Chapter Chapter 26 · Chapter XXVI The Guests

. Chapter XXVI The Guests

It was not till the evening, after family prayers, that Angel found

opportunity of broaching to his father one or two subjects near his

heart. He had strung himself up to the purpose while kneeling behind

his brothers on the carpet, studying the little nails in the heels of

their walking boots. When the service was over they went out of the

room with their mother, and Mr Clare and himself were left alone.

The young man first discussed with the elder his plans for the

attainment of his position as a farmer on an extensive scale—either in

England or in the Colonies. His father then told him that, as he had

not been put to the expense of sending Angel up to Cambridge, he had

felt it his duty to set by a sum of money every year towards the

purchase or lease of land for him some day, that he might not feel

himself unduly slighted.

“As far as worldly wealth goes,” continued his father, “you will no

doubt stand far superior to your brothers in a few years.”

This considerateness on old Mr Clare’s part led Angel onward to the

other and dearer subject. He observed to his father that he was then

six-and-twenty, and that when he should start in the farming business

he would require eyes in the back of his head to see to all

matters—some one would be necessary to superintend the domestic labours

of his establishment whilst he was afield. Would it not be well,

therefore, for him to marry?

His father seemed to think this idea not unreasonable; and then Angel

put the question—

“What kind of wife do you think would be best for me as a thrifty

hard-working farmer?”

“A truly Christian woman, who will be a help and a comfort to you in

your goings-out and your comings-in. Beyond that, it really matters

little. Such an one can be found; indeed, my earnest-minded friend and

neighbour, Dr Chant—”

“But ought she not primarily to be able to milk cows, churn good

butter, make immense cheeses; know how to sit hens and turkeys and rear

chickens, to direct a field of labourers in an emergency, and estimate

the value of sheep and calves?”

“Yes; a farmer’s wife; yes, certainly. It would be desirable.” Mr

Clare, the elder, had plainly never thought of these points before. “I

was going to add,” he said, “that for a pure and saintly woman you will

not find one more to your true advantage, and certainly not more to

your mother’s mind and my own, than your friend Mercy, whom you used to

show a certain interest in. It is true that my neighbour Chant’s

daughter had lately caught up the fashion of the younger clergy round

about us for decorating the Communion-table—alter, as I was shocked to

hear her call it one day—with flowers and other stuff on festival

occasions. But her father, who is quite as opposed to such flummery as

I, says that can be cured. It is a mere girlish outbreak which, I am

sure, will not be permanent.”

“Yes, yes; Mercy is good and devout, I know. But, father, don’t you

think that a young woman equally pure and virtuous as Miss Chant, but

one who, in place of that lady’s ecclesiastical accomplishments,

understands the duties of farm life as well as a farmer himself, would

suit me infinitely better?”

His father persisted in his conviction that a knowledge of a farmer’s

wife’s duties came second to a Pauline view of humanity; and the

impulsive Angel, wishing to honour his father’s feelings and to advance

the cause of his heart at the same time, grew specious. He said that

fate or Providence had thrown in his way a woman who possessed every

qualification to be the helpmate of an agriculturist, and was decidedly

of a serious turn of mind. He would not say whether or not she had

attached herself to the sound Low Church School of his father; but she

would probably be open to conviction on that point; she was a regular

church-goer of simple faith; honest-hearted, receptive, intelligent,

graceful to a degree, chaste as a vestal, and, in personal appearance,

exceptionally beautiful.

“Is she of a family such as you would care to marry into—a lady, in

short?” asked his startled mother, who had come softly into the study

during the conversation.

“She is not what in common parlance is called a lady,” said Angel,

unflinchingly, “for she is a cottager’s daughter, as I am proud to say.

But she _is_ a lady, nevertheless—in feeling and nature.”

“Mercy Chant is of a very good family.”

“Pooh!—what’s the advantage of that, mother?” said Angel quickly. “How

is family to avail the wife of a man who has to rough it as I have, and

shall have to do?”

“Mercy is accomplished. And accomplishments have their charm,” returned

his mother, looking at him through her silver spectacles.

“As to external accomplishments, what will be the use of them in the

life I am going to lead?—while as to her reading, I can take that in

hand. She’ll be apt pupil enough, as you would say if you knew her.

She’s brim full of poetry—actualized poetry, if I may use the

expression. She _lives_ what paper-poets only write... And she is an

unimpeachable Christian, I am sure; perhaps of the very tribe, genus,

and species you desire to propagate.”

“O Angel, you are mocking!”

“Mother, I beg pardon. But as she really does attend Church almost

every Sunday morning, and is a good Christian girl, I am sure you will

tolerate any social shortcomings for the sake of that quality, and feel

that I may do worse than choose her.” Angel waxed quite earnest on that

rather automatic orthodoxy in his beloved Tess which (never dreaming

that it might stand him in such good stead) he had been prone to slight

when observing it practised by her and the other milkmaids, because of

its obvious unreality amid beliefs essentially naturalistic.

In their sad doubts as to whether their son had himself any right

whatever to the title he claimed for the unknown young woman, Mr and

Mrs Clare began to feel it as an advantage not to be overlooked that

she at least was sound in her views; especially as the conjunction of

the pair must have arisen by an act of Providence; for Angel never

would have made orthodoxy a condition of his choice. They said finally

that it was better not to act in a hurry, but that they would not

object to see her.

Angel therefore refrained from declaring more particulars now. He felt

that, single-minded and self-sacrificing as his parents were, there yet

existed certain latent prejudices of theirs, as middle-class people,

which it would require some tact to overcome. For though legally at

liberty to do as he chose, and though their daughter-in-law’s

qualifications could make no practical difference to their lives, in

the probability of her living far away from them, he wished for

affection’s sake not to wound their sentiment in the most important

decision of his life.

He observed his own inconsistencies in dwelling upon accidents in

Tess’s life as if they were vital features. It was for herself that he

loved Tess; her soul, her heart, her substance—not for her skill in the

dairy, her aptness as his scholar, and certainly not for her simple

formal faith-professions. Her unsophisticated open-air existence

required no varnish of conventionality to make it palatable to him. He

held that education had as yet but little affected the beats of emotion

and impulse on which domestic happiness depends. It was probable that,

in the lapse of ages, improved systems of moral and intellectual

training would appreciably, perhaps considerably, elevate the

involuntary and even the unconscious instincts of human nature; but up

to the present day, culture, as far as he could see, might be said to

have affected only the mental epiderm of those lives which had been

brought under its influence. This belief was confirmed by his

experience of women, which, having latterly been extended from the

cultivated middle-class into the rural community, had taught him how

much less was the intrinsic difference between the good and wise woman

of one social stratum and the good and wise woman of another social

stratum, than between the good and bad, the wise and the foolish, of

the same stratum or class.

It was the morning of his departure. His brothers had already left the

Vicarage to proceed on a walking tour in the north, whence one was to

return to his college, and the other to his curacy. Angel might have

accompanied them, but preferred to rejoin his sweetheart at Talbothays.

He would have been an awkward member of the party; for, though the most

appreciative humanist, the most ideal religionist, even the best-versed

Christologist of the three, there was alienation in the standing

consciousness that his squareness would not fit the round hole that had

been prepared for him. To neither Felix nor Cuthbert had he ventured to

mention Tess.

His mother made him sandwiches, and his father accompanied him, on his

own mare, a little way along the road. Having fairly well advanced his

own affairs, Angel listened in a willing silence, as they jogged on

together through the shady lanes, to his father’s account of his parish

difficulties, and the coldness of brother clergymen whom he loved,

because of his strict interpretations of the New Testament by the light

of what they deemed a pernicious Calvinistic doctrine.

“Pernicious!” said Mr Clare, with genial scorn; and he proceeded to

recount experiences which would show the absurdity of that idea. He

told of wondrous conversions of evil livers of which he had been the

instrument, not only amongst the poor, but amongst the rich and

well-to-do; and he also candidly admitted many failures.

As an instance of the latter, he mentioned the case of a young upstart

squire named d’Urberville, living some forty miles off, in the

neighbourhood of Trantridge.

“Not one of the ancient d’Urbervilles of Kingsbere and other places?”

asked his son. “That curiously historic worn-out family with its

ghostly legend of the coach-and-four?”

“O no. The original d’Urbervilles decayed and disappeared sixty or

eighty years ago—at least, I believe so. This seems to be a new family

which had taken the name; for the credit of the former knightly line I

hope they are spurious, I’m sure. But it is odd to hear you express

interest in old families. I thought you set less store by them even

than I.”

“You misapprehend me, father; you often do,” said Angel with a little

impatience. “Politically I am sceptical as to the virtue of their being

old. Some of the wise even among themselves ‘exclaim against their own

succession,’ as Hamlet puts it; but lyrically, dramatically, and even

historically, I am tenderly attached to them.”

This distinction, though by no means a subtle one, was yet too subtle

for Mr Clare the elder, and he went on with the story he had been about

to relate; which was that after the death of the senior so-called

d’Urberville, the young man developed the most culpable passions,

though he had a blind mother, whose condition should have made him know

better. A knowledge of his career having come to the ears of Mr Clare,

when he was in that part of the country preaching missionary sermons,

he boldly took occasion to speak to the delinquent on his spiritual

state. Though he was a stranger, occupying another’s pulpit, he had

felt this to be his duty, and took for his text the words from St Luke:

“Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee!” The young

man much resented this directness of attack, and in the war of words

which followed when they met he did not scruple publicly to insult Mr

Clare, without respect for his gray hairs.

Angel flushed with distress.

“Dear father,” he said sadly, “I wish you would not expose yourself to

such gratuitous pain from scoundrels!”

“Pain?” said his father, his rugged face shining in the ardour of

self-abnegation. “The only pain to me was pain on his account, poor,

foolish young man. Do you suppose his incensed words could give me any

pain, or even his blows? ‘Being reviled we bless; being persecuted we

suffer it; being defamed we entreat; we are made as the filth of the

world, and as the offscouring of all things unto this day.’ Those

ancient and noble words to the Corinthians are strictly true at this

present hour.”

“Not blows, father? He did not proceed to blows?”

“No, he did not. Though I have borne blows from men in a mad state of

intoxication.”

“No!”

“A dozen times, my boy. What then? I have saved them from the guilt of

murdering their own flesh and blood thereby; and they have lived to

thank me, and praise God.”

“May this young man do the same!” said Angel fervently. “But I fear

otherwise, from what you say.”

“We’ll hope, nevertheless,” said Mr Clare. “And I continue to pray for

him, though on this side of the grave we shall probably never meet

again. But, after all, one of those poor words of mine may spring up in

his heart as a good seed some day.”

Now, as always, Clare’s father was sanguine as a child; and though the

younger could not accept his parent’s narrow dogma, he revered his

practice and recognized the hero under the pietist. Perhaps he revered

his father’s practice even more now than ever, seeing that, in the

question of making Tessy his wife, his father had not once thought of

inquiring whether she were well provided or penniless. The same

unworldliness was what had necessitated Angel’s getting a living as a

farmer, and would probably keep his brothers in the position of poor

parsons for the term of their activities; yet Angel admired it none the

less. Indeed, despite his own heterodoxy, Angel often felt that he was

nearer to his father on the human side than was either of his brethren.