finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_4_part_5.txt
Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xxix
chapter xxix
{"name": "Chapter XXIX", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase4-chapter25-34", "summary": "A local farm man named Jack Dollop, the same man who escaped an aspiring mother-in-law by hiding in the dairy's churn, marries a local wealthy widow but finds that her wealth evaporated upon her remarriage. All at Talbothays laugh at this tidbit of gossip and side with the despicable Dollop against the scheming widow. But Tess takes the story to heart and worries more and more about sharing her past with Angel", "analysis": ""}


"Now, who mid ye think I've heard news o' this morning?" said
Dairyman Crick, as he sat down to breakfast next day, with a riddling
gaze round upon the munching men and maids. "Now, just who mid ye
think?"

One guessed, and another guessed.  Mrs Crick did not guess, because
she knew already.

"Well," said the dairyman, "'tis that slack-twisted 'hore's-bird of a
feller, Jack Dollop.  He's lately got married to a widow-woman."

"Not Jack Dollop?  A villain--to think o' that!" said a milker.

The name entered quickly into Tess Durbeyfield's consciousness, for
it was the name of the lover who had wronged his sweetheart, and had
afterwards been so roughly used by the young woman's mother in the
butter-churn.

"And had he married the valiant matron's daughter, as he promised?"
asked Angel Clare absently, as he turned over the newspaper he was
reading at the little table to which he was always banished by Mrs
Crick, in her sense of his gentility.

"Not he, sir.  Never meant to," replied the dairyman. "As I say, 'tis
a widow-woman, and she had money, it seems--fifty poun' a year or so;
and that was all he was after.  They were married in a great hurry;
and then she told him that by marrying she had lost her fifty poun'
a year.  Just fancy the state o' my gentleman's mind at that news!
Never such a cat-and-dog life as they've been leading ever since!
Serves him well beright.  But onluckily the poor woman gets the worst
o't."

"Well, the silly body should have told en sooner that the ghost of
her first man would trouble him," said Mrs Crick.

"Ay, ay," responded the dairyman indecisively.  "Still, you can see
exactly how 'twas.  She wanted a home, and didn't like to run the
risk of losing him.  Don't ye think that was something like it,
maidens?"

He glanced towards the row of girls.

"She ought to ha' told him just before they went to church, when he
could hardly have backed out," exclaimed Marian.

"Yes, she ought," agreed Izz.

"She must have seen what he was after, and should ha' refused him,"
cried Retty spasmodically.

"And what do you say, my dear?" asked the dairyman of Tess.

"I think she ought--to have told him the true state of things--or
else refused him--I don't know," replied Tess, the bread-and-butter
choking her.

"Be cust if I'd have done either o't," said Beck Knibbs, a married
helper from one of the cottages.  "All's fair in love and war.  I'd
ha' married en just as she did, and if he'd said two words to me
about not telling him beforehand anything whatsomdever about my first
chap that I hadn't chose to tell, I'd ha' knocked him down wi' the
rolling-pin--a scram little feller like he!  Any woman could do it."

The laughter which followed this sally was supplemented only by a
sorry smile, for form's sake, from Tess.  What was comedy to them was
tragedy to her; and she could hardly bear their mirth.  She soon rose
from table, and, with an impression that Clare would soon follow her,
went along a little wriggling path, now stepping to one side of the
irrigating channels, and now to the other, till she stood by the main
stream of the Var.  Men had been cutting the water-weeds higher up
the river, and masses of them were floating past her--moving islands
of green crow-foot, whereon she might almost have ridden; long locks
of which weed had lodged against the piles driven to keep the cows
from crossing.

Yes, there was the pain of it.  This question of a woman telling her
story--the heaviest of crosses to herself--seemed but amusement to
others.  It was as if people should laugh at martyrdom.

"Tessy!" came from behind her, and Clare sprang across the gully,
alighting beside her feet.  "My wife--soon!"

"No, no; I cannot.  For your sake, O Mr Clare; for your sake, I say
no!"

"Tess!"

"Still I say no!" she repeated.

Not expecting this, he had put his arm lightly round her waist the
moment after speaking, beneath her hanging tail of hair.  (The
younger dairymaids, including Tess, breakfasted with their hair loose
on Sunday mornings before building it up extra high for attending
church, a style they could not adopt when milking with their heads
against the cows.)  If she had said "Yes" instead of "No" he
would have kissed her; it had evidently been his intention; but
her determined negative deterred his scrupulous heart.  Their
condition of domiciliary comradeship put her, as the woman, to such
disadvantage by its enforced intercourse, that he felt it unfair to
her to exercise any pressure of blandishment which he might have
honestly employed had she been better able to avoid him.  He released
her momentarily-imprisoned waist, and withheld the kiss.

It all turned on that release.  What had given her strength to refuse
him this time was solely the tale of the widow told by the dairyman;
and that would have been overcome in another moment.  But Angel said
no more; his face was perplexed; he went away.

Day after day they met--somewhat less constantly than before; and
thus two or three weeks went by.  The end of September drew near, and
she could see in his eye that he might ask her again.

His plan of procedure was different now--as though he had made up
his mind that her negatives were, after all, only coyness and youth
startled by the novelty of the proposal.  The fitful evasiveness of
her manner when the subject was under discussion countenanced the
idea.  So he played a more coaxing game; and while never going beyond
words, or attempting the renewal of caresses, he did his utmost
orally.

In this way Clare persistently wooed her in undertones like that of
the purling milk--at the cow's side, at skimmings, at butter-makings,
at cheese-makings, among broody poultry, and among farrowing pigs--as
no milkmaid was ever wooed before by such a man.

Tess knew that she must break down.  Neither a religious sense of a
certain moral validity in the previous union nor a conscientious wish
for candour could hold out against it much longer.  She loved him so
passionately, and he was so godlike in her eyes; and being, though
untrained, instinctively refined, her nature cried for his tutelary
guidance.  And thus, though Tess kept repeating to herself, "I can
never be his wife," the words were vain.  A proof of her weakness lay
in the very utterance of what calm strength would not have taken the
trouble to formulate.  Every sound of his voice beginning on the old
subject stirred her with a terrifying bliss, and she coveted the
recantation she feared.

His manner was--what man's is not?--so much that of one who would
love and cherish and defend her under any conditions, changes,
charges, or revelations, that her gloom lessened as she basked in it.
The season meanwhile was drawing onward to the equinox, and though
it was still fine, the days were much shorter.  The dairy had again
worked by morning candlelight for a long time; and a fresh renewal
of Clare's pleading occurred one morning between three and four.

She had run up in her bedgown to his door to call him as usual;
then had gone back to dress and call the others; and in ten minutes
was walking to the head of the stairs with the candle in her
hand.  At the same moment he came down his steps from above in his
shirt-sleeves and put his arm across the stairway.

"Now, Miss Flirt, before you go down," he said peremptorily. "It is a
fortnight since I spoke, and this won't do any longer.  You MUST tell
me what you mean, or I shall have to leave this house.  My door was
ajar just now, and I saw you.  For your own safety I must go.  You
don't know.  Well?  Is it to be yes at last?"

"I am only just up, Mr Clare, and it is too early to take me to
task!" she pouted.  "You need not call me Flirt.  'Tis cruel and
untrue.  Wait till by and by.  Please wait till by and by!  I will
really think seriously about it between now and then.  Let me go
downstairs!"

She looked a little like what he said she was as, holding the candle
sideways, she tried to smile away the seriousness of her words.

"Call me Angel, then, and not Mr Clare."

"Angel."

"Angel dearest--why not?"

"'Twould mean that I agree, wouldn't it?"

"It would only mean that you love me, even if you cannot marry me;
and you were so good as to own that long ago."

"Very well, then, 'Angel dearest', if I MUST," she murmured, looking
at her candle, a roguish curl coming upon her mouth, notwithstanding
her suspense.

Clare had resolved never to kiss her until he had obtained her
promise; but somehow, as Tess stood there in her prettily tucked-up
milking gown, her hair carelessly heaped upon her head till there
should be leisure to arrange it when skimming and milking were done,
he broke his resolve, and brought his lips to her cheek for one
moment.  She passed downstairs very quickly, never looking back at
him or saying another word.  The other maids were already down,
and the subject was not pursued.  Except Marian, they all looked
wistfully and suspiciously at the pair, in the sad yellow rays which
the morning candles emitted in contrast with the first cold signals
of the dawn without.

When skimming was done--which, as the milk diminished with the
approach of autumn, was a lessening process day by day--Retty and
the rest went out.  The lovers followed them.

"Our tremulous lives are so different from theirs, are they not?" he
musingly observed to her, as he regarded the three figures tripping
before him through the frigid pallor of opening day.

"Not so very different, I think," she said.

"Why do you think that?"

"There are very few women's lives that are not--tremulous," Tess
replied, pausing over the new word as if it impressed her.  "There's
more in those three than you think."

"What is in them?"

"Almost either of 'em," she began, "would make--perhaps would
make--a properer wife than I.  And perhaps they love you as well
as I--almost."

"O, Tessy!"

There were signs that it was an exquisite relief to her to hear the
impatient exclamation, though she had resolved so intrepidly to let
generosity make one bid against herself.  That was now done, and she
had not the power to attempt self-immolation a second time then.
They were joined by a milker from one of the cottages, and no more
was said on that which concerned them so deeply.  But Tess knew that
this day would decide it.

In the afternoon several of the dairyman's household and assistants
went down to the meads as usual, a long way from the dairy, where
many of the cows were milked without being driven home.  The
supply was getting less as the animals advanced in calf, and the
supernumerary milkers of the lush green season had been dismissed.

The work progressed leisurely.  Each pailful was poured into tall
cans that stood in a large spring-waggon which had been brought
upon the scene; and when they were milked, the cows trailed away.
Dairyman Crick, who was there with the rest, his wrapper gleaming
miraculously white against a leaden evening sky, suddenly looked
at his heavy watch.

"Why, 'tis later than I thought," he said.  "Begad!  We shan't be
soon enough with this milk at the station, if we don't mind.  There's
no time to-day to take it home and mix it with the bulk afore sending
off.  It must go to station straight from here.  Who'll drive it
across?"

Mr Clare volunteered to do so, though it was none of his business,
asking Tess to accompany him.  The evening, though sunless, had
been warm and muggy for the season, and Tess had come out with
her milking-hood only, naked-armed and jacketless; certainly not
dressed for a drive.  She therefore replied by glancing over her
scant habiliments; but Clare gently urged her.  She assented by
relinquishing her pail and stool to the dairyman to take home, and
mounted the spring-waggon beside Clare.



Chapter XXIX
A local farm man named Jack Dollop, the same man who escaped an aspiring mother-in-law by hiding in the dairy's churn, marries a local wealthy widow but finds that her wealth evaporated upon her remarriage. All at Talbothays laugh at this tidbit of gossip and side with the despicable Dollop against the scheming widow. But Tess takes the story to heart and worries more and more about sharing her past with Angel