Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays 38. CHAPTER XXXVIII (continued)

She did not reach the house unobserved. Just by the garden-hedge she was met by a girl who knew her--one of the two or three with whom she had been intimate at school. After making a few inquiries as to how Tess came there, her friend, unheeding her tragic look, interrupted with--

"But where's thy gentleman, Tess?"

Tess hastily explained that he had been called away on business, and, leaving her interlocutor, clambered over the garden-hedge, and thus made her way to the house.

As she went up the garden-path she heard her mother singing by the back door, coming in sight of which she perceived Mrs Durbeyfield on the doorstep in the act of wringing a sheet. Having performed this without observing Tess, she went indoors, and her daughter followed her.

The washing-tub stood in the same old place on the same old quarter-hogshead, and her mother, having thrown the sheet aside, was about to plunge her arms in anew.

"Why--Tess!--my chil'--I thought you was married!--married really and truly this time--we sent the cider----"

"Yes, mother; so I am."

"Going to be?"

"No--I am married."

"Married! Then where's thy husband?"

"Oh, he's gone away for a time."

"Gone away! When was you married, then? The day you said?"

"Yes, Tuesday, mother."

"And now 'tis on'y Saturday, and he gone away?"

"Yes, he's gone."

"What's the meaning o' that? 'Nation seize such husbands as you seem to get, say I!"