finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_1_part_9.txt
Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter ix
chapter ix
{"name": "Chapter IX", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11", "summary": "Early the next morning Tess meets her new mistress, Mrs. d'Urberville, and discovers that the old woman is blind. Very attached to birds of all kinds, she has Tess place two chickens in her lap. Then she tells Tess that part of her job will be to whistle to her bullfinches. Tess, who has taken liberties describing her degree of expertise in the matter of fowls, says she will practice. However, despite her best efforts, Tess finds she cannot whistle until Alec, who is completely smitten, helps her", "analysis": ""}


The community of fowls to which Tess had been appointed as
supervisor, purveyor, nurse, surgeon, and friend made its
headquarters in an old thatched cottage standing in an enclosure that
had once been a garden, but was now a trampled and sanded square.
The house was overrun with ivy, its chimney being enlarged by the
boughs of the parasite to the aspect of a ruined tower.  The lower
rooms were entirely given over to the birds, who walked about them
with a proprietary air, as though the place had been built by
themselves, and not by certain dusty copyholders who now lay east
and west in the churchyard.  The descendants of these bygone owners
felt it almost as a slight to their family when the house which had
so much of their affection, had cost so much of their forefathers'
money, and had been in their possession for several generations
before the d'Urbervilles came and built here, was indifferently
turned into a fowl-house by Mrs Stoke-d'Urberville as soon as the
property fell into hand according to law.  "'Twas good enough for
Christians in grandfather's time," they said.

The rooms wherein dozens of infants had wailed at their nursing now
resounded with the tapping of nascent chicks.  Distracted hens in
coops occupied spots where formerly stood chairs supporting sedate
agriculturists.  The chimney-corner and once-blazing hearth was now
filled with inverted beehives, in which the hens laid their eggs;
while out of doors the plots that each succeeding householder had
carefully shaped with his spade were torn by the cocks in wildest
fashion.

The garden in which the cottage stood was surrounded by a wall, and
could only be entered through a door.

When Tess had occupied herself about an hour the next morning in
altering and improving the arrangements, according to her skilled
ideas as the daughter of a professed poulterer, the door in the wall
opened and a servant in white cap and apron entered.  She had come
from the manor-house.

"Mrs d'Urberville wants the fowls as usual," she said; but perceiving
that Tess did not quite understand, she explained, "Mis'ess is a old
lady, and blind."

"Blind!" said Tess.

Almost before her misgiving at the news could find time to shape
itself she took, under her companion's direction, two of the
most beautiful of the Hamburghs in her arms, and followed the
maid-servant, who had likewise taken two, to the adjacent mansion,
which, though ornate and imposing, showed traces everywhere on this
side that some occupant of its chambers could bend to the love of
dumb creatures--feathers floating within view of the front, and
hen-coops standing on the grass.

In a sitting-room on the ground-floor, ensconced in an armchair with
her back to the light, was the owner and mistress of the estate, a
white-haired woman of not more than sixty, or even less, wearing a
large cap.  She had the mobile face frequent in those whose sight
has decayed by stages, has been laboriously striven after, and
reluctantly let go, rather than the stagnant mien apparent in persons
long sightless or born blind.  Tess walked up to this lady with her
feathered charges--one sitting on each arm.

"Ah, you are the young woman come to look after my birds?" said Mrs
d'Urberville, recognizing a new footstep.  "I hope you will be kind
to them.  My bailiff tells me you are quite the proper person.
Well, where are they?  Ah, this is Strut!  But he is hardly so
lively to-day, is he?  He is alarmed at being handled by a stranger,
I suppose. And Phena too--yes, they are a little frightened--aren't
you, dears? But they will soon get used to you."

While the old lady had been speaking Tess and the other maid, in
obedience to her gestures, had placed the fowls severally in her lap,
and she had felt them over from head to tail, examining their beaks,
their combs, the manes of the cocks, their wings, and their claws.
Her touch enabled her to recognize them in a moment, and to discover
if a single feather were crippled or draggled.  She handled their
crops, and knew what they had eaten, and if too little or too much;
her face enacting a vivid pantomime of the criticisms passing in her
mind.

The birds that the two girls had brought in were duly returned to the
yard, and the process was repeated till all the pet cocks and hens
had been submitted to the old woman--Hamburghs, Bantams, Cochins,
Brahmas, Dorkings, and such other sorts as were in fashion just
then--her perception of each visitor being seldom at fault as she
received the bird upon her knees.

It reminded Tess of a Confirmation, in which Mrs d'Urberville was the
bishop, the fowls the young people presented, and herself and the
maid-servant the parson and curate of the parish bringing them up.
At the end of the ceremony Mrs d'Urberville abruptly asked Tess,
wrinkling and twitching her face into undulations, "Can you whistle?"

"Whistle, Ma'am?"

"Yes, whistle tunes."

Tess could whistle like most other country-girls, though the
accomplishment was one which she did not care to profess in genteel
company.  However, she blandly admitted that such was the fact.

"Then you will have to practise it every day.  I had a lad who did it
very well, but he has left.  I want you to whistle to my bullfinches;
as I cannot see them, I like to hear them, and we teach 'em airs
that way.  Tell her where the cages are, Elizabeth.  You must begin
to-morrow, or they will go back in their piping. They have been
neglected these several days."

"Mr d'Urberville whistled to 'em this morning, ma'am," said
Elizabeth.

"He!  Pooh!"

The old lady's face creased into furrows of repugnance, and she made
no further reply.

Thus the reception of Tess by her fancied kinswoman terminated, and
the birds were taken back to their quarters.  The girl's surprise at
Mrs d'Urberville's manner was not great; for since seeing the size of
the house she had expected no more.  But she was far from being aware
that the old lady had never heard a word of the so-called kinship.
She gathered that no great affection flowed between the blind woman
and her son.  But in that, too, she was mistaken.  Mrs d'Urberville
was not the first mother compelled to love her offspring resentfully,
and to be bitterly fond.


In spite of the unpleasant initiation of the day before, Tess
inclined to the freedom and novelty of her new position in the
morning when the sun shone, now that she was once installed there;
and she was curious to test her powers in the unexpected direction
asked of her, so as to ascertain her chance of retaining her post.
As soon as she was alone within the walled garden she sat herself
down on a coop, and seriously screwed up her mouth for the
long-neglected practice.  She found her former ability to have
degenerated to the production of a hollow rush of wind through the
lips, and no clear note at all.

She remained fruitlessly blowing and blowing, wondering how she
could have so grown out of the art which had come by nature, till
she became aware of a movement among the ivy-boughs which cloaked
the garden-wall no less then the cottage.  Looking that way she
beheld a form springing from the coping to the plot.  It was Alec
d'Urberville, whom she had not set eyes on since he had conducted
her the day before to the door of the gardener's cottage where she
had lodgings.

"Upon my honour!" cried he, "there was never before such a beautiful
thing in Nature or Art as you look, 'Cousin' Tess ('Cousin' had a
faint ring of mockery).  I have been watching you from over the
wall--sitting like IM-patience on a monument, and pouting up that
pretty red mouth to whistling shape, and whooing and whooing, and
privately swearing, and never being able to produce a note.  Why,
you are quite cross because you can't do it."

"I may be cross, but I didn't swear."

"Ah!  I understand why you are trying--those bullies!  My mother
wants you to carry on their musical education.  How selfish of her!
As if attending to these curst cocks and hens here were not enough
work for any girl.  I would flatly refuse, if I were you."

"But she wants me particularly to do it, and to be ready by to-morrow
morning."

"Does she?  Well then--I'll give you a lesson or two."

"Oh no, you won't!" said Tess, withdrawing towards the door.

"Nonsense; I don't want to touch you.  See--I'll stand on this side
of the wire-netting, and you can keep on the other; so you may feel
quite safe.  Now, look here; you screw up your lips too harshly.
There 'tis--so."

He suited the action to the word, and whistled a line of "Take, O
take those lips away."  But the allusion was lost upon Tess.

"Now try," said d'Urberville.

She attempted to look reserved; her face put on a sculptural
severity.  But he persisted in his demand, and at last, to get rid of
him, she did put up her lips as directed for producing a clear note;
laughing distressfully, however, and then blushing with vexation that
she had laughed.

He encouraged her with "Try again!"

Tess was quite serious, painfully serious by this time; and she
tried--ultimately and unexpectedly emitting a real round sound.
The momentary pleasure of success got the better of her; her eyes
enlarged, and she involuntarily smiled in his face.

"That's it!  Now I have started you--you'll go on beautifully.
There--I said I would not come near you; and, in spite of such
temptation as never before fell to mortal man, I'll keep my
word...  Tess, do you think my mother a queer old soul?"

"I don't know much of her yet, sir."

"You'll find her so; she must be, to make you learn to whistle to her
bullfinches.  I am rather out of her books just now, but you will be
quite in favour if you treat her live-stock well.  Good morning.  If
you meet with any difficulties and want help here, don't go to the
bailiff, come to me."


It was in the economy of this _regime_ that Tess Durbeyfield had
undertaken to fill a place.  Her first day's experiences were fairly
typical of those which followed through many succeeding days.  A
familiarity with Alec d'Urberville's presence--which that young man
carefully cultivated in her by playful dialogue, and by jestingly
calling her his cousin when they were alone--removed much of her
original shyness of him, without, however, implanting any feeling
which could engender shyness of a new and tenderer kind.  But she was
more pliable under his hands than a mere companionship would have
made her, owing to her unavoidable dependence upon his mother, and,
through that lady's comparative helplessness, upon him.

She soon found that whistling to the bullfinches in Mrs
d'Urberville's room was no such onerous business when she had
regained the art, for she had caught from her musical mother numerous
airs that suited those songsters admirably.  A far more satisfactory
time than when she practised in the garden was this whistling by the
cages each morning.  Unrestrained by the young man's presence she
threw up her mouth, put her lips near the bars, and piped away in
easeful grace to the attentive listeners.

Mrs d'Urberville slept in a large four-post bedstead hung with heavy
damask curtains, and the bullfinches occupied the same apartment,
where they flitted about freely at certain hours, and made little
white spots on the furniture and upholstery.  Once while Tess was at
the window where the cages were ranged, giving her lesson as usual,
she thought she heard a rustling behind the bed.  The old lady was
not present, and turning round the girl had an impression that
the toes of a pair of boots were visible below the fringe of the
curtains.  Thereupon her whistling became so disjointed that the
listener, if such there were, must have discovered her suspicion of
his presence.  She searched the curtains every morning after that,
but never found anybody within them.  Alec d'Urberville had evidently
thought better of his freak to terrify her by an ambush of that kind.



Chapter IX
Early the next morning Tess meets her new mistress, Mrs. d'Urberville, and discovers that the old woman is blind. Very attached to birds of all kinds, she has Tess place two chickens in her lap. Then she tells Tess that part of her job will be to whistle to her bullfinches. Tess, who has taken liberties describing her degree of expertise in the matter of fowls, says she will practice. However, despite her best efforts, Tess finds she cannot whistle until Alec, who is completely smitten, helps her