Kabanata Kabanata 33 · Chapter XXXIII Two Evenings

. Chapter XXXIII Two Evenings

Angel felt that he would like to spend a day with her before the

wedding, somewhere away from the dairy, as a last jaunt in her company

while there were yet mere lover and mistress; a romantic day, in

circumstances that would never be repeated; with that other and greater

day beaming close ahead of them. During the preceding week, therefore,

he suggested making a few purchases in the nearest town, and they

started together.

Clare’s life at the dairy had been that of a recluse in respect the

world of his own class. For months he had never gone near a town, and,

requiring no vehicle, had never kept one, hiring the dairyman’s cob or

gig if he rode or drove. They went in the gig that day.

And then for the first time in their lives they shopped as partners in

one concern. It was Christmas Eve, with its loads a holly and

mistletoe, and the town was very full of strangers who had come in from

all parts of the country on account of the day. Tess paid the penalty

of walking about with happiness superadded to beauty on her countenance

by being much stared at as she moved amid them on his arm.

In the evening they returned to the inn at which they had put up, and

Tess waited in the entry while Angel went to see the horse and gig

brought to the door. The general sitting-room was full of guests, who

were continually going in and out. As the door opened and shut each

time for the passage of these, the light within the parlour fell full

upon Tess’s face. Two men came out and passed by her among the rest.

One of them had stared her up and down in surprise, and she fancied he

was a Trantridge man, though that village lay so many miles off that

Trantridge folk were rarities here.

“A comely maid that,” said the other.

“True, comely enough. But unless I make a great mistake—” And he

negatived the remainder of the definition forthwith.

Clare had just returned from the stable-yard, and, confronting the man

on the threshold, heard the words, and saw the shrinking of Tess. The

insult to her stung him to the quick, and before he had considered

anything at all he struck the man on the chin with the full force of

his fist, sending him staggering backwards into the passage.

The man recovered himself, and seemed inclined to come on, and Clare,

stepping outside the door, put himself in a posture of defence. But his

opponent began to think better of the matter. He looked anew at Tess as

he passed her, and said to Clare—

“I beg pardon, sir; ’twas a complete mistake. I thought she was another

woman, forty miles from here.”

Clare, feeling then that he had been too hasty, and that he was,

moreover, to blame for leaving her standing in an inn-passage, did what

he usually did in such cases, gave the man five shillings to plaster

the blow; and thus they parted, bidding each other a pacific good

night. As soon as Clare had taken the reins from the ostler, and the

young couple had driven off, the two men went in the other direction.

“And was it a mistake?” said the second one.

“Not a bit of it. But I didn’t want to hurt the gentleman’s

feelings—not I.”

In the meantime the lovers were driving onward.

“Could we put off our wedding till a little later?” Tess asked in a dry

dull voice. “I mean if we wished?”

“No, my love. Calm yourself. Do you mean that the fellow may have time

to summon me for assault?” he asked good-humouredly.

“No—I only meant—if it should have to be put off.”

What she meant was not very clear, and he directed her to dismiss such

fancies from her mind, which she obediently did as well as she could.

But she was grave, very grave, all the way home; till she thought, “We

shall go away, a very long distance, hundreds of miles from these

parts, and such as this can never happen again, and no ghost of the

past reach there.”

They parted tenderly that night on the landing, and Clare ascended to

his attic. Tess sat up getting on with some little requisites, lest the

few remaining days should not afford sufficient time. While she sat she

heard a noise in Angel’s room overhead, a sound of thumping and

struggling. Everybody else in the house was asleep, and in her anxiety

lest Clare should be ill she ran up and knocked at his door, and asked

him what was the matter.

“Oh, nothing, dear,” he said from within. “I am so sorry I disturbed

you! But the reason is rather an amusing one: I fell asleep and dreamt

that I was fighting that fellow again who insulted you, and the noise

you heard was my pummelling away with my fists at my portmanteau, which

I pulled out to-day for packing. I am occasionally liable to these

freaks in my sleep. Go to bed and think of it no more.”

This was the last drachm required to turn the scale of her indecision.

Declare the past to him by word of mouth she could not; but there was

another way. She sat down and wrote on the four pages of a note-sheet a

succinct narrative of those events of three or four years ago, put it

into an envelope, and directed it to Clare. Then, lest the flesh should

again be weak, she crept upstairs without any shoes and slipped the

note under his door.

Her night was a broken one, as it well might be, and she listened for

the first faint noise overhead. It came, as usual; he descended, as

usual. She descended. He met her at the bottom of the stairs and kissed

her. Surely it was as warmly as ever!

He looked a little disturbed and worn, she thought. But he said not a

word to her about her revelation, even when they were alone. Could he

have had it? Unless he began the subject she felt that she could say

nothing. So the day passed, and it was evident that whatever he thought

he meant to keep to himself. Yet he was frank and affectionate as

before. Could it be that her doubts were childish? that he forgave her;

that he loved her for what she was, just as she was, and smiled at her

disquiet as at a foolish nightmare? Had he really received her note?

She glanced into his room, and could see nothing of it. It might be

that he forgave her. But even if he had not received it she had a

sudden enthusiastic trust that he surely would forgive her.

Every morning and night he was the same, and thus New Year’s Eve

broke—the wedding day.

The lovers did not rise at milking-time, having through the whole of

this last week of their sojourn at the dairy been accorded something of

the position of guests, Tess being honoured with a room of her own.

When they arrived downstairs at breakfast-time they were surprised to

see what effects had been produced in the large kitchen for their glory

since they had last beheld it. At some unnatural hour of the morning

the dairyman had caused the yawning chimney-corner to be whitened, and

the brick hearth reddened, and a blazing yellow damask blower to be

hung across the arch in place of the old grimy blue cotton one with a

black sprig pattern which had formerly done duty there. This renovated

aspect of what was the focus indeed of the room on a full winter

morning threw a smiling demeanour over the whole apartment.

“I was determined to do summat in honour o’t”, said the dairyman. “And

as you wouldn’t hear of my gieing a rattling good randy wi’ fiddles and

bass-viols complete, as we should ha’ done in old times, this was all I

could think o’ as a noiseless thing.”

Tess’s friends lived so far off that none could conveniently have been

present at the ceremony, even had any been asked; but as a fact nobody

was invited from Marlott. As for Angel’s family, he had written and

duly informed them of the time, and assured them that he would be glad

to see one at least of them there for the day if he would like to come.

His brothers had not replied at all, seeming to be indignant with him;

while his father and mother had written a rather sad letter, deploring

his precipitancy in rushing into marriage, but making the best of the

matter by saying that, though a dairywoman was the last daughter-in-law

they could have expected, their son had arrived at an age which he

might be supposed to be the best judge.

This coolness in his relations distressed Clare less than it would have

done had he been without the grand card with which he meant to surprise

them ere long. To produce Tess, fresh from the dairy, as a d’Urberville

and a lady, he had felt to be temerarious and risky; hence he had

concealed her lineage till such time as, familiarized with worldly ways

by a few months’ travel and reading with him, he could take her on a

visit to his parents and impart the knowledge while triumphantly

producing her as worthy of such an ancient line. It was a pretty

lover’s dream, if no more. Perhaps Tess’s lineage had more value for

himself than for anybody in the world beside.

Her perception that Angel’s bearing towards her still remained in no

whit altered by her own communication rendered Tess guiltily doubtful

if he could have received it. She rose from breakfast before he had

finished, and hastened upstairs. It had occurred to her to look once

more into the queer gaunt room which had been Clare’s den, or rather

eyrie, for so long, and climbing the ladder she stood at the open door

of the apartment, regarding and pondering. She stooped to the threshold

of the doorway, where she had pushed in the note two or three days

earlier in such excitement. The carpet reached close to the sill, and

under the edge of the carpet she discerned the faint white margin of

the envelope containing her letter to him, which he obviously had never

seen, owing to her having in her haste thrust it beneath the carpet as

well as beneath the door.

With a feeling of faintness she withdrew the letter. There it

was—sealed up, just as it had left her hands. The mountain had not yet

been removed. She could not let him read it now, the house being in

full bustle of preparation; and descending to her own room she

destroyed the letter there.

She was so pale when he saw her again that he felt quite anxious. The

incident of the misplaced letter she had jumped at as if it prevented a

confession; but she knew in her conscience that it need not; there was

still time. Yet everything was in a stir; there was coming and going;

all had to dress, the dairyman and Mrs Crick having been asked to

accompany them as witnesses; and reflection or deliberate talk was

well-nigh impossible. The only minute Tess could get to be alone with

Clare was when they met upon the landing.

“I am so anxious to talk to you—I want to confess all my faults and

blunders!” she said with attempted lightness.

“No, no—we can’t have faults talked of—you must be deemed perfect

to-day at least, my Sweet!” he cried. “We shall have plenty of time,

hereafter, I hope, to talk over our failings. I will confess mine at

the same time.”

“But it would be better for me to do it now, I think, so that you could

not say—”

“Well, my quixotic one, you shall tell me anything—say, as soon as we

are settled in our lodging; not now. I, too, will tell you my faults

then. But do not let us spoil the day with them; they will be excellent

matter for a dull time.”

“Then you don’t wish me to, dearest?”

“I do not, Tessy, really.”

The hurry of dressing and starting left no time for more than this.

Those words of his seemed to reassure her on further reflection. She

was whirled onward through the next couple of critical hours by the

mastering tide of her devotion to him, which closed up further

meditation. Her one desire, so long resisted, to make herself his, to

call him her lord, her own—then, if necessary, to die—had at last

lifted her up from her plodding reflective pathway. In dressing, she

moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which

eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness.

The church was a long way off, and they were obliged to drive,

particularly as it was winter. A closed carriage was ordered from a

roadside inn, a vehicle which had been kept there ever since the old

days of post-chaise travelling. It had stout wheel-spokes and heavy

felloes, a great curved bed, immense straps and springs, and a pole

like a battering-ram. The postilion was a venerable “boy” of sixty—a

martyr to rheumatic gout, the result of excessive exposure in youth,

counter-acted by strong liquors—who had stood at inn-doors doing

nothing for the whole five-and-twenty years that had elapsed since he

had no longer been required to ride professionally, as if expecting the

old times to come back again. He had a permanent running wound on the

outside of his right leg, originated by the constant bruisings of

aristocratic carriage-poles during the many years that he had been in

regular employ at the King’s Arms, Casterbridge.

Inside this cumbrous and creaking structure, and behind this decayed

conductor, the _partie carrée_ took their seats—the bride and

bridegroom and Mr and Mrs Crick. Angel would have liked one at least of

his brothers to be present as groomsman, but their silence after his

gentle hint to that effect by letter had signified that they did not

care to come. They disapproved of the marriage, and could not be

expected to countenance it. Perhaps it was as well that they could not

be present. They were not worldly young fellows, but fraternizing with

dairy-folk would have struck unpleasantly upon their biased niceness,

apart from their views of the match.

Upheld by the momentum of the time, Tess knew nothing of this, did not

see anything, did not know the road they were taking to the church. She

knew that Angel was close to her; all the rest was a luminous mist. She

was a sort of celestial person, who owed her being to poetry—one of

those classical divinities Clare was accustomed to talk to her about

when they took their walks together.

The marriage being by licence there were only a dozen or so of people

in the church; had there been a thousand they would have produced no

more effect upon her. They were at stellar distances from her present

world. In the ecstatic solemnity with which she swore her faith to him

the ordinary sensibilities of sex seemed a flippancy. At a pause in the

service, while they were kneeling together, she unconsciously inclined

herself towards him, so that her shoulder touched his arm; she had been

frightened by a passing thought, and the movement had been automatic,

to assure herself that he was really there, and to fortify her belief

that his fidelity would be proof against all things.

Clare knew that she loved him—every curve of her form showed that—but

he did not know at that time the full depth of her devotion, its

single-mindedness, its meekness; what long-suffering it guaranteed,

what honesty, what endurance, what good faith.

As they came out of church the ringers swung the bells off their rests,

and a modest peal of three notes broke forth—that limited amount of

expression having been deemed sufficient by the church builders for the

joys of such a small parish. Passing by the tower with her husband on

the path to the gate she could feel the vibrant air humming round them

from the louvred belfry in the circle of sound, and it matched the

highly-charged mental atmosphere in which she was living.

This condition of mind, wherein she felt glorified by an irradiation

not her own, like the angel whom St John saw in the sun, lasted till

the sound of the church bells had died away, and the emotions of the

wedding-service had calmed down. Her eyes could dwell upon details more

clearly now, and Mr and Mrs Crick having directed their own gig to be

sent for them, to leave the carriage to the young couple, she observed

the build and character of that conveyance for the first time. Sitting

in silence she regarded it long.

“I fancy you seem oppressed, Tessy,” said Clare.

“Yes,” she answered, putting her hand to her brow. “I tremble at many

things. It is all so serious, Angel. Among other things I seem to have

seen this carriage before, to be very well acquainted with it. It is

very odd—I must have seen it in a dream.”

“Oh—you have heard the legend of the d’Urberville Coach—that well-known

superstition of this county about your family when they were very

popular here; and this lumbering old thing reminds you of it.”

“I have never heard of it to my knowledge,” said she. “What is the

legend—may I know it?”

“Well—I would rather not tell it in detail just now. A certain

d’Urberville of the sixteenth or seventeenth century committed a

dreadful crime in his family coach; and since that time members of the

family see or hear the old coach whenever—— But I’ll tell you another

day—it is rather gloomy. Evidently some dim knowledge of it has been

brought back to your mind by the sight of this venerable caravan.”

“I don’t remember hearing it before,” she murmured. “Is it when we are

going to die, Angel, that members of my family see it, or is it when we

have committed a crime?”

“Now, Tess!”

He silenced her by a kiss.

By the time they reached home she was contrite and spiritless. She was

Mrs Angel Clare, indeed, but had she any moral right to the name? Was

she not more truly Mrs Alexander d’Urberville? Could intensity of love

justify what might be considered in upright souls as culpable

reticence? She knew not what was expected of women in such cases; and

she had no counsellor.

However, when she found herself alone in her room for a few minutes—the

last day this on which she was ever to enter it—she knelt down and

prayed. She tried to pray to God, but it was her husband who really had

her supplication. Her idolatry of this man was such that she herself

almost feared it to be ill-omened. She was conscious of the notion

expressed by Friar Laurence: “These violent delights have violent

ends.” It might be too desperate for human conditions—too rank, to

wild, too deadly.

“O my love, why do I love you so!” she whispered there alone; “for she

you love is not my real self, but one in my image; the one I might have

been!”

Afternoon came, and with it the hour for departure. They had decided to

fulfil the plan of going for a few days to the lodgings in the old

farmhouse near Wellbridge Mill, at which he meant to reside during his

investigation of flour processes. At two o’clock there was nothing left

to do but to start. All the servantry of the dairy were standing in the

red-brick entry to see them go out, the dairyman and his wife following

to the door. Tess saw her three chamber-mates in a row against the

wall, pensively inclining their heads. She had much questioned if they

would appear at the parting moment; but there they were, stoical and

staunch to the last. She knew why the delicate Retty looked so fragile,

and Izz so tragically sorrowful, and Marian so blank; and she forgot

her own dogging shadow for a moment in contemplating theirs.

She impulsively whispered to him—

“Will you kiss ’em all, once, poor things, for the first and last

time?”

Clare had not the least objection to such a farewell formality—which

was all that it was to him—and as he passed them he kissed them in

succession where they stood, saying “Goodbye” to each as he did so.

When they reached the door Tess femininely glanced back to discern the

effect of that kiss of charity; there was no triumph in her glance, as

there might have been. If there had it would have disappeared when she

saw how moved the girls all were. The kiss had obviously done harm by

awakening feelings they were trying to subdue.

Of all this Clare was unconscious. Passing on to the wicket-gate he

shook hands with the dairyman and his wife, and expressed his last

thanks to them for their attentions; after which there was a moment of

silence before they had moved off. It was interrupted by the crowing of

a cock. The white one with the rose comb had come and settled on the

palings in front of the house, within a few yards of them, and his

notes thrilled their ears through, dwindling away like echoes down a

valley of rocks.

“Oh?” said Mrs Crick. “An afternoon crow!”

Two men were standing by the yard gate, holding it open.

“That’s bad,” one murmured to the other, not thinking that the words

could be heard by the group at the door-wicket.

The cock crew again—straight towards Clare.

“Well!” said the dairyman.

“I don’t like to hear him!” said Tess to her husband. “Tell the man to

drive on. Goodbye, goodbye!”

The cock crew again.

“Hoosh! Just you be off, sir, or I’ll twist your neck!” said the

dairyman with some irritation, turning to the bird and driving him

away. And to his wife as they went indoors: “Now, to think o’ that just

to-day! I’ve not heard his crow of an afternoon all the year afore.”

“It only means a change in the weather,” said she; “not what you think:

’tis impossible!”