Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment
LIII
It was evening at Emminster Vicarage. The two
customary candles were burning under their green shades
in the Vicar's study, but he had not been sitting
there. Occasionally he came in, stirred the small fire
which sufficed for the increasing mildness of the
spring, and went out again; sometimes pausing at the
front door, going on to the drawing-room, then
returning again to the front door.
It faced westward, and though gloom prevailed inside,
there was still light enough without to see with
distinctness. Mrs Clare, who had been sitting in the
drawing-room, followed him hither.
"Plenty of time yet," said the Vicar. "He doesn't
reach Chalk-Newton till six, even if the train should
be punctual, and ten miles of country-road, five of
them in Crimmercrock Lane, are not jogged over in a
hurry by our old horse."
"But he has done it in an hour with us, my dear."
"Years ago."
Thus they passed the minutes, each well knowing that
this was only waste of breath, the one essential being
simply to wait.
At length there was a slight noise in the lane, and the
old pony-chaise appeared indeed outside the railings.
They saw alight therefrom a form which they affected to
recognize, but would actually have passed by in the
street without identifying had he not got out of their
carriage at the particular moment when a particular
person was due.
Mrs Clare rushed through the dark passage to the door,
and her husband came more slowly after her.
The new arrival, who was just about to enter, saw their
anxious faces in the doorway and the gleam of the west
in their spectacles because they confronted the last
rays of day; but they could only see his shape against
the light.
"O, my boy, my boy--home again at last!" cried Mrs
Clare, who cared no more at that moment for the stains
of heterodoxy which has caused all this separation than
for the dust upon his clothes. What woman, indeed,
among the most faithful adherents of the truth,
believes the promises and threats of the Word in the
sense in which she believes in her own children, or
would not throw her theology to the wind if weighed
against their happiness? As soon as they reached the
room where the candles were lighted she looked at his
face.
"O, it is not Angel--not my son--the Angel who went
away!" she cried in all the irony of sorrow, as she
turned herself aside.
His father, too, was shocked to see him, so reduced was
that figure from its former contours by worry and the
bad season that Clare had experienced, in the climate
to which he had so rashly hurried in his first aversion
to the mockery of events at home. You could see the
skeleton behind the man, and almost the ghost behind
the skeleton. He matched Crivelli's dead CHRISTUS.
His sunken eye-pits were of morbid hue, and the light
in his eyes had waned. The angular hollows and lines
of his aged ancestors had succeeded to their reign in
his face twenty years before their time.
"I was ill over there, you know," he said. "I am all
right now."
As if, however, to falsify this assertion, his legs
seemed to give way, and he suddenly sat down to save
himself from falling. It was only a slight attack of
faintness, resulting from the tedious day's journey,
and the excitement of arrival.
"Has any letter come for me lately?" he asked.
"I received the last you sent on by the merest chance,
and after considerable delay through being inland;
or I might have come sooner."
"It was from your wife, we supposed?"
"It was."
Only one other had recently come. They had not sent it
on to him, knowing he would start for home so soon.
He hastily opened the letter produced, and was much
disturbed to read in Tess's handwriting the sentiments
expressed in her last hurried scrawl to him.
O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do
not deserve it. I have thought it all over carefully,
and I can never, never forgive you! You know that I
did not intend to wrong you--why have you so wronged
me? You are cruel, cruel indeed! I will try to forget
you. It is all injustice I have received at your
hands. -- T
"It is quite true!" said Angel, throwing down the
letter. "Perhaps she will never be reconciled to me!"
"Don't, Angel, be so anxious about a mere child of the
soil!" said his mother.
"Child of the soil! Well, we all are children of the
soil. I wish she were so in the sense you mean; but
let me now explain to you what I have never explained
before, that her father is a descendant in the male
line of one of the oldest Norman houses, like a good
many others who lead obscure agricultural lives in our
villages, and are dubbed 'sons of the soil.'"
He soon retired to bed; and the next morning, feeling
exceedingly unwell, he remained in his room pondering.
The circumstances amid which he had left Tess were such
that though, while on the south of the Equator and just
in receipt of her loving epistle, it had seemed the
easiest thing in the world to rush back into her arms
the moment he chose to forgive her, now that he had
arrived it was not so easy as it had seemed. She was
passionate, and her present letter, showing that her
estimate of him had changed under his delay--too justly
changed, he sadly owned,--made him ask himself if it
would be wise to confront her unannounced in the
presence of her parents. Supposing that her love had
indeed turned to dislike during the last weeks of
separation, a sudden meeting might lead to bitter
words.
Clare therefore thought it would be best to prepare
Tess and her family by sending a line to Marlott
announcing his return, and his hope that she was still
living with them there, as he had arranged for her to
do when he left England. He despatched the inquiry
that very day, and before the week was out there came a
short reply from Mrs Durbeyfield which did not remove
his embarrassment, for it bore no address, though to
his surprise it was not written from Marlott.
SIR
J write these few lines to say that my Daughter is away
from me at present, and J am not sure when she will
return, but J will let you know as Soon as she do.
J do not feel at liberty to tell you Where she is
temperly biding. J should say that me and my Family
have left Marlott for some Time.----
Yours, J. DURBEYFIELD
It was such a relief to Clare to learn that Tess was at
least apparently well that her mother's stiff reticence
as to her whereabouts did not long distress him. They
were all angry with him, evidently. He would wait till
Mrs Durbeyfield could inform him of Tess's return,
which her letter implied to be soon. He deserved no
more. His had been a love "which alters when it
alteration finds". He had undergone some strange
experiences in his absence; he had seen the virtual
Faustina in the literal Cornelia, a spiritual Lucretia
in a corporeal Phryne; he had thought of the woman
taken and set in the midst as one deserving to be
stoned, and of the wife of Uriah being made a queen;
and he had asked himself why he had not judged Tess
constructively rather than biographically, by the will
rather than by the deed?
A day or two passed while he waited at his father's
house for the promised second note from Joan
Durbeyfield, and indirectly to recover a little more
strength. The strength showed signs of coming back,
but there was no sign of Joan's letter. Then he hunted
up the old letter sent on to him in Brazil, which Tess
had written from Flintcomb-Ash, and re-read it. The
sentences touched him now as much as when he had first
perused them.
I must cry to you in my trouble--I have no one else....
I think I must die if you do not come soon, or tell me
to come to you.... Please, please, not to be just--only
a little kind to me! ... If you would come, I could die
in your arms! I would be well content to do that if so
be you had forgiven me! ... If you will send me one
little line and say, "I AM COMING SOON," I will bide
on, Angel--O so cheerfully! ... Think how it do hurt my
heart not to see you ever--ever! Ah, if I could only
make your dear heart ache one little minute of each day
as mine does every day and all day long. It might lead
you to show pity to your poor lonely one....I would be
content, ay, glad, to live with you as your servant, if
I may not as your wife; so that I could only be near
you, and get glimpses of you, and think of you as mine.
... I long for only one thing in heaven or earth or
under the earth, to meet you, my own dear! Come to
me--come to me, and save me from what threatens me.
Clare determined that he would no longer believe in her
more recent and severer regard of him; but would go and
find her immediately. He asked his father if she had
applied for any money during his absence. His father
returned a negative, and then for the first time it
occurred to Angel that her pride had stood in her way,
and that she had suffered privation. From his remarks
his parents now gathered the real reason of the
separation; and their Christianity was such that,
reprobates being their especial care, the tenderness
towards Tess which her blood, her simplicity, even her
poverty, had not engendered, was instantly excited by
her sin.
Whilst he was hastily packing together a few articles
for his journey he glanced over a poor plain missive
also lately come to hand--the one from Marian and Izz
Huett, beginning----
"HONOUR'D SIR----Look to your Wife if you do love her
as much as she do love you," and signed, "FROM TWO
WELL-WISHERS.
