'Is he gone to heaven?' asked Abraham, between the sobs.
Then Durbeyfield began to shovel in the earth, and the children cried
anew. All except Tess. Her face was dry and pale, as though she
regarded herself in the light of a murderess.
V
The haggling business, which had mainly depended on the horse, became
disorganized forthwith. Distress, if not penury, loomed in the
distance. Durbeyfield was what was locally called a slack-twisted
fellow; he had good strength to work at times; but the times could
not be relied on to coincide with the hours of requirement; and,
having been unaccustomed to the regular toil of the day-labourer,
he was not particularly persistent when they did so coincide.
Tess, meanwhile, as the one who had dragged her parents into this
quagmire, was silently wondering what she could do to help them out
of it; and then her mother broached her scheme.
'We must take the ups wi' the downs, Tess,' said she; 'and never
could your high blood have been found out at a more called-for
moment. You must try your friends. Do ye know that there is a very
rich Mrs d'Urberville living on the outskirts o' The Chase, who must
be our relation? You must go to her and claim kin, and ask for some
help in our trouble.'
'I shouldn't care to do that,' says Tess. 'If there is such a lady,
'twould be enough for us if she were friendly--not to expect her to
give us help.'
'You could win her round to do anything, my dear. Besides, perhaps
there's more in it than you know of. I've heard what I've heard,
good-now.'
The oppressive sense of the harm she had done led Tess to be more
deferential than she might otherwise have been to the maternal
wish; but she could not understand why her mother should find such
satisfaction in contemplating an enterprise of, to her, such doubtful
profit. Her mother might have made inquiries, and have discovered
that this Mrs d'Urberville was a lady of unequalled virtues and
charity. But Tess's pride made the part of poor relation one of
particular distaste to her.
'I'd rather try to get work,' she murmured.
'Durbeyfield, you can settle it,' said his wife, turning to where he
sat in the background. 'If you say she ought to go, she will go.'
'I don't like my children going and making themselves beholden to
strange kin,' murmured he. 'I'm the head of the noblest branch o'
the family, and I ought to live up to it.'
His reasons for staying away were worse to Tess than her own
objections to going. 'Well, as I killed the horse, mother,' she said
mournfully, 'I suppose I ought to do something. I don't mind going
and seeing her, but you must leave it to me about asking for help.
And don't go thinking about her making a match for me--it is silly.'
'Very well said, Tess!' observed her father sententiously.
'Who said I had such a thought?' asked Joan.
'I fancy it is in your mind, mother. But I'll go.'
Rising early next day she walked to the hill-town called Shaston,
