第 五十三 章 · Chapter LIII Conclusion

. Chapter LIII Conclusion

It was evening at Emminster Vicarage. The two customary candles were

burning under their green shades in the Vicar’s study, but he had not

been sitting there. Occasionally he came in, stirred the small fire

which sufficed for the increasing mildness of the spring, and went out

again; sometimes pausing at the front door, going on to the

drawing-room, then returning again to the front door.

It faced westward, and though gloom prevailed inside, there was still

light enough without to see with distinctness. Mrs Clare, who had been

sitting in the drawing-room, followed him hither.

“Plenty of time yet,” said the Vicar. “He doesn’t reach Chalk-Newton

till six, even if the train should be punctual, and ten miles of

country-road, five of them in Crimmercrock Lane, are not jogged over in

a hurry by our old horse.”

“But he has done it in an hour with us, my dear.”

“Years ago.”

Thus they passed the minutes, each well knowing that this was only

waste of breath, the one essential being simply to wait.

At length there was a slight noise in the lane, and the old pony-chaise

appeared indeed outside the railings. They saw alight therefrom a form

which they affected to recognize, but would actually have passed by in

the street without identifying had he not got out of their carriage at

the particular moment when a particular person was due.

Mrs Clare rushed through the dark passage to the door, and her husband

came more slowly after her.

The new arrival, who was just about to enter, saw their anxious faces

in the doorway and the gleam of the west in their spectacles because

they confronted the last rays of day; but they could only see his shape

against the light.

“O, my boy, my boy—home again at last!” cried Mrs Clare, who cared no

more at that moment for the stains of heterodoxy which had caused all

this separation than for the dust upon his clothes. What woman, indeed,

among the most faithful adherents of the truth, believes the promises

and threats of the Word in the sense in which she believes in her own

children, or would not throw her theology to the wind if weighed

against their happiness? As soon as they reached the room where the

candles were lighted she looked at his face.

“O, it is not Angel—not my son—the Angel who went away!” she cried in

all the irony of sorrow, as she turned herself aside.

His father, too, was shocked to see him, so reduced was that figure

from its former contours by worry and the bad season that Clare had

experienced, in the climate to which he had so rashly hurried in his

first aversion to the mockery of events at home. You could see the

skeleton behind the man, and almost the ghost behind the skeleton. He

matched Crivelli’s dead _Christus_. His sunken eye-pits were of morbid

hue, and the light in his eyes had waned. The angular hollows and lines

of his aged ancestors had succeeded to their reign in his face twenty

years before their time.

“I was ill over there, you know,” he said. “I am all right now.”

As if, however, to falsify this assertion, his legs seemed to give way,

and he suddenly sat down to save himself from falling. It was only a

slight attack of faintness, resulting from the tedious day’s journey,

and the excitement of arrival.

“Has any letter come for me lately?” he asked. “I received the last you

sent on by the merest chance, and after considerable delay through

being inland; or I might have come sooner.”

“It was from your wife, we supposed?”

“It was.”

Only one other had recently come. They had not sent it on to him,

knowing he would start for home so soon.

He hastily opened the letter produced, and was much disturbed to read

in Tess’s handwriting the sentiments expressed in her last hurried

scrawl to him.

O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do not deserve

it. I have thought it all over carefully, and I can never, never

forgive you! You know that I did not intend to wrong you—why have

you so wronged me? You are cruel, cruel indeed! I will try to

forget you. It is all injustice I have received at your hands!

T.

“It is quite true!” said Angel, throwing down the letter. “Perhaps she

will never be reconciled to me!”

“Don’t, Angel, be so anxious about a mere child of the soil!” said his

mother.

“Child of the soil! Well, we all are children of the soil. I wish she

were so in the sense you mean; but let me now explain to you what I

have never explained before, that her father is a descendant in the

male line of one of the oldest Norman houses, like a good many others

who lead obscure agricultural lives in our villages, and are dubbed

‘sons of the soil.’”

He soon retired to bed; and the next morning, feeling exceedingly

unwell, he remained in his room pondering. The circumstances amid which

he had left Tess were such that though, while on the south of the

Equator and just in receipt of her loving epistle, it had seemed the

easiest thing in the world to rush back into her arms the moment he

chose to forgive her, now that he had arrived it was not so easy as it

had seemed. She was passionate, and her present letter, showing that

her estimate of him had changed under his delay—too justly changed, he

sadly owned,—made him ask himself if it would be wise to confront her

unannounced in the presence of her parents. Supposing that her love had

indeed turned to dislike during the last weeks of separation, a sudden

meeting might lead to bitter words.

Clare therefore thought it would be best to prepare Tess and her family

by sending a line to Marlott announcing his return, and his hope that

she was still living with them there, as he had arranged for her to do

when he left England. He despatched the inquiry that very day, and

before the week was out there came a short reply from Mrs Durbeyfield

which did not remove his embarrassment, for it bore no address, though

to his surprise it was not written from Marlott.

Sir,

J write these few lines to say that my Daughter is away from me at

present, and J am not sure when she will return, but J will let you

know as Soon as she do. J do not feel at liberty to tell you Where

she is temperly biding. J should say that me and my Family have

left Marlott for some Time.—

Yours,

J. Durbeyfield

It was such a relief to Clare to learn that Tess was at least

apparently well that her mother’s stiff reticence as to her whereabouts

did not long distress him. They were all angry with him, evidently. He

would wait till Mrs Durbeyfield could inform him of Tess’s return,

which her letter implied to be soon. He deserved no more. His had been

a love “which alters when it alteration finds”. He had undergone some

strange experiences in his absence; he had seen the virtual Faustina in

the literal Cornelia, a spiritual Lucretia in a corporeal Phryne; he

had thought of the woman taken and set in the midst as one deserving to

be stoned, and of the wife of Uriah being made a queen; and he had

asked himself why he had not judged Tess constructively rather than

biographically, by the will rather than by the deed?

A day or two passed while he waited at his father’s house for the

promised second note from Joan Durbeyfield, and indirectly to recover a

little more strength. The strength showed signs of coming back, but

there was no sign of Joan’s letter. Then he hunted up the old letter

sent on to him in Brazil, which Tess had written from Flintcomb-Ash,

and re-read it. The sentences touched him now as much as when he had

first perused them.

...I must cry to you in my trouble—I have no one else!... I think I

must die if you do not come soon, or tell me to come to you... please,

please, not to be just—only a little kind to me.... If you would come,

I could die in your arms! I would be well content to do that if so be

you had forgiven me!... if you will send me one little line, and say,

_I am coming soon_, I will bide on, Angel—O, so cheerfully!... think

how it do hurt my heart not to see you ever—ever! Ah, if I could only

make your dear heart ache one little minute of each day as mine does

every day and all day long, it might lead you to show pity to your poor

lonely one.... I would be content, ay, glad, to live with you as your

servant, if I may not as your wife; so that I could only be near you,

and get glimpses of you, and think of you as mine.... I long for only

one thing in heaven or earth or under the earth, to meet you, my own

dear! Come to me—come to me, and save me from what threatens me!

Clare determined that he would no longer believe in her more recent and

severer regard of him, but would go and find her immediately. He asked

his father if she had applied for any money during his absence. His

father returned a negative, and then for the first time it occurred to

Angel that her pride had stood in her way, and that she had suffered

privation. From his remarks his parents now gathered the real reason of

the separation; and their Christianity was such that, reprobates being

their especial care, the tenderness towards Tess which her blood, her

simplicity, even her poverty, had not engendered, was instantly excited

by her sin.

Whilst he was hastily packing together a few articles for his journey

he glanced over a poor plain missive also lately come to hand—the one

from Marian and Izz Huett, beginning—

“Honour’d Sir, Look to your Wife if you do love her as much as she do

love you,” and signed, “From Two Well-Wishers.”