The dim light in the barn grew dimmer, and they could see to work no longer.  When Tess had reached home that evening, and had entered into the privacy of her little white-washed chamber, she began impetuously writing a letter to Clare.  But falling into doubt, she could not finish it.  Afterwards she took the ring from the ribbon on which she wore it next her heart, and retained it on her finger all night, as if to fortify herself in the sensation that she was really the wife of this elusive lover of hers, who could propose that Izz should go with him abroad, so shortly after he had left her.  Knowing that, how could she write entreaties to him, or show that she cared for him any more?

XLIV

By the disclosure in the barn her thoughts were led anew in the direction which they had taken more than once of late—­to the distant Emminster Vicarage.  It was through her husband’s parents that she had been charged to send a letter to Clare if she desired; and to write to them direct if in difficulty.  But that sense of her having morally no claim upon him had always led Tess to suspend her impulse to send these notes; and to the family at the Vicarage, therefore, as to her own parents since her marriage, she was virtually non-existent.  This self-effacement in both directions had been quite in consonance with her independent character of desiring nothing by way of favour or pity to which she was not entitled on a fair consideration of her deserts.  She had set herself to stand or fall by her qualities, and to waive such merely technical claims upon a strange family as had been established for her by the flimsy fact of a member of that family, in a season of impulse, writing his name in a church-book beside hers.

But now that she was stung to a fever by Izz’s tale, there was a limit to her powers of renunciation.  Why had her husband not written to her?  He had distinctly implied that he would at least let her know of the locality to which he had journeyed; but he had not sent a line to notify his address.  Was he really indifferent?  But was he ill?  Was it for her to make some advance?  Surely she might summon the courage of solicitude, call at the Vicarage for intelligence, and express her grief at his silence.  If Angel’s father were the good man she had heard him represented to be, he would be able to enter into her heart-starved situation.  Her social hardships she could conceal.

To leave the farm on a week-day was not in her power; Sunday was the only possible opportunity.  Flintcomb-Ash being in the middle of the cretaceous tableland over which no railway had climbed as yet, it would be necessary to walk.  And the distance being fifteen miles each way she would have to allow herself a long day for the undertaking by rising early.

A fortnight later, when the snow had gone, and had been followed by a hard black frost, she took advantage of the state of the roads to try the experiment.  At four o’clock that Sunday morning she came downstairs and stepped out into the starlight.  The weather was still favourable, the ground ringing under her feet like an anvil.