. "The fact is," said d'Urberville drily, "whatever your dear husband
believed you accept, and whatever he rejected you reject, without the
least inquiry or reasoning on your own part. That's just like you
women. Your mind is enslaved to his."
"Ah, because he knew everything!" said she, with a triumphant
simplicity of faith in Angel Clare that the most perfect man could
hardly have deserved, much less her husband.
"Yes, but you should not take negative opinions wholesale from
another person like that. A pretty fellow he must be to teach you
such scepticism!" "He never forced my judgement! He would never argue on the subject
with me! But I looked at it in this way; what he believed, after
inquiring deep into doctrines, was much more likely to be right than
what I might believe, who hadn't looked into doctrines at all."
"What used he to say? He must have said something?"
She reflected; and with her acute memory for the letter of Angel
Clare's remarks, even when she did not comprehend their spirit, she
recalled a merciless polemical syllogism that she had heard him
use when, as it occasionally happened, he indulged in a species of
thinking aloud with her at his side. In delivering it she gave also
Clare's accent and manner with reverential faithfulness.
"Say that again," asked d'Urberville, who had listened with the
greatest attention. She repeated the argument, and d'Urberville thoughtfully murmured the
words after her.
"Anything else?" he presently asked. "He said at another time something like this"; and she gave another,
which might possibly have been paralleled in many a work of the
pedigree ranging from the Dictionnaire Philosophique to Huxley's
Essays. "Ah--ha! How do you remember them?"
"I wanted to believe what he believed, though he didn't wish me to;
and I managed to coax him to tell me a few of his thoughts. I can't
say I quite understand that one; but I know it is right."
"H'm. Fancy your being able to teach me what you don't know
yourself!" He fell into thought. "And so I threw in my spiritual lot with his," she resumed. "I
didn't wish it to be different. What's good enough for him is good
enough for me." "Does he know that you are as big an infidel as he?"
"No--I never told him--if I am an infidel."
"Well--you are better off to-day that I am, Tess, after all! You
don't believe that you ought to preach my doctrine, and, therefore,
do no despite to your conscience in abstaining. I do believe I ought
to preach it, but, like the devils, I believe and tremble, for I
suddenly leave off preaching it, and give way to my passion for you."