Tess of the dUrbervilles - Page 235/283

If you really cannot come to me, will you let me come to

you? I am, as I say, worried, pressed to do what I will

not do. It cannot be that I shall yield one inch, yet I am

in terror as to what an accident might lead to, and I so

defenceless on account of my first error. I cannot say more

about this--it makes me too miserable. But if I break down

by falling into some fearful snare, my last state will be

worse than my first. O God, I cannot think of it! Let me

come at once, or at once come to me!

I would be content, ay, glad, to live with you as your

servant, if I may not as your wife; so that I could only be

near you, and get glimpses of you, and think of you as mine.

The daylight has nothing to show me, since you are not here,

and I don't like to see the rooks and starlings in the

field, because I grieve and grieve to miss you who used to

see them with me. I long for only one thing in heaven or

earth or under the earth, to meet you, my own dear! Come

to me--come to me, and save me from what threatens me!-

Your faithful heartbroken TESS

XLIX

The appeal duly found its way to the breakfast-table of the quiet

Vicarage to the westward, in that valley where the air is so soft and

the soil so rich that the effort of growth requires but superficial

aid by comparison with the tillage at Flintcomb-Ash, and where to

Tess the human world seemed so different (though it was much the

same). It was purely for security that she had been requested by

Angel to send her communications through his father, whom he kept

pretty well informed of his changing addresses in the country he

had gone to exploit for himself with a heavy heart.

"Now," said old Mr Clare to his wife, when he had read the envelope,

"if Angel proposes leaving Rio for a visit home at the end of next

month, as he told us that he hoped to do, I think this may hasten his

plans; for I believe it to be from his wife." He breathed deeply at

the thought of her; and the letter was redirected to be promptly sent

on to Angel. "Dear fellow, I hope he will get home safely," murmured Mrs Clare.

"To my dying day I shall feel that he has been ill-used. You should

have sent him to Cambridge in spite of his want of faith and given

him the same chance as the other boys had. He would have grown out

of it under proper influence, and perhaps would have taken Orders

after all. Church or no Church, it would have been fairer to him."