บทที่ บทที่ 52 · Chapter LII Fluctuations

. Chapter LII Fluctuations

During the small hours of the next morning, while it was still dark,

dwellers near the highways were conscious of a disturbance of their

night’s rest by rumbling noises, intermittently continuing till

daylight—noises as certain to recur in this particular first week of

the month as the voice of the cuckoo in the third week of the same.

They were the preliminaries of the general removal, the passing of the

empty waggons and teams to fetch the goods of the migrating families;

for it was always by the vehicle of the farmer who required his

services that the hired man was conveyed to his destination. That this

might be accomplished within the day was the explanation of the

reverberation occurring so soon after midnight, the aim of the carters

being to reach the door of the outgoing households by six o’clock, when

the loading of their movables at once began.

But to Tess and her mother’s household no such anxious farmer sent his

team. They were only women; they were not regular labourers; they were

not particularly required anywhere; hence they had to hire a waggon at

their own expense, and got nothing sent gratuitously.

It was a relief to Tess, when she looked out of the window that

morning, to find that though the weather was windy and louring, it did

not rain, and that the waggon had come. A wet Lady-Day was a spectre

which removing families never forgot; damp furniture, damp bedding,

damp clothing accompanied it, and left a train of ills.

Her mother, ’Liza-Lu, and Abraham were also awake, but the younger

children were let sleep on. The four breakfasted by the thin light, and

the “house-ridding” was taken in hand.

It proceeded with some cheerfulness, a friendly neighbour or two

assisting. When the large articles of furniture had been packed in

position, a circular nest was made of the beds and bedding, in which

Joan Durbeyfield and the young children were to sit through the

journey. After loading there was a long delay before the horses were

brought, these having been unharnessed during the ridding; but at

length, about two o’clock, the whole was under way, the cooking-pot

swinging from the axle of the waggon, Mrs Durbeyfield and family at the

top, the matron having in her lap, to prevent injury to its works, the

head of the clock, which, at any exceptional lurch of the waggon,

struck one, or one-and-a-half, in hurt tones. Tess and the next eldest

girl walked alongside till they were out of the village.

They had called on a few neighbours that morning and the previous

evening, and some came to see them off, all wishing them well, though,

in their secret hearts, hardly expecting welfare possible to such a

family, harmless as the Durbeyfields were to all except themselves.

Soon the equipage began to ascend to higher ground, and the wind grew

keener with the change of level and soil.

The day being the sixth of April, the Durbeyfield waggon met many other

waggons with families on the summit of the load, which was built on a

wellnigh unvarying principle, as peculiar, probably, to the rural

labourer as the hexagon to the bee. The groundwork of the arrangement

was the family dresser, which, with its shining handles, and

finger-marks, and domestic evidences thick upon it, stood importantly

in front, over the tails of the shaft-horses, in its erect and natural

position, like some Ark of the Covenant that they were bound to carry

reverently.

Some of the households were lively, some mournful; some were stopping

at the doors of wayside inns; where, in due time, the Durbeyfield

menagerie also drew up to bait horses and refresh the travellers.

During the halt Tess’s eyes fell upon a three-pint blue mug, which was

ascending and descending through the air to and from the feminine

section of a household, sitting on the summit of a load that had also

drawn up at a little distance from the same inn. She followed one of

the mug’s journeys upward, and perceived it to be clasped by hands

whose owner she well knew. Tess went towards the waggon.

“Marian and Izz!” she cried to the girls, for it was they, sitting with

the moving family at whose house they had lodged. “Are you

house-ridding to-day, like everybody else?”

They were, they said. It had been too rough a life for them at

Flintcomb-Ash, and they had come away, almost without notice, leaving

Groby to prosecute them if he chose. They told Tess their destination,

and Tess told them hers.

Marian leant over the load, and lowered her voice. “Do you know that

the gentleman who follows ’ee—you’ll guess who I mean—came to ask for

’ee at Flintcomb after you had gone? We didn’t tell’n where you was,

knowing you wouldn’t wish to see him.”

“Ah—but I did see him!” Tess murmured. “He found me.”

“And do he know where you be going?”

“I think so.”

“Husband come back?”

“No.”

She bade her acquaintance goodbye—for the respective carters had now

come out from the inn—and the two waggons resumed their journey in

opposite directions; the vehicle whereon sat Marian, Izz, and the

ploughman’s family with whom they had thrown in their lot, being

brightly painted, and drawn by three powerful horses with shining brass

ornaments on their harness; while the waggon on which Mrs Durbeyfield

and her family rode was a creaking erection that would scarcely bear

the weight of the superincumbent load; one which had known no paint

since it was made, and drawn by two horses only. The contrast well

marked the difference between being fetched by a thriving farmer and

conveying oneself whither no hirer waited one’s coming.

The distance was great—too great for a day’s journey—and it was with

the utmost difficulty that the horses performed it. Though they had

started so early, it was quite late in the afternoon when they turned

the flank of an eminence which formed part of the upland called

Greenhill. While the horses stood to stale and breathe themselves Tess

looked around. Under the hill, and just ahead of them, was the

half-dead townlet of their pilgrimage, Kingsbere, where lay those

ancestors of whom her father had spoken and sung to painfulness:

Kingsbere, the spot of all spots in the world which could be considered

the d’Urbervilles’ home, since they had resided there for full five

hundred years.

A man could be seen advancing from the outskirts towards them, and when

he beheld the nature of their waggon-load he quickened his steps.

“You be the woman they call Mrs Durbeyfield, I reckon?” he said to

Tess’s mother, who had descended to walk the remainder of the way.

She nodded. “Though widow of the late Sir John d’Urberville, poor

nobleman, if I cared for my rights; and returning to the domain of his

forefathers.”

“Oh? Well, I know nothing about that; but if you be Mrs Durbeyfield, I

am sent to tell ’ee that the rooms you wanted be let. We didn’t know

that you was coming till we got your letter this morning—when ’twas too

late. But no doubt you can get other lodgings somewhere.”

The man had noticed the face of Tess, which had become ash-pale at his

intelligence. Her mother looked hopelessly at fault. “What shall we do

now, Tess?” she said bitterly. “Here’s a welcome to your ancestors’

lands! However, let’s try further.”

They moved on into the town, and tried with all their might, Tess

remaining with the waggon to take care of the children whilst her

mother and ’Liza-Lu made inquiries. At the last return of Joan to the

vehicle, an hour later, when her search for accommodation had still

been fruitless, the driver of the waggon said the goods must be

unloaded, as the horses were half-dead, and he was bound to return part

of the way at least that night.

“Very well—unload it here,” said Joan recklessly. “I’ll get shelter

somewhere.”

The waggon had drawn up under the churchyard wall, in a spot screened

from view, and the driver, nothing loth, soon hauled down the poor heap

of household goods. This done, she paid him, reducing herself to almost

her last shilling thereby, and he moved off and left them, only too

glad to get out of further dealings with such a family. It was a dry

night, and he guessed that they would come to no harm.

Tess gazed desperately at the pile of furniture. The cold sunlight of

this spring evening peered invidiously upon the crocks and kettles,

upon the bunches of dried herbs shivering in the breeze, upon the brass

handles of the dresser, upon the wicker-cradle they had all been rocked

in, and upon the well-rubbed clock-case, all of which gave out the

reproachful gleam of indoor articles abandoned to the vicissitudes of a

roofless exposure for which they were never made. Round about were

deparked hills and slopes—now cut up into little paddocks—and the green

foundations that showed where the d’Urberville mansion once had stood;

also an outlying stretch of Egdon Heath that had always belonged to the

estate. Hard by, the aisle of the church called the d’Urberville Aisle

looked on imperturbably.

“Isn’t your family vault your own freehold?” said Tess’s mother, as she

returned from a reconnoitre of the church and graveyard. “Why, of

course ’tis, and that’s where we will camp, girls, till the place of

your ancestors finds us a roof! Now, Tess and ’Liza and Abraham, you

help me. We’ll make a nest for these children, and then we’ll have

another look round.”

Tess listlessly lent a hand, and in a quarter of an hour the old

four-post bedstead was dissociated from the heap of goods, and erected

under the south wall of the church, the part of the building known as

the d’Urberville Aisle, beneath which the huge vaults lay. Over the

tester of the bedstead was a beautiful traceried window, of many

lights, its date being the fifteenth century. It was called the

d’Urberville Window, and in the upper part could be discerned heraldic

emblems like those on Durbeyfield’s old seal and spoon.

Joan drew the curtains round the bed so as to make an excellent tent of

it, and put the smaller children inside. “If it comes to the worst we

can sleep there too, for one night,” she said. “But let us try further

on, and get something for the dears to eat! O, Tess, what’s the use of

your playing at marrying gentlemen, if it leaves us like this!”

Accompanied by ’Liza-Lu and the boy, she again ascended the little lane

which secluded the church from the townlet. As soon as they got into

the street they beheld a man on horseback gazing up and down. “Ah—I’m

looking for you!” he said, riding up to them. “This is indeed a family

gathering on the historic spot!”

It was Alec d’Urberville. “Where is Tess?” he asked.

Personally Joan had no liking for Alec. She cursorily signified the

direction of the church, and went on, d’Urberville saying that he would

see them again, in case they should be still unsuccessful in their

search for shelter, of which he had just heard. When they had gone,

d’Urberville rode to the inn, and shortly after came out on foot.

In the interim Tess, left with the children inside the bedstead,

remained talking with them awhile, till, seeing that no more could be

done to make them comfortable just then, she walked about the

churchyard, now beginning to be embrowned by the shades of nightfall.

The door of the church was unfastened, and she entered it for the first

time in her life.

Within the window under which the bedstead stood were the tombs of the

family, covering in their dates several centuries. They were canopied,

altar-shaped, and plain; their carvings being defaced and broken; their

brasses torn from the matrices, the rivet-holes remaining like

martin-holes in a sandcliff. Of all the reminders that she had ever

received that her people were socially extinct, there was none so

forcible as this spoliation.

She drew near to a dark stone on which was inscribed:

OSTIUM SEPULCHRI ANTIQUAE FAMILIAE D’URBERVILLE

Tess did not read Church-Latin like a Cardinal, but she knew that this

was the door of her ancestral sepulchre, and that the tall knights of

whom her father had chanted in his cups lay inside.

She musingly turned to withdraw, passing near an altar-tomb, the oldest

of them all, on which was a recumbent figure. In the dusk she had not

noticed it before, and would hardly have noticed it now but for an odd

fancy that the effigy moved. As soon as she drew close to it she

discovered all in a moment that the figure was a living person; and the

shock to her sense of not having been alone was so violent that she was

quite overcome, and sank down nigh to fainting, not, however, till she

had recognized Alec d’Urberville in the form.

He leapt off the slab and supported her.

“I saw you come in,” he said smiling, “and got up there not to

interrupt your meditations. A family gathering, is it not, with these

old fellows under us here? Listen.”

He stamped with his heel heavily on the floor; whereupon there arose a

hollow echo from below.

“That shook them a bit, I’ll warrant!” he continued. “And you thought I

was the mere stone reproduction of one of them. But no. The old order

changeth. The little finger of the sham d’Urberville can do more for

you than the whole dynasty of the real underneath.... Now command me.

What shall I do?”

“Go away!” she murmured.

“I will—I’ll look for your mother,” said he blandly. But in passing her

he whispered: “Mind this; you’ll be civil yet!”

When he was gone she bent down upon the entrance to the vaults, and

said—

“Why am I on the wrong side of this door!”

In the meantime Marian and Izz Huett had journeyed onward with the

chattels of the ploughman in the direction of their land of Canaan—the

Egypt of some other family who had left it only that morning. But the

girls did not for a long time think of where they were going. Their

talk was of Angel Clare and Tess, and Tess’s persistent lover, whose

connection with her previous history they had partly heard and partly

guessed ere this.

“’Tisn’t as though she had never known him afore,” said Marian. “His

having won her once makes all the difference in the world. ’Twould be a

thousand pities if he were to tole her away again. Mr Clare can never

be anything to us, Izz; and why should we grudge him to her, and not

try to mend this quarrel? If he could on’y know what straits she’s put

to, and what’s hovering round, he might come to take care of his own.”

“Could we let him know?”

They thought of this all the way to their destination; but the bustle

of re-establishment in their new place took up all their attention

then. But when they were settled, a month later, they heard of Clare’s

approaching return, though they had learnt nothing more of Tess. Upon

that, agitated anew by their attachment to him, yet honourably disposed

to her, Marian uncorked the penny ink-bottle they shared, and a few

lines were concocted between the two girls.

Honour’d Sir,

Look to your Wife if you do love her as much as she do love you.

For she is sore put to by an Enemy in the shape of a Friend. Sir,

there is one near her who ought to be Away. A woman should not be

try’d beyond her Strength, and continual dropping will wear away a

Stone—ay, more—a Diamond.

From Two Well-Wishers

This was addressed to Angel Clare at the only place they had ever heard

him to be connected with, Emminster Vicarage; after which they

continued in a mood of emotional exaltation at their own generosity,

which made them sing in hysterical snatches and weep at the same time.

End of Phase the Sixth

Phase the Seventh:

Fulfilment