"Oh--nothing, miss," he answered. "Marlott is Marlott still. Folks
have died and that. John Durbeyfield, too, hev had a daughter
married this week to a gentleman-farmer; not from John's own house,
you know; they was married elsewhere; the gentleman being of that
high standing that John's own folk was not considered well-be-doing
enough to have any part in it, the bridegroom seeming not to know
how't have been discovered that John is a old and ancient nobleman
himself by blood, with family skillentons in their own vaults to
this day, but done out of his property in the time o' the Romans.
However, Sir John, as we call 'n now, kept up the wedding-day as well
as he could, and stood treat to everybody in the parish; and John's
wife sung songs at The Pure Drop till past eleven o'clock."
Hearing this, Tess felt so sick at heart that she could not decide
to go home publicly in the fly with her luggage and belongings. She
asked the turnpike-keeper if she might deposit her things at his
house for a while, and, on his offering no objection, she dismissed
her carriage, and went on to the village alone by a back lane.
At sight of her father's chimney she asked herself how she could
possibly enter the house? Inside that cottage her relations were
calmly supposing her far away on a wedding-tour with a comparatively
rich man, who was to conduct her to bouncing prosperity; while here
she was, friendless, creeping up to the old door quite by herself,
with no better place to go to in the world.
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!" "Mother!" Tess went across to Joan Durbeyfield, laid her face upon
the matron's bosom, and burst into sobs. "I don't know how to tell
'ee, mother! You said to me, and wrote to me, that I was not to tell
him. But I did tell him--I couldn't help it--and he went away!"