Tess of the dUrbervilles | Page 9

an infinitely
Revised Code, there was a gap of two hundred years as ordinarily
understood. When they were together the Jacobean and the Victorian
ages were juxtaposed.
Returning along the garden path Tess mused on what the mother could
have wished to ascertain from the book on this particular day. She
guessed the recent ancestral discovery to bear upon it, but did not
divine that it solely concerned herself. Dismissing this, however, she
busied herself with sprinkling the linen dried during the day-time, in
company with her nine-year-old brother Abraham, and her sister
Eliza-Louisa of twelve and a half, called "'Liza-Lu," the youngest ones
being put to bed. There was an interval of four years and more between
Tess and the next of the family, the two who had filled the gap having
died in their infancy, and this lent her a deputy-maternal attitude when
she was alone with her juniors. Next in juvenility to Abraham came
two more girls, Hope and Modesty; then a boy of three, and then the
baby, who had just completed his first year.
All these young souls were passengers in the Durbeyfield ship--entirely
dependent on the judgement of the two Durbeyfield adults for their
pleasures, their necessities, their health, even their existence. If the
heads of the Durbeyfield household chose to sail into difficulty,
disaster, starvation, disease, degradation, death, thither were these
half-dozen little captives under hatches compelled to sail with

them--six helpless creatures, who had never been asked if they wished
for life on any terms, much less if they wished for it on such hard
conditions as were involved in being of the shiftless house of
Durbeyfield. Some people would like to know whence the poet whose
philosophy is in these days deemed as profound and trustworthy as his
song is breezy and pure, gets his authority for speaking of "Nature's
holy plan."
It grew later, and neither father nor mother reappeared. Tess looked out
of the door, and took a mental journey through Marlott. The village was
shutting its eyes. Candles and lamps were being put out everywhere:
she could inwardly behold the extinguisher and the extended hand.
Her mother's fetching simply meant one more to fetch. Tess began to
perceive that a man in indifferent health, who proposed to start on a
journey before one in the morning, ought not to be at an inn at this late
hour celebrating his ancient blood.
"Abraham," she said to her little brother, "do you put on your hat--you
bain't afraid?--and go up to Rolliver's, and see what has gone wi' father
and mother."
The boy jumped promptly from his seat, and opened the door, and the
night swallowed him up. Half an hour passed yet again; neither man,
woman, nor child returned. Abraham, like his parents, seemed to have
been limed and caught by the ensnaring inn.
"I must go myself," she said.
'Liza-Lu then went to bed, and Tess, locking them all in, started on her
way up the dark and crooked lane or street not made for hasty progress;
a street laid out before inches of land had value, and when one-handed
clocks sufficiently subdivided the day.

IV
Rolliver's inn, the single alehouse at this end of the long and broken

village, could only boast of an off-licence; hence, as nobody could
legally drink on the premises, the amount of overt accommodation for
consumers was strictly limited to a little board about six inches wide
and two yards long, fixed to the garden palings by pieces of wire, so as
to form a ledge. On this board thirsty strangers deposited their cups as
they stood in the road and drank, and threw the dregs on the dusty
ground to the pattern of Polynesia, and wished they could have a restful
seat inside.
Thus the strangers. But there were also local customers who felt the
same wish; and where there's a will there's a way.
In a large bedroom upstairs, the window of which was thickly curtained
with a great woollen shawl lately discarded by the landlady, Mrs
Rolliver, were gathered on this evening nearly a dozen persons, all
seeking beatitude; all old inhabitants of the nearer end of Marlott, and
frequenters of this retreat. Not only did the distance to the The Pure
Drop, the fully-licensed tavern at the further part of the dispersed
village, render its accommodation practically unavailable for dwellers
at this end; but the far more serious question, the quality of the liquor,
confirmed the prevalent opinion that it was better to drink with Rolliver
in a corner of the housetop than with the other landlord in a wide
house.
A gaunt four-post bedstead which stood in the room afforded
sitting-space for several persons gathered round three of its sides; a
couple more men had elevated themselves on