finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_27_part_0.txt
Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 28
chapter 28
{"name": "Phase IV: \"The Consequence,\" Chapter Twenty-Eight", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-28", "summary": "A few days later, Angel asks why Tess said \"no\" so definitely, even after she's admitted that she loves him. Tess says that she's not a fine lady, and makes up various other excuses about not being good enough, etc. Tess almost wishes someone would tell him about her past, because she sure can't bring herself to do it. But no one around there knows about it. He keeps pressing her, and she's afraid of giving in. Finally she promises to tell him all her reasons, and all her history. Angel laughs, because what kinds of \"experiences\" can a seemingly inexperienced young girl like Tess have? She's not laughing, though, and says she'll tell him everything on Sunday. She's so agitated that she can't go help with the milking, and shuts herself up in her room, going back and forth between hope and fear. She wants to say yes, but thinks she shouldn't.", "analysis": ""}


Her refusal, though unexpected, did not permanently daunt Clare.
His experience of women was great enough for him to be aware that
the negative often meant nothing more than the preface to the
affirmative; and it was little enough for him not to know that in
the manner of the present negative there lay a great exception to
the dallyings of coyness.  That she had already permitted him to
make love to her he read as an additional assurance, not fully
trowing that in the fields and pastures to "sigh gratis" is by no
means deemed waste; love-making being here more often accepted
inconsiderately and for its own sweet sake than in the carking,
anxious homes of the ambitious, where a girl's craving for an
establishment paralyzes her healthy thought of a passion as an end.

"Tess, why did you say 'no' in such a positive way?" he asked her in
the course of a few days.

She started.

"Don't ask me.  I told you why--partly.  I am not good enough--not
worthy enough."

"How?  Not fine lady enough?"

"Yes--something like that," murmured she.  "Your friends would scorn
me."

"Indeed, you mistake them--my father and mother.  As for my brothers,
I don't care--"  He clasped his fingers behind her back to keep her
from slipping away.  "Now--you did not mean it, sweet?--I am sure you
did not!  You have made me so restless that I cannot read, or play,
or do anything.  I am in no hurry, Tess, but I want to know--to hear
from your own warm lips--that you will some day be mine--any time you
may choose; but some day?"

She could only shake her head and look away from him.

Clare regarded her attentively, conned the characters of her face as
if they had been hieroglyphics.  The denial seemed real.

"Then I ought not to hold you in this way--ought I?  I have no
right to you--no right to seek out where you are, or walk with you!
Honestly, Tess, do you love any other man?"

"How can you ask?" she said, with continued self-suppression.

"I almost know that you do not.  But then, why do you repulse me?"

"I don't repulse you.  I like you to--tell me you love me; and you
may always tell me so as you go about with me--and never offend me."

"But you will not accept me as a husband?"

"Ah--that's different--it is for your good, indeed, my dearest!
O, believe me, it is only for your sake!  I don't like to give
myself the great happiness o' promising to be yours in that
way--because--because I am SURE I ought not to do it."

"But you will make me happy!"

"Ah--you think so, but you don't know!"

At such times as this, apprehending the grounds of her refusal to be
her modest sense of incompetence in matters social and polite, he
would say that she was wonderfully well-informed and versatile--which
was certainly true, her natural quickness and her admiration for him
having led her to pick up his vocabulary, his accent, and fragments
of his knowledge, to a surprising extent.  After these tender
contests and her victory she would go away by herself under the
remotest cow, if at milking-time, or into the sedge or into her room,
if at a leisure interval, and mourn silently, not a minute after an
apparently phlegmatic negative.

The struggle was so fearful; her own heart was so strongly on the
side of his--two ardent hearts against one poor little conscience--
that she tried to fortify her resolution by every means in her power.
She had come to Talbothays with a made-up mind.  On no account could
she agree to a step which might afterwards cause bitter rueing to her
husband for his blindness in wedding her.  And she held that what her
conscience had decided for her when her mind was unbiassed ought not
to be overruled now.

"Why don't somebody tell him all about me?" she said.  "It was only
forty miles off--why hasn't it reached here?  Somebody must know!"

Yet nobody seemed to know; nobody told him.

For two or three days no more was said.  She guessed from the sad
countenances of her chamber companions that they regarded her not
only as the favourite, but as the chosen; but they could see for
themselves that she did not put herself in his way.

Tess had never before known a time in which the thread of her life
was so distinctly twisted of two strands, positive pleasure and
positive pain.  At the next cheese-making the pair were again left
alone together.  The dairyman himself had been lending a hand; but
Mr Crick, as well as his wife, seemed latterly to have acquired a
suspicion of mutual interest between these two; though they walked
so circumspectly that suspicion was but of the faintest. Anyhow, the
dairyman left them to themselves.

They were breaking up the masses of curd before putting them into
the vats.  The operation resembled the act of crumbling bread on a
large scale; and amid the immaculate whiteness of the curds Tess
Durbeyfield's hands showed themselves of the pinkness of the rose.
Angel, who was filling the vats with his handful, suddenly ceased,
and laid his hands flat upon hers.  Her sleeves were rolled far above
the elbow, and bending lower he kissed the inside vein of her soft
arm.

Although the early September weather was sultry, her arm, from
her dabbling in the curds, was as cold and damp to his mouth as a
new-gathered mushroom, and tasted of the whey.  But she was such
a sheaf of susceptibilities that her pulse was accelerated by the
touch, her blood driven to her finder-ends, and the cool arms
flushed hot.  Then, as though her heart had said, "Is coyness longer
necessary? Truth is truth between man and woman, as between man and
man," she lifted her eyes and they beamed devotedly into his, as her
lip rose in a tender half-smile.

"Do you know why I did that, Tess?" he said.

"Because you love me very much!"

"Yes, and as a preliminary to a new entreaty."

"Not AGAIN!"

She looked a sudden fear that her resistance might break down under
her own desire.

"O, Tessy!" he went on, "I CANNOT think why you are so tantalizing.
Why do you disappoint me so?  You seem almost like a coquette, upon
my life you do--a coquette of the first urban water!  They blow
hot and blow cold, just as you do, and it is the very last sort of
thing to expect to find in a retreat like Talbothays. ...  And yet,
dearest," he quickly added, observing now the remark had cut her, "I
know you to be the most honest, spotless creature that ever lived.
So how can I suppose you a flirt?  Tess, why don't you like the idea
of being my wife, if you love me as you seem to do?"

"I have never said I don't like the idea, and I never could say it;
because--it isn't true!"

The stress now getting beyond endurance, her lip quivered, and she
was obliged to go away.  Clare was so pained and perplexed that he
ran after and caught her in the passage.

"Tell me, tell me!" he said, passionately clasping her, in
forgetfulness of his curdy hands: "do tell me that you won't belong
to anybody but me!"

"I will, I will tell you!" she exclaimed.  "And I will give you a
complete answer, if you will let me go now. I will tell you my
experiences--all about myself--all!"

"Your experiences, dear; yes, certainly; any number."  He expressed
assent in loving satire, looking into her face.  "My Tess, no doubt,
almost as many experiences as that wild convolvulus out there on the
garden hedge, that opened itself this morning for the first time.
Tell me anything, but don't use that wretched expression any more
about not being worthy of me."

"I will try--not!  And I'll give you my reasons to-morrow--next
week."

"Say on Sunday?"

"Yes, on Sunday."

At last she got away, and did not stop in her retreat till she was in
the thicket of pollard willows at the lower side of the barton, where
she could be quite unseen.  Here Tess flung herself down upon the
rustling undergrowth of spear-grass, as upon a bed, and remained
crouching in palpitating misery broken by momentary shoots of joy,
which her fears about the ending could not altogether suppress.

In reality, she was drifting into acquiescence.  Every see-saw of her
breath, every wave of her blood, every pulse singing in her ears, was
a voice that joined with nature in revolt against her scrupulousness.
Reckless, inconsiderate acceptance of him; to close with him at the
altar, revealing nothing, and chancing discovery; to snatch ripe
pleasure before the iron teeth of pain could have time to shut upon
her: that was what love counselled; and in almost a terror of ecstasy
Tess divined that, despite her many months of lonely self-chastisement,
wrestlings, communings, schemes to lead a future of austere
isolation, love's counsel would prevail.

The afternoon advanced, and still she remained among the willows.
She heard the rattle of taking down the pails from the forked stands;
the "waow-waow!" which accompanied the getting together of the cows.
But she did not go to the milking.  They would see her agitation;
and the dairyman, thinking the cause to be love alone, would
good-naturedly tease her; and that harassment could not be borne.

Her lover must have guessed her overwrought state, and invented some
excuse for her non-appearance, for no inquiries were made or calls
given.  At half-past six the sun settled down upon the levels with
the aspect of a great forge in the heavens; and presently a monstrous
pumpkin-like moon arose on the other hand.  The pollard willows,
tortured out of their natural shape by incessant choppings, became
spiny-haired monsters as they stood up against it.  She went in and
upstairs without a light.

It was now Wednesday.  Thursday came, and Angel looked thoughtfully
at her from a distance, but intruded in no way upon her.  The indoor
milkmaids, Marian and the rest, seemed to guess that something
definite was afoot, for they did not force any remarks upon her in
the bedchamber.  Friday passed; Saturday.  To-morrow was the day.

"I shall give way--I shall say yes--I shall let myself marry
him--I cannot help it!" she jealously panted, with her hot face to
the pillow that night, on hearing one of the other girls sigh his
name in her sleep.  "I can't bear to let anybody have him but me!
Yet it is a wrong to him, and may kill him when he knows!  O my
heart--O--O--O!"



Phase IV: "The Consequence," Chapter Twenty-Eight
A few days later, Angel asks why Tess said "no" so definitely, even after she's admitted that she loves him. Tess says that she's not a fine lady, and makes up various other excuses about not being good enough, etc. Tess almost wishes someone would tell him about her past, because she sure can't bring herself to do it. But no one around there knows about it. He keeps pressing her, and she's afraid of giving in. Finally she promises to tell him all her reasons, and all her history. Angel laughs, because what kinds of "experiences" can a seemingly inexperienced young girl like Tess have? She's not laughing, though, and says she'll tell him everything on Sunday. She's so agitated that she can't go help with the milking, and shuts herself up in her room, going back and forth between hope and fear. She wants to say yes, but thinks she shouldn't.