finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_4_part_6.txt
Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 40
chapter 40
{"name": "Chapter 40", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-5-chapters-35-44", "summary": "Angel discusses Brazil with his parents at breakfast, then does errands around town. On the way to the bank, he encounters Mercy Chant, carrying an armful of Bibles. Angel suggests that he may go to Brazil as a monk, implying Roman Catholicism, which shocks Mercy, who claims she glories in her Protestantism. He apologizes to her, telling her that he thinks that he is going crazy. Angel deposits money for Tess and wrote to her at her parents to inform her of his plans. Angel calls at the Wellbridge farmhouse, where he surprisingly reminisces about the happier time there. Angel wonders whether he has been cruelly blinded, and believes that if she had told him sooner he would have forgiven her. Angel finds Izz Huett there. She tells Angel that if he had asked her to marry him, he would have married a woman who loved him. Angel admits to Izz that he has separated from his wife for personal reasons, and asks Izz to go to Brazil with him instead of her. He warns her that he is not to trust him in morals now, for what they will be doing is wrong in the eyes of Western civilization. She admits that she does not love him as much as Tess did, for Tess would have laid down her life for him and Izz could do no more. Finally Angel claims that he does not know what he has been saying, and apologizes for his momentary levity. He tells Izz that she has saved him by her honest words about Tess from an impulse toward folly and treachery. According to Angel, women may be bad, but are not so bad as men in such things.", "analysis": "The result of Angel's realization that he has treated Tess poorly is not that he makes amends for his actions; rather, he descends into undertaking a series of haphazard and self-destructive actions. Having realized the inadequacy of holding dogmatically to his own principles, Angel seems to abandon them altogether. His conversation with Mercy Chant, although sly and humorous, reveals a decadence and tendency to shock not previously exhibited by Angel Clare, while his proposal that Izz Huett accompany him to Brazil is an altogether abandonment of his moral code. Angel's decision to go to Brazil itself represents Angel's rejection of his principles; when he discusses Brazil with Izz Huett, he frames the journey as a means to reject the tenets of Western civilization. It is only when Izz Huett reminds Angel that no woman could love Angel more than Tess did that Angel returns to more grounded and rational behavior. This reinforces the theme of Tess's absolute love for Angel, and serves as a reminder that, even if Tess herself may not have a perfect personal history, in her love for Angel she is flawless"}


At breakfast Brazil was the topic, and all endeavoured to take a
hopeful view of Clare's proposed experiment with that country's soil,
notwithstanding the discouraging reports of some farm-labourers who
had emigrated thither and returned home within the twelve months.
After breakfast Clare went into the little town to wind up such
trifling matters as he was concerned with there, and to get from
the local bank all the money he possessed.  On his way back he
encountered Miss Mercy Chant by the church, from whose walls she
seemed to be a sort of emanation.  She was carrying an armful of
Bibles for her class, and such was her view of life that events which
produced heartache in others wrought beatific smiles upon her--an
enviable result, although, in the opinion of Angel, it was obtained
by a curiously unnatural sacrifice of humanity to mysticism.

She had learnt that he was about to leave England, and observed what
an excellent and promising scheme it seemed to be.

"Yes; it is a likely scheme enough in a commercial sense, no doubt,"
he replied.  "But, my dear Mercy, it snaps the continuity of
existence.  Perhaps a cloister would be preferable."

"A cloister!  O, Angel Clare!"

"Well?"

"Why, you wicked man, a cloister implies a monk, and a monk Roman
Catholicism."

"And Roman Catholicism sin, and sin damnation.  Thou art in a parlous
state, Angel Clare."

"_I_ glory in my Protestantism!" she said severely.

Then Clare, thrown by sheer misery into one of the demoniacal moods
in which a man does despite to his true principles, called her close
to him, and fiendishly whispered in her ear the most heterodox ideas
he could think of.  His momentary laughter at the horror which
appeared on her fair face ceased when it merged in pain and anxiety
for his welfare.

"Dear Mercy," he said, "you must forgive me.  I think I am going
crazy!"

She thought that he was; and thus the interview ended, and Clare
re-entered the Vicarage.  With the local banker he deposited the
jewels till happier days should arise.  He also paid into the bank
thirty pounds--to be sent to Tess in a few months, as she might
require; and wrote to her at her parents' home in Blackmoor Vale to
inform her of what he had done.  This amount, with the sum he had
already placed in her hands--about fifty pounds--he hoped would be
amply sufficient for her wants just at present, particularly as in
an emergency she had been directed to apply to his father.

He deemed it best not to put his parents into communication with her
by informing them of her address; and, being unaware of what had
really happened to estrange the two, neither his father nor his
mother suggested that he should do so.  During the day he left the
parsonage, for what he had to complete he wished to get done quickly.

As the last duty before leaving this part of England it was necessary
for him to call at the Wellbridge farmhouse, in which he had spent
with Tess the first three days of their marriage, the trifle of rent
having to be paid, the key given up of the rooms they had occupied,
and two or three small articles fetched away that they had left
behind.  It was under this roof that the deepest shadow ever thrown
upon his life had stretched its gloom over him.  Yet when he had
unlocked the door of the sitting-room and looked into it, the memory
which returned first upon him was that of their happy arrival on a
similar afternoon, the first fresh sense of sharing a habitation
conjointly, the first meal together, the chatting by the fire with
joined hands.

The farmer and his wife were in the field at the moment of his visit,
and Clare was in the rooms alone for some time.  Inwardly swollen
with a renewal of sentiment that he had not quite reckoned with, he
went upstairs to her chamber, which had never been his.  The bed
was smooth as she had made it with her own hands on the morning of
leaving.  The mistletoe hung under the tester just as he had placed
it.  Having been there three or four weeks it was turning colour, and
the leaves and berries were wrinkled.  Angel took it down and crushed
it into the grate.  Standing there, he for the first time doubted
whether his course in this conjecture had been a wise, much less
a generous, one.  But had he not been cruelly blinded?  In the
incoherent multitude of his emotions he knelt down at the bedside
wet-eyed.  "O Tess!  If you had only told me sooner, I would have
forgiven you!" he mourned.

Hearing a footstep below, he rose and went to the top of the stairs.
At the bottom of the flight he saw a woman standing, and on her
turning up her face recognized the pale, dark-eyed Izz Huett.

"Mr Clare," she said, "I've called to see you and Mrs Clare, and to
inquire if ye be well.  I thought you might be back here again."

This was a girl whose secret he had guessed, but who had not yet
guessed his; an honest girl who loved him--one who would have made as
good, or nearly as good, a practical farmer's wife as Tess.

"I am here alone," he said; "we are not living here now."  Explaining
why he had come, he asked, "Which way are you going home, Izz?"

"I have no home at Talbothays Dairy now, sir," she said.

"Why is that?"

Izz looked down.

"It was so dismal there that I left!  I am staying out this way."
She pointed in a contrary direction, the direction in which he was
journeying.

"Well--are you going there now?  I can take you if you
wish for a lift."

Her olive complexion grew richer in hue.

"Thank 'ee, Mr Clare," she said.

He soon found the farmer, and settled the account for his rent and
the few other items which had to be considered by reason of the
sudden abandonment of the lodgings.  On Clare's return to his horse
and gig, Izz jumped up beside him.

"I am going to leave England, Izz," he said, as they drove on.
"Going to Brazil."

"And do Mrs Clare like the notion of such a journey?" she asked.

"She is not going at present--say for a year or so.  I am going out
to reconnoitre--to see what life there is like."

They sped along eastward for some considerable distance, Izz making
no observation.

"How are the others?" he inquired.  "How is Retty?"

"She was in a sort of nervous state when I zid her last; and so thin
and hollow-cheeked that 'a do seem in a decline.  Nobody will ever
fall in love wi' her any more," said Izz absently.

"And Marian?"

Izz lowered her voice.

"Marian drinks."

"Indeed!"

"Yes.  The dairyman has got rid of her."

"And you!"

"I don't drink, and I bain't in a decline.  But--I am no great things
at singing afore breakfast now!"

"How is that?  Do you remember how neatly you used to turn ''Twas
down in Cupid's Gardens' and 'The Tailor's Breeches' at morning
milking?"

"Ah, yes!  When you first came, sir, that was.  Not when you had been
there a bit."

"Why was that falling-off?"

Her black eyes flashed up to his face for one moment by way of
answer.

"Izz!--how weak of you--for such as I!" he said, and fell into
reverie.  "Then--suppose I had asked YOU to marry me?"

"If you had I should have said 'Yes', and you would have married a
woman who loved 'ee!"

"Really!"

"Down to the ground!" she whispered vehemently.  "O my God! did you
never guess it till now!"

By-and-by they reached a branch road to a village.

"I must get down.  I live out there," said Izz abruptly, never having
spoken since her avowal.

Clare slowed the horse.  He was incensed against his fate, bitterly
disposed towards social ordinances; for they had cooped him up in a
corner, out of which there was no legitimate pathway.  Why not be
revenged on society by shaping his future domesticities loosely,
instead of kissing the pedagogic rod of convention in this ensnaring
manner?

"I am going to Brazil alone, Izz," said he.  "I have separated from
my wife for personal, not voyaging, reasons.  I may never live with
her again.  I may not be able to love you; but--will you go with me
instead of her?"

"You truly wish me to go?"

"I do.  I have been badly used enough to wish for relief.  And you at
least love me disinterestedly."

"Yes--I will go," said Izz, after a pause.

"You will?  You know what it means, Izz?"

"It means that I shall live with you for the time you are over
there--that's good enough for me."

"Remember, you are not to trust me in morals now.  But I ought
to remind you that it will be wrong-doing in the eyes of
civilization--Western civilization, that is to say."

"I don't mind that; no woman do when it comes to agony-point, and
there's no other way!"

"Then don't get down, but sit where you are."

He drove past the cross-roads, one mile, two miles, without showing
any signs of affection.

"You love me very, very much, Izz?" he suddenly asked.

"I do--I have said I do!  I loved you all the time we was at the
dairy together!"

"More than Tess?"

She shook her head.

"No," she murmured, "not more than she."

"How's that?"

"Because nobody could love 'ee more than Tess did! ...  She would
have laid down her life for 'ee.  I could do no more."

Like the prophet on the top of Peor, Izz Huett would fain have spoken
perversely at such a moment, but the fascination exercised over her
rougher nature by Tess's character compelled her to grace.

Clare was silent; his heart had risen at these straightforward words
from such an unexpected unimpeachable quarter.  In his throat was
something as if a sob had solidified there.  His ears repeated, "SHE
WOULD HAVE LAID DOWN HER LIFE FOR 'EE.  I COULD DO NO MORE!"

"Forget our idle talk, Izz," he said, turning the horse's head
suddenly.  "I don't know what I've been saying!  I will now drive
you back to where your lane branches off."

"So much for honesty towards 'ee!  O--how can I bear it--how can
I--how can I!"

Izz Huett burst into wild tears, and beat her forehead as she saw
what she had done.

"Do you regret that poor little act of justice to an absent one?
O, Izz, don't spoil it by regret!"

She stilled herself by degrees.

"Very well, sir.  Perhaps I didn't know what I was saying, either,
wh--when I agreed to go!  I wish--what cannot be!"

"Because I have a loving wife already."

"Yes, yes!  You have!"

They reached the corner of the lane which they had passed half an
hour earlier, and she hopped down.

"Izz--please, please forget my momentary levity!" he cried.  "It was
so ill-considered, so ill-advised!"

"Forget it?  Never, never!  O, it was no levity to me!"

He felt how richly he deserved the reproach that the wounded cry
conveyed, and, in a sorrow that was inexpressible, leapt down and
took her hand.

"Well, but, Izz, we'll part friends, anyhow?  You don't know what
I've had to bear!"

She was a really generous girl, and allowed no further bitterness to
mar their adieux.

"I forgive 'ee, sir!" she said.

"Now, Izz," he said, while she stood beside him there, forcing
himself to the mentor's part he was far from feeling; "I want you to
tell Marian when you see her that she is to be a good woman, and not
to give way to folly.  Promise that, and tell Retty that there are
more worthy men than I in the world, that for my sake she is to act
wisely and well--remember the words--wisely and well--for my sake.
I send this message to them as a dying man to the dying; for I shall
never see them again.  And you, Izzy, you have saved me by your
honest words about my wife from an incredible impulse towards folly
and treachery.  Women may be bad, but they are not so bad as men in
these things!  On that one account I can never forget you.  Be always
the good and sincere girl you have hitherto been; and think of me as
a worthless lover, but a faithful friend.  Promise."

She gave the promise.

"Heaven bless and keep you, sir.  Goodbye!"

He drove on; but no sooner had Izz turned into the lane, and Clare
was out of sight, than she flung herself down on the bank in a fit of
racking anguish; and it was with a strained unnatural face that she
entered her mother's cottage late that night.  Nobody ever was told
how Izz spent the dark hours that intervened between Angel Clare's
parting from her and her arrival home.

Clare, too, after bidding the girl farewell, was wrought to aching
thoughts and quivering lips.  But his sorrow was not for Izz.  That
evening he was within a feather-weight's turn of abandoning his road
to the nearest station, and driving across that elevated dorsal line
of South Wessex which divided him from his Tess's home.  It was
neither a contempt for her nature, nor the probable state of her
heart, which deterred him.

No; it was a sense that, despite her love, as corroborated by Izz's
admission, the facts had not changed.  If he was right at first,
he was right now.  And the momentum of the course on which he
had embarked tended to keep him going in it, unless diverted by
a stronger, more sustained force than had played upon him this
afternoon.  He could soon come back to her.  He took the train that
night for London, and five days after shook hands in farewell of his
brothers at the port of embarkation.



Chapter 40
Angel discusses Brazil with his parents at breakfast, then does errands around town. On the way to the bank, he encounters Mercy Chant, carrying an armful of Bibles. Angel suggests that he may go to Brazil as a monk, implying Roman Catholicism, which shocks Mercy, who claims she glories in her Protestantism. He apologizes to her, telling her that he thinks that he is going crazy. Angel deposits money for Tess and wrote to her at her parents to inform her of his plans. Angel calls at the Wellbridge farmhouse, where he surprisingly reminisces about the happier time there. Angel wonders whether he has been cruelly blinded, and believes that if she had told him sooner he would have forgiven her. Angel finds Izz Huett there. She tells Angel that if he had asked her to marry him, he would have married a woman who loved him. Angel admits to Izz that he has separated from his wife for personal reasons, and asks Izz to go to Brazil with him instead of her. He warns her that he is not to trust him in morals now, for what they will be doing is wrong in the eyes of Western civilization. She admits that she does not love him as much as Tess did, for Tess would have laid down her life for him and Izz could do no more. Finally Angel claims that he does not know what he has been saying, and apologizes for his momentary levity. He tells Izz that she has saved him by her honest words about Tess from an impulse toward folly and treachery. According to Angel, women may be bad, but are not so bad as men in such things.
The result of Angel's realization that he has treated Tess poorly is not that he makes amends for his actions; rather, he descends into undertaking a series of haphazard and self-destructive actions. Having realized the inadequacy of holding dogmatically to his own principles, Angel seems to abandon them altogether. His conversation with Mercy Chant, although sly and humorous, reveals a decadence and tendency to shock not previously exhibited by Angel Clare, while his proposal that Izz Huett accompany him to Brazil is an altogether abandonment of his moral code. Angel's decision to go to Brazil itself represents Angel's rejection of his principles; when he discusses Brazil with Izz Huett, he frames the journey as a means to reject the tenets of Western civilization. It is only when Izz Huett reminds Angel that no woman could love Angel more than Tess did that Angel returns to more grounded and rational behavior. This reinforces the theme of Tess's absolute love for Angel, and serves as a reminder that, even if Tess herself may not have a perfect personal history, in her love for Angel she is flawless