“He can with my assistance. He must!”
“And with mine.”
“No, sir!”
“How damned foolish this is!” burst out
d’Urberville. “Why, he thinks we
are the same family; and will be quite satisfied!”
“He don’t. I’ve undeceived
him.”
“The more fool you!”
D’Urberville in anger retreated from her to
the hedge, where he pulled off the long smockfrock
which had disguised him; and rolling it up and pushing
it into the couch-fire, went away.
Tess could not get on with her digging after this;
she felt restless; she wondered if he had gone back
to her father’s house; and taking the fork in
her hand proceeded homewards.
Some twenty yards from the house she was met by one
of her sisters.
“O, Tessy—what do you think!
’Liza-Lu is a-crying, and there’s a lot
of folk in the house, and mother is a good deal better,
but they think father is dead!”
The child realized the grandeur of the news; but not
as yet its sadness, and stood looking at Tess with
round-eyed importance till, beholding the effect produced
upon her, she said—
“What, Tess, shan’t we talk to father
never no more?”
“But father was only a little bit ill!”
exclaimed Tess distractedly.
’Liza-Lu came up.
“He dropped down just now, and the doctor who
was there for mother said there was no chance for
him, because his heart was growed in.”
Yes; the Durbeyfield couple had changed places; the
dying one was out of danger, and the indisposed one
was dead. The news meant even more than it sounded.
Her father’s life had a value apart from his
personal achievements, or perhaps it would not have
had much. It was the last of the three lives
for whose duration the house and premises were held
under a lease; and it had long been coveted by the
tenant-farmer for his regular labourers, who were stinted
in cottage accommodation. Moreover, “liviers”
were disapproved of in villages almost as much as
little freeholders, because of their independence
of manner, and when a lease determined it was never
renewed.
Thus the Durbeyfields, once d’Urbervilles, saw
descending upon them the destiny which, no doubt,
when they were among the Olympians of the county,
they had caused to descend many a time, and severely
enough, upon the heads of such landless ones as they
themselves were now. So do flux and reflux—the
rhythm of change—alternate and persist
in everything under the sky.
At length it was the eve of Old Lady-Day, and the
agricultural world was in a fever of mobility such
as only occurs at that particular date of the year.
It is a day of fulfilment; agreements for outdoor
service during the ensuing year, entered into at Candlemas,
are to be now carried out. The labourers—or
“work-folk”, as they used to call themselves
immemorially till the other word was introduced from
without—who wish to remain no longer in
old places are removing to the new farms.
