by Thomas Hardy
“I have,” she said.
“He came to Trantridge two or three years ago to preach on behalf of some missionary society; and I, wretched fellow that I was, insulted him when in his disinterestedness he tried to reason with me and show me the way. He did not resent my conduct, he simply said that some day I should receive the first-fruits of the Spirit—that those who came to scoff sometimes remained to pray. There was a strange magic in his words. They sank into my mind. But the loss of my mother hit me most, and by degrees I was brought to see daylight. Since then, my one desire has been to hand on the true view to others, and that is what I was trying to do to-day; though it is only lately that I have preached hereabout. The first months of my ministry have been spent in the North of England among strangers, where I preferred to make my earliest clumsy attempts, so as to acquire courage before undergoing that severest of all tests of one’s sincerity, addressing those who have known one and have been one’s companions in the days of darkness. If you could only know, Tess, the pleasure of having a good slap at yourself, I am sure—”
“Don’t go on with it!” she cried passionately as she turned away from him to a stile by the wayside, on which she bent herself. “I can’t believe in such sudden things! I feel indignant with you for talking to me like this, when you know—when you know what harm you’ve done me! You and those like you take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in Heaven by becoming converted! Out upon such—I don’t believe in you—I hate it!”
“Tess,” he insisted, “don’t speak so! It came to me like a jolly new idea! And you don’t believe me? What don’t you believe?”
“Your conversion. Your scheme of religion.”
“Why?”
She dropped her voice. “Because a better man than you does not believe in such.”
“What a woman’s reason! Who is this better man?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“Well,” he declared, a resentment beneath his words seeming ready to spring out at a moment’s notice, “God forbid that I should say I am a good man—and you know I don’t say any such thing. I am new to goodness, truly; but new-comers see furthest sometimes.”
“Yes,” she replied sadly. “But I cannot believe in your conversion to a new spirit. Such flashes as you feel, Alec, I fear don’t last!”
Thus speaking, she turned from the stile over which she had been leaning and faced him; whereupon his eyes, falling casually upon the familiar countenance and form, remained contemplating her. The inferior man was quiet in him now, but it was surely not extracted nor even entirely subdued.
“Don’t look at me like that!” he said abruptly.
Tess, who had been quite unconscious of her action and mien, instantly withdrew the large, dark gaze of her eyes, stammering with a flush, “I beg your pardon!” And there was revived in her the wretched sentiment which had often come to her before, that in inhabiting the fleshly tabernacle with which Nature had endowed her, she was somehow doing wrong.
“No, no! Don’t beg my pardon. But since you wear a veil to hide your good looks, why don’t you keep it down?”
She pulled down the veil, saying hastily, “It was mostly to keep off the wind.”
“It may seem harsh of me to dictate like this,” he went on, “but it is better that I should not look too often on you. It might be dangerous.”
“Ssh!” said Tess.
“Well, women’s faces have had too much power over me already for me not to fear them! An evangelist has nothing to do with such as they, and it reminds me of the old times that I would forget!”
After this their conversation dwindled to a casual remark now and then as they rambled onward, Tess inwardly wondering how far he was going with her and not liking to send him back by positive mandate. Frequently when they came to a gate or stile, they found painted thereon in red or blue letters some text of Scripture, and she asked him if he knew who had been at the pains to blazon these announcements. He told her that the man was employed by himself and others who were working with him in that district, to paint these reminders, that no means might be left untried which might move the hearts of a wicked generation.
At length the road touched the spot called Cross-in-Hand. Of all spots on the bleached and desolate upland, this was the most forlorn. It was so far removed from the charm which is sought in landscape by artists and view-lovers as to reach a new kind of beauty, a negative beauty of tragic tone. The place took its name from a stone pillar which stood there, a strange, rude monolith, from a stratum unknown in any local quarry, on which was roughly carved a human hand. Differing accounts were given of its history and purport. Some authorities stated that a devotional cross had once formed the complete erection thereon, of which the present relic was but the stump; others that the stone as it stood was entire, and that it had been fixed there to mark a boundary or place of meeting. Anyhow, whatever the origin of the relic, there was and is something sinister or solemn, according to mood, in the scene amid which it stands; something tending to impress the most phlegmatic passerby.
“I think I must leave you now,” he remarked as they drew near to this spot. “I have to preach at Abbot‘s-Cernel at six this evening, and my way lies across to the right from here. And you upset me somewhat too, Tessy—I cannot, will not, say why. I must go away and get strength.... How is it that you speak so fluently now? Who has taught you such good English?”
“I have learnt things in my troubles,” she said evasively.
“What troubles have you had?”
She told him of the first one—the only one that related to him.
D‘Urberville was struck mute. “I knew nothing of this till now!” he next murmured. “Why didn’t you write to me when you felt your trouble coming on?”
She did not reply, and he broke the silence by adding: “Well—you will see me again.”
“No,” she answered. “Do not again come near me!”
“I will think. But before we part, come here.” He stepped up to the pillar. “This was once a Holy Cross. Relics are not in my creed, but I fear you at moments—far more than you need fear me at present; and to lessen my fear, put your hand upon that stone hand and swear that you will never tempt me—by your charms or ways.”
“Good God—how can you ask what is so unnecessary! All that is furthest from my thought!”
“Yes—but swear it.”
Tess, half frightened, gave way to his importunity, placed her hand upon the stone, and swore.
“I am sorry you are not a believer,” he continued, “that some unbeliever should have got hold of you and unsettled your mind. But no more now. At home at least I can pray for you; and I will; and who knows what may not happen? I’m off. Good-bye!”
He turned to a hunting-gate in the hedge and, without letting his eyes again rest upon her, leapt over and struck out across the down in the direction of Abbot‘s-Cernel. As he walked his pace showed perturbation, and by and by, as if instigated by a former thought, he drew from his pocket a small book, between the leaves of which was folded a letter, worn and soiled as from much rereading. D’Urberville opened the letter. It was dated several months before this time and was signed by Parson Clare.
The letter began by expressing the writer’s unfeigned joy at d‘Urberville’s conversion and thanked him for his kindness in communicating with the parson on the subject. It expressed Mr. Clare’s warm assurance of forgiveness for d’Urberville’s former conduct and his interest in the young man’s plans for the future. He, Mr. Clare, would much have liked to see d‘Urber ville in the church to whose ministry he had devoted so many years of his own life and would have helped him to enter a theological college to that end; but since his correspondent had possibly not cared to do this on account of the delay it would have entailed, he was not the man to insist upon its paramount importance. Every man must work as he cou
ld best work and in the method towards which he felt impelled by the Spirit.
D‘Urberville read and reread this letter and seemed to quiz himself cynically. He also read some passages from memoranda as he walked till his face assumed a calm, and apparently the image of Tess no longer troubled his mind.
She meanwhile had kept along the edge of the hill by which lay her nearest way home. Within the distance of a mile she met a solitary shepherd.
“What is the meaning of that old stone I have passed?” she asked of him. “Was it ever a Holy Cross?”
“Cross—no; ‘twere not a cross! ’Tis a thing of ill omen, miss. It was put up in wuld times by the relations of a malefactor who was tortured there by nailing his hand to a post and afterwards hung. The bones lie underneath. They say he sold his soul to the devil, and that he walks at times.”
She felt the petite mort at this unexpectedly gruesome information and left the solitary man behind her. It was dusk when she drew near to Flintcomb-Ash, and in the lane at the entrance to the hamlet she approached a girl and her lover without their observing her. They were talking no secrets, and the clear, unconcerned voice of the young woman, in response to the warmer accents of the man, spread into the chilly air as the one soothing thing within the dusky horizon, full of a stagnant obscurity upon which nothing else intruded. For a moment the voices cheered the heart of Tess till she reasoned that this interview had its origin, on one side or the other, in the same attraction which had been the prelude to her own tribulation. When she came close, the girl turned serenely and recognized her, the young man walking off in embarrassment. The woman was Izz Huett, whose interest in Tess’s excursion immediately superseded her own proceedings. Tess did not explain very clearly its results, and Izz, who was a girl of tact, began to speak of her own little affair, a phase of which Tess had just witnessed.
“He is Amby Seedling, the chap who used to sometimes come and help at Talbothays,” she explained indifferently. “He actually inquired and found out that I had come here and has followed me. He says he’s been in love wi’ me these two years. But I’ve hardly answered him.”
46
SEVERAL DAYS had passed since her futile journey, and Tess was afield. The dry winter wind still blew, but a screen of thatched hurdles erected in the eye of the blast kept its force away from her. On the sheltered side was a turnip-slicing machine, whose bright blue hue of new paint seemed almost vocal in the otherwise subdued scene. Opposite its front was a long mound, or “grave,” in which the roots had been preserved since early winter. Tess was standing at the uncovered end, chopping off with a bill-hook the fibres and earth from each root and throwing it after the operation into the slicer. A man was turning the handle of the machine, and from its trough came the newly cut swedes, the fresh smell of whose yellow chips was accompanied by the sounds of the snuffling wind, the smart swish of the slicing-blades, and the choppings of the hook in Tess’s leather-gloved hand.
The wide acreage of blank agricultural brownness, apparent where the swedes had been pulled, was beginning to be striped in wales of darker brown, gradually broadening to ribands. Along the edge of each of these, something crept upon ten legs, moving without haste and without rest up and down the whole length of the field; it was two horses and a man, the plough going between them, turning up the cleared ground for a spring sowing.
For hours nothing relieved the joyless monotony of things. Then, far beyond the ploughing-teams, a black speck was seen. It had come from the comer of a fence, where there was a gap, and its tendency was up the incline, towards the swede-cutters. From the proportions of a mere point it advanced to the shape of a ninepin, and was soon perceived to be a man in black, arriving from the direction of Flintcomb-Ash. The man at the slicer, having nothing else to do with his eyes, continually observed the corner, but Tess, who was occupied, did not perceive him till her companion directed her attention to his approach.
It was not her hard taskmaster, Farmer Groby; it was one in a semi-clerical costume, who now represented what had once been the free-and-easy Alec d‘Urberville. Not being hot at his preaching, there was less enthusiasm about him now, and the presence of the grinder seemed to embarrass him. A pale distress was already on Tess’s face, and she pulled her curtained hood further over it.
D‘Urberville came up and said quietly, “I want to speak to you, Tess.”
“You have refused my last request, not to come near me!” said she.
“Yes, but I have a good reason.”
“Well, tell it.”
“It is more serious than you may think.”
He glanced round to see if he were overheard. They were at some distance from the man who turned the slicer, and the movement of the machine, too, sufficiently prevented Alec’s words reaching other ears. D‘Urberville placed himself so as to screen Tess from the labourer, turning his back to the latter.
“It is this,” he continued with capricious compunction. “In thinking of your soul and mine when we last met, I neglected to inquire as to your worldly condition. You were well dressed, and I did not think of it. But I see now that it is hard—harder than it used to be when I—knew you—harder than you deserve. Perhaps a good deal of it is owing to me!”
She did not answer, and he watched her inquiringly as, with bent head, her face completely screened by the hood, she resumed her trimming of the swedes. By going on with her work she felt better able to keep him outside her emotions.
“Tess,” he added with a sigh of discontent, “yours was the very worst case I ever was concerned in! I had no idea of what had resulted till you told me. Scamp that I was to foul that innocent life! The whole blame was mine—the whole unconventional business of our time at Trantridge. You, too, the real blood of which I am but the base imitation, what a blind young thing you were as to possibilities! I say in all earnestness that it is a shame for parents to bring up their girls in such dangerous ignorance of the gins and nets that the wicked may set for them, whether their motive be a good one or the result of simple indifference.”
Tess still did no more than listen, throwing down one globular root and taking up another with automatic regularity, the pensive contour of the mere field-woman alone marking her.
“But it is not that I came to say,” d‘Urberville went on. “My circumstances are these. I have lost my mother since you were at Trantridge, and the place is my own. But I intend to sell it and devote myself to missionary work in Africa. A devil of a poor hand I shall make at the trade, no doubt. However, what I want to ask you is, will you put it in my power to do my duty—to make the only reparation I can make for the trick played you? That is, will you be my wife and go with me? ... I have already obtained this precious document. It was my old mother’s dying wish.”
He drew a piece of parchment from his pocket, with a slight fumbling of embarrassment.
“What is it?” said she.
“A marriage licence.”
“Oh no, sir—no!” she said quickly, starting back.
“You will not? Why is that?”
And as he asked the question a disappointment which was not entirely the disappointment of thwarted duty crossed d‘Urber ville’s face. It was unmistakably a symptom that something of his old passion for her had been revived; duty and desire ran hand in hand.
“Surely,” he began again, in more impetuous tones, and then looked round at the labourer who turned the slicer.
Tess, too, felt that the argument could not be ended there. Informing the man that a gentleman had come to see her, with whom she wished to walk a little way, she moved off with d‘Urberville across the zebra-striped field. When they reached the first newly ploughed section, he held out his hand to help her over it; but she stepped forward on the summits of the earth-rolls as if she did not see him.
“You will not marry me, Tess, and make me a self-respecting man?” he repeated as soon as they were over the furrows.
“I cannot.”
“But why?”
“You kno
w I have no affection for you.”
“But you would get to feel that in time, perhaps—as soon as you really could forgive me?”
“Never!”
“Why so positive?”
“I love somebody else.”
The words seemed to astonish him.
“You do?” he cried. “Somebody else? But has not a sense of what is morally right and proper any weight with you?”
“No, no, no—don’t say that!”
“Anyhow, then, your love for this other man may be only a passing feeling which you will overcome—”
“No—no.”
“Yes, yes! Why not?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“You must in honour!”
“Well, then—I have married him.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed; and he stopped dead and gazed at her.
“I did not wish to tell—I did not mean to!” she pleaded. “It is a secret here, or at any rate but dimly known. So will you, please will you, keep from questioning me? You must remember that we are now strangers.”
“Strangers—are we? Strangers!”
For a moment a flash of his old irony marked his face, but he determinedly chastened it down.
