第137章

`He has won me back to him.'

Clare looked at her keenly, then, gathering her meaning, flagged like one plague-stricken, and his glance sank; it fell on her hands, which, once rosy, were now white and more delicate.

She continued--

`He is upstairs.I hate him now, because he told me a lie - that you would not come again; and you have come! These clothes are what he's put upon me: I didn't care what he did wi' me! But - will you go away, Angel, please, and never come any more?'

They stood fixed, their baffled hearts looking out of their eyes with a joylessness pitiful to see.Both seemed to implore something to shelter them from reality.

`Ah - it is my fault!' said Clare.

But he could not get on.Speech was as inexpressive as silence.But he had a vague consciousness of one thing, though it was not clear to him till later; that his original Tess had spiritually ceased to recognize the body before him as hers - allowing it to drift, like a corpse upon the current, in a direction dissociated from its living will.

A few instants passed, and he found that Tess was gone.His face grew colder and more shrunken as he stood concentrated on the moment, and a minute or two after he found himself in the street, walking along he did not know whither.

Chapter 56 Mrs Brooks, the lady who was the householder at The Herons, and owner of all the handsome furniture, was not a person of an unusually curious turn of mind.She was too deeply materialized, poor woman, by her long and enforced bondage to that arithmetical demon Profit-and-Loss, to retain much curiosity for its own sake, and apart from possible lodgers' pockets.Nevertheless, the visit of Angel Clare to her well-paying tenants, Mr and Mrs d'Urberville, as she deemed them, was sufficiently exceptional in point of time and manner to reinvigorate the feminine proclivity which had been stifled down as useless save in its bearings on the letting trade.

Tess had spoken to her husband from the doorway, without entering the dining-room, and Mrs Brooks, who stood within the partly-closed door of her own sitting-room at the back of the passage, could hear fragments of the conversation - if conversation it could be called - between those two wretched souls.She heard Tess re-ascend the stairs to the first floor, and the departure of Clare, and the closing of the front door behind him.

Then the door of the room above was shut, and Mrs Brooks knew that Tess had re-entered her apartment.As the young lady was not fully dressed Mrs Brooks knew that she would not emerge again for some time.

She accordingly ascended the stairs softly, and stood at the door of the front room - a drawing-room, connected with the room immediately behind it (which was a bedroom) by folding-doors in the common manner.This first floor, containing Mrs Brooks's best apartments, had been taken by the week by the d'Urbervilles.The back room was now in silence; but from the drawing-room there came sounds.

All that she could at first distinguish of them was one syllable, continually repeated in a low note of moaning, as if it came from a soul bound to some Ixionian wheel--`O - O - O!'

Then a silence, then a heavy sigh, and again--`O - O - O!'

The landlady looked through the keyhole.Only a small space of the room inside was visible, but within that space came a corner of the breakfast table, which was already spread for the meal, and also a chair beside.

Over the seat of the chair Tess's face was bowed, her posture being a kneeling one in front of it; her hands were clasped over her head, the skirts of her dressing-gown and the embroidery of her night-gown flowed upon the floor behind her, and her stockingless feet, from which the slippers had fallen, protruded upon the carpet.It was from her lips that came the murmur of unspeakable despair.

Then a man's voice from the adjoining bedroom `What's the matter?'

She did not answer, but went on, in a tone which was a soliloquy rather than an exclamation, and a dirge rather than a soliloquy.Mrs Brooks could only catch a portion:

`And then my dear, dear husband came home to me...and I did not know it!...And you had used your cruel persuasion upon me...you did not stop using it - no - you did not stop! My little sisters and brothers and my mother's needs - they were the things you moved me by...and you said my husband would never come back - never; and you taunted me, and said what a simpleton I was to expect him!...And at last I believed you and gave way!...And then he came back! Now he is gone.Gone a second time, and I have lost him now for ever...and he will not love me the littlest bit ever any more - only hate me!...O yes, I have lost him now - again because of - you!' In writhing, with her head on the chair, she turned her face towards the door, and Mrs Brooks could see the pain upon it; and that her lips were bleeding from the clench of her teeth upon them, and that the long lashes of her closed eyes stuck in wet tags to her cheeks.She continued:

`And he is dying - he looks as if he is dying!...And my sin will kill him and not kill me!...O, you have torn my life all to pieces...made me be what I prayed you in pity not to make me be again!...My own true husband will never, never - O God - I can't bear this! - I cannot!'

There were more and sharper words from the man; then a sudden rustle;she had sprung to her feet.Mrs Brooks, thinking that the speaker was coming to rush out of the door, hastily retreated down the stairs.

She need not have done so, however, for the door of the sitting-room was not opened.But Mrs Brooks felt it unsafe to watch on the landing again, and entered her own parlour below.

She could hear nothing through the floor, although she listened intently, and thereupon went to the kitchen to finish her interrupted breakfast.

Coming up presently to the front room on the ground floor she took up some sewing, waiting for her lodgers to ring that she might take away the breakfast, which she meant to do herself, to discover what was the matter if possible.