Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Phase the First: The Maiden 4. CHAPTER IV (continued)

They went home together, Tess holding one arm of her father, and Mrs Durbeyfield the other. He had, in truth, drunk very little--not a fourth of the quantity which a systematic tippler could carry to church on a Sunday afternoon without a hitch in his eastings of genuflections; but the weakness of Sir John's constitution made mountains of his petty sins in this kind. On reaching the fresh air he was sufficiently unsteady to incline the row of three at one moment as if they were marching to London, and at another as if they were marching to Bath--which produced a comical effect, frequent enough in families on nocturnal homegoings; and, like most comical effects, not quite so comic after all. The two women valiantly disguised these forced excursions and countermarches as well as they could from Durbeyfield their cause, and from Abraham, and from themselves; and so they approached by degrees their own door, the head of the family bursting suddenly into his former refrain as he drew near, as if to fortify his soul at sight of the smallness of his present residence--

"I've got a fam--ily vault at Kingsbere!"

"Hush--don't be so silly, Jacky," said his wife. "Yours is not the only family that was of 'count in wold days. Look at the Anktells, and Horseys, and the Tringhams themselves--gone to seed a'most as much as you--though you was bigger folks then they, that's true. Thank God, I was never of no family, and have nothing to be ashamed of in that way!"

"Don't you be so sure o' that. From you nater 'tis my belief you've disgraced yourselves more than any o' us, and was kings and queens outright at one time."

Tess turned the subject by saying what was far more prominent in her own mind at the moment than thoughts of her ancestry--"I am afraid father won't be able to take the journey with the beehives tomorrow so early."

"I? I shall be all right in an hour or two," said Durbeyfield.