“Thank God!” murmured Clare; and yet he
was conscious of a pang of bitterness at the thought—approximately
true, though not wholly so—that having
shifted the burden of her life to his shoulders, she
was now reposing without care.
He turned away to descend; then, irresolute, faced
round to her door again. In the act he caught
sight of one of the d’Urberville dames, whose
portrait was immediately over the entrance to Tess’s
bedchamber. In the candlelight the painting was
more than unpleasant. Sinister design lurked
in the woman’s features, a concentrated purpose
of revenge on the other sex—so it seemed
to him then. The Caroline bodice of the portrait
was low—precisely as Tess’s had been
when he tucked it in to show the necklace; and again
he experienced the distressing sensation of a resemblance
between them.
The check was sufficient. He resumed his retreat
and descended.
His air remained calm and cold, his small compressed
mouth indexing his powers of self-control; his face
wearing still that terrible sterile expression which
had spread thereon since her disclosure. It was
the face of a man who was no longer passion’s
slave, yet who found no advantage in his enfranchisement.
He was simply regarding the harrowing contingencies
of human experience, the unexpectedness of things.
Nothing so pure, so sweet, so virginal as Tess had
seemed possible all the long while that he had adored
her, up to an hour ago; but
The little
less, and what worlds away!
He argued erroneously when he said to himself that
her heart was not indexed in the honest freshness
of her face; but Tess had no advocate to set him right.
Could it be possible, he continued, that eyes which
as they gazed never expressed any divergence from what
the tongue was telling, were yet ever seeing another
world behind her ostensible one, discordant and contrasting?
He reclined on his couch in the sitting-room, and
extinguished the light. The night came in, and
took up its place there, unconcerned and indifferent;
the night which had already swallowed up his happiness,
and was now digesting it listlessly; and was ready
to swallow up the happiness of a thousand other people
with as little disturbance or change of mien.
Clare arose in the light of a dawn that was ashy and
furtive, as though associated with crime. The
fireplace confronted him with its extinct embers;
the spread supper-table, whereon stood the two full
glasses of untasted wine, now flat and filmy; her vacated
seat and his own; the other articles of furniture,
with their eternal look of not being able to help
it, their intolerable inquiry what was to be done?
From above there was no sound; but in a few minutes
there came a knock at the door. He remembered
that it would be the neighbouring cottager’s
wife, who was to minister to their wants while they
remained here.
