Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment



LIII


It was evening at Emminster Vicarage.  The two
customary candles were burning under their green shades
in the Vicar's study, but he had not been sitting
there.  Occasionally he came in, stirred the small fire
which sufficed for the increasing mildness of the
spring, and went out again; sometimes pausing at the
front door, going on to the drawing-room, then
returning again to the front door.

It faced westward, and though gloom prevailed inside,
there was still light enough without to see with
distinctness.  Mrs Clare, who had been sitting in the
drawing-room, followed him hither.

"Plenty of time yet," said the Vicar.  "He doesn't
reach Chalk-Newton till six, even if the train should
be punctual, and ten miles of country-road, five of
them in Crimmercrock Lane, are not jogged over in a
hurry by our old horse."

"But he has done it in an hour with us, my dear."

"Years ago."

Thus they passed the minutes, each well knowing that
this was only waste of breath, the one essential being
simply to wait.

At length there was a slight noise in the lane, and the
old pony-chaise appeared indeed outside the railings.
They saw alight therefrom a form which they affected to
recognize, but would actually have passed by in the
street without identifying had he not got out of their
carriage at the particular moment when a particular
person was due.

Mrs Clare rushed through the dark passage to the door,
and her husband came more slowly after her.

The new arrival, who was just about to enter, saw their
anxious faces in the doorway and the gleam of the west
in their spectacles because they confronted the last
rays of day; but they could only see his shape against
the light.

"O, my boy, my boy--home again at last!" cried Mrs
Clare, who cared no more at that moment for the stains
of heterodoxy which has caused all this separation than
for the dust upon his clothes.  What woman, indeed,
among the most faithful adherents of the truth,
believes the promises and threats of the Word in the
sense in which she believes in her own children, or
would not throw her theology to the wind if weighed
against their happiness?  As soon as they reached the
room where the candles were lighted she looked at his
face.

"O, it is not Angel--not my son--the Angel who went
away!" she cried in all the irony of sorrow, as she
turned herself aside.

His father, too, was shocked to see him, so reduced was
that figure from its former contours by worry and the
bad season that Clare had experienced, in the climate
to which he had so rashly hurried in his first aversion
to the mockery of events at home.  You could see the
skeleton behind the man, and almost the ghost behind
the skeleton.  He matched Crivelli's dead CHRISTUS.
His sunken eye-pits were of morbid hue, and the light
in his eyes had waned.  The angular hollows and lines
of his aged ancestors had succeeded to their reign in
his face twenty years before their time.

"I was ill over there, you know," he said.  "I am all
right now."

As if, however, to falsify this assertion, his legs
seemed to give way, and he suddenly sat down to save
himself from falling.  It was only a slight attack of
faintness, resulting from the tedious day's journey,
and the excitement of arrival.

"Has any letter come for me lately?" he asked.
"I received the last you sent on by the merest chance,
and after considerable delay through being inland;
or I might have come sooner."

"It was from your wife, we supposed?"

"It was."

Only one other had recently come.  They had not sent it
on to him, knowing he would start for home so soon.

He hastily opened the letter produced, and was much
disturbed to read in Tess's handwriting the sentiments
expressed in her last hurried scrawl to him.


O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel!  I do
not deserve it.  I have thought it all over carefully,
and I can never, never forgive you!  You know that I
did not intend to wrong you--why have you so wronged
me?  You are cruel, cruel indeed!  I will try to forget
you.  It is all injustice I have received at your
hands.  --  T


"It is quite true!" said Angel, throwing down the
letter. "Perhaps she will never be reconciled to me!"

"Don't, Angel, be so anxious about a mere child of the
soil!" said his mother.

"Child of the soil!  Well, we all are children of the
soil.  I wish she were so in the sense you mean; but
let me now explain to you what I have never explained
before, that her father is a descendant in the male
line of one of the oldest Norman houses, like a good
many others who lead obscure agricultural lives in our
villages, and are dubbed 'sons of the soil.'"

He soon retired to bed; and the next morning, feeling
exceedingly unwell, he remained in his room pondering.
The circumstances amid which he had left Tess were such
that though, while on the south of the Equator and just
in receipt of her loving epistle, it had seemed the
easiest thing in the world to rush back into her arms
the moment he chose to forgive her, now that he had
arrived it was not so easy as it had seemed.  She was
passionate, and her present letter, showing that her
estimate of him had changed under his delay--too justly
changed, he sadly owned,--made him ask himself if it
would be wise to confront her unannounced in the
presence of her parents.  Supposing that her love had
indeed turned to dislike during the last weeks of
separation, a sudden meeting might lead to bitter
words.

Clare therefore thought it would be best to prepare
Tess and her family by sending a line to Marlott
announcing his return, and his hope that she was still
living with them there, as he had arranged for her to
do when he left England.  He despatched the inquiry
that very day, and before the week was out there came a
short reply from Mrs Durbeyfield which did not remove
his embarrassment, for it bore no address, though to
his surprise it was not written from Marlott.


SIR

J write these few lines to say that my Daughter is away
from me at present, and J am not sure when she will
return, but J will let you know as Soon as she do.
J do not feel at liberty to tell you Where she is
temperly biding.  J should say that me and my Family
have left Marlott for some Time.----

Yours, J. DURBEYFIELD


It was such a relief to Clare to learn that Tess was at
least apparently well that her mother's stiff reticence
as to her whereabouts did not long distress him.  They
were all angry with him, evidently.  He would wait till
Mrs Durbeyfield could inform him of Tess's return,
which her letter implied to be soon.  He deserved no
more.  His had been a love "which alters when it
alteration finds".  He had undergone some strange
experiences in his absence; he had seen the virtual
Faustina in the literal Cornelia, a spiritual Lucretia
in a corporeal Phryne; he had thought of the woman
taken and set in the midst as one deserving to be
stoned, and of the wife of Uriah being made a queen;
and he had asked himself why he had not judged Tess
constructively rather than biographically, by the will
rather than by the deed?

A day or two passed while he waited at his father's
house for the promised second note from Joan
Durbeyfield, and indirectly to recover a little more
strength.  The strength showed signs of coming back,
but there was no sign of Joan's letter.  Then he hunted
up the old letter sent on to him in Brazil, which Tess
had written from Flintcomb-Ash, and re-read it.  The
sentences touched him now as much as when he had first
perused them.


I must cry to you in my trouble--I have no one else....
I think I must die if you do not come soon, or tell me
to come to you.... Please, please, not to be just--only
a little kind to me! ... If you would come, I could die
in your arms! I would be well content to do that if so
be you had forgiven me! ... If you will send me one
little line and say, "I AM COMING SOON," I will bide
on, Angel--O so cheerfully! ... 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....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.
... 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.


Clare determined that he would no longer believe in her
more recent and severer regard of him; but would go and
find her immediately.  He asked his father if she had
applied for any money during his absence.  His father
returned a negative, and then for the first time it
occurred to Angel that her pride had stood in her way,
and that she had suffered privation.  From his remarks
his parents now gathered the real reason of the
separation; and their Christianity was such that,
reprobates being their especial care, the tenderness
towards Tess which her blood, her simplicity, even her
poverty, had not engendered, was instantly excited by
her sin.

Whilst he was hastily packing together a few articles
for his journey he glanced over a poor plain missive
also lately come to hand--the one from Marian and Izz
Huett, beginning----

"HONOUR'D SIR----Look to your Wife if you do love her
as much as she do love you," and signed, "FROM TWO
WELL-WISHERS."



LIV


In a quarter of an hour Clare was leaving the house,
whence his mother watched his thin figure as it
disappeared into the street.  He had declined to borrow
his father's old mare, well knowing of its necessity to
the household.  He went to the inn, where he hired a
trap, and could hardly wait during the harnessing.  In
a very few minutes after he was driving up the hill out
of the town which, three or four months earlier in the
year, Tess had descended with such hopes and ascended
with such shattered purposes.

Benvill Lane soon stretched before him, its hedges and
trees purple with buds; but he was looking at other
things, and only recalled himself to the scene
sufficiently to enable him to keep the way.  In
something less than an hour-and-a-half he had skirted
the south of the King's Hintock estates and ascended to
the untoward solitude of Cross-in-Hand, the unholy
stone whereon Tess had been compelled by Alec
d'Urberville, in his whim of reformation, to swear the
strange oath that she would never wilfully tempt him
again. The pale and blasted nettle-stems of the
preceding year even now lingered nakedly in the banks,
young green nettles of the present spring growing from
their roots.

Thence he went along the verge of the upland
overhanging the other Hintocks, and, turning to the
right, plunged into the bracing calcareous region of
Flintcomb-Ash, the address from which she had written
to him in one of the letters, and which he supposed to
be the place of sojourn referred to by her mother.
Here, of course, he did not find her; and what added to
his depression was the discovery that no "Mrs Clare"
had ever been heard of by the cottagers or by the
farmer himself, though Tess was remembered well enough
by her Christian name.  His name she had obviously
never used during their separation, and her dignified
sense of their total severance was shown not much less
by this abstention than by the hardships she had chosen
to undergo (of which he now learnt for the first time)
rather than apply to his father for more funds.

From this place they told him Tess Durbeyfield had
gone, without due notice, to the home of her parents on
the other side of Blackmoor, and it therefore became
necessary to find Mrs Durbeyfield.  She had told him
she was not now at Marlott, but had been curiously
reticent as to her actual address, and the only course
was to go to Marlott and inquire for it.  The farmer
who had been so churlish with Tess was quite
smooth-tongued to Clare, and lent him a horse and man
to drive him towards Marlott, the gig he had arrived in
being sent back to Emminster; for the limit of a day's
journey with that horse was reached.

Clare would not accept the loan of the farmer's vehicle
for a further distance than to the outskirts of the
Vale, and, sending it back with the man who had driven
him, he put up at an inn, and next day entered on foot
the region wherein was the spot of his dear Tess's
birth.  It was as yet too early in the year for much
colour to appear in the gardens and foliage; the
so-called spring was but winter overlaid with a thin
coat of greenness, and it was of a parcel with his
expectations.

The house in which Tess had passed the years of her
childhood was now inhabited by another family who had
never known her.  The new residents were in the garden,
taking as much interest in their own doings as if the
homestead had never passed its primal time in
conjunction with the histories of others, beside which
the histories of these were but as a tale told by an
idiot.  They walked about the garden paths with
thoughts of their own concerns entirely uppermost,
bringing their actions at every moment in jarring
collision with the dim ghosts behind them, talking as
though the time when Tess lived there were not one whit
intenser in story than now.  Even the spring birds sang
over their heads as if they thought there was nobody
missing in particular.

On inquiry of these precious innocents, to whom even
the name of their predecessors was a failing memory,
Clare learned that John Durbeyfield was dead; that his
widow and children had left Marlott, declaring that
they were going to live at Kingsbere, but instead of
doing so had gone on to another place they mentioned.
By this time Clare abhorred the house for ceasing to
contain Tess, and hastened away from its hated presence
without once looking back.

His way was by the field in which he had first beheld
her at the dance.  It was as bad as the house--even
worse.  He passed on through the churchyard, where,
amongst the new headstones, he saw one of a somewhat
superior design to the rest.  The inscription ran thus:


  In memory of John Durbeyfield, rightly d'Urberville, of
  the once powerful family of that Name, and Direct
  Descendant through an illustrious Line from Sir Pagan
  d'Urberville, one of the Knights of the Conqueror. Died
  March 10th, 18--
             HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN.


Some man, apparently the sexton, had observed Clare
standing there, and drew nigh.  "Ah, sir, now that's a
man who didn't want to lie here, but wished to be
carried to Kingsbere, where his ancestors be."

"And why didn't they respect his wish?"

"Oh--no money.  Bless your soul, sir, why--there,
I wouldn't wish to say it everywhere, but--even this
headstone, for all the flourish wrote upon en, is not
paid for."

"Ah, who put it up?"

The man told the name of a mason in the village, and,
on leaving the churchyard, Clare called at the mason's
house. He found that the statement was true, and paid
the bill. This done he turned in the direction of the
migrants.

The distance was too long for a walk, but Clare felt
such a strong desire for isolation that at first he
would neither hire a conveyance nor go to a circuitous
line of railway by which he might eventually reach the
place.  At Shaston, however, he found he must hire; but
the way was such that he did not enter Joan's place
till about seven o'clock in the evening, having
traversed a distance of over twenty miles since leaving
Marlott. The village being small he had little
difficulty in finding Mrs Durbeyfield's tenement, which
was a house in a walled garden, remote from the main
road, where she had stowed away her clumsy old
furniture as best she could.  It was plain that for
some reason or other she had not wished him to visit
her, and he felt his call to be somewhat of an
intrusion.  She came to the door herself, and the light
from the evening sky fell upon her face.

This was the first time that Clare had ever met her,
but he was too preoccupied to observe more than that
she was still a handsome woman, in the garb of a
respectable widow.  He was obliged to explain that he
was Tess's husband, and his object in coming there, and
he did it awkwardly enough.  "I want to see her at
once," he added.  "You said you would write to me
again, but you have not done so."

"Because she've not come home," said Joan.

"Do you know if she is well?"

"I don't.  But you ought to, sir," said she.

"I admit it.  Where is she staying?"

From the beginning of the interview Joan had disclosed
her embarrassment by keeping her hand to the side of
her cheek.

"I--don't know exactly where she is staying," she
answered. "She was--but----"

"Where was she?"

"Well, she is not there now."

In her evasiveness she paused again, and the younger
children had by this time crept to the door, where,
pulling at his mother's skirts, the youngest
murmured----

"Is this the gentleman who is going to marry Tess?"

"He has married her," Joan whispered.  "Go inside."

Clare saw her efforts for reticence, and asked----

"Do you think Tess would wish me to try and find her?
If not, of course----"

"I don't think she would."

"Are you sure?"

"I am sure she wouldn't."

He was turning away; and then he thought of Tess's
tender letter.

"I am sure she would!" he retorted passionately.
"I know her better than you do."

"That's very likely, sir; for I have never really known
her."

"Please tell me her address, Mrs Durbeyfield, in
kindness to a lonely wretched man!" Tess's mother again
restlessly swept her cheek with her vertical hand, and
seeing that he suffered, she at last said, is a low
voice----

"She is at Sandbourne."

"Ah--where there?  Sandbourne has become a large place,
they say."

"I don't know more particularly than I have said--
Sandbourne.  For myself, I was never there."

It was apparent that Joan spoke the truth in this, and
he pressed her no further.

"Are you in want of anything?" he said gently.

"No, sir," she replied.  "We are fairly well provided
for."

Without entering the house Clare turned away.  There
was a station three miles ahead, and paying off his
coachman, he walked thither.  The last train to
Sandbourne left shortly after, and it bore Clare on its
wheels.



LV


At eleven o'clock that night, having secured a bed at
one of the hotels and telegraphed his address to his
father immediately on his arrival, he walked out into
the streets of Sandbourne.  It was too late to call on
or inquire for any one, and he reluctantly postponed
his purpose till the morning.  But he could not retire
to rest just yet.

This fashionable watering-place, with its eastern and
its western stations, its piers, its groves of pines,
its promenades, and its covered gardens, was, to Angel
Clare, like a fairy place suddenly created by the
stroke of a wand, and allowed to get a little dusty.
An outlying eastern tract of the enormous Egdon Waste
was close at hand, yet on the very verge of that tawny
piece of antiquity such a glittering novelty as this
pleasure city had chosen to spring up.  Within the
space of a mile from its outskirts every irregularity
of the soil was prehistoric, every channel an
undisturbed British trackway; not a sod having been
turned there since the days of the Caesars.  Yet the
exotic had grown here, suddenly as the prophet's gourd;
and had drawn hither Tess.

By the midnight lamps he went up and down the winding
way of this new world in an old one, and could discern
between the trees and against the stars the lofty
roofs, chimneys, gazebos, and towers of the numerous
fanciful residences of which the place was composed.
It was a city of detached mansions; a Mediterranean
lounging-place on the English Channel; and as seen now
by night it seemed even more imposing than it was.

The sea was near at hand, but not intrusive; it
murmured, and he thought it was the pines; the pines
murmured in precisely the same tones, and he thought
they were the sea.

Where could Tess possibly be, a cottage-girl, his young
wife, amidst all this wealth and fashion?  The more he
pondered the more was he puzzled.  Were there any cows
to milk here?  There certainly were no fields to till.
She was most probably engaged to do something in one of
these large houses; and he sauntered along, looking at
the chamber-windows and their lights going out one by
one; and wondered which of them might be hers.

Conjecture was useless, and just after twelve o'clock
he entered and went to bed.   Before putting out his
light he re-read Tess's impassioned letter.  Sleep,
however, he could not--so near her, yet so far from
her--and he continually lifted the window-blind and
regarded the backs of the opposite houses, and wondered
behind which of the sashes she reposed at that moment.

He might almost as well have sat up all night.  In the
morning he arose at seven, and shortly after went out,
taking the direction of the chief post-office.  At the
door he met an intelligent postman coming out with
letters for the morning delivery.

"Do you know the address of a Mrs Clare?" asked Angel.
The postman shook his head.

Then, remembering that she would have been likely to
continue the use of her maiden name, Clare said----

"Of a Miss Durbeyfield?"

"Durbeyfield?"

This also was strange to the postman addressed.

"There's visitors coming and going every day, as you
know, sir," he said; "and without the name of the house
'tis impossible to find 'em."

One of his comrades hastening out at that moment, the
name was repeated to him.

"I know no name of Durbeyfield; but there is the name
of d'Urberville at The Herons," said the second.

"That's it!" cried Clare, pleased to think that she has
reverted to the real pronunciation.  "What place is The
Herons?"

"A stylish lodging-house.  'Tis all lodging-houses
here, bless 'ee."

Clare received directions how to find the house, and
hastened thither, arriving with the milkman.  The
Herons, though an ordinary villa, stood in its own
grounds, and was certainly the last place in which one
would have expected to find lodgings, so private was
its appearance.  If poor Tess was a servant here, as he
feared, she would go to the back-door to that milkman,
and he was inclined to go thither also.  However, in
his doubts he turned to the front, and rang.

The hour being early the landlady herself opened the
door. Clare inquired for Teresa d'Urberville or
Durbeyfield.

"Mrs d'Urberville?"

"Yes."

Tess, then, passed as a married woman, and he felt
glad, even though she had not adopted his name.

"Will you kindly tell her that a relative is anxious to
see her?"

"It is rather early.  What name shall I give, sir?"

"Angel."

"Mr Angel?"

"No; Angel.  It is my Christian name.  She'll
understand."

"I'll see if she is awake."

He was shown into the front room--the dining-room--and
looked out through the spring curtains at the little
lawn, and the rhododendrons and other shrubs upon it.
Obviously her position was by no means so bad as he had
feared, and it crossed his mind that she must somehow
have claimed and sold the jewels to attain it.  He did
not blame her for one moment.  Soon his sharpened ear
detected footsteps upon the stairs, at which his heart
thumped so painfully that he could hardly stand firm.
"Dear me! what will she think of me, so altered as I
am!" he said to himself; and the door opened.

Tess appeared on the threshold--not at all as he had
expected to see her--bewilderingly otherwise, indeed.
Her great natural beauty was, if not heightened,
rendered more obvious by her attire.  She was loosely
wrapped in a cashmere dressing-gown of gray-white,
embroidered in half-mourning tints, and she wore
slippers of the same hue.  Her neck rose out of a frill
of down, and her well-remembered cable of dark-brown
hair was partially coiled up in a mass at the back of
her head and partly hanging on her shoulder--the
evident result of haste.

He had held out his arms, but they had fallen again to
his side; for she had not come forward, remaining still
in the opening of the doorway.  Mere yellow skeleton
that he was now he felt the contrast between them, and
thought his appearance distasteful to her.

"Tess!" he said huskily, "can you forgive me for going
away? Can't you--come to me?  How do you get to
be--like this?"

"It is too late," said she, her voice sounding hard
through the room, her eyes shining unnaturally.

"I did not think rightly of you--I did not see you as
you were!" he continued to plead.  "I have learnt to
since, dearest Tessy mine!"

"Too late, too late!" she said, waving her hand in the
impatience of a person whose tortures cause every
instant to seem an hour.  "Don't come close to me,
Angel!  No--you must not.  Keep away."

"But don't you love me, my dear wife, because I have
been so pulled down by illness?  You are not so
fickle--I am come on purpose for you--my mother and
father will welcome you now!"

"Yes--O, yes, yes!  But I say, I say it is too late."

She seemed to feel like a fugitive in a dream, who
tries to move away, but cannot.  "Don't you know
all--don't you know it?  Yet how do you come here if
you do not know?"

"I inquired here and there, and I found the way."

"I waited and waited for you," she went on, her tones
suddenly resuming their old fluty pathos.  "But you did
not come!  And I wrote to you, and you did not come!
He kept on saying you would never come any more, and
that I was a foolish woman.  He was very kind to me,
and to mother, and to all of us after father's death.
He----"

"I don't understand."

"He has won me back to him."

Clare looked at her keenly, then, gathering her
meaning, flagged like one plague-stricken, and his
glance sank; it fell on her hands, which, once rosy,
were now white and more delicate.

She continued----

"He is upstairs.  I hate him now, because he told me a
lie--that you would not come again; and you HAVE come!
These clothes are what he's put upon me: I didn't care
what he did wi' me!  But--will you go away, Angel,
please, and never come any more?"

They stood fixed, their baffled hearts looking out of
their eyes with a joylessness pitiful to see.  Both
seemed to implore something to shelter them from
reality.

"Ah--it is my fault!" said Clare.

But he could not get on.  Speech was as inexpressive as
silence.  But he had a vague consciousness of one
thing, though it was not clear to him till later; that
his original Tess had spiritually ceased to recognize
the body before him as hers--allowing it to drift, like
a corpse upon the current, in a direction dissociated
from its living will.

A few instants passed, and he found that Tess was gone.
His face grew colder and more shrunken as he stood
concentrated on the moment, and a minute or two after
he found himself in the street, walking along he did
not know whither.



LVI


Mrs Brooks, the lady who was the householder at The
Herons, and owner of all the handsome furniture, was
not a person of an unusually curious turn of mind.
She was too deeply materialized, poor woman, by her long
and enforced bondage to that arithmetical demon
Profit-and-Loss, to retain much curiousity for its own
sake, and apart from possible lodgers' pockets.
Nevertheless, the visit of Angel Clare to her
well-paying tenants, Mr and Mrs d'Urberville, as she
deemed them, was sufficiently exceptional in point of
time and manner to reinvigorate the feminine proclivity
which had been stifled down as useless save in its
bearings to the letting trade.

Tess had spoken to her husband from the doorway,
without entering the dining-room, and Mrs Brooks, who
stood within the partly-closed door of her own
sitting-room at the back of the passage, could hear
fragments of the conversation--if conversation it could
be called--between those two wretched souls.  She heard
Tess re-ascend the stairs to the first floor, and the
departure of Clare, and the closing of the front door
behind him.  Then the door of the room above was shut,
and Mrs Brooks knew that Tess had re-entered her
apartment.  As the young lady was not fully dressed,
Mrs Brooks knew that she would not emerge again for
some time.

She accordingly ascended the stairs softly, and stood
at the door of the front room--a drawing-room,
connected with the room immediately behind it (which
was a bedroom) by folding-doors in the common manner.
This first floor, containing Mrs Brooks's best
apartments, had been taken by the week by the
d'Urbervilles.  The back room was now in silence; but
from the drawing-room there came sounds.

All that she could at first distinguish of them was one
syllable, continually repeated in a low note of
moaning, as if it came from a soul bound to some
Ixionian wheel----

"O--O--O!"

Then a silence, then a heavy sigh, and again----

"O--O--O!"

The landlady looked through the keyhole.  Only a small
space of the room inside was visible, but within that
space came a corner of the breakfast table, which was
already spread for the meal, and also a chair beside.
Over the seat of the chair Tess's face was bowed, her
posture being a kneeling one in front of it; her hands
were clasped over her head, the skirts of her
dressing-gown and the embroidery of her night-gown
flowed upon the floor behind her, and her stockingless
feet, from which the slippers had fallen, protruded
upon the carpet.  It was from her lips that came the
murmur of unspeakable despair.

Then a man's voice from the adjoining bedroom----

"What's a matter?"

She did not answer, but went on, in a tone which was a
soliloquy rather than an exclamation, and a dirge
rather than a soliloquy.  Mrs Brooks could only catch a
portion:

"And then my dear, dear husband came home to me ...
and I did not know it! ... And you had used your cruel
persuasion upon me ... you did not stop using
it--no--you did not stop! My little sisters and
brothers and my mother's needs--they were the things
you moved me by ... and you said my husband would never
come back--never; and you taunted me, and said what a
simpleton I was to expect him! ... And at last I
believed you and gave way! ... And then he came back!
Now he is gone.  Gone a second time, and I have lost
him now for ever ... and he will not love me the
littlest bit ever any more--only hate me! ... O yes,
I have lost him now--again because of--you!" In writhing,
with her head on the chair, she turned her face towards
the door, and Mrs Brooks could see the pain upon it;
and that her lips were bleeding from the clench of her
teeth upon them, and that the long lashes of her closed
eyes stuck in wet tags to her cheeks.  She continued:
"And he is dying--he looks as if he is dying! ... And
my sin will kill him and not kill me! ... O, you have
torn my life all to pieces ... made me be what I prayed
you in pity not to make me be again! ... My own true
husband will never, never--O God--I can't bear this!--
I cannot!"

There were more and sharper words from the man; then a
sudden rustle; she had sprung to her feet. Mrs Brooks,
thinking that the speaker was coming to rush out of the
door, hastily retreated down the stairs.

She need not have done so, however, for the door of the
sitting-room was not opened.  But Mrs Brooks felt it
unsafe to watch on the landing again, and entered her
own parlour below.

She could hear nothing through the floor, although she
listened intently, and thereupon went to the kitchen to
finish her interrupted breakfast.  Coming up presently
to the front room on the ground floor she took up some
sewing, waiting for her lodgers to ring that she might
take away the breakfast, which she meant to do herself,
to discover what was the matter if possible.  Overhead,
as she sat, she could now hear the floorboards slightly
creak, as if some one were walking about, and presently
the movement was explained by the rustle of garments
against the banisters, the opening and the closing of
the front door, and the form of Tess passing to the
gate on her way into the street.  She was fully dressed
now in the walking costume of a well-to-do young lady
in which she had arrived, with the sole addition that
over her hat and black feathers a veil was drawn.

Mrs Brooks had not been able to catch any word of
farewell, temporary or otherwise, between her tenants
at the door above.  They might have quarrelled, or Mr
d'Urberville might still be asleep, for he was not an
early riser.

She went into the back room which was more especially
her own apartment, and continued her sewing there.  The
lady lodger did not return, nor did the gentleman ring
his bell. Mrs Brooks pondered on the delay, and on what
probable relation the visitor who had called so early
bore to the couple upstairs.  In reflecting she leant
back in her chair.

As she did so her eyes glanced casually over the
ceiling till they were arrested by a spot in the middle
of its white surface which she had never noticed there
before.  It was about the size of a wafer when she
first observed it, but it speedily grew as large as the
palm of her hand, and then she could perceive that it
was red.  The oblong white ceiling, with this scarlet
blot in the midst, had the appearance of a gigantic ace
of hearts.

Mrs Brooks had strange qualms of misgiving.  She got
upon the table, and touched the spot in the ceiling
with her fingers. It was damp, and she fancied that it
was a blood stain.

Descending from the table, she left the parlour, and
went upstairs, intending to enter the room overhead,
which was the bedchamber at the back of the
drawing-room.  But, nerveless woman as she had now
become, she could not bring herself to attempt the
handle.  She listened.  The dead silence within was
broken only by a regular beat.

Drip, drip, drip.

Mrs Brooks hastened downstairs, opened the front door,
and ran into the street.  A man she knew, one of the
workmen employed at an adjoining villa, was passing by,
and she begged him to come in and go upstairs with her;
she feared something had happened to one of her
lodgers.  The workman assented, and followed her to the
landing.

She opened the door of the drawing-room, and stood back
for him to pass in, entering herself behind him.  The
room was empty; the breakfast--a substantial repast of
coffee, eggs, and a cold ham--lay spread upon the table
untouched, as when she had taken it up, excepting that
the carving-knife was missing.  She asked the man to go
through the folding-doors into the adjoining room.

He opened the doors, entered a step or two, and came
back almost instantly with a rigid face.  "My good God,
the gentleman in bed is dead!  I think he has been hurt
with a knife--a lot of blood had run down upon the
floor!"

The alarm was soon given, and the house which had
lately been so quiet resounded with the tramp of many
footsteps, a surgeon among the rest.  The wound was
small, but the point of the blade had touched the heart
of the victim, who lay on his back, pale, fixed, dead,
as if he had scarcely moved after the infliction of the
blow.  In a quarter of an hour the news that a
gentleman who was a temporary visitor to the town had
been stabbed in his bed, spread through every street
and villa of the popular watering-place.



LVII


Meanwhile Angel Clare had walked automatically along
the way by which he had come, and, entering his hotel,
sat down over the breakfast, staring at nothingness.
He went on eating and drinking unconsciously till on a
sudden he demanded his bill; having paid which he took
his dressing-bag in his hand, the only luggage he had
brought with him, and went out.

At the moment of his departure a telegram was handed to
him--a few words from his mother, stating that they
were glad to know his address, and informing him that
his brother Cuthbert had proposed to and been accepted
by Mercy Chant.

Clare crumpled up the paper, and followed the route to
the station; reaching it, he found that there would be
no train leaving for an hour and more.  He sat down to
wait, and having waited a quarter of an hour felt that
he could wait there no longer.  Broken in heart and
numbed, he had nothing to hurry for; but he wished to
get out of a town which had been the scene of such an
experience, and turned to walk to the first station
onward, and let the train pick him up there.

The highway that he followed was open, and at a little
distance dipped into a valley, across which it could be
seen running from edge to edge.  He had traversed the
greater part of this depression, and was climbing the
western acclivity, when, pausing for breath, he
unconsciously looked back.  Why he did so he could not
say, but something seemed to impel him to the act.  The
tape-like surface of the road diminished in his rear as
far as he could see, and as he gazed a moving spot
intruded on the white vacuity of its perspective.

It was a human figure running.  Clare waited, with a
dim sense that somebody was trying to overtake him.

The form descending the incline was a woman's, yet so
entirely was his mind blinded to the idea of his wife's
following him that even when she came nearer he did not
recognize her under the totally changed attire in which
he now beheld her.  It was not till she was quite close
that he could believe her to be Tess.

"I saw you--turn away from the station--just before I
got there--and I have been following you all this way!"

She was so pale, so breathless, so quivering in every
muscle, that he did not ask her a single question, but
seizing her hand, and pulling it within his arm, he led
her along.  To avoid meeting any possible wayfarers he
left the high road, and took a footpath under some
fir-trees.  When they were deep among the moaning
boughs he stopped and looked at her inquiringly.

"Angel," she said, as if waiting for this, "do you know
what I have been running after you for?  To tell you
that I have killed him!" A pitiful white smile lit her
face as she spoke.

"What!" said he, thinking from the strangeness of her
manner that she was in some delirium.

"I have done it--I don't know how," she continued.
"Still, I owed it to you, and to myself, Angel.  I
feared long ago, when I struck him on the mouth with my
glove, that I might do it some day for the trap he set
for me in my simple youth, and his wrong to you through
me.  He has come between us and ruined us, and now he
can never do it any more.  I never loved him at all,
Angel, as I loved you.  You know it, don't you?  You
believe it?  You didn't come back to me, and I was
obliged to go back to him.  Why did you go away--why
did you--when I loved you so?  I can't think why you
did it.  But I don't blame you; only, Angel, will you
forgive me my sin against you, now I have killed him?
I thought as I ran along that you would be sure to
forgive me now I have done that. It came to me as a
shining light that I should get you back that way.  I
could not bear the loss of you any longer--you don't
know how entirely I was unable to bear your not loving
me!  Say you do now, dear, dear husband; say you do,
now I have killed him!"

"I do love you, Tess--O, I do--it is all come back!"
he said, tightening his arms round her with fervid
pressure. "But how do you mean--you have killed him?"

"I mean that I have," she murmured in a reverie.

"What, bodily?  Is he dead?"

"Yes.  He heard me crying about you, and he bitterly
taunted me; and called you by a foul name; and then I
did it.  My heart could not bear it.  He had nagged me
about you before. And then I dressed myself and came
away to find you."

By degrees he was inclined to believe that she had
faintly attempted, at least, what she said she had
done; and his horror at her impulse was mixed with
amazement at the strength of her affection for himself,
and at the strangeness of its quality, which had
apparently extinguished her moral sense altogether.
Unable to realize the gravity of her conduct she seemed
at last content; and he looked at her as she lay upon
his shoulder, weeping with happiness, and wondered what
obscure strain in the d'Urberville blood had led to
this aberration--if it were an aberration.  There
momentarily flashed through his mind that the family
tradition of the coach and murder might have arisen
because the d'Urbervilles had been known to do these
things.  As well as his confused and excited ideas
could reason, he supposed that in the moment of mad
grief of which she spoke her mind had lost its balance,
and plunged her into this abyss.

It was very terrible if true; if a temporary
hallucination, sad.  But, anyhow, here was this
deserted wife of his, this passionately-fond woman,
clinging to him without a suspicion that he would be
anything to her but a protector.  He saw that for him
to be otherwise was not, in her mind, within the region
of the possible.  Tenderness was absolutely dominant in
Clare at last.  He kissed her endlessly with his white
lips, and held her hand, and said--

"I will not desert you!  I will protect you by every
means in my power, dearest love, whatever you may have
done or not have done!"

They then walked on under the trees, Tess turning her
head every now and then to look at him.  Worn and
unhandsome as he had become, it was plain that she did
not discern the least fault in his appearance.  To her
he was, as of old, all that was perfection, personally
and mentally.  He was still her Antinous, her Apollo
even; his sickly face was beautiful as the morning to
her affectionate regard on this day no less than when
she first beheld him; for was it not the face of the
one man on earth who had loved her purely, and who had
believed in her as pure!

With an instinct as to possibilities he did not now, as
he had intended, make for the first station beyond the
town, but plunged still farther under the firs, which
here abounded for miles.  Each clasping the other round
the waist they promenaded over the dry bed of
fir-needles, thrown into a vague intoxicating
atmosphere at the consciousness of being together at
last, with no living soul between them; ignoring that
there was a corpse.  Thus they proceeded for several
miles till Tess, arousing herself, looked about her,
and said, timidly----

"Are we going anywhere in particular?"

"I don't know, dearest.  Why?"

"I don't know."

"Well, we might walk a few miles further, and when it
is evening find lodgings somewhere or other--in a
lonely cottage, perhaps.  Can you walk well, Tessy?"

"O yes!  I could walk for ever and ever with your arm
round me!"

Upon the whole it seemed a good thing to do.  Thereupon
they quickened their pace, avoiding high roads, and
following obscure paths tending more or less northward.
But there was an unpractical vagueness in their
movements throughout the day; neither one of them
seemed to consider any question of effectual escape,
disguise, or long concealment.  Their every idea was
temporary and unforefending, like the plans of two
children.

At mid-day they drew near to a roadside inn, and Tess
would have entered it with him to get something to eat,
but he persuaded her to remain among the trees and
bushes of this half-woodland, half-moorland part of the
country, till he should come back.  Her clothes were of
recent fashion; even the ivory-handled parasol that she
carried was of a shape unknown in the retired spot to
which they had now wandered; and the cut of such
articles would have attracted attention in the settle
of a tavern.  He soon returned, with food enough for
half-a-dozen people and two bottles of wine--enough to
last them for a day or more, should any emergency
arise.

They sat down upon some dead boughs and shared their
meal. Between one and two o'clock they packed up the
remainder and went on again.

"I feel strong enough to walk any distance," said she.

"I think we may as well steer in a general way towards
the interior of the country, where we can hide for a
time, and are less likely to be looked for than
anywhere near the coast," Clare remarked.  "Later on,
when they have forgotten us, we can make for some
port."

She made no reply to this beyond that of grasping him
more tightly, and straight inland they went.  Though
the season was an English May the weather was serenely
bright, and during the afternoon it was quite warm.
Through the latter miles of their walk their footpath
had taken them into the depths of the New Forest, and
towards evening, turning the corner of a lane, they
perceived behind a brook and bridge a large board on
which was painted in white letters, "This desirable
Mansion to be Let Furnished"; particulars following,
with directions to apply to some London agents. Passing
through the gate they could see the house, an old brick
building of regular design and large accommodation.

"I know it," said Clare.  "It is Bramshurst Court.  You
can see that it is shut up, and grass is growing on the
drive."

"Some of the windows are open," said Tess.

"Just to air the rooms, I suppose."

"All these rooms empty, and we without a roof to our
heads!"

"You are getting tired, my Tess!" he said.  "We'll stop
soon." And kissing her sad mouth he again led her
onwards.

He was growing weary likewise, for they had wandered a
dozen or fifteen miles, and it became necessary to
consider what they should do for rest.  They looked
from afar at isolated cottages and little inns, and
were inclined to approach one of the latter, when their
hearts failed them, and they sheered off.  At length
their gait dragged, and they stood still.

"Could we sleep under the trees?" she asked.

He thought the season insufficiently advanced.

"I have been thinking of that empty mansion we passed,"
he said.  "Let us go back towards it again."

They retraced their steps, but it was half an hour
before they stood without the entrance-gate as earlier.
He then requested her to stay where she was, whilst he
went to see who was within.

She sat down among the bushes within the gate, and
Clare crept towards the house.  His absence lasted some
considerable time, and when he returned Tess was wildly
anxious, not for herself, but for him.  He had found
out from a boy that there was only an old woman in
charge as caretaker, and she only came there on fine
days, from the hamlet near, to open and shut the
windows.  She would come to shut them at sunset.
"Now, we can get in through one of the lower windows,
and rest there," said he.

Under his escort she went tardily forward to the main
front, whose shuttered windows, like sightless
eyeballs, excluded the possibility of watchers.  The
door was reached a few steps further, and one of the
windows beside it was open. Clare clambered in, and
pulled Tess in after him.

Except the hall the rooms were all in darkness, and
they ascended the staircase.  Up here also the shutters
were tightly closed, the ventilation being
perfunctorily done, for this day at least, by opening
the hall-window in front and an upper window behind.
Clare unlatched the door of a large chamber, felt his
way across it, and parted the shutters to the width of
two or three inches.  A shaft of dazzling sunlight
glanced into the room, revealing heavy, old-fashioned
furniture, crimson damask hangings, and an enormous
four-post bedstead, along the head of which were carved
running figures, apparently Atalanta's race.

"Rest at last!" said he, setting down his bag and the
parcel of viands.

They remained in great quietness till the caretaker
should have come to shut the windows: as a precaution,
putting themselves in total darkness by barring the
shutters as before, lest the woman should open the door
of their chamber for any casual reason.  Between six
and seven o'clock she came, but did not approach the
wing they were in.  They heard her close the windows,
fasten them, lock the door, and go away.  Then Clare
again stole a chink of light from the window, and they
shared another meal, till by-and-by they were enveloped
in the shades of night which they had no candle to
disperse.



LVIII


The night was strangely solemn and still.  In the small
hours she whispered to him the whole story of how he
had walked in his sleep with her in his arms across the
Froom stream, at the imminent risk of both their lives,
and laid her down in the stone coffin at the ruined
abbey.  He had never known of that till now.

"Why didn't you tell me next day?" he said.  "It might
have prevented much misunderstanding and woe."

"Don't think of what's past!" said she.  "I am not
going to think outside of now.  Why should we!  Who
knows what tomorrow has in store?"

But it apparently had no sorrow.  The morning was wet
and foggy, and Clare, rightly informed that the
caretaker only opened the windows on fine days,
ventured to creep out of their chamber, and explore the
house, leaving Tess asleep. There was no food on the
premises, but there was water, and he took advantage of
the fog to emerge from the mansion, and fetch tea,
bread, and butter from a shop in a little place two
miles beyond, as also a small tin kettle and spirit-lamp,
that they might get fire without smoke.  His re-entry
awoke her; and they breakfasted on what he had brought.

They were indisposed to stir abroad, and the day
passed, and the night following, and the next, and
next; till, almost without their being aware, five days
had slipped by in absolute seclusion, not a sight or
sound of a human being disturbing their peacefulness,
such as it was.  The changes of the weather were their
only events, the birds of the New Forest their only
company.  By tacit consent they hardly once spoke of
any incident of the past subsequent to their
wedding-day.  The gloomy intervening time seemed to
sink into chaos, over which the present and prior times
closed as if it never had been.  Whenever he suggested
that they should leave their shelter, and go forwards
towards Southampton or London, she showed a strange
unwillingness to move.

"Why should we put an end to all that's sweet and
lovely!" she deprecated.  "What must come will come."
And, looking through the shutter-chink: "All is trouble
outside there; inside here content."

He peeped out also.  It was quite true; within was
affection, union, error forgiven: outside was the
inexorable.

"And--and," she said, pressing her cheek against his,
"I fear that what you think of me now may not last.
I do not wish to outlive your present feeling for me.
I would rather not.  I would rather be dead and buried
when the time comes for you to despise me, so that it
may never be known to me that you despised me."

"I cannot ever despise you."

"I also hope that.  But considering what my life had
been I cannot see why any man should, sooner or later,
be able to help despising me....  How wickedly mad I
was!  Yet formerly I never could bear to hurt a fly or
a worm, and the sight of a bird in a cage used often to
make me cry."

They remained yet another day.  In the night the dull
sky cleared, and the result was that the old caretaker
at the cottage awoke early.  The brilliant sunrise made
her unusually brisk; she decided to open the contiguous
mansion immediately, and to air it thoroughly on such a
day.  Thus it occurred that, having arrived and opened
the lower rooms before six o'clock, she ascended to the
bedchambers, and was about to turn the handle of the
one wherein they lay.  At that moment she fancied she
could hear the breathing of persons within.  Her
slippers and her antiquity had rendered her progress a
noiseless one so far, and she made for instant retreat;
then, deeming that her hearing might have deceived her,
she turned anew to the door and softly tried the
handle.  The lock was out of order, but a piece of
furniture had been moved forward on the inside, which
prevented her opening the door more than an inch or
two.  A stream of morning light through the
shutter-chink fell upon the faces of the pair, wrapped
in profound slumber, Tess's lips being parted like a
half-opened flower near his cheek. The caretaker was so
struck with their innocent appearance, and with the
elegance of Tess's gown hanging across a chair, her
silk stockings beside it, the pretty parasol, and the
other habits in which she had arrived because she had
none else, that her first indignation at the effrontery
of tramps and vagabonds gave way to a momentary
sentimentality over this genteel elopement, as it
seemed.  She closed the door, and withdrew as softly as
she had come, to go and consult with her neighbours on
the odd discovery.

Not more than a minute had elapsed after her withdrawal
when Tess woke, and then Clare.  Both had a sense that
something had disturbed them, though they could not say
what; and the uneasy feeling which it engendered grew
stronger.  As soon as he was dressed he narrowly
scanned the lawn through the two or three inches of
shutter-chink.

"I think we will leave at once," said he.  "It is a
fine day. And I cannot help fancying somebody is about
the house.  At any rate, the woman will be sure to come
today."

She passively assented, and putting the room in order
they took up the few articles that belonged to them,
and departed noiselessly.  When they had got into the
Forest she turned to take a last look at the house.

"Ah, happy house--goodbye!" she said.  "My life can
only be a question of a few weeks.  Why should we not
have stayed there?"

"Don't say it, Tess!  We shall soon get out of this
district altogether.  We'll continue our course as
we've begun it, and keep straight north.  Nobody will
think of looking for us there.  We shall be looked for
at the Wessex ports if we are sought at all.  When we
are in the north we will get to a port and away."

Having thus persuaded her the plan was pursued, and
they kept a bee-line northward.  Their long repose at
the manor-house lent them walking power now; and
towards mid-day they found that they were approaching
the steepled city of Melchester, which lay directly in
their way.  He decided to rest her in a clump of trees
during the afternoon, and push onward under cover of
darkness.  At dusk Clare purchased food as usual, and
their night march began, the boundary between Upper and
Mid-Wessex being crossed about eight o'clock.

To walk across country without much regard to roads was
not new to Tess, and she showed her old agility in the
performance.  The intercepting city, ancient
Melchester, they were obliged to pass through in order
to take advantage of the town bridge for crossing a
large river that obstructed them.  It was about
midnight when they went along the deserted streets,
lighted fitfully by the few lamps, keeping off the
pavement that it might not echo their footsteps.  The
graceful pile of cathedral architecture rose dimly on
their left hand, but it was lost upon them now.  Once
out of the town they followed the turnpike-road, which
after a few miles plunged across an open plain.

Though the sky was dense with cloud a diffused light
from some fragment of a moon had hitherto helped them a
little. But the moon had now sunk, the clouds seemed to
settle almost on their heads, and the night grew as
dark as a cave. However, they found their way along,
keeping as much on the turf as possible that their
tread might not resound, which it was easy to do, there
being no hedge or fence of any kind.  All around was
open loneliness and black solitude, over which a stiff
breeze blew.

They had proceeded thus gropingly two or three miles
further when on a sudden Clare became conscious of some
vast erection close in his front, rising sheer from the
grass. They had almost struck themselves against it.

"What monstrous place is this?" said Angel.

"It hums," said she.  "Hearken!"

He listened.  The wind, playing upon the edifice,
produced a booming tune, like the note of some gigantic
one-stringed harp.  No other sound came from it, and
lifting his hand and advancing a step or two, Clare
felt the vertical surface of the structure.  It seemed
to be of solid stone, without joint or moulding.
Carrying his fingers onward he found that what he had
come in contact with was a colossal rectangular pillar;
by stretching out his left hand he could feel a similar
one adjoining.  At an indefinite height overhead
something made the black sky blacker, which had the
semblance of a vast architrave uniting the pillars
horizontally.  They carefully entered beneath and
between; the surfaces echoed their soft rustle; but
they seemed to be still out of doors.  The place was
roofless.  Tess drew her breath fearfully, and Angel,
perplexed, said----

"What can it be?"

Feeling sideways they encountered another tower-like
pillar, square and uncompromising as the first; beyond
it another and another.  The place was all doors and
pillars, some connected above by continuous
architraves.

"A very Temple of the Winds," he said.

The next pillar was isolated; others composed a
trilithon; others were prostrate, their flanks forming
a causeway wide enough for a carriage and it was soon
obvious that they made up a forest of monoliths grouped
upon the grassy expanse of the plain.  The couple
advanced further into this pavilion of the night till
they stood in its midst.

"It is Stonehenge!" said Clare.

"The heathen temple, you mean?"

"Yes.  Older than the centuries; older than the
d'Urbervilles!  Well, what shall we do, darling?
We may find shelter further on."

But Tess, really tired by this time, flung herself upon
an oblong slab that lay close at hand, and was
sheltered from the wind by a pillar.  Owing to the
action of the sun during the preceding day the stone
was warm and dry, in comforting contrast to the rough
and chill grass around, which had damped her skirts and
shoes.

"I don't want to go any further, Angel," she said,
stretching out her hand for his.  "Can't we bide here?"

"I fear not.  This spot is visible for miles by day,
although it does not seem so now."

"One of my mother's people was a shepherd hereabouts,
now I think of it.  And you used to say at Talbothays
that I was a heathen.  So now I am at home."

He knelt down beside her outstretched form, and put his
lips upon hers.

"Sleepy are you, dear?  I think you are lying on an
altar."

"I like very much to be here," she murmured.  "It is so
solemn and lonely--after my great happiness--with
nothing but the sky above my face.  it seems as if
there were no folk in the world but we two; and I wish
there were not--except 'Liza-Lu."

Clare though she might as well rest here till it should
get a little lighter, and he flung his overcoat upon
her, and sat down by her side.

"Angel, if anything happens to me, will you watch over
'Liza-Lu for my sake?" she asked, when they had
listened a long time to the wind among the pillars.

"I will."

"She is so good and simple and pure.  O, Angel--I wish
you would marry her if you lose me, as you will do
shortly.  O, if you would!"

"If I lose you I lose all!  And she is my
sister-in-law."

"That's nothing, dearest.  People marry sister-laws
continually about Marlott; and 'Liza-Lu is so gentle
and sweet, and she is growing so beautiful.  O, I could
share you with her willingly when we are spirits!  If
you would train her and teach her, Angel, and bring her
up for your own self! ...  She had all the best of me
without the bad of me; and if she were to become yours
it would almost seem as if death had not divided us....
Well, I have said it.  I won't mention it again."

She ceased, and he fell into thought.  In the far
north-east sky he could see between the pillars a level
streak of light.  The uniform concavity of black cloud
was lifting bodily like the lid of a pot, letting in at
the earth's edge the coming day, against which the
towering monoliths and trilithons began to be blackly
defined.

"Did they sacrifice to God here?" asked she.

"No," said he.

"Who to?"

"I believe to the sun.  That lofty stone set away by
itself is in the direction of the sun, which will
presently rise behind it."

"This reminds me, dear," she said.  "You remember you
never would interfere with any belief of mine before we
were married?  But I knew your mind all the same, and I
thought as you thought--not from any reasons of my own,
but because you thought so.  Tell me now, Angel, do you
think we shall meet again after we are dead?  I want to
know."

He kissed her to avoid a reply at such a time.

"O, Angel--I fear that means no!" said she, with a
suppressed sob.  "And I wanted so to see you again--
so much, so much!  What--not even you and I, Angel,
who love each other so well?"

Like a greater than himself, to the critical question
at the critical time he did not answer; and they were
again silent. In a minute or two her breathing became
more regular, her clasp of his hand relaxed, and she
fell asleep.  The band of silver paleness along the
east horizon made even the distant parts of the Great
Plain appear dark and near; and the whole enormous
landscape bore that impress of reserve, taciturnity,
and hesitation which is usual just before day. The
eastward pillars and their architraves stood up blackly
against the light, and the great flame-shaped Sun-stone
beyond them; and the Stone of Sacrifice midway.
Presently the night wind died out, and the quivering
little pools in the cup-like hollows of the stones lay
still.  At the same time something seemed to move on
the verge of the dip eastward--a mere dot.  It was the
head of a man approaching them from the hollow beyond
the Sun-stone.  Clare wished they had gone onward, but
in the circumstances decided to remain quiet.  The
figure came straight towards the circle of pillars in
which they were.

He heard something behind him, the brush of feet.
Turning, he saw over the prostrate columns another
figure; then before he was aware, another was at hand
on the right, under a trilithon, and another on the
left.  The dawn shone full on the front of the man
westward, and Clare could discern from this that he was
tall, and walked as if trained.  They all closed in
with evident purpose.  Her story then was true!
Springing to his feet, he looked around for a weapon,
loose stone, means of escape, anything.  By this time
the nearest man was upon him.

"It is no use, sir," he said.  "There are sixteen of us
on the Plain, and the whole country is reared."

"Let her finish her sleep!" he implored in a whisper of
the men as they gathered round.

When they saw where she lay, which they had not done
till then, they showed no objection, and stood watching
her, as still as the pillars around.  He went to the
stone and bent over her, holding one poor little hand;
her breathing now was quick and small, like that of a
lesser creature than a woman.  All waited in the
growing light, their faces and hands as if they were
silvered, the remainder of their figures dark, the
stones glistening green-gray, the Plain still a mass of
shade.  Soon the light was strong, and a ray shone upon
her unconscious form, peering under her eyelids and
waking her.

"What is it, Angel?" she said, starting up.  "Have they
come for me?"

"Yes, dearest," he said.  "They have come."

"It is as it should be," she murmured.  "Angel, I am
almost glad--yes, glad!  This happiness could not have
lasted.  It was too much.  I have had enough; and now I
shall not live for you to despise me!"

She stood up, shook herself, and went forward, neither
of the men having moved.

"I am ready," she said quietly.



LIX


The city of Wintoncester, that fine old city, aforetime
capital of Wessex, lay amidst its convex and concave
downlands in all the brightness and warmth of a July
morning.  The gabled brick, tile, and freestone houses
had almost dried off for the season their integument of
lichen, the streams in the meadows were low, and in the
sloping High Street, from the West Gateway to the
mediaeval cross, and from the mediaeval cross to the
bridge, that leisurely dusting and sweeping was in
progress which usually ushers in an old-fashioned
market-day.

From the western gate aforesaid the highway, as every
Wintoncestrian knows, ascends a long and regular
incline of the exact length of a measured mile, leaving
the houses gradually behind.  Up this road from the
precincts of the city two persons were walking rapidly,
as if unconscious of the trying ascent--unconscious
through preoccupation and not through buoyancy.  They
had emerged upon this road through a narrow barred
wicket in a high wall a little lower down. They seemed
anxious to get out of the sight of the houses and of
their kind, and this road appeared to offer the
quickest means of doing so.  Though they were young
they walked with bowed heads, which gait of grief the
sun's rays smiled on pitilessly.

One of the pair was Angel Clare, the other a tall
budding creature--half girl, half woman--a
spiritualized image of Tess, slighter than she, but
with the same beautiful eyes--Clare's sister-in-law,
'Liza-Lu.  Their pale faces seemed to have shrunk to
half their natural size.  They moved on hand in hand,
and never spoke a word, the drooping of their heads
being that of Giotto's "Two Apostles".

When they had nearly reached the top of the great West
Hill the clocks in the town struck eight.  Each gave a
start at the notes, and, walking onward yet a few
steps, they reached the first milestone, standing
whitely on the green margin of the grass, and backed by
the down, which here was open to the road.  They
entered upon the turf, and, impelled by a force that
seemed to overrule their will, suddenly stood still,
turned, and waited in paralyzed suspense beside the
stone.

The prospect from this summit was almost unlimited.
In the valley beneath lay the city they had just left,
its more prominent buildings showing as in an isometric
drawing--among them the broad cathedral tower, with
its Norman windows and immense length of aisle and
nave, the spires of St Thomas's, the pinnacled tower of
the College, and, more to the right, the tower and
gables of the ancient hospice, where to this day the
pilgrim may receive his dole of bread and ale.  Behind
the city swept the rotund upland of St Catherine's
Hill; further off, landscape beyond landscape, till the
horizon was lost in the radiance of the sun hanging
above it.

Against these far stretches of country rose, in front
of the other city edifices, a large red-brick building,
with level gray roofs, and rows of short barred windows
bespeaking captivity, the whole contrasting greatly by
its formalism with the quaint irregularities of the
Gothic erections.  It was somewhat disguised from the
road in passing it by yews and evergreen oaks, but it
was visible enough up here.  The wicket from which the
pair had lately emerged was in the wall of this
structure.  From the middle of the building an ugly
flat-topped octagonal tower ascended against the east
horizon, and viewed from this spot, on its shady side
and against the light, it seemed the one blot on the
city's beauty.  Yet it was with this blot, and not with
the beauty, that the two gazers were concerned.

Upon the cornice of the tower a tall staff was fixed.
Their eyes were riveted on it.  A few minutes after the
hour had struck something moved slowly up the staff,
and extended itself upon the breeze.  It was a black flag.

"Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals,
in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess.
And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in
their tombs unknowing.  The two speechless gazers bent
themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and
remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the
flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had
strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on.