Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays
38. CHAPTER XXXVIII (continued)
"To think, now, that this was to be the end o't!" said
Sir John. "And I with a family vault under that there
church of Kingsbere as big as Squire Jollard's
ale-cellar, and my folk lying there in sixes and
sevens, as genuine county bones and marrow as any
recorded in history. And now to be sure what they
fellers at Rolliver's and The Pure Drop will say to me!
How they'll squint and glane, and say, 'This is yer
mighty match is it; this is yer getting back to the
true level of yer forefathers in King Norman's time!'
I feel this is too much, Joan; I shall put an end to
myself, title and all--I can bear it no longer! ... But
she can make him keep her if he's married her?"
"Why, yes. But she won't think o' doing that."
"D'ye think he really have married her?--or is it like
the first----"
Poor Tess, who had heard as far as this, could not bear
to hear more. The perception that her word could be
doubted even here, in her own parental house, set her
mind against the spot as nothing else could have done.
How unexpected were the attacks of destiny! And if her
father doubted her a little, would not neighbours and
acquaintance doubt her much? O, she could not live
long at home!
A few days, accordingly, were all that she allowed
herself here, at the end of which time she received a
short note from Clare, informing her that he had gone
to the North of England to look at a farm. In her
craving for the lustre of her true position as his
wife, and to hide from her parents the vast extent of
the division between them, she made use of this letter
as her reason for again departing, leaving them under
the impression that she was setting out to join him.
Still further to screen her husband from any imputation
on unkindness to her, she took twenty-five of the fifty
pounds Clare had given her, and handed the sum over to
her mother, as if the wife of a man like Angel Clare
could well afford it, saying that it was a slight
return for the trouble and humiliation she had brought
upon them in years past. With this assertion of her
dignity she bade them farewell; and after that there
were lively doing in the Durbeyfield household for some
time on the strength of Tess's bounty, her mother
saying, and, indeed, believing, that the rupture which
had arisen between the young husband and wife had
adjusted itself under their strong feeling that they
could not live apart from each other.
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