Then Mrs Durbeyfield informed him that no letter had
come, but Tess unfortunately had come herself.
When at length the collapse was explained to him,
a sullen mortification, not usual with Durbeyfield,
overpowered the influence of the cheering glass.
Yet the intrinsic quality of the event moved his
touchy sensitiveness less than its conjectured effect
upon the minds of others.
“To think, now, that this was to be the end
o’t!” said Sir John. “And I
with a family vault under that there church of Kingsbere
as big as Squire Jollard’s ale-cellar, and my
folk lying there in sixes and sevens, as genuine county
bones and marrow as any recorded in history.
And now to be sure what they fellers at Rolliver’s
and The Pure Drop will say to me! How they’ll
squint and glane, and say, ’This is yer mighty
match is it; this is yer getting back to the true
level of yer forefathers in King Norman’s time!’
I feel this is too much, Joan; I shall put an end
to myself, title and all—I can bear it
no longer! ... But she can make him keep her
if he’s married her?”
“Why, yes. But she won’t think o’
doing that.”
“D’ye think he really have married her?—or
is it like the first—”
Poor Tess, who had heard as far as this, could not
bear to hear more. The perception that her word
could be doubted even here, in her own parental house,
set her mind against the spot as nothing else could
have done. How unexpected were the attacks of
destiny! And if her father doubted her a little,
would not neighbours and acquaintance doubt her much?
O, she could not live long at home!
A few days, accordingly, were all that she allowed
herself here, at the end of which time she received
a short note from Clare, informing her that he had
gone to the North of England to look at a farm.
In her craving for the lustre of her true position
as his wife, and to hide from her parents the vast
extent of the division between them, she made use
of this letter as her reason for again departing,
leaving them under the impression that she was setting
out to join him. Still further to screen her
husband from any imputation of unkindness to her,
she took twenty-five of the fifty pounds Clare had
given her, and handed the sum over to her mother, as
if the wife of a man like Angel Clare could well afford
it, saying that it was a slight return for the trouble
and humiliation she had brought upon them in years
past. With this assertion of her dignity she
bade them farewell; and after that there were lively
doings in the Durbeyfield household for some time
on the strength of Tess’s bounty, her mother
saying, and, indeed, believing, that the rupture which
had arisen between the young husband and wife had
adjusted itself under their strong feeling that they
could not live apart from each other.
It was three weeks after the marriage that Clare found
himself descending the hill which led to the well-known
parsonage of his father. With his downward course
the tower of the church rose into the evening sky
in a manner of inquiry as to why he had come; and no
living person in the twilighted town seemed to notice
him, still less to expect him. He was arriving
like a ghost, and the sound of his own footsteps was
almost an encumbrance to be got rid of.
