finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_9_part_0.txt
Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 10
chapter 10
{"name": "Phase I: \"The Maiden,\" Chapter Ten", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-10", "summary": "The narrator tells us how the regular folks in Tess's new neighborhood spend their free time: they drink. A lot. On Saturdays, they all walk as a group to a nearby town, and walk back late at night. Or early the next morning. Tess doesn't go with them for a long time, but finally starts to go along with them--some of the women pressure her, and she gives in. She enjoys the company, especially after hanging out with chickens and an eccentric old lady all week. Tess has gone several times on these weekly trips to the next town, and has gotten in the habit of walking home with the group--they come home so late that she doesn't feel comfortably walking back alone. One week, Alec sees her standing in the street waiting for her comrades to walk home with her. He offers her a ride home, but she politely refuses, saying that she'd rather wait for her peers. The other villagers join her soon, and they begin their three-mile walk together. Tess is the only sober one in the group. Car Darch, one of the women in the group has it in for Tess because Tess is Alec's new favorite, and she's jealous. Car is in the front of the group, and is balancing a basket of groceries on her head. Someone in the group suddenly notices a trickle of something going down Car's back. It's treacle . Everyone starts laughing at her, so Car throws herself on the grass and starts rubbing her back against the ground to get the sticky goop off. Of course, they only laugh harder. Tess joins in the laughter. Big mistake. Car immediately picks a fight with her about it. Tess defends herself, saying that everyone else was laughing. Car actually wants a fist-fight, and pulls off her outer clothes . Some of the men in the group try to make peace and defend Tess, but that only makes their wives jealous and angry. Suddenly, Alec D'Urberville appears on horseback. He asks what's going on , and then offers to rescue Tess. She's about ready to faint from a combination of shame and anger and fear, and agrees to climb up with him. The women in the group watch Alec ride off with Tess, and chuckle quietly amongst themselves. \"Out of the frying-pan into the fire!\" as Car's mother explains it.", "analysis": ""}


Every village has its idiosyncrasy, its constitution, often its own
code of morality.  The levity of some of the younger women in and
about Trantridge was marked, and was perhaps symptomatic of the
choice spirit who ruled The Slopes in that vicinity.  The place had
also a more abiding defect; it drank hard.  The staple conversation
on the farms around was on the uselessness of saving money; and
smock-frocked arithmeticians, leaning on their ploughs or hoes, would
enter into calculations of great nicety to prove that parish relief
was a fuller provision for a man in his old age than any which could
result from savings out of their wages during a whole lifetime.

The chief pleasure of these philosophers lay in going every Saturday
night, when work was done, to Chaseborough, a decayed market-town two
or three miles distant; and, returning in the small hours of the next
morning, to spend Sunday in sleeping off the dyspeptic effects of the
curious compounds sold to them as beer by the monopolizers of the
once-independent inns.

For a long time Tess did not join in the weekly pilgrimages.  But
under pressure from matrons not much older than herself--for a
field-man's wages being as high at twenty-one as at forty, marriage
was early here--Tess at length consented to go.  Her first experience
of the journey afforded her more enjoyment than she had expected,
the hilariousness of the others being quite contagious after her
monotonous attention to the poultry-farm all the week. She went again
and again.  Being graceful and interesting, standing moreover on the
momentary threshold of womanhood, her appearance drew down upon her
some sly regards from loungers in the streets of Chaseborough; hence,
though sometimes her journey to the town was made independently, she
always searched for her fellows at nightfall, to have the protection
of their companionship homeward.

This had gone on for a month or two when there came a Saturday in
September, on which a fair and a market coincided; and the pilgrims
from Trantridge sought double delights at the inns on that account.
Tess's occupations made her late in setting out, so that her comrades
reached the town long before her.  It was a fine September evening,
just before sunset, when yellow lights struggle with blue shades in
hairlike lines, and the atmosphere itself forms a prospect without
aid from more solid objects, except the innumerable winged insects
that dance in it.  Through this low-lit mistiness Tess walked
leisurely along.

She did not discover the coincidence of the market with the fair till
she had reached the place, by which time it was close upon dusk.  Her
limited marketing was soon completed; and then as usual she began to
look about for some of the Trantridge cottagers.

At first she could not find them, and she was informed that most of
them had gone to what they called a private little jig at the house
of a hay-trusser and peat-dealer who had transactions with their
farm.  He lived in an out-of-the-way nook of the townlet, and in
trying to find her course thither her eyes fell upon Mr d'Urberville
standing at a street corner.

"What--my Beauty?  You here so late?" he said.

She told him that she was simply waiting for company homeward.

"I'll see you again," said he over her shoulder as she went on down
the back lane.

Approaching the hay-trussers, she could hear the fiddled notes of
a reel proceeding from some building in the rear; but no sound of
dancing was audible--an exceptional state of things for these parts,
where as a rule the stamping drowned the music.  The front door being
open she could see straight through the house into the garden at the
back as far as the shades of night would allow; and nobody appearing
to her knock, she traversed the dwelling and went up the path to the
outhouse whence the sound had attracted her.

It was a windowless erection used for storage, and from the open door
there floated into the obscurity a mist of yellow radiance, which at
first Tess thought to be illuminated smoke.  But on drawing nearer
she perceived that it was a cloud of dust, lit by candles within the
outhouse, whose beams upon the haze carried forward the outline of
the doorway into the wide night of the garden.

When she came close and looked in she beheld indistinct forms
racing up and down to the figure of the dance, the silence of their
footfalls arising from their being overshoe in "scroff"--that is
to say, the powdery residuum from the storage of peat and other
products, the stirring of which by their turbulent feet created the
nebulosity that involved the scene.  Through this floating, fusty
_debris_ of peat and hay, mixed with the perspirations and warmth of
the dancers, and forming together a sort of vegeto-human pollen, the
muted fiddles feebly pushed their notes, in marked contrast to the
spirit with which the measure was trodden out.  They coughed as
they danced, and laughed as they coughed.  Of the rushing couples
there could barely be discerned more than the high lights--the
indistinctness shaping them to satyrs clasping nymphs--a multiplicity
of Pans whirling a multiplicity of Syrinxes; Lotis attempting to
elude Priapus, and always failing.

At intervals a couple would approach the doorway for air, and
the haze no longer veiling their features, the demigods resolved
themselves into the homely personalities of her own next-door
neighbours.  Could Trantridge in two or three short hours have
metamorphosed itself thus madly!

Some Sileni of the throng sat on benches and hay-trusses by the wall;
and one of them recognized her.

"The maids don't think it respectable to dance at The Flower-de-Luce,"
he explained.  "They don't like to let everybody see which be their
fancy-men.  Besides, the house sometimes shuts up just when their
jints begin to get greased.  So we come here and send out for
liquor."

"But when be any of you going home?" asked Tess with some anxiety.

"Now--a'most directly.  This is all but the last jig."

She waited.  The reel drew to a close, and some of the party were in
the mind of starting.  But others would not, and another dance was
formed.  This surely would end it, thought Tess.  But it merged in
yet another.  She became restless and uneasy; yet, having waited so
long, it was necessary to wait longer; on account of the fair the
roads were dotted with roving characters of possibly ill intent; and,
though not fearful of measurable dangers, she feared the unknown.
Had she been near Marlott she would have had less dread.

"Don't ye be nervous, my dear good soul," expostulated, between his
coughs, a young man with a wet face and his straw hat so far back
upon his head that the brim encircled it like the nimbus of a saint.
"What's yer hurry?  To-morrow is Sunday, thank God, and we can sleep
it off in church-time.  Now, have a turn with me?"

She did not abhor dancing, but she was not going to dance here.  The
movement grew more passionate: the fiddlers behind the luminous
pillar of cloud now and then varied the air by playing on the wrong
side of the bridge or with the back of the bow.  But it did not
matter; the panting shapes spun onwards.

They did not vary their partners if their inclination were to stick
to previous ones.  Changing partners simply meant that a satisfactory
choice had not as yet been arrived at by one or other of the pair,
and by this time every couple had been suitably matched.  It was then
that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which emotion was the matter
of the universe, and matter but an adventitious intrusion likely to
hinder you from spinning where you wanted to spin.

Suddenly there was a dull thump on the ground: a couple had fallen,
and lay in a mixed heap.  The next couple, unable to check its
progress, came toppling over the obstacle.  An inner cloud of dust
rose around the prostrate figures amid the general one of the room,
in which a twitching entanglement of arms and legs was discernible.

"You shall catch it for this, my gentleman, when you get home!" burst
in female accents from the human heap--those of the unhappy partner
of the man whose clumsiness had caused the mishap; she happened
also to be his recently married wife, in which assortment there was
nothing unusual at Trantridge as long as any affection remained
between wedded couples; and, indeed, it was not uncustomary in their
later lives, to avoid making odd lots of the single people between
whom there might be a warm understanding.

A loud laugh from behind Tess's back, in the shade of the garden,
united with the titter within the room.  She looked round, and saw
the red coal of a cigar: Alec d'Urberville was standing there alone.
He beckoned to her, and she reluctantly retreated towards him.

"Well, my Beauty, what are you doing here?"

She was so tired after her long day and her walk that she confided
her trouble to him--that she had been waiting ever since he saw her
to have their company home, because the road at night was strange to
her.  "But it seems they will never leave off, and I really think I
will wait no longer."

"Certainly do not.  I have only a saddle-horse here to-day; but come
to The Flower-de-Luce, and I'll hire a trap, and drive you home with
me."

Tess, though flattered, had never quite got over her original
mistrust of him, and, despite their tardiness, she preferred to walk
home with the work-folk.  So she answered that she was much obliged
to him, but would not trouble him.  "I have said that I will wait for
'em, and they will expect me to now."

"Very well, Miss Independence.  Please yourself...  Then I shall not
hurry...  My good Lord, what a kick-up they are having there!"

He had not put himself forward into the light, but some of them
had perceived him, and his presence led to a slight pause and a
consideration of how the time was flying.  As soon as he had re-lit
a cigar and walked away the Trantridge people began to collect
themselves from amid those who had come in from other farms, and
prepared to leave in a body.  Their bundles and baskets were gathered
up, and half an hour later, when the clock-chime sounded a quarter
past eleven, they were straggling along the lane which led up the
hill towards their homes.

It was a three-mile walk, along a dry white road, made whiter
to-night by the light of the moon.

Tess soon perceived as she walked in the flock, sometimes with this
one, sometimes with that, that the fresh night air was producing
staggerings and serpentine courses among the men who had partaken too
freely; some of the more careless women also were wandering in their
gait--to wit, a dark virago, Car Darch, dubbed Queen of Spades, till
lately a favourite of d'Urberville's; Nancy, her sister, nicknamed
the Queen of Diamonds; and the young married woman who had already
tumbled down.  Yet however terrestrial and lumpy their appearance
just now to the mean unglamoured eye, to themselves the case was
different.  They followed the road with a sensation that they were
soaring along in a supporting medium, possessed of original and
profound thoughts, themselves and surrounding nature forming
an organism of which all the parts harmoniously and joyously
interpenetrated each other.  They were as sublime as the moon and
stars above them, and the moon and stars were as ardent as they.

Tess, however, had undergone such painful experiences of this kind in
her father's house that the discovery of their condition spoilt the
pleasure she was beginning to feel in the moonlight journey.  Yet she
stuck to the party, for reasons above given.

In the open highway they had progressed in scattered order; but now
their route was through a field-gate, and the foremost finding a
difficulty in opening it, they closed up together.

This leading pedestrian was Car the Queen of Spades, who carried a
wicker-basket containing her mother's groceries, her own draperies,
and other purchases for the week.  The basket being large and heavy,
Car had placed it for convenience of porterage on the top of her
head, where it rode on in jeopardized balance as she walked with
arms akimbo.

"Well--whatever is that a-creeping down thy back, Car Darch?" said
one of the group suddenly.

All looked at Car.  Her gown was a light cotton print, and from the
back of her head a kind of rope could be seen descending to some
distance below her waist, like a Chinaman's queue.

"'Tis her hair falling down," said another.

No; it was not her hair: it was a black stream of something oozing
from her basket, and it glistened like a slimy snake in the cold
still rays of the moon.

"'Tis treacle," said an observant matron.

Treacle it was.  Car's poor old grandmother had a weakness for the
sweet stuff.  Honey she had in plenty out of her own hives, but
treacle was what her soul desired, and Car had been about to give her
a treat of surprise.  Hastily lowering the basket the dark girl found
that the vessel containing the syrup had been smashed within.

By this time there had arisen a shout of laughter at the
extraordinary appearance of Car's back, which irritated the dark
queen into getting rid of the disfigurement by the first sudden means
available, and independently of the help of the scoffers.  She rushed
excitedly into the field they were about to cross, and flinging
herself flat on her back upon the grass, began to wipe her gown
as well as she could by spinning horizontally on the herbage and
dragging herself over it upon her elbows.

The laughter rang louder; they clung to the gate, to the posts,
rested on their staves, in the weakness engendered by their
convulsions at the spectacle of Car.  Our heroine, who had hitherto
held her peace, at this wild moment could not help joining in with
the rest.

It was a misfortune--in more ways than one.  No sooner did the dark
queen hear the soberer richer note of Tess among those of the other
work-people than a long-smouldering sense of rivalry inflamed her to
madness.  She sprang to her feet and closely faced the object of her
dislike.

"How darest th' laugh at me, hussy!" she cried.

"I couldn't really help it when t'others did," apologized Tess,
still tittering.

"Ah, th'st think th' beest everybody, dostn't, because th' beest
first favourite with He just now!  But stop a bit, my lady, stop a
bit!  I'm as good as two of such! Look here--here's at 'ee!"

To Tess's horror the dark queen began stripping off the bodice of
her gown--which for the added reason of its ridiculed condition she
was only too glad to be free of--till she had bared her plump neck,
shoulders, and arms to the moonshine, under which they looked as
luminous and beautiful as some Praxitelean creation, in their
possession of the faultless rotundities of a lusty country-girl.
She closed her fists and squared up at Tess.

"Indeed, then, I shall not fight!" said the latter majestically; "and
if I had know you was of that sort, I wouldn't have so let myself
down as to come with such a whorage as this is!"

The rather too inclusive speech brought down a torrent of
vituperation from other quarters upon fair Tess's unlucky head,
particularly from the Queen of Diamonds, who having stood in the
relations to d'Urberville that Car had also been suspected of, united
with the latter against the common enemy.  Several other women also
chimed in, with an animus which none of them would have been so
fatuous as to show but for the rollicking evening they had passed.
Thereupon, finding Tess unfairly browbeaten, the husbands and lovers
tried to make peace by defending her; but the result of that attempt
was directly to increase the war.

Tess was indignant and ashamed.  She no longer minded the loneliness
of the way and the lateness of the hour; her one object was to get
away from the whole crew as soon as possible.  She knew well enough
that the better among them would repent of their passion next day.
They were all now inside the field, and she was edging back to rush
off alone when a horseman emerged almost silently from the corner of
the hedge that screened the road, and Alec d'Urberville looked round
upon them.

"What the devil is all this row about, work-folk?" he asked.

The explanation was not readily forthcoming; and, in truth, he did
not require any.  Having heard their voices while yet some way off he
had ridden creepingly forward, and learnt enough to satisfy himself.

Tess was standing apart from the rest, near the gate.  He bent over
towards her.  "Jump up behind me," he whispered, "and we'll get shot
of the screaming cats in a jiffy!"

She felt almost ready to faint, so vivid was her sense of the crisis.
At almost any other moment of her life she would have refused such
proffered aid and company, as she had refused them several times
before; and now the loneliness would not of itself have forced her
to do otherwise.  But coming as the invitation did at the particular
juncture when fear and indignation at these adversaries could be
transformed by a spring of the foot into a triumph over them, she
abandoned herself to her impulse, climbed the gate, put her toe upon
his instep, and scrambled into the saddle behind him.  The pair were
speeding away into the distant gray by the time that the contentious
revellers became aware of what had happened.

The Queen of Spades forgot the stain on her bodice, and stood
beside the Queen of Diamonds and the new-married, staggering young
woman--all with a gaze of fixity in the direction in which the
horse's tramp was diminishing into silence on the road.

"What be ye looking at?" asked a man who had not observed the
incident.

"Ho-ho-ho!" laughed dark Car.

"Hee-hee-hee!" laughed the tippling bride, as she steadied herself on
the arm of her fond husband.

"Heu-heu-heu!" laughed dark Car's mother, stroking her moustache as
she explained laconically: "Out of the frying-pan into the fire!"

Then these children of the open air, whom even excess of alcohol
could scarce injure permanently, betook themselves to the field-path;
and as they went there moved onward with them, around the shadow of
each one's head, a circle of opalized light, formed by the moon's
rays upon the glistening sheet of dew.  Each pedestrian could see
no halo but his or her own, which never deserted the head-shadow,
whatever its vulgar unsteadiness might be; but adhered to it, and
persistently beautified it; till the erratic motions seemed an
inherent part of the irradiation, and the fumes of their breathing
a component of the night's mist; and the spirit of the scene, and
of the moonlight, and of Nature, seemed harmoniously to mingle with
the spirit of wine.



Phase I: "The Maiden," Chapter Ten
The narrator tells us how the regular folks in Tess's new neighborhood spend their free time: they drink. A lot. On Saturdays, they all walk as a group to a nearby town, and walk back late at night. Or early the next morning. Tess doesn't go with them for a long time, but finally starts to go along with them--some of the women pressure her, and she gives in. She enjoys the company, especially after hanging out with chickens and an eccentric old lady all week. Tess has gone several times on these weekly trips to the next town, and has gotten in the habit of walking home with the group--they come home so late that she doesn't feel comfortably walking back alone. One week, Alec sees her standing in the street waiting for her comrades to walk home with her. He offers her a ride home, but she politely refuses, saying that she'd rather wait for her peers. The other villagers join her soon, and they begin their three-mile walk together. Tess is the only sober one in the group. Car Darch, one of the women in the group has it in for Tess because Tess is Alec's new favorite, and she's jealous. Car is in the front of the group, and is balancing a basket of groceries on her head. Someone in the group suddenly notices a trickle of something going down Car's back. It's treacle . Everyone starts laughing at her, so Car throws herself on the grass and starts rubbing her back against the ground to get the sticky goop off. Of course, they only laugh harder. Tess joins in the laughter. Big mistake. Car immediately picks a fight with her about it. Tess defends herself, saying that everyone else was laughing. Car actually wants a fist-fight, and pulls off her outer clothes . Some of the men in the group try to make peace and defend Tess, but that only makes their wives jealous and angry. Suddenly, Alec D'Urberville appears on horseback. He asks what's going on , and then offers to rescue Tess. She's about ready to faint from a combination of shame and anger and fear, and agrees to climb up with him. The women in the group watch Alec ride off with Tess, and chuckle quietly amongst themselves. "Out of the frying-pan into the fire!" as Car's mother explains it.