"To think, now, that this was to be the end o't!" said Sir John.
"And I with a family vault under that there church of Kingsbere as big as Squire Jollard's ale-cellar, and my folk lying there in sixes and sevens, as genuine county bones and marrow as any recorded in history.
And now to be sure what they fellers at Rolliver's and The Pure Drop will say to me!
How they'll squint and glane, and say,
'This is yer mighty match is it; this is yer getting back to the true level of yer forefathers in King Norman's time!'
I feel this is too much, Joan; I shall put an end to myself, title and all-I can bear it no longer!...
But she can make him keep her if he's married her?"
"Why, yes. But she won't think o' doing that."
"D'ye think he really have married her?-or is it like the first-"
Poor Tess, who had heard as far as this, could not bear to hear more.
The perception that her word could be doubted even here, in her own parental house, set her mind against the spot as nothing else could have done.
How unexpected were the attacks of destiny!
And if her father doubted her a little, would not neighbours and acquaintance doubt her much?
O, she could not live long at home!
A few days, accordingly, were all that she allowed herself here, at the end of which time she received a short note from Clare, informing her that he had gone to the North of England to look at a farm.
In her craving for the lustre of her true position as his wife, and to hide from her parents the vast extent of the division between them, she made use of this letter as her reason for again departing, leaving them under the impression that she was setting out to join him.
Still further to screen her husband from any imputation of unkindness to her, she took twenty-five of the fifty pounds Clare had given her, and handed the sum over to her mother, as if the wife of a man like Angel Clare could well afford it, saying that it was a slight return for the trouble and humiliation she had brought upon them in years past.
With this assertion of her dignity she bade them farewell; and after that there were lively doings in the Durbeyfield household for some time on the strength of Tess's bounty, her mother saying, and, indeed, believing, that the rupture which had arisen between the young husband and wife had adjusted itself under their strong feeling that they could not live apart from each other.
XXXIX
It was three weeks after the marriage that Clare found himself descending the hill which led to the well-known parsonage of his father.
With his downward course the tower of the church rose into the evening sky in a manner of inquiry as to why he had come; and no living person in the twilighted town seemed to notice him, still less to expect him.
He was arriving like a ghost, and the sound of his own footsteps was almost an encumbrance to be got rid of.
The picture of life had changed for him.
Before this time he had known it but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet.
Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with the leer of a study by Van Beers.
His conduct during these first weeks had been desultory beyond description.
After mechanically attempting to pursue his agricultural plans as though nothing unusual had happened, in the manner recommended by the great and wise men of all ages, he concluded that very few of those great and wise men had ever gone so far outside themselves as to test the feasibility of their counsel.
"This is the chief thing: be not perturbed," said the Pagan moralist.
That was just Clare's own opinion.
But he was perturbed.
"Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid," said the Nazarene.
Clare chimed in cordially; but his heart was troubled all the same.
How he would have liked to confront those two great thinkers, and earnestly appeal to them as fellow-man to fellow-men, and ask them to tell him their method!
His mood transmuted itself into a dogged indifference till at length he fancied he was looking on his own existence with the passive interest of an outsider.
He was embittered by the conviction that all this desolation had been brought about by the accident of her being a d'Urberville.
When he found that Tess came of that exhausted ancient line, and was not of the new tribes from below, as he had fondly dreamed, why had he not stoically abandoned her in fidelity to his principles?
This was what he had got by apostasy, and his punishment was deserved.
Then he became weary and anxious, and his anxiety increased.
He wondered if he had treated her unfairly.
He ate without knowing that he ate, and drank without tasting.
As the hours dropped past, as the motive of each act in the long series of bygone days presented itself to his view, he perceived how intimately the notion of having Tess as a dear possession was mixed up with all his schemes and words and ways.
In going hither and thither he observed in the outskirts of a small town a red-and-blue placard setting forth the great advantages of the Empire of Brazil as a field for the emigrating agriculturist.
Land was offered there on exceptionally advantageous terms.
Brazil somewhat attracted him as a new idea.
Tess could eventually join him there, and perhaps in that country of contrasting scenes and notions and habits the conventions would not be so operative which made life with her seem impracticable to him here.
In brief he was strongly inclined to try Brazil, especially as the season for going thither was just at hand.
With this view he was returning to Emminster to disclose his plan to his parents, and to make the best explanation he could make of arriving without Tess, short of revealing what had actually separated them.
As he reached the door the new moon shone upon his face, just as the old one had done in the small hours of that morning when he had carried his wife in his arms across the river to the graveyard of the monks; but his face was thinner now.
Clare had given his parents no warning of his visit, and his arrival stirred the atmosphere of the Vicarage as the dive of the kingfisher stirs a quiet pool.
His father and mother were both in the drawing-room, but neither of his brothers was now at home.