this? Dear, if you would only be a little
more conceited, and believe in yourself so far
as to see that you were strong enough to work this
change in me, you would perhaps be in a mind to come
to me, your poor wife.
How silly I was in my happiness when
I thought I could trust you always to love me!
I ought to have known that such as that was not
for poor me. But I am sick at heart, not only
for old times, but for the present. Think—think
how it do hurt my heart not to see you ever—ever!
Ah, if I could only make your dear heart ache
one little minute of each day as mine does every
day and all day long, it might lead you to show
pity to your poor lonely one.
People still say that I am rather pretty,
Angel (handsome is the word they use, since I wish
to be truthful). Perhaps I am what they say.
But I do not value my good looks; I only like
to have them because they belong to you, my dear, and
that there may be at least one thing about me worth
your having. So much have I felt this, that
when I met with annoyance on account of the same,
I tied up my face in a bandage as long as people
would believe in it. O Angel, I tell you
all this not from vanity—you will certainly
know I do not—but only that you may
come to me!
If you really cannot come to me, will
you let me come to you? I am, as I say, worried,
pressed to do what I will not do. It cannot
be that I shall yield one inch, yet I am in terror
as to what an accident might lead to, and I so defenceless
on account of my first error. I cannot say more
about this—it makes me too miserable.
But if I break down by falling into some fearful
snare, my last state will be worse than my first.
O God, I cannot think of it! Let me come
at once, or at once come to me!
I would be content, ay, glad, to
live with you as your
servant, if I may not as your wife;
so that I could only be
near you, and get glimpses of you,
and think of you as mine.
The daylight has nothing to show me,
since you are not here, and I don’t like
to see the rooks and starlings in the field, because
I grieve and grieve to miss you who used to see
them with me. I long for only one thing in heaven
or earth or under the earth, to meet you, my own
dear! Come to me—come to me, and
save me from what threatens me!—
Your faithful heartbroken
TESS
The appeal duly found its way to the breakfast-table
of the quiet Vicarage to the westward, in that valley
where the air is so soft and the soil so rich that
the effort of growth requires but superficial aid
by comparison with the tillage at Flintcomb-Ash, and
where to Tess the human world seemed so different
(though it was much the same). It was purely
for security that she had been requested by Angel
to send her communications through his father, whom
he kept pretty well informed of his changing addresses
in the country he had gone to exploit for himself
with a heavy heart.
