الفصل الفصل 35 · Chapter XXXV Provocations

. Chapter XXXV Provocations

Her narrative ended; even its re-assertions and secondary explanations

were done. Tess’s voice throughout had hardly risen higher than its

opening tone; there had been no exculpatory phrase of any kind, and she

had not wept.

But the complexion even of external things seemed to suffer

transmutation as her announcement progressed. The fire in the grate

looked impish—demoniacally funny, as if it did not care in the least

about her strait. The fender grinned idly, as if it too did not care.

The light from the water-bottle was merely engaged in a chromatic

problem. All material objects around announced their irresponsibility

with terrible iteration. And yet nothing had changed since the moments

when he had been kissing her; or rather, nothing in the substance of

things. But the essence of things had changed.

When she ceased, the auricular impressions from their previous

endearments seemed to hustle away into the corner of their brains,

repeating themselves as echoes from a time of supremely purblind

foolishness.

Clare performed the irrelevant act of stirring the fire; the

intelligence had not even yet got to the bottom of him. After stirring

the embers he rose to his feet; all the force of her disclosure had

imparted itself now. His face had withered. In the strenuousness of his

concentration he treadled fitfully on the floor. He could not, by any

contrivance, think closely enough; that was the meaning of his vague

movement. When he spoke it was in the most inadequate, commonplace

voice of the many varied tones she had heard from him.

“Tess!”

“Yes, dearest.”

“Am I to believe this? From your manner I am to take it as true. O you

cannot be out of your mind! You ought to be! Yet you are not... My

wife, my Tess—nothing in you warrants such a supposition as that?”

“I am not out of my mind,” she said.

“And yet—” He looked vacantly at her, to resume with dazed senses: “Why

didn’t you tell me before? Ah, yes, you would have told me, in a

way—but I hindered you, I remember!”

These and other of his words were nothing but the perfunctory babble of

the surface while the depths remained paralyzed. He turned away, and

bent over a chair. Tess followed him to the middle of the room, where

he was, and stood there staring at him with eyes that did not weep.

Presently she slid down upon her knees beside his foot, and from this

position she crouched in a heap.

“In the name of our love, forgive me!” she whispered with a dry mouth.

“I have forgiven you for the same!”

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

“Forgive me as you are forgiven! _I_ forgive _you_, Angel.”

“You—yes, you do.”

“But you do not forgive me?”

“O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case! You were one person;

now you are another. My God—how can forgiveness meet such a

grotesque—prestidigitation as that!”

He paused, contemplating this definition; then suddenly broke into

horrible laughter—as unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell.

“Don’t—don’t! It kills me quite, that!” she shrieked. “O have mercy

upon me—have mercy!”

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

“Angel, Angel! what do you mean by that laugh?” she cried out. “Do you

know what this is to me?”

He shook his head.

“I have been hoping, longing, praying, to make you happy! I have

thought what joy it will be to do it, what an unworthy wife I shall be

if I do not! That’s what I have felt, Angel!”

“I know that.”

“I thought, Angel, that you loved me—me, my very self! If it is I you

do love, O how can it be that you look and speak so? It frightens me!

Having begun to love you, I love you for ever—in all changes, in all

disgraces, because you are yourself. I ask no more. Then how can you, O

my own husband, stop loving me?”

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

“But who?”

“Another woman in your shape.”

She perceived in his words the realization of her own apprehensive

foreboding in former times. He looked upon her as a species of

imposter; a guilty woman in the guise of an innocent one. Terror was

upon her white face as she saw it; her cheek was flaccid, and her mouth

had almost the aspect of a round little hole. The horrible sense of his

view of her so deadened her that she staggered, and he stepped forward,

thinking she was going to fall.

“Sit down, sit down,” he said gently. “You are ill; and it is natural

that you should be.”

She did sit down, without knowing where she was, that strained look

still upon her face, and her eyes such as to make his flesh creep.

“I don’t belong to you any more, then; do I, Angel?” she asked

helplessly. “It is not me, but another woman like me that he loved, he

says.”

The image raised caused her to take pity upon herself as one who was

ill-used. Her eyes filled as she regarded her position further; she

turned round and burst into a flood of self-sympathetic tears.

Clare was relieved at this change, for the effect on her of what had

happened was beginning to be a trouble to him only less than the woe of

the disclosure itself. He waited patiently, apathetically, till the

violence of her grief had worn itself out, and her rush of weeping had

lessened to a catching gasp at intervals.

“Angel,” she said suddenly, in her natural tones, the insane, dry voice

of terror having left her now. “Angel, am I too wicked for you and me

to live together?”

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

“I shan’t ask you to let me live with you, Angel, because I have no

right to! I shall not write to mother and sisters to say we be married,

as I said I would do; and I shan’t finish the good hussif I cut out and

meant to make while we were in lodgings.”

“Shan’t you?”

“No, I shan’t do anything, unless you order me to; and if you go away

from me I shall not follow ’ee; and if you never speak to me any more I

shall not ask why, unless you tell me I may.”

“And if I order you to do anything?”

“I will obey you like your wretched slave, even if it is to lie down

and die.”

“You are very good. But it strikes me that there is a want of harmony

between your present mood of self-sacrifice and your past mood of

self-preservation.”

These were the first words of antagonism. To fling elaborate sarcasms

at Tess, however, was much like flinging them at a dog or cat. The

charms of their subtlety passed by her unappreciated, and she only

received them as inimical sounds which meant that anger ruled. She

remained mute, not knowing that he was smothering his affection for

her. She hardly observed that a tear descended slowly upon his cheek, a

tear so large that it magnified the pores of the skin over which it

rolled, like the object lens of a microscope. Meanwhile reillumination

as to the terrible and total change that her confession had wrought in

his life, in his universe, returned to him, and he tried desperately to

advance among the new conditions in which he stood. Some consequent

action was necessary; yet what?

“Tess,” he said, as gently as he could speak, “I cannot stay—in this

room—just now. I will walk out a little way.”

He quietly left the room, and the two glasses of wine that he had

poured out for their supper—one for her, one for him—remained on the

table untasted. This was what their _Agape_ had come to. At tea, two or

three hours earlier, they had, in the freakishness of affection, drunk

from one cup.

The closing of the door behind him, gently as it had been pulled to,

roused Tess from her stupor. He was gone; she could not stay. Hastily

flinging her cloak around her she opened the door and followed, putting

out the candles as if she were never coming back. The rain was over and

the night was now clear.

She was soon close at his heels, for Clare walked slowly and without

purpose. His form beside her light gray figure looked black, sinister,

and forbidding, and she felt as sarcasm the touch of the jewels of

which she had been momentarily so proud. Clare turned at hearing her

footsteps, but his recognition of her presence seemed to make no

difference to him, and he went on over the five yawning arches of the

great bridge in front of the house.

The cow and horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain

having been enough to charge them, but not enough to wash them away.

Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick

transit as she passed; she would not have known they were shining

overhead if she had not seen them there—the vastest things of the

universe imaged in objects so mean.

The place to which they had travelled to-day was in the same valley as

Talbothays, but some miles lower down the river; and the surroundings

being open, she kept easily in sight of him. Away from the house the

road wound through the meads, and along these she followed Clare

without any attempt to come up with him or to attract him, but with

dumb and vacant fidelity.

At last, however, her listless walk brought her up alongside him, and

still he said nothing. The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great

after enlightenment, and it was mighty in Clare now. The outdoor air

had apparently taken away from him all tendency to act on impulse; she

knew that he saw her without irradiation—in all her bareness; that Time

was chanting his satiric psalm at her then—

Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate;

Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate. For thy

life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain; And the veil of

thine head shall be grief, and the crown shall be pain.

He was still intently thinking, and her companionship had now

insufficient power to break or divert the strain of thought. What a

weak thing her presence must have become to him! She could not help

addressing Clare.

“What have I done—what _have_ I done! I have not told of anything that

interferes with or belies my love for you. You don’t think I planned

it, do you? It is in your own mind what you are angry at, Angel; it is

not in me. O, it is not in me, and I am not that deceitful woman you

think me!”

“H’m—well. Not deceitful, my wife; but not the same. No, not the same.

But do not make me reproach you. I have sworn that I will not; and I

will do everything to avoid it.”

But she went on pleading in her distraction; and perhaps said things

that would have been better left to silence.

“Angel!—Angel! I was a child—a child when it happened! I knew nothing

of men.”

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

“Then will you not forgive me?”

“I do forgive you, but forgiveness is not all.”

“And love me?”

To this question he did not answer.

“O Angel—my mother says that it sometimes happens so!—she knows several

cases where they were worse than I, and the husband has not minded it

much—has got over it at least. And yet the woman had not loved him as I

do you!”

“Don’t, Tess; don’t argue. Different societies, different manners. You

almost make me say you are an unapprehending peasant woman, who have

never been initiated into the proportions of social things. You don’t

know what you say.”

“I am only a peasant by position, not by nature!”

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

“So much the worse for you. I think that parson who unearthed your

pedigree would have done better if he had held his tongue. I cannot

help associating your decline as a family with this other fact—of your

want of firmness. Decrepit families imply decrepit wills, decrepit

conduct. Heaven, why did you give me a handle for despising you more by

informing me of your descent! Here was I thinking you a new-sprung

child of nature; there were you, the belated seedling of an effete

aristocracy!”

“Lots of families are as bad as mine in that! Retty’s family were once

large landowners, and so were Dairyman Billett’s. And the Debbyhouses,

who now are carters, were once the De Bayeux family. You find such as I

everywhere; ’tis a feature of our county, and I can’t help it.”

“So much the worse for the county.”

She took these reproaches in their bulk simply, not in their

particulars; he did not love her as he had loved her hitherto, and to

all else she was indifferent.

They wandered on again in silence. It was said afterwards that a

cottager of Wellbridge, who went out late that night for a doctor, met

two lovers in the pastures, walking very slowly, without converse, one

behind the other, as in a funeral procession, and the glimpse that he

obtained of their faces seemed to denote that they were anxious and

sad. Returning later, he passed them again in the same field,

progressing just as slowly, and as regardless of the hour and of the

cheerless night as before. It was only on account of his preoccupation

with his own affairs, and the illness in his house, that he did not

bear in mind the curious incident, which, however, he recalled a long

while after.

During the interval of the cottager’s going and coming, she had said to

her husband—

“I don’t see how I can help being the cause of much misery to you all

your life. The river is down there. I can put an end to myself in it. I

am not afraid.”

“I don’t wish to add murder to my other follies,” he said.

“I will leave something to show that I did it myself—on account of my

shame. They will not blame you then.”

“Don’t speak so absurdly—I wish not to hear it. It is nonsense to have

such thoughts in this kind of case, which is rather one for satirical

laughter than for tragedy. You don’t in the least understand the

quality of the mishap. It would be viewed in the light of a joke by

nine-tenths of the world if it were known. Please oblige me by

returning to the house, and going to bed.”

“I will,” said she dutifully.

They had rambled round by a road which led to the well-known ruins of

the Cistercian abbey behind the mill, the latter having, in centuries

past, been attached to the monastic establishment. The mill still

worked on, food being a perennial necessity; the abbey had perished,

creeds being transient. One continually sees the ministration of the

temporary outlasting the ministration of the eternal. Their walk having

been circuitous, they were still not far from the house, and in obeying

his direction she only had to reach the large stone bridge across the

main river and follow the road for a few yards. When she got back,

everything remained as she had left it, the fire being still burning.

She did not stay downstairs for more than a minute, but proceeded to

her chamber, whither the luggage had been taken. Here she sat down on

the edge of the bed, looking blankly around, and presently began to

undress. In removing the light towards the bedstead its rays fell upon

the tester of white dimity; something was hanging beneath it, and she

lifted the candle to see what it was. A bough of mistletoe. Angel had

put it there; she knew that in an instant. This was the explanation of

that mysterious parcel which it had been so difficult to pack and

bring; whose contents he would not explain to her, saying that time

would soon show her the purpose thereof. In his zest and his gaiety he

had hung it there. How foolish and inopportune that mistletoe looked

now.

Having nothing more to fear, having scarce anything to hope, for that

he would relent there seemed no promise whatever, she lay down dully.

When sorrow ceases to be speculative, sleep sees her opportunity. Among

so many happier moods which forbid repose this was a mood which

welcomed it, and in a few minutes the lonely Tess forgot existence,

surrounded by the aromatic stillness of the chamber that had once,

possibly, been the bride-chamber of her own ancestry.

Later on that night Clare also retraced his steps to the house.

Entering softly to the sitting-room he obtained a light, and with the

manner of one who had considered his course he spread his rugs upon the

old horse-hair sofa which stood there, and roughly shaped it to a

sleeping-couch. Before lying down he crept shoeless upstairs, and

listened at the door of her apartment. Her measured breathing told that

she was sleeping profoundly.

“Thank God!” murmured Clare; and yet he was conscious of a pang of

bitterness at the thought—approximately true, though not wholly so—that

having shifted the burden of her life to his shoulders, she was now

reposing without care.

He turned away to descend; then, irresolute, faced round to her door

again. In the act he caught sight of one of the d’Urberville dames,

whose portrait was immediately over the entrance to Tess’s bedchamber.

In the candlelight the painting was more than unpleasant. Sinister

design lurked in the woman’s features, a concentrated purpose of

revenge on the other sex—so it seemed to him then. The Caroline bodice

of the portrait was low—precisely as Tess’s had been when he tucked it

in to show the necklace; and again he experienced the distressing

sensation of a resemblance between them.

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

His air remained calm and cold, his small compressed mouth indexing his

powers of self-control; his face wearing still that terrible sterile

expression which had spread thereon since her disclosure. It was the

face of a man who was no longer passion’s slave, yet who found no

advantage in his enfranchisement. He was simply regarding the harrowing

contingencies of human experience, the unexpectedness of things.

Nothing so pure, so sweet, so virginal as Tess had seemed possible all

the long while that he had adored her, up to an hour ago; but

The little less, and what worlds away!

He argued erroneously when he said to himself that her heart was not

indexed in the honest freshness of her face; but Tess had no advocate

to set him right. Could it be possible, he continued, that eyes which

as they gazed never expressed any divergence from what the tongue was

telling, were yet ever seeing another world behind her ostensible one,

discordant and contrasting?

He reclined on his couch in the sitting-room, and extinguished the

light. The night came in, and took up its place there, unconcerned and

indifferent; the night which had already swallowed up his happiness,

and was now digesting it listlessly; and was ready to swallow up the

happiness of a thousand other people with as little disturbance or

change of mien.