change--and then--we should be--my mother would be--homeless
again.'
'O no--no. I would guarantee you against such as that in writing, if
necessary. Think it over.'
Tess shook her head. But d'Urberville persisted; she had seldom seen
him so determined; he would not take a negative.
'Please just tell your mother,' he said, in emphatic tones. 'It is
her business to judge--not yours. I shall get the house swept out
and whitened to-morrow morning, and fires lit; and it will be dry by
the evening, so that you can come straight there. Now mind, I shall
expect you.'
Tess again shook her head, her throat swelling with complicated
emotion. She could not look up at d'Urberville.
'I owe you something for the past, you know,' he resumed. 'And you
cured me, too, of that craze; so I am glad--'
'I would rather you had kept the craze, so that you had kept the
practice which went with it!'
'I am glad of this opportunity of repaying you a little. To-morrow I
shall expect to hear your mother's goods unloading... Give me your
hand on it now--dear, beautiful Tess!'
With the last sentence he had dropped his voice to a murmur, and put
his hand in at the half-open casement. With stormy eyes she pulled
the stay-bar quickly, and, in doing so, caught his arm between the
casement and the stone mullion.
'Damnation--you are very cruel!' he said, snatching out his arm.
'No, no!--I know you didn't do it on purpose. Well I shall expect
you, or your mother and children at least.'
'I shall not come--I have plenty of money!' she cried.
'Where?'
'At my father-in-law's, if I ask for it.'
'IF you ask for it. But you won't, Tess; I know you; you'll never
ask for it--you'll starve first!'
With these words he rode off. Just at the corner of the street he
met the man with the paint-pot, who asked him if he had deserted the
brethren.
'You go to the devil!' said d'Urberville.
Tess remained where she was a long while, till a sudden rebellious
sense of injustice caused the region of her eyes to swell with the
rush of hot tears thither. Her husband, Angel Clare himself, had,
like others, dealt out hard measure to her; surely he had! She had
never before admitted such a thought; but he had surely! Never
in her life--she could swear it from the bottom of her soul--had
she ever intended to do wrong; yet these hard judgements had
come. Whatever her sins, they were not sins of intention, but of
inadvertence, and why should she have been punished so persistently?
She passionately seized the first piece of paper that came to hand,
and scribbled the following lines:
O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do
not deserve it. I have thought it all over carefully,
and I can never, never forgive you! You know that I
