conveyed, and, in a sorrow that was inexpressible, leapt down and
took her hand.
'Well, but, Izz, we'll part friends, anyhow? You don't know what
I've had to bear!'
She was a really generous girl, and allowed no further bitterness to
mar their adieux.
'I forgive 'ee, sir!' she said.
'Now, Izz,' he said, while she stood beside him there, forcing
himself to the mentor's part he was far from feeling; 'I want you to
tell Marian when you see her that she is to be a good woman, and not
to give way to folly. Promise that, and tell Retty that there are
more worthy men than I in the world, that for my sake she is to act
wisely and well--remember the words--wisely and well--for my sake.
I send this message to them as a dying man to the dying; for I shall
never see them again. And you, Izzy, you have saved me by your
honest words about my wife from an incredible impulse towards folly
and treachery. Women may be bad, but they are not so bad as men in
these things! On that one account I can never forget you. Be always
the good and sincere girl you have hitherto been; and think of me as
a worthless lover, but a faithful friend. Promise.'
She gave the promise.
'Heaven bless and keep you, sir. Goodbye!'
He drove on; but no sooner had Izz turned into the lane, and Clare
was out of sight, than she flung herself down on the bank in a fit of
racking anguish; and it was with a strained unnatural face that she
entered her mother's cottage late that night. Nobody ever was told
how Izz spent the dark hours that intervened between Angel Clare's
parting from her and her arrival home.
Clare, too, after bidding the girl farewell, was wrought to aching
thoughts and quivering lips. But his sorrow was not for Izz. That
evening he was within a feather-weight's turn of abandoning his road
to the nearest station, and driving across that elevated dorsal line
of South Wessex which divided him from his Tess's home. It was
neither a contempt for her nature, nor the probable state of her
heart, which deterred him.
No; it was a sense that, despite her love, as corroborated by Izz's
admission, the facts had not changed. If he was right at first,
he was right now. And the momentum of the course on which he
had embarked tended to keep him going in it, unless diverted by
a stronger, more sustained force than had played upon him this
afternoon. He could soon come back to her. He took the train that
night for London, and five days after shook hands in farewell of his
brothers at the port of embarkation.
XLI
From the foregoing events of the winter-time let us press on to
an October day, more than eight months subsequent to the parting
of Clare and Tess. We discover the latter in changed conditions;
instead of a bride with boxes and trunks which others bore, we see
her a lonely woman with a basket and a bundle in her own porterage,
