“And I shall not stay here. Though I didn’t
like to initiate it, I have seen that it was advisable
we should part—at least for a while, till
I can better see the shape that things have taken,
and can write to you.”
Tess stole a glance at her husband. He was pale,
even tremulous; but, as before, she was appalled by
the determination revealed in the depths of this gentle
being she had married—the will to subdue
the grosser to the subtler emotion, the substance
to the conception, the flesh to the spirit.
Propensities, tendencies, habits, were as dead leaves
upon the tyrannous wind of his imaginative ascendency.
He may have observed her look, for he explained—
“I think of people more kindly when I am away
from them”; adding cynically, “God knows;
perhaps we will shake down together some day, for
weariness; thousands have done it!”
That day he began to pack up, and she went upstairs
and began to pack also. Both knew that it was
in their two minds that they might part the next morning
for ever, despite the gloss of assuaging conjectures
thrown over their proceeding because they were of the
sort to whom any parting which has an air of finality
is a torture. He knew, and she knew, that, though
the fascination which each had exercised over the
other—on her part independently of accomplishments—would
probably in the first days of their separation be even
more potent than ever, time must attenuate that effect;
the practical arguments against accepting her as a
housemate might pronounce themselves more strongly
in the boreal light of a remoter view. Moreover,
when two people are once parted—have abandoned
a common domicile and a common environment—new
growths insensibly bud upward to fill each vacated
place; unforeseen accidents hinder intentions, and
old plans are forgotten.
Midnight came and passed silently, for there was nothing
to announce it in the Valley of the Froom.
Not long after one o’clock there was a slight
creak in the darkened farmhouse once the mansion of
the d’Urbervilles. Tess, who used the
upper chamber, heard it and awoke. It had come
from the corner step of the staircase, which, as usual,
was loosely nailed. She saw the door of her
bedroom open, and the figure of her husband crossed
the stream of moonlight with a curiously careful tread.
He was in his shirt and trousers only, and her first
flush of joy died when she perceived that his eyes
were fixed in an unnatural stare on vacancy.
When he reached the middle of the room he stood still
and murmured in tones of indescribable sadness—
“Dead! dead! dead!”
Under the influence of any strongly-disturbing force,
Clare would occasionally walk in his sleep, and even
perform strange feats, such as he had done on the
night of their return from market just before their
marriage, when he re-enacted in his bedroom his combat
with the man who had insulted her. Tess saw
that continued mental distress had wrought him into
that somnambulistic state now.
