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.
