Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (573 page)

“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!”

CHAPTER XXXIV

They drove by the level road along the valley to a distance of a few miles, and, reaching Wellbridge, turned away from the village to the left, and over the great Elizabethan bridge which gives the place half its name. Immediately behind it stood the house wherein they had engaged lodgings, whose exterior features are so well known to all travellers through the Froom Valley; once portion of a fine manorial residence, and the property and seat of a d’Urberville, but since its partial demolition a farmhouse.

“Welcome to one of your ancestral mansions!” said Clare as he handed her down. But he regretted the pleasantry; it was too near a satire.

On entering they found that, though they had only engaged a couple of rooms, the farmer had taken advantage of their proposed presence during the coming days to pay a New Year’s visit to some friends, leaving a woman from a neighbouring cottage to minister to their few wants. The absoluteness of possession pleased them, and they realised it as the first moment of their experience under their own exclusive roof-tree.

But he found that the mouldy old habitation somewhat depressed his bride. When the carriage was gone they ascended the stairs to wash their hands, the charwoman showing the way. On the landing Tess stopped and started.

“What’s the matter?” said he.

“Those horrid women!” she answered with a smile. “How they frightened me.”

He looked up, and perceived two life-size portraits on panels built into the masonry. As all visitors to the mansion are aware, these paintings represent women of middle age, of a date some two hundred years ago, whose lineaments once seen can never be forgotten. The long pointed features, narrow eye, and smirk of the one, so suggestive of merciless treachery; the bill-hook nose, large teeth, and bold eye of the other suggesting arrogance to the point of ferocity, haunt the beholder afterwards in his dreams.

“Whose portraits are those?” asked Clare of the charwoman.

“I have been told by old folk that they were ladies of the d’Urberville family, the ancient lords of this manor,” she said, “Owing to their being builded into the wall they can’t be moved away.”

The unpleasantness of the matter was that, in addition to their effect upon Tess, her fine features were unquestionably traceable in these exaggerated forms. He said nothing of this, however, and, regretting that he had gone out of his way to choose the house for their bridal time, went on into the adjoining room. The place having been rather hastily prepared for them, they washed their hands in one basin. Clare touched hers under the water.

“Which are my fingers and which are yours?” he said, looking up. “They are very much mixed.”

“They are all yours,” said she, very prettily, and endeavoured to be gayer than she was. He had not been displeased with her thoughtfulness on such an occasion; it was what every sensible woman would show: but Tess knew that she had been thoughtful to excess, and struggled against it.

The sun was so low on that short last afternoon of the year that it shone in through a small opening and formed a golden staff which stretched across to her skirt, where it made a spot like a paint-mark set upon her. They went into the ancient parlour to tea, and here they shared their first common meal alone. Such was their childishness, or rather his, that he found it interesting to use the same bread-and-butter plate as herself, and to brush crumbs from her lips with his own. He wondered a little that she did not enter into these frivolities with his own zest.

Looking at her silently for a long time; “She is a dear dear Tess,” he thought to himself, as one deciding on the true construction of a difficult passage. “Do I realise solemnly enough how utterly and irretrievably this little womanly thing is the creature of my good or bad faith and fortune? I think not. I think I could not, unless I were a woman myself. What I am in worldly estate, she is. What I become, she must become. What I cannot be, she cannot be. And shall I ever neglect her, or hurt her, or even forget to consider her? God forbid such a crime!”

They sat on over the tea-table waiting for their luggage, which the dairyman had promised to send before it grew dark. But evening began to close in, and the luggage did not arrive, and they had brought nothing more than they stood in. With the departure of the sun the calm mood of the winter day changed. Out of doors there began noises as of silk smartly rubbed; the restful dead leaves of the preceding autumn were stirred to irritated resurrection, and whirled about unwillingly, and tapped against the shutters. It soon began to rain.

“That cock knew the weather was going to change,” said Clare.

The woman who had attended upon them had gone home for the night, but she had placed candles upon the table, and now they lit them. Each candle-flame drew towards the fireplace.

“These old houses are so draughty,” continued Angel, looking at the flames, and at the grease guttering down the sides. “I wonder where that luggage is. We haven’t even a brush and comb.”

“I don’t know,” she answered, absent-minded.

“Tess, you are not a bit cheerful this evening — not at all as you used to be. Those harridans on the panels upstairs have unsettled you. I am sorry I brought you here. I wonder if you really love me, after all?”

He knew that she did, and the words had no serious intent; but she was surcharged with emotion, and winced like a wounded animal. Though she tried not to shed tears, she could not help showing one or two.

“I did not mean it!” said he, sorry. “You are worried at not having your things, I know. I cannot think why old Jonathan has not come with them. Why, it is seven o’clock? Ah, there he is!”

A knock had come to the door, and, there being nobody else to answer it, Clare went out. He returned to the room with a small package in his hand.

“It is not Jonathan, after all,” he said.

“How vexing!” said Tess.

The packet had been brought by a special messenger, who had arrived at Talbothays from Emminster Vicarage immediately after the departure of the married couple, and had followed them hither, being under injunction to deliver it into nobody’s hands but theirs. Clare brought it to the light. It was less than a foot long, sewed up in canvas, sealed in red wax with his father’s seal, and directed in his father’s hand to “Mrs Angel Clare.”

“It is a little wedding-present for you, Tess,” said he, handing it to her. “How thoughtful they are!”

Tess looked a little flustered as she took it.

“I think I would rather have you open it, dearest,” said she, turning over the parcel. “I don’t like to break those great seals; they look so serious. Please open it for me!”

He undid the parcel. Inside was a case of morocco leather, on the top of which lay a note and a key.

The note was for Clare, in the following words:

My dear son —

Possibly you have forgotten that on the death of your godmother, Mrs Pitney, when you were a lad, she — vain, kind woman that she was — left to me a portion of the contents of her jewel-case in trust for your wife, if you should ever have one, as a mark of her affection for you and whomsoever you should choose. This trust I have fulfilled, and the diamonds have been locked up at my banker’s ever since. Though I feel it to be a somewhat incongruous act in the circumstances, I am, as you will see, bound to hand over the articles to the woman to whom the use of them for her lifetime will now rightly belong, and they are therefore promptly sent. They become, I believe, heirlooms, strictly speaking, according to the terms of your godmother’s will. The precise words of the clause that refers to this matter are enclosed.

“I do remember,” said Clare; “but I had quite forgotten.”

Unlocking the case, they found it to contain a necklace, with pendant, bracelets, and ear-rings; and also some other small ornaments.

Tess seemed afraid to touch them at first, but her eyes sparkled for a moment as much as the stones when Clare spread out the set.

“Are they mine?” she asked incredulously.

“They are, certainly,” said he.

He looked into the fire. He remembered how, when he was a lad of fifteen, his godmother, the Squire’s wife — the only rich person with whom he had ever come in contact — had pinned her faith to his success; had prophesied a wondrous career for him. There had seemed nothing at all out of keeping with such a conjectured career in the storing up of these showy ornaments for his wife and the wives of her descendants. They gleamed somewhat ironically now. “Yet why?” he asked himself. It was but a question of vanity throughout; and if that were admitted into one side of the equation it should be admitted into the other. His wife was a d’Urberville: whom could they become better than her?

Suddenly he said with enthusiasm —

“Tess, put them on — put them on!” And he turned from the fire to help her.

But as if by magic she had already donned them — necklace, ear-rings, bracelets, and all.

“But the gown isn’t right, Tess,” said Clare. “It ought to be a low one for a set of brilliants like that.”

“Ought it?” said Tess.

“Yes,” said he.

He suggested to her how to tuck in the upper edge of her bodice, so as to make it roughly approximate to the cut for evening wear; and when she had done this, and the pendant to the necklace hung isolated amid the whiteness of her throat, as it was designed to do, he stepped back to survey her.