That was all she said on the matter. If Tess
had been artful, had she made a scene, fainted, wept
hysterically, in that lonely lane, notwithstanding
the fury of fastidiousness with which he was possessed,
he would probably not have withstood her. But
her mood of long-suffering made his way easy for him,
and she herself was his best advocate. Pride,
too, entered into her submission—which
perhaps was a symptom of that reckless acquiescence
in chance too apparent in the whole d’Urberville
family—and the many effective chords which
she could have stirred by an appeal were left untouched.
The remainder of their discourse was on practical
matters only. He now handed her a packet containing
a fairly good sum of money, which he had obtained
from his bankers for the purpose. The brilliants,
the interest in which seemed to be Tess’s for
her life only (if he understood the wording of the
will), he advised her to let him send to a bank for
safety; and to this she readily agreed.
These things arranged, he walked with Tess back to
the carriage, and handed her in. The coachman
was paid and told where to drive her. Taking
next his own bag and umbrella—the sole articles
he had brought with him hitherwards—he
bade her goodbye; and they parted there and then.
The fly moved creepingly up a hill, and Clare watched
it go with an unpremeditated hope that Tess would
look out of the window for one moment. But that
she never thought of doing, would not have ventured
to do, lying in a half-dead faint inside. Thus
he beheld her recede, and in the anguish of his heart
quoted a line from a poet, with peculiar emendations
of his own—
God’s NOT in his heaven:
All’s WRONG with the
world!
When Tess had passed over the crest of the hill he
turned to go his own way, and hardly knew that he
loved her still.
As she drove on through Blackmoor Vale, and the landscape
of her youth began to open around her, Tess aroused
herself from her stupor. Her first thought was
how would she be able to face her parents?
She reached a turnpike-gate which stood upon the highway
to the village. It was thrown open by a stranger,
not by the old man who had kept it for many years,
and to whom she had been known; he had probably left
on New Year’s Day, the date when such changes
were made. Having received no intelligence lately
from her home, she asked the turnpike-keeper for news.
“Oh—nothing, miss,” he answered.
“Marlott is Marlott still. Folks have
died and that. John Durbeyfield, too, hev had
a daughter married this week to a gentleman-farmer;
not from John’s own house, you know; they was
married elsewhere; the gentleman being of that high
standing that John’s own folk was not considered
well-be-doing enough to have any part in it, the bridegroom
seeming not to know how’t have been discovered
that John is a old and ancient nobleman himself by
blood, with family skillentons in their own vaults
to this day, but done out of his property in the time
o’ the Romans. However, Sir John, as we
call ’n now, kept up the wedding-day as well
as he could, and stood treat to everybody in the parish;
and John’s wife sung songs at The Pure Drop
till past eleven o’clock.”
