Tess of the dUrbervilles | Page 8

days we was made Knights o' the Royal Oak, our real
name being d'Urberville! ... Don't that make your bosom plim? 'Twas
on this account that your father rode home in the vlee; not because he'd
been drinking, as people supposed."
"I'm glad of that. Will it do us any good, mother?"
"O yes! 'Tis thoughted that great things may come o't. No doubt a
mampus of volk of our own rank will be down here in their carriages as
soon as 'tis known. Your father learnt it on his way hwome from
Shaston, and he has been telling me the whole pedigree of the matter."
"Where is father now?" asked Tess suddenly.
Her mother gave irrelevant information by way of answer: "He called
to see the doctor to-day in Shaston. It is not consumption at all, it seems.
It is fat round his heart, 'a says. There, it is like this." Joan Durbeyfield,
as she spoke, curved a sodden thumb and forefinger to the shape of the
letter C, and used the other forefinger as a pointer. "'At the present
moment,' he says to your father, 'your heart is enclosed all round there,
and all round there; this space is still open,' 'a says. 'As soon as it do
meet, so,'"--Mrs Durbeyfield closed her fingers into a circle
complete--"'off you will go like a shadder, Mr Durbeyfield,' 'a says.
'You mid last ten years; you mid go off in ten months, or ten days.'"
Tess looked alarmed. Her father possibly to go behind the eternal cloud
so soon, notwithstanding this sudden greatness!
"But where IS father?" she asked again.
Her mother put on a deprecating look. "Now don't you be bursting out
angry! The poor man--he felt so rafted after his uplifting by the pa'son's
news--that he went up to Rolliver's half an hour ago. He do want to get
up his strength for his journey to-morrow with that load of beehives,
which must be delivered, family or no. He'll have to start shortly after
twelve to-night, as the distance is so long."

"Get up his strength!" said Tess impetuously, the tears welling to her
eyes. "O my God! Go to a public-house to get up his strength! And you
as well agreed as he, mother!"
Her rebuke and her mood seemed to fill the whole room, and to impart
a cowed look to the furniture, and candle, and children playing about,
and to her mother's face.
"No," said the latter touchily, "I be not agreed. I have been waiting for
'ee to bide and keep house while I go fetch him."
"I'll go."
"O no, Tess. You see, it would be no use."
Tess did not expostulate. She knew what her mother's objection meant.
Mrs Durbeyfield's jacket and bonnet were already hanging slily upon a
chair by her side, in readiness for this contemplated jaunt, the reason
for which the matron deplored more than its necessity.
"And take the Compleat Fortune-Teller to the outhouse," Joan
continued, rapidly wiping her hands, and donning the garments.
The Compleat Fortune-Teller was an old thick volume, which lay on a
table at her elbow, so worn by pocketing that the margins had reached
the edge of the type. Tess took it up, and her mother started.
This going to hunt up her shiftless husband at the inn was one of Mrs
Durbeyfield's still extant enjoyments in the muck and muddle of rearing
children. To discover him at Rolliver's, to sit there for an hour or two
by his side and dismiss all thought and care of the children during the
interval, made her happy. A sort of halo, an occidental glow, came over
life then. Troubles and other realities took on themselves a
metaphysical impalpability, sinking to mere mental phenomena for
serene contemplation, and no longer stood as pressing concretions
which chafed body and soul. The youngsters, not immediately within
sight, seemed rather bright and desirable appurtenances than otherwise;
the incidents of daily life were not without humorousness and jollity in

their aspect there. She felt a little as she had used to feel when she sat
by her now wedded husband in the same spot during his wooing,
shutting her eyes to his defects of character, and regarding him only in
his ideal presentation as lover.
Tess, being left alone with the younger children, went first to the
outhouse with the fortune-telling book, and stuffed it into the thatch. A
curious fetishistic fear of this grimy volume on the part of her mother
prevented her ever allowing it to stay in the house all night, and hither
it was brought back whenever it had been consulted. Between the
mother, with her fast-perishing lumber of superstitions, folk-lore,
dialect, and orally transmitted ballads, and the daughter, with her
trained National teachings and Standard knowledge under