Chapter Chapter 41 · Chapter XLI Hope Springs Eternal in the Human Breast

. Chapter XLI Hope Springs Eternal in the Human Breast

From the foregoing events of the winter-time let us press on to an

October day, more than eight months subsequent to the parting of Clare

and Tess. We discover the latter in changed conditions; instead of a

bride with boxes and trunks which others bore, we see her a lonely

woman with a basket and a bundle in her own porterage, as at an earlier

time when she was no bride; instead of the ample means that were

projected by her husband for her comfort through this probationary

period, she can produce only a flattened purse.

After again leaving Marlott, her home, she had got through the spring

and summer without any great stress upon her physical powers, the time

being mainly spent in rendering light irregular service at dairy-work

near Port-Bredy to the west of the Blackmoor Valley, equally remote

from her native place and from Talbothays. She preferred this to living

on his allowance. Mentally she remained in utter stagnation, a

condition which the mechanical occupation rather fostered than checked.

Her consciousness was at that other dairy, at that other season, in the

presence of the tender lover who had confronted her there—he who, the

moment she had grasped him to keep for her own, had disappeared like a

shape in a vision.

The dairy-work lasted only till the milk began to lessen, for she had

not met with a second regular engagement as at Talbothays, but had done

duty as a supernumerary only. However, as harvest was now beginning,

she had simply to remove from the pasture to the stubble to find plenty

of further occupation, and this continued till harvest was done.

Of the five-and-twenty pounds which had remained to her of Clare’s

allowance, after deducting the other half of the fifty as a

contribution to her parents for the trouble and expense to which she

had put them, she had as yet spent but little. But there now followed

an unfortunate interval of wet weather, during which she was obliged to

fall back upon her sovereigns.

She could not bear to let them go. Angel had put them into her hand,

had obtained them bright and new from his bank for her; his touch had

consecrated them to souvenirs of himself—they appeared to have had as

yet no other history than such as was created by his and her own

experiences—and to disperse them was like giving away relics. But she

had to do it, and one by one they left her hands.

She had been compelled to send her mother her address from time to

time, but she concealed her circumstances. When her money had almost

gone a letter from her mother reached her. Joan stated that they were

in dreadful difficulty; the autumn rains had gone through the thatch of

the house, which required entire renewal; but this could not be done

because the previous thatching had never been paid for. New rafters and

a new ceiling upstairs also were required, which, with the previous

bill, would amount to a sum of twenty pounds. As her husband was a man

of means, and had doubtless returned by this time, could she not send

them the money?

Tess had thirty pounds coming to her almost immediately from Angel’s

bankers, and, the case being so deplorable, as soon as the sum was

received she sent the twenty as requested. Part of the remainder she

was obliged to expend in winter clothing, leaving only a nominal sum

for the whole inclement season at hand. When the last pound had gone, a

remark of Angel’s that whenever she required further resources she was

to apply to his father, remained to be considered.

But the more Tess thought of the step, the more reluctant was she to

take it. The same delicacy, pride, false shame, whatever it may be

called, on Clare’s account, which had led her to hide from her own

parents the prolongation of the estrangement, hindered her owning to

his that she was in want after the fair allowance he had left her. They

probably despised her already; how much more they would despise her in

the character of a mendicant! The consequence was that by no effort

could the parson’s daughter-in-law bring herself to let him know her

state.

Her reluctance to communicate with her husband’s parents might, she

thought, lessen with the lapse of time; but with her own the reverse

obtained. On her leaving their house after the short visit subsequent

to her marriage they were under the impression that she was ultimately

going to join her husband; and from that time to the present she had

done nothing to disturb their belief that she was awaiting his return

in comfort, hoping against hope that his journey to Brazil would result

in a short stay only, after which he would come to fetch her, or that

he would write for her to join him; in any case that they would soon

present a united front to their families and the world. This hope she

still fostered. To let her parents know that she was a deserted wife,

dependent, now that she had relieved their necessities, on her own

hands for a living, after the _éclat_ of a marriage which was to

nullify the collapse of the first attempt, would be too much indeed.

The set of brilliants returned to her mind. Where Clare had deposited

them she did not know, and it mattered little, if it were true that she

could only use and not sell them. Even were they absolutely hers it

would be passing mean to enrich herself by a legal title to them which

was not essentially hers at all.

Meanwhile her husband’s days had been by no means free from trial. At

this moment he was lying ill of fever in the clay lands near Curitiba

in Brazil, having been drenched with thunder-storms and persecuted by

other hardships, in common with all the English farmers and

farm-labourers who, just at this time, were deluded into going thither

by the promises of the Brazilian Government, and by the baseless

assumption that those frames which, ploughing and sowing on English

uplands, had resisted all the weathers to whose moods they had been

born, could resist equally well all the weathers by which they were

surprised on Brazilian plains.

To return. Thus it happened that when the last of Tess’s sovereigns had

been spent she was unprovided with others to take their place, while on

account of the season she found it increasingly difficult to get

employment. Not being aware of the rarity of intelligence, energy,

health, and willingness in any sphere of life, she refrained from

seeking an indoor occupation; fearing towns, large houses, people of

means and social sophistication, and of manners other than rural. From

that direction of gentility Black Care had come. Society might be

better than she supposed from her slight experience of it. But she had

no proof of this, and her instinct in the circumstances was to avoid

its purlieus.

The small dairies to the west, beyond Port-Bredy, in which she had

served as supernumerary milkmaid during the spring and summer required

no further aid. Room would probably have been made for her at

Talbothays, if only out of sheer compassion; but comfortable as her

life had been there, she could not go back. The anti-climax would be

too intolerable; and her return might bring reproach upon her idolized

husband. She could not have borne their pity, and their whispered

remarks to one another upon her strange situation; though she would

almost have faced a knowledge of her circumstances by every individual

there, so long as her story had remained isolated in the mind of each.

It was the interchange of ideas about her that made her sensitiveness

wince. Tess could not account for this distinction; she simply knew

that she felt it.

She was now on her way to an upland farm in the centre of the county,

to which she had been recommended by a wandering letter which had

reached her from Marian. Marian had somehow heard that Tess was

separated from her husband—probably through Izz Huett—and the

good-natured and now tippling girl, deeming Tess in trouble, had

hastened to notify to her former friend that she herself had gone to

this upland spot after leaving the dairy, and would like to see her

there, where there was room for other hands, if it was really true that

she worked again as of old.

With the shortening of the days all hope of obtaining her husband’s

forgiveness began to leave her; and there was something of the habitude

of the wild animal in the unreflecting instinct with which she rambled

on—disconnecting herself by littles from her eventful past at every

step, obliterating her identity, giving no thought to accidents or

contingencies which might make a quick discovery of her whereabouts by

others of importance to her own happiness, if not to theirs.

Among the difficulties of her lonely position not the least was the

attention she excited by her appearance, a certain bearing of

distinction, which she had caught from Clare, being superadded to her

natural attractiveness. Whilst the clothes lasted which had been

prepared for her marriage, these casual glances of interest caused her

no inconvenience, but as soon as she was compelled to don the wrapper

of a fieldwoman, rude words were addressed to her more than once; but

nothing occurred to cause her bodily fear till a particular November

afternoon.

She had preferred the country west of the River Brit to the upland farm

for which she was now bound, because, for one thing, it was nearer to

the home of her husband’s father; and to hover about that region

unrecognized, with the notion that she might decide to call at the

Vicarage some day, gave her pleasure. But having once decided to try

the higher and drier levels, she pressed back eastward, marching afoot

towards the village of Chalk-Newton, where she meant to pass the night.

The lane was long and unvaried, and, owing to the rapid shortening of

the days, dusk came upon her before she was aware. She had reached the

top of a hill down which the lane stretched its serpentine length in

glimpses, when she heard footsteps behind her back, and in a few

moments she was overtaken by a man. He stepped up alongside Tess and

said—

“Good night, my pretty maid”: to which she civilly replied.

The light still remaining in the sky lit up her face, though the

landscape was nearly dark. The man turned and stared hard at her.

“Why, surely, it is the young wench who was at Trantridge awhile—young

Squire d’Urberville’s friend? I was there at that time, though I don’t

live there now.”

She recognized in him the well-to-do boor whom Angel had knocked down

at the inn for addressing her coarsely. A spasm of anguish shot through

her, and she returned him no answer.

“Be honest enough to own it, and that what I said in the town was true,

though your fancy-man was so up about it—hey, my sly one? You ought to

beg my pardon for that blow of his, considering.”

Still no answer came from Tess. There seemed only one escape for her

hunted soul. She suddenly took to her heels with the speed of the wind,

and, without looking behind her, ran along the road till she came to a

gate which opened directly into a plantation. Into this she plunged,

and did not pause till she was deep enough in its shade to be safe

against any possibility of discovery.

Under foot the leaves were dry, and the foliage of some holly bushes

which grew among the deciduous trees was dense enough to keep off

draughts. She scraped together the dead leaves till she had formed them

into a large heap, making a sort of nest in the middle. Into this Tess

crept.

Such sleep as she got was naturally fitful; she fancied she heard

strange noises, but persuaded herself that they were caused by the

breeze. She thought of her husband in some vague warm clime on the

other side of the globe, while she was here in the cold. Was there

another such a wretched being as she in the world? Tess asked herself;

and, thinking of her wasted life, said, “All is vanity.” She repeated

the words mechanically, till she reflected that this was a most

inadequate thought for modern days. Solomon had thought as far as that

more than two thousand years ago; she herself, though not in the van of

thinkers, had got much further. If all were only vanity, who would mind

it? All was, alas, worse than vanity—injustice, punishment, exaction,

death. The wife of Angel Clare put her hand to her brow, and felt its

curve, and the edges of her eye-sockets perceptible under the soft

skin, and thought as she did so that a time would come when that bone

would be bare. “I wish it were now,” she said.

In the midst of these whimsical fancies she heard a new strange sound

among the leaves. It might be the wind; yet there was scarcely any

wind. Sometimes it was a palpitation, sometimes a flutter; sometimes it

was a sort of gasp or gurgle. Soon she was certain that the noises came

from wild creatures of some kind, the more so when, originating in the

boughs overhead, they were followed by the fall of a heavy body upon

the ground. Had she been ensconced here under other and more pleasant

conditions she would have become alarmed; but, outside humanity, she

had at present no fear.

Day at length broke in the sky. When it had been day aloft for some

little while it became day in the wood.

Directly the assuring and prosaic light of the world’s active hours had

grown strong, she crept from under her hillock of leaves, and looked

around boldly. Then she perceived what had been going on to disturb

her. The plantation wherein she had taken shelter ran down at this spot

into a peak, which ended it hitherward, outside the hedge being arable

ground. Under the trees several pheasants lay about, their rich plumage

dabbled with blood; some were dead, some feebly twitching a wing, some

staring up at the sky, some pulsating quickly, some contorted, some

stretched out—all of them writhing in agony, except the fortunate ones

whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature to

bear more.

Tess guessed at once the meaning of this. The birds had been driven

down into this corner the day before by some shooting-party; and while

those that had dropped dead under the shot, or had died before

nightfall, had been searched for and carried off, many badly wounded

birds had escaped and hidden themselves away, or risen among the thick

boughs, where they had maintained their position till they grew weaker

with loss of blood in the night-time, when they had fallen one by one

as she had heard them.

She had occasionally caught glimpses of these men in girlhood, looking

over hedges, or peeping through bushes, and pointing their guns,

strangely accoutred, a bloodthirsty light in their eyes. She had been

told that, rough and brutal as they seemed just then, they were not

like this all the year round, but were, in fact, quite civil persons

save during certain weeks of autumn and winter, when, like the

inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula, they ran amuck, and made it their

purpose to destroy life—in this case harmless feathered creatures,

brought into being by artificial means solely to gratify these

propensities—at once so unmannerly and so unchivalrous towards their

weaker fellows in Nature’s teeming family.

With the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred sufferers as much

as for herself, Tess’s first thought was to put the still living birds

out of their torture, and to this end with her own hands she broke the

necks of as many as she could find, leaving them to lie where she had

found them till the game-keepers should come—as they probably would

come—to look for them a second time.

“Poor darlings—to suppose myself the most miserable being on earth in

the sight o’ such misery as yours!” she exclaimed, her tears running

down as she killed the birds tenderly. “And not a twinge of bodily pain

about me! I be not mangled, and I be not bleeding, and I have two hands

to feed and clothe me.” She was ashamed of herself for her gloom of the

night, based on nothing more tangible than a sense of condemnation

under an arbitrary law of society which had no foundation in Nature.