"Just so."
"May I write to you?"
"O yes--if you are ill, or want anything at all. I hope that will
not be the case; so that it may happen that I write first to you."
"I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my
punishment ought to be; only--only--don't make it more than I can
bear!" That was all she said on the matter. If Tess had been artful, had
she made a scene, fainted, wept hysterically, in that lonely lane,
notwithstanding the fury of fastidiousness with which he was
possessed, he would probably not have withstood her. But her mood
of long-suffering made his way easy for him, and she herself was
his best advocate. Pride, too, entered into her submission--which
perhaps was a symptom of that reckless acquiescence in chance too
apparent in the whole d'Urberville family--and the many effective
chords which she could have stirred by an appeal were left untouched.
The remainder of their discourse was on practical matters only. He
now handed her a packet containing a fairly good sum of money, which
he had obtained from his bankers for the purpose. The brilliants,
the interest in which seemed to be Tess's for her life only (if he
understood the wording of the will), he advised her to let him send
to a bank for safety; and to this she readily agreed. These things arranged, he walked with Tess back to the carriage,
and handed her in. The coachman was paid and told where to drive
her. Taking next his own bag and umbrella--the sole articles he had
brought with him hitherwards--he bade her goodbye; and they parted
there and then. The fly moved creepingly up a hill, and Clare watched it go with an
unpremeditated hope that Tess would look out of the window for one
moment. But that she never thought of doing, would not have ventured
to do, lying in a half-dead faint inside. Thus he beheld her recede,
and in the anguish of his heart quoted a line from a poet, with
peculiar emendations of his own-God's NOT in his heaven:
All's WRONG with the world! When Tess had passed over the crest of the hill he turned to go his
own way, and hardly knew that he loved her still.
XXXVIII
As she drove on through Blackmoor Vale, and the landscape of her
youth began to open around her, Tess aroused herself from her stupor.
Her first thought was how would she be able to face her parents? She reached a turnpike-gate which stood upon the highway to the
village. It was thrown open by a stranger, not by the old man who
had kept it for many years, and to whom she had been known; he had
probably left on New Year's Day, the date when such changes were
made. Having received no intelligence lately from her home, she
asked the turnpike-keeper for news.