome man!”
“I don’t think so,” said Tess coldly.
“Well, there’s your chance, whether or no; and I’m sure he wears a beautiful diamond ring!”
“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 grand relation keep on putting his hand up to his mistarshers?”
“Hark at that child!” cried Mrs. Durbeyfield, with parenthetic admiration.
“Perhaps to show his diamond ring,” murmured Sir John dreamily from his chair.
“Well, she’s made a conquest o’ the younger branch of us, straight off,” continued the matron to her husband, “and she’s a fool if she don’t follow it up.”
“I’ll think it over,” said Tess, leaving the room.
“I don’t quite like my children going away from home,” said the haggler. “As the head of the family, the rest ought to come to me.”
“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 likely, and make a lady of her; and then she’ll be what her forefathers was.”
John Durbeyfield had more conceit than energy or health, and this supposition was pleasant to him.
“Well, perhaps that’s what young Mr. d‘Urberville means,” he admitted; “and sure enough he mid have serious thoughts about improving his blood by linking on to the old line. Tess, the little rogue! And have she really paid ’em a visit to such an end is 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.
“Well, what be you going to do?” she asked.
“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 being there!”
The children, who had made use of this idea of Tess being taken up by their wealthy kinsfolk (which 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 neutrality.
“I will go,” said Tess at last.
Her mother could not repress her consciousness of the nuptial vision conjured up by the girl’s consent.
“That’s right! For such a pretty maid as ‘tis, this is a fine chance!”
Tess smiled crossly.
“I hope it is a chance for earning money. It is no other kind of chance. You had better say nothing of that silly sort about parish.”
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 doubtingly. “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 acquiring 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 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 from the year of her birth.
7
ON 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?”
“But I am going to work!” said Tess.
“Well, yes,” said Mrs. Durbeyfield; and in a private tone, “at first there mid be a little pretence 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 fullness of which, supplementing 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 h
ole in my stocking-heel!” said Tess.
“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.”
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 zee 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 reflector 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 zay too much to Tess of his fancy for her and this chance she has got. She is such an odd maid that it mid zet 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 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!”
“Now,” said Tess, flushing and turning quickly, “I’ll hear no more o’ that! Mother, how could you ever put such stuff into their heads?”
“Going to work, my dears, for our rich relation, 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 of the occasion. “Well, I hope my young friend will like such a comely sample of his own blood. And tell‘n, Tess, that being sunk, 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 lam micken feller like myself can. Tell’n he shall hae it for a hundred. But I won’t stand up on 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 sentiments that were in her. She turned quickly and went out.
So the girls and their mother all walked together, 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 with the smallest; the group forming a picture of honest beauty flanked by innocence 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 springcart, 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 summit, came round the bend of the road there, passed the luggage-cart and halted beside Tess, who looked up 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 indecision: it was misgiving. She would have preferred the humble cart. The young man 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 determination; 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 interest 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.
“Oh, I don’t know exactly,” she said. “I was thinking that perhaps it would ha’ been better if Tess had not gone.”
“Oughtn’t ye to have thought of that before?”
“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 choice over her as his kinswoman.”
“Yes, you ought, perhaps, to ha’ done that,” snored Sir John.
Joan Durbeyfield always managed to find consolation 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.”
“What’s her trump card? Her d‘Urberville blood, you mean?”
“No, stupid; her face—as ‘twas mine.”
8
HAVING MOUNTED beside her, Alec d‘Urberville 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 grey 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 f
ather’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 conductor’s driving.
“You will go down slow, 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.”
“But perhaps you need not now?”
“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?”
“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.
“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?”
“An, 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 touchy still, very touchy; 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. Sometimes 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 aspect of the straight road enlarged with their advance, the two banks dividing like a splitting stick, one rushing past at each shoulder.