Tess of the d'Urbervilles
A countrywoman wronged, a love that cannot forgive it, and a law that will not
Page 1
In the village of Marlott, in the Vale of Blackmoor, lived John Durbeyfield, a small higgler with more thirst than sense, his wife Joan, and their children, the eldest a handsome girl of sixteen named Tess. One evening, walking home along the Shaston road, John met Parson Tringham, who called out to him, half in jest, "Good night, Sir John." The parson explained: the Durbeyfields were the last of the old and knightly family of d'Urberville, who had come over with the Conqueror and now lay under grand tombs at Kingsbere — all dead, except John, the head of it, lowered now to carting and ditch-digging. John walked on repeating it to himself. That same evening, down in the village street, the Marlott girls held their yearly club-walking in white dresses, and among them, carrying a peeled willow wand like the rest, walked Tess.
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The news of the old name changed little at home, except that John grew prouder and drank more. One night he was too drunk to drive the hives into Casterbridge market, so Tess went instead, with their old horse Prince pulling the cart. It was black dark on the highway, and somewhere past midnight, worn out, Tess let the reins go slack and fell asleep. She woke to a crash: a fast mail-cart, coming on without a light, had driven into them head-on, and the shaft had struck Prince. Tess climbed down and knelt by him in the road, trying to hold him, but there was nothing to be done; the horse grew quiet and then still under her hands. Prince was the only horse the family had, and the money he might have earned was needed badly. Tess blamed no one else. She felt she had killed him herself, and it was this, more than anything, that sent her at last to Trantridge to ask help of the rich Stoke-d'Urbervilles there.
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Tess's mother sent her to Trantridge to call on the rich Mrs d'Urberville, who turned out to be no real kin at all — her family, the Stokes, had simply bought the old name. It was not the mistress who met Tess at the gate, though, but her son Alec, a bold young man who looked her over as if pricing a mare. Mrs d'Urberville was nearly blind and kept to her rooms, so Tess was set to mind the strange, fine fowls that filled the old garden, with no company most days but the hens and, far too often, Alec, who came to watch her work, bring her strawberries from his own hand, and press flowers on her until she could hardly carry them. He found reasons to walk beside her, to put his arm about her on a bolting horse, to turn up wherever she was alone. Tess did not want him and said so plainly more than once. But he was patient, and the weeks at Trantridge went on.
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One autumn night, Alec took Tess up behind him on his horse to ride home from a dance in Chaseborough, after some of the other girls had quarreled with her out of jealousy. He did not take the straight road, but led the tired horse deep into the ancient forest called The Chase, saying he had lost the way in the fog and must let the horse rest. He left Tess wrapped in his coat on a bed of dead leaves while he went, he said, to find their bearings, and was gone a long time. The fog lay thick and white over the dark trees, and there was no sound anywhere but the branches moving. When he came back and found her asleep, he knelt down beside her in the darkness. What happened next among the silent trees the book does not show and no one but the two of them ever truly knew — only that when Tess walked home to Marlott in the cold grey morning, something in her had changed forever.
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Tess went home to Marlott, and in time a baby came, a boy, sickly from the first. The vicar would not promise to come in the night when it looked as if the child would not live till morning, so Tess baptized him herself, gathering her brothers and sisters around the bed by candlelight and saying the old words over him, naming him Sorrow, with her mother Joan standing by to answer in place of godparents. The baby died before the week was out. Because Tess had christened him herself and not a clergyman, the vicar would not let him lie in the churchyard proper among the baptized dead, so at dusk Tess carried the small coffin out herself and buried him in the cheap, nameless corner set aside for the unbaptized, marking the grave afterward with wildflowers in a jam jar, since no stone was allowed her there.
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Three years on, wanting to begin again somewhere nobody knew her, Tess took work as a dairymaid at Talbothays, a prosperous dairy farm down in the lush Froom valley. There she met Angel Clare, a clergyman's son learning farming before taking up land of his own, a thoughtful young man with ideas of his own about the world. He noticed Tess from the first, drawn to something grave and lovely in her that the other dairymaids did not have, though he knew nothing of what had happened to her. All that golden summer they worked side by side, milking at dawn, walking home through mist-white meadows, and slowly fell in love. In the end, standing by the millpond one evening, he asked her to marry him. Tess, full of dread for the secret she still carried, refused him again and again, though she loved him beyond anything — until at last she said yes.
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They were married quietly and went to spend their wedding night at Wellbridge, an old farmhouse once part of the d'Urberville family's own lands — a coincidence Tess felt as an omen. That evening, before the fire, each confessed something to the other. Angel told her of a reckless affair he'd once had in London, and asked her forgiveness, which she gave at once and gladly. Then, holding his hand, Tess told him everything in return — Alec, The Chase, the baby who had died. She had tried to tell him before and always failed; now, with nothing left to lose, she told it all, plainly, to the end. Angel sat very still as she spoke, and when she finished he did not take her in his arms. He got up and walked out without a word, and when he came back, hours later, something in his face toward her had changed completely and forever, though he said only that he needed to think.
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Angel left for Brazil alone, meaning to see whether he could ever come to live with what Tess had told him, leaving her only a little money. Pride kept Tess from going to his family for help, and in time the money ran out. She found the hardest work she could get, at a bleak upland farm called Flintcomb-Ash, hacking frozen swedes out of the chalky soil with her bare, cracked hands alongside the other women, and later feeding the great steam threshing machine from dawn until dark, choked in chaff and noise. It was here, half starved and exhausted, that Alec d'Urberville found her again — no longer the bold young man he had been, but a travelling preacher now, converted at a revival meeting, who watched her work before coming down to speak to her. He said he had changed, and asked her to marry him, since in his eyes he had wronged her. Tess, loyal still to the husband who had abandoned her, told him plainly that she already had one.
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Tess's father died, the family was turned out of their cottage, and Tess, worn down by poverty and certain Angel would never return, at last went to live under Alec d'Urberville's protection at a fine lodging house called The Herons, in the resort town of Sandbourne. Then Angel did come back, broken and sorry from his time abroad, having decided he could not live without her. He found his way to the lodging house and asked for her. Tess came down to him trembling, told him it was too late, that Alec had worn her down into going to him by telling her Angel would never return, and sent him away in despair. But upstairs, after he had gone, the landlady below noticed a dark red stain spreading slowly across her white ceiling, growing larger by the minute, and ran up crying out that something terrible had happened in the room above. When Tess caught up with Angel on the road a little later, she told him simply what she had done.
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Tess and Angel fled together, finding a few last days of peace hiding in an empty country house, until the police traced them to the stone circle at Stonehenge, where Tess, exhausted, lay down on one of the great flat stones to sleep and was taken as the sun rose. She was tried and condemned to death for Alec d'Urberville's murder, and the law, in the end, was not merciful. On the appointed morning, Angel and Tess's young sister, Liza-Lu, climbed a hill outside the old city of Wintoncester and stood looking down at the grey walls of the prison below, holding hands, unable to speak. A great bell inside the city began to toll slowly. Neither of them moved. Then, up on the squat tower of the gaol, a tall black flag was run up a staff and hung there, unfurling slowly in the still morning air. Angel and Liza-Lu bowed their heads, then, after a while, rose, took each other's hand again, and walked slowly on down the hill together.
About this story
- Audience: general readers
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