finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_4_part_10.txt
Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 44
chapter 44
{"name": "Chapter 44", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-5-chapters-35-44", "summary": "Tess wonders why her husband has not written to her, for he had distinctly implied that he would at least let her know of the locality to which he journeyed. She wonders whether he is indifferent or ill. On a Sunday morning, the only morning in which Tess may leave, Tess leaves for Emminster. When Tess reaches the home of the Clares at Emminster, nobody answers, for they are all at church. Tess sees Felix and Cuthbert, but fears that they should find her before she is prepared to confront them. Tess also sees Mercy Chant, whom one of the brothers identifies; Tess remembers the name from Talbothays, and listens as the brothers discuss how Angel threw himself away upon a dairymaid. When the Clares reach their home once more, they find Tess's boots which she has left there and appropriate them as charity. Tess views this scene as evidence of her condemnation, and feels that she cannot return to the vicarage. Tess leaves Emminster and reaches the village of Evershead, where she learns that a fiery, Christian man is preaching. Tess finds this preacher giving a sermon on justification by faith. She recognizes the voice of the preacher as that of Alec d'Urberville.", "analysis": "Tess continues to suffer indignities during her husband's absence, as shown when she overhears the discussion between Felix and Cuthbert about Angel's seemingly disreputable wife. Hardy even includes unmotivated embarrassments for Tess such as the loss of her shoes as evidence of her dejected state. However, the seeming evidence that Tess has concerning the Clares' opinion of her remains idle gossip, for Angel's brothers merely speculate on Tess without the concrete evidence that she believes they must have. The reappearance of Alec d'Urberville is the culmination of recent chapters' foreshadowing. Having found herself confronted with nearly all of the characters who have been a threat to her since departing from Angel, Tess now finds the person most responsible for her tragic fate. There is a certain irony concerning Alec's fate, particular in comparison with Angel; the rigidly moral son of a minister finds himself a businessman, while the unscrupulous hedonist becomes a fundamentalist preacher. Nevertheless, the amount to which Alec has changed since Tess has left Trantridge remains doubtful"}


By the disclosure in the barn her thoughts were led anew in the
direction which they had taken more than once of late--to the distant
Emminster Vicarage.  It was through her husband's parents that she
had been charged to send a letter to Clare if she desired; and to
write to them direct if in difficulty.  But that sense of her having
morally no claim upon him had always led Tess to suspend her impulse
to send these notes; and to the family at the Vicarage, therefore,
as to her own parents since her marriage, she was virtually
non-existent.  This self-effacement in both directions had been quite
in consonance with her independent character of desiring nothing
by way of favour or pity to which she was not entitled on a fair
consideration of her deserts.  She had set herself to stand or fall
by her qualities, and to waive such merely technical claims upon a
strange family as had been established for her by the flimsy fact of
a member of that family, in a season of impulse, writing his name in
a church-book beside hers.

But now that she was stung to a fever by Izz's tale, there was a
limit to her powers of renunciation.  Why had her husband not written
to her?  He had distinctly implied that he would at least let her
know of the locality to which he had journeyed; but he had not sent a
line to notify his address.  Was he really indifferent?  But was he
ill?  Was it for her to make some advance?  Surely she might summon
the courage of solicitude, call at the Vicarage for intelligence, and
express her grief at his silence.  If Angel's father were the good
man she had heard him represented to be, he would be able to enter
into her heart-starved situation.  Her social hardships she could
conceal.

To leave the farm on a week-day was not in her power; Sunday was
the only possible opportunity.  Flintcomb-Ash being in the middle
of the cretaceous tableland over which no railway had climbed as
yet, it would be necessary to walk.  And the distance being fifteen
miles each way she would have to allow herself a long day for the
undertaking by rising early.

A fortnight later, when the snow had gone, and had been followed by
a hard black frost, she took advantage of the state of the roads to
try the experiment.  At four o'clock that Sunday morning she came
downstairs and stepped out into the starlight.  The weather was still
favourable, the ground ringing under her feet like an anvil.

Marian and Izz were much interested in her excursion, knowing that
the journey concerned her husband.  Their lodgings were in a cottage
a little further along the lane, but they came and assisted Tess
in her departure, and argued that she should dress up in her very
prettiest guise to captivate the hearts of her parents-in-law; though
she, knowing of the austere and Calvinistic tenets of old Mr Clare,
was indifferent, and even doubtful.  A year had now elapsed since
her sad marriage, but she had preserved sufficient draperies from
the wreck of her then full wardrobe to clothe her very charmingly as
a simple country girl with no pretensions to recent fashion; a soft
gray woollen gown, with white crape quilling against the pink skin of
her face and neck, and a black velvet jacket and hat.

"'Tis a thousand pities your husband can't see 'ee now--you do look
a real beauty!" said Izz Huett, regarding Tess as she stood on
the threshold between the steely starlight without and the yellow
candlelight within.  Izz spoke with a magnanimous abandonment of
herself to the situation; she could not be--no woman with a heart
bigger than a hazel-nut could be--antagonistic to Tess in her
presence, the influence which she exercised over those of her own sex
being of a warmth and strength quite unusual, curiously overpowering
the less worthy feminine feelings of spite and rivalry.

With a final tug and touch here, and a slight brush there, they let
her go; and she was absorbed into the pearly air of the fore-dawn.
They heard her footsteps tap along the hard road as she stepped out
to her full pace.  Even Izz hoped she would win, and, though without
any particular respect for her own virtue, felt glad that she had
been prevented wronging her friend when momentarily tempted by Clare.

It was a year ago, all but a day, that Clare had married Tess, and
only a few days less than a year that he had been absent from her.
Still, to start on a brisk walk, and on such an errand as hers, on a
dry clear wintry morning, through the rarefied air of these chalky
hogs'-backs, was not depressing; and there is no doubt that her dream
at starting was to win the heart of her mother-in-law, tell her whole
history to that lady, enlist her on her side, and so gain back the
truant.

In time she reached the edge of the vast escarpment below which
stretched the loamy Vale of Blackmoor, now lying misty and still
in the dawn.  Instead of the colourless air of the uplands, the
atmosphere down there was a deep blue.  Instead of the great
enclosures of a hundred acres in which she was now accustomed to
toil, there were little fields below her of less than half-a-dozen
acres, so numerous that they looked from this height like the meshes
of a net.  Here the landscape was whitey-brown; down there, as in
Froom Valley, it was always green.  Yet it was in that vale that her
sorrow had taken shape, and she did not love it as formerly.  Beauty
to her, as to all who have felt, lay not in the thing, but in what
the thing symbolized.

Keeping the Vale on her right, she steered steadily westward; passing
above the Hintocks, crossing at right-angles the high-road from
Sherton-Abbas to Casterbridge, and skirting Dogbury Hill and
High-Stoy, with the dell between them called "The Devil's Kitchen".
Still following the elevated way she reached Cross-in-Hand, where
the stone pillar stands desolate and silent, to mark the site of a
miracle, or murder, or both.  Three miles further she cut across the
straight and deserted Roman road called Long-Ash Lane; leaving which
as soon as she reached it she dipped down a hill by a transverse lane
into the small town or village of Evershead, being now about halfway
over the distance.  She made a halt here, and breakfasted a second
time, heartily enough--not at the Sow-and-Acorn, for she avoided
inns, but at a cottage by the church.

The second half of her journey was through a more gentle country, by
way of Benvill Lane.  But as the mileage lessened between her and the
spot of her pilgrimage, so did Tess's confidence decrease, and her
enterprise loom out more formidably.  She saw her purpose in such
staring lines, and the landscape so faintly, that she was sometimes
in danger of losing her way.  However, about noon she paused by a
gate on the edge of the basin in which Emminster and its Vicarage
lay.

The square tower, beneath which she knew that at that moment the
Vicar and his congregation were gathered, had a severe look in
her eyes.  She wished that she had somehow contrived to come on a
week-day.  Such a good man might be prejudiced against a woman who
had chosen Sunday, never realizing the necessities of her case.
But it was incumbent upon her to go on now.  She took off the thick
boots in which she had walked thus far, put on her pretty thin ones
of patent leather, and, stuffing the former into the hedge by the
gatepost where she might readily find them again, descended the hill;
the freshness of colour she had derived from the keen air thinning
away in spite of her as she drew near the parsonage.

Tess hoped for some accident that might favour her, but nothing
favoured her.  The shrubs on the Vicarage lawn rustled uncomfortably
in the frosty breeze; she could not feel by any stretch of
imagination, dressed to her highest as she was, that the house was
the residence of near relations; and yet nothing essential, in nature
or emotion, divided her from them: in pains, pleasures, thoughts,
birth, death, and after-death, they were the same.

She nerved herself by an effort, entered the swing-gate, and rang
the door-bell.  The thing was done; there could be no retreat.  No;
the thing was not done.  Nobody answered to her ringing.  The effort
had to be risen to and made again.  She rang a second time, and the
agitation of the act, coupled with her weariness after the fifteen
miles' walk, led her to support herself while she waited by resting
her hand on her hip and her elbow against the wall of the porch. The
wind was so nipping that the ivy-leaves had become wizened and gray,
each tapping incessantly upon its neighbour with a disquieting stir
of her nerves.  A piece of blood-stained paper, caught up from some
meat-buyer's dust-heap, beat up and down the road without the gate;
too flimsy to rest, too heavy to fly away; and a few straws kept it
company.

The second peal had been louder, and still nobody came.  Then she
walked out of the porch, opened the gate, and passed through.  And
though she looked dubiously at the house-front as if inclined to
return, it was with a breath of relied that she closed the gate.  A
feeling haunted her that she might have been recognized (though how
she could not tell), and orders been given not to admit her.

Tess went as far as the corner.  She had done all she could do; but
determined not to escape present trepidation at the expense of future
distress, she walked back again quite past the house, looking up at
all the windows.

Ah--the explanation was that they were all at church, every one.  She
remembered her husband saying that his father always insisted upon
the household, servants included, going to morning-service, and,
as a consequence, eating cold food when they came home.  It was,
therefore, only necessary to wait till the service was over.  She
would not make herself conspicuous by waiting on the spot, and she
started to get past the church into the lane.  But as she reached the
churchyard-gate the people began pouring out, and Tess found herself
in the midst of them.

The Emminster congregation looked at her as only a congregation of
small country-townsfolk walking home at its leisure can look at a
woman out of the common whom it perceives to be a stranger.  She
quickened her pace, and ascended the road by which she had come,
to find a retreat between its hedges till the Vicar's family should
have lunched, and it might be convenient for them to receive her.
She soon distanced the churchgoers, except two youngish men, who,
linked arm-in-arm, were beating up behind her at a quick step.

As they drew nearer she could hear their voices engaged in earnest
discourse, and, with the natural quickness of a woman in her
situation, did not fail to recognize in those noises the quality
of her husband's tones.  The pedestrians were his two brothers.
Forgetting all her plans, Tess's one dread was lest they should
overtake her now, in her disorganized condition, before she was
prepared to confront them; for though she felt that they could not
identify her, she instinctively dreaded their scrutiny.  The more
briskly they walked, the more briskly walked she.  They were plainly
bent upon taking a short quick stroll before going indoors to lunch
or dinner, to restore warmth to limbs chilled with sitting through a
long service.

Only one person had preceded Tess up the hill--a ladylike young
woman, somewhat interesting, though, perhaps, a trifle _guindee_
and prudish.  Tess had nearly overtaken her when the speed of her
brothers-in-law brought them so nearly behind her back that she could
hear every word of their conversation.  They said nothing, however,
which particularly interested her till, observing the young lady
still further in front, one of them remarked, "There is Mercy Chant.
Let us overtake her."

Tess knew the name.  It was the woman who had been destined for
Angel's life-companion by his and her parents, and whom he probably
would have married but for her intrusive self.  She would have known
as much without previous information if she had waited a moment, for
one of the brothers proceeded to say: "Ah! poor Angel, poor Angel!
I never see that nice girl without more and more regretting his
precipitancy in throwing himself away upon a dairymaid, or whatever
she may be.  It is a queer business, apparently.  Whether she has
joined him yet or not I don't know; but she had not done so some
months ago when I heard from him."

"I can't say.  He never tells me anything nowadays.  His
ill-considered marriage seems to have completed that estrangement
from me which was begun by his extraordinary opinions."

Tess beat up the long hill still faster; but she could not outwalk
them without exciting notice.  At last they outsped her altogether,
and passed her by.  The young lady still further ahead heard their
footsteps and turned.  Then there was a greeting and a shaking of
hands, and the three went on together.

They soon reached the summit of the hill, and, evidently intending
this point to be the limit of their promenade, slackened pace and
turned all three aside to the gate whereat Tess had paused an hour
before that time to reconnoitre the town before descending into it.
During their discourse one of the clerical brothers probed the hedge
carefully with his umbrella, and dragged something to light.

"Here's a pair of old boots," he said.  "Thrown away, I suppose, by
some tramp or other."

"Some imposter who wished to come into the town barefoot, perhaps,
and so excite our sympathies," said Miss Chant.  "Yes, it must have
been, for they are excellent walking-boots--by no means worn out.
What a wicked thing to do!  I'll carry them home for some poor
person."

Cuthbert Clare, who had been the one to find them, picked them up for
her with the crook of his stick; and Tess's boots were appropriated.

She, who had heard this, walked past under the screen of her woollen
veil till, presently looking back, she perceived that the church
party had left the gate with her boots and retreated down the hill.

Thereupon our heroine resumed her walk.  Tears, blinding tears, were
running down her face.  She knew that it was all sentiment, all
baseless impressibility, which had caused her to read the scene as
her own condemnation; nevertheless she could not get over it; she
could not contravene in her own defenceless person all those untoward
omens.  It was impossible to think of returning to the Vicarage.
Angel's wife felt almost as if she had been hounded up that hill like
a scorned thing by those--to her--superfine clerics.  Innocently
as the slight had been inflicted, it was somewhat unfortunate that
she had encountered the sons and not the father, who, despite his
narrowness, was far less starched and ironed than they, and had to
the full the gift of charity.  As she again thought of her dusty
boots she almost pitied those habiliments for the quizzing to which
they had been subjected, and felt how hopeless life was for their
owner.

"Ah!" she said, still sighing in pity of herself, "THEY didn't know
that I wore those over the roughest part of the road to save these
pretty ones HE bought for me--no--they did not know it!  And they
didn't think that HE chose the colour o' my pretty frock--no--how
could they?  If they had known perhaps they would not have cared,
for they don't care much for him, poor thing!"

Then she grieved for the beloved man whose conventional standard of
judgement had caused her all these latter sorrows; and she went her
way without knowing that the greatest misfortune of her life was this
feminine loss of courage at the last and critical moment through her
estimating her father-in-law by his sons.  Her present condition was
precisely one which would have enlisted the sympathies of old Mr and
Mrs Clare.  Their hearts went out of them at a bound towards extreme
cases, when the subtle mental troubles of the less desperate among
mankind failed to win their interest or regard.  In jumping at
Publicans and Sinners they would forget that a word might be said for
the worries of Scribes and Pharisees; and this defect or limitation
might have recommended their own daughter-in-law to them at this
moment as a fairly choice sort of lost person for their love.

Thereupon she began to plod back along the road by which she had come
not altogether full of hope, but full of a conviction that a crisis
in her life was approaching.  No crisis, apparently, had supervened;
and there was nothing left for her to do but to continue upon that
starve-acre farm till she could again summon courage to face the
Vicarage.  She did, indeed, take sufficient interest in herself to
throw up her veil on this return journey, as if to let the world see
that she could at least exhibit a face such as Mercy Chant could
not show.  But it was done with a sorry shake of the head. "It is
nothing--it is nothing!" she said.  "Nobody loves it; nobody sees it.
Who cares about the looks of a castaway like me!"

Her journey back was rather a meander than a march.  It had no
sprightliness, no purpose; only a tendency.  Along the tedious length
of Benvill Lane she began to grow tired, and she leant upon gates and
paused by milestones.

She did not enter any house till, at the seventh or eighth mile, she
descended the steep long hill below which lay the village or townlet
of Evershead, where in the morning she had breakfasted with such
contrasting expectations.  The cottage by the church, in which she
again sat down, was almost the first at that end of the village, and
while the woman fetched her some milk from the pantry, Tess, looking
down the street, perceived that the place seemed quite deserted.

"The people are gone to afternoon service, I suppose?" she said.

"No, my dear," said the old woman.  "'Tis too soon for that; the
bells hain't strook out yet.  They be all gone to hear the preaching
in yonder barn.  A ranter preaches there between the services--an
excellent, fiery, Christian man, they say.  But, Lord, I don't go to
hear'n!  What comes in the regular way over the pulpit is hot enough
for I."

Tess soon went onward into the village, her footsteps echoing against
the houses as though it were a place of the dead.  Nearing the
central part, her echoes were intruded on by other sounds; and seeing
the barn not far off the road, she guessed these to be the utterances
of the preacher.

His voice became so distinct in the still clear air that she could
soon catch his sentences, though she was on the closed side of
the barn.  The sermon, as might be expected, was of the extremest
antinomian type; on justification by faith, as expounded in the
theology of St Paul.  This fixed idea of the rhapsodist was delivered
with animated enthusiasm, in a manner entirely declamatory, for he
had plainly no skill as a dialectician.  Although Tess had not heard
the beginning of the address, she learnt what the text had been from
its constant iteration--


   "O foolish galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye
   should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ
   hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?"


Tess was all the more interested, as she stood listening behind, in
finding that the preacher's doctrine was a vehement form of the view
of Angel's father, and her interest intensified when the speaker
began to detail his own spiritual experiences of how he had come by
those views.  He had, he said, been the greatest of sinners.  He had
scoffed; he had wantonly associated with the reckless and the lewd.
But a day of awakening had come, and, in a human sense, it had been
brought about mainly by the influence of a certain clergyman, whom he
had at first grossly insulted; but whose parting words had sunk into
his heart, and had remained there, till by the grace of Heaven they
had worked this change in him, and made him what they saw him.

But more startling to Tess than the doctrine had been the voice,
which, impossible as it seemed, was precisely that of Alec
d'Urberville.  Her face fixed in painful suspense, she came round
to the front of the barn, and passed before it.  The low winter sun
beamed directly upon the great double-doored entrance on this side;
one of the doors being open, so that the rays stretched far in over
the threshing-floor to the preacher and his audience, all snugly
sheltered from the northern breeze.  The listeners were entirely
villagers, among them being the man whom she had seen carrying the
red paint-pot on a former memorable occasion.  But her attention
was given to the central figure, who stood upon some sacks of corn,
facing the people and the door.  The three o'clock sun shone full
upon him, and the strange enervating conviction that her seducer
confronted her, which had been gaining ground in Tess ever since she
had heard his words distinctly, was at last established as a fact
indeed.


END OF PHASE THE FIFTH





Phase the Sixth: The Convert



Chapter 44
Tess wonders why her husband has not written to her, for he had distinctly implied that he would at least let her know of the locality to which he journeyed. She wonders whether he is indifferent or ill. On a Sunday morning, the only morning in which Tess may leave, Tess leaves for Emminster. When Tess reaches the home of the Clares at Emminster, nobody answers, for they are all at church. Tess sees Felix and Cuthbert, but fears that they should find her before she is prepared to confront them. Tess also sees Mercy Chant, whom one of the brothers identifies; Tess remembers the name from Talbothays, and listens as the brothers discuss how Angel threw himself away upon a dairymaid. When the Clares reach their home once more, they find Tess's boots which she has left there and appropriate them as charity. Tess views this scene as evidence of her condemnation, and feels that she cannot return to the vicarage. Tess leaves Emminster and reaches the village of Evershead, where she learns that a fiery, Christian man is preaching. Tess finds this preacher giving a sermon on justification by faith. She recognizes the voice of the preacher as that of Alec d'Urberville.
Tess continues to suffer indignities during her husband's absence, as shown when she overhears the discussion between Felix and Cuthbert about Angel's seemingly disreputable wife. Hardy even includes unmotivated embarrassments for Tess such as the loss of her shoes as evidence of her dejected state. However, the seeming evidence that Tess has concerning the Clares' opinion of her remains idle gossip, for Angel's brothers merely speculate on Tess without the concrete evidence that she believes they must have. The reappearance of Alec d'Urberville is the culmination of recent chapters' foreshadowing. Having found herself confronted with nearly all of the characters who have been a threat to her since departing from Angel, Tess now finds the person most responsible for her tragic fate. There is a certain irony concerning Alec's fate, particular in comparison with Angel; the rigidly moral son of a minister finds himself a businessman, while the unscrupulous hedonist becomes a fundamentalist preacher. Nevertheless, the amount to which Alec has changed since Tess has left Trantridge remains doubtful