Speaker 1: Chapter twenty six. It was not until the evening after
family prayers that Angel found opportunity approaching to his father
one or two subjects near his heart. He had strung
himself up to the purpose while kneeling behind his brothers
on the carpet, studying the little nails in the heels
of their walking boots. When the service was over, they
went out of the room with their mother, and mister
Clare and himself were left alone. The young man first
discussed with the elder his plans for the attainment of
his position as a farmer on an extensive scale, either
in England or in the colonies. His father then told
him that, as he had not been put to the
expense of sending Angel up to Cambridge, he had felt
it his duty to set by a sum of money
every year towards the purchase or lease of land for
him some day, that he might not feel himself unduly
slighted as far as worldly wealth goes, continued his father,
you will no doubt stand far superior to your brothers
in a few years. This considerateness on old mister Clare's
part led Angel onward to the other and dearer subject.
He observed to his father that he was then six
and twenty, and that when he would start in the
farming business he would require eyes in the back of
his head to see to all matters. Some one would
be necessary to superintend the domestic labors of his establishment
whilst he was afield. Would it not be well therefore,
for him to marry? His father seemed to think this
idea not unreasonable, and then Angel put the question, what
kind of wife do you think would be best for
me as a thrifty, hard working farmer, A truly Christian
woman who would be of help and a comfort to
you in your goings out and your comings in. Beyond that,
it really matters little such a one can be found, indeed,
my earnest minded friend and neighbor, doctor Chant. But ought
she not primarily be able to milk cows, churn good butter,
and make immense cheeses, know how to sit hens and
turkeys and reared chickens, to direct a field of laborers
in an emergency, and estimate the value of sheep and calves. Yes,
a farmer's wife, Yes, certainly it would be desirable. Mister
Clare the elder had plainly never thought of these points
before I was going to add, he said that for
a pure and saintly woman, you will not find one
more to your true advantage, and certainly not more to
your mother's mind and my own than your friend Mercy,
whom you used to show a certain interest in. It
is true that my neighbor chance daughter has lately caught
up the fashion of the younger clergy round about us
for decorating the communion table alter as. I was shocked
to hear her call it one day, with flowers and
other stuff on festival occasions. But her father, who is
quite as opposed to such flummery as I, said that
it can be cured. It is a mere girlish outbreak,
which I am sure will not be permanent. Yes, yes,
Mercy is good and devout, I know. But father, don't
you think that a young woman equally pure and virtuous
as Mischant, But one who, in place of that lady's
ecclesiastical accomplishments, understands the duties of farm life as well
as a farmer himself, would suit me infinitely better. His
father persisted in his conviction that a knowledge of a
farmer's wife's duties came second to a poor line view
of humanity, and the impulsive Angel, wishing to honor his
father's feelings and to advance the cause of his heart,
at the same time, grew specious. He said that fate
or providence had thrown in his way a woman who
possessed every qualification to be the helpmate of an agriculturist,
and was decidedly of a serious turn of mind. He
would not say whether or not she had attached herself
to the sound low church school of his father, but
she would probably be open to conviction on that point.
She was a regular church goer of simple faith, honest hearted, receptive, intelligent,
graceful to a degree, chaste as a vestal, and in
personal appearance exceptionally beautiful. Is she of a family such
that you would care we had to marry into a lady?
In short, asked his startled mother, who had come softly
into the study during the conversation. She is not what
in common parlance is called a lady, said Angel, unflinchingly.
For she is a cottager's daughter, as I am proud
to say. But she is a lady. Nevertheless, in feeling
and nature, mercy Chant is of a very good family.
Pooh what's the advantage of that, mother, said Angel quickly.
How is family to avail the wife of a man
who has to rough it as I have and shall
have to do. Mercy is accomplished, and accomplishments have their
charm returned his mother, looking at him through her silver spectacles.
As to external accomplishments, what will be the use in
them in the life I am going to lead? While
as to her reading, I can take that in hand.
She'll be at pupil enough. As you would say if
you knew her, she's brim full of poetry, actualized poetry,
if I may use the expression, she lives what paper
poets only write. And she's an unimpeachable Christian. I'm sure,
perhaps of the very tribe, genus, and species you desire
to propagate. Oh Angel, you are mocking mother. I beg pardon,
But as she really does attend church almost every Sunday
morning and is a good Christian girl, I'm sure you
will tolerate any social shortcomings for the sake of that quality,
and feel that I may do worse than choose her.
Angel waxed quite earnest in that rather automatic orthodoxy in
his beloved Tess, which never dreaming that it might stand
him in such good stead. He had been prone to
slight when observing it practiced by her and the other milkmaids,
because of its obvious unreality amid beliefs essentially natural realistic
in their sad doubts as to whether their son had
himself any right whatsoever to the title he claimed for
the unknown young woman. Mister and Missus Clare began to
feel it as an advantage not to be overlooked, that
she at least was sound in her views, especially as
the conjunction of the pair must have risen by an
act of providence, for Angel would never have made orthodoxy
a condition of his choice. They said finally that it
was better not to act in a hurry, but that
they would not object to see her. Angel therefore refrained
from declaring more particulars Now he felt that single minded
and self sacrificing as his parents were, there yet existed
certain latent prejudices of theirs as middle class people, which
would require some tact to overcome. For though legally at
liberty to do as he choose, and though their daughter
in law's qualifications could make no practical difference in them
in the probability of her living far away from them,
He wished, for affection's sake not to wound their sentiment
in the most important decision of his life. He observed
his own inconsistencies in dwelling upon accidents in Tess's life
as if they were vital features. It was for herself
that he loved Tess, her soul, her heart, her substance,
not for her skill in the dairy, her aptness as
his scholar, and certainly not for her simple formal faith professions.
Her unsophisticated, open air existence required no varnish of conventionality
to make it palatable to him. He held that education
had as yet but little affected the beats of emotion
and impulse on which domestic happiness depends. It was probable that,
in the lapse of ages, improved systems of moral and
intellectual training would appreciably, perhaps considerably, elevate the involuntary and
even the unconscious instincts of human nature. But up to
the present day, culture, as far as he can see,
might be said to have affected only the mental EpiDerm
of those lives which had been brought under its influence.
This belief was confirmed by his experience of women, which
having latterly been extended from the cultivated middle class into
the rural community, had taught him how much less was
the intrinsic difference between the good and wise woman of
one social stratum and the good and wise woman of
another social stratum, than between the good and bad, the
wise and the foolish of the same stratum or class.
It was the morning of his departure. His brothers had
already left the vicarage to proceed on a walking tour
in the North, whence one was to return to his
college and the other to his curacy. Angel might have
accompanied them, but preferred to rejoin his sweetheart at Halbethays.
He would have been an awkward member of the party,
for though the most appreciative humanist, the most ideal religionist,
even the best versed Christiologist of the three, there was
alienation in the standing consciousness that his squareness would not
fit the round hole that had been prepared for him
to neither Felix nor Cuthbert. Had he ventured to mention
tess his mother made him sandwiches, had his father accompanied
him on his own mare a little way along the road,
Having fairly well advanced his own affairs. Angel listened in
a willing silence as they jogged on together through the
shady lanes to his father's account of his parish difficulties
and the coldness of brother clergyman, whom he loved because
of his strict interpretations of the New Testament by the
light of what they deemed a pernicious calvinistic doc doctrine. Pernicious,
said mister Clare, with genial scorn, and he proceeded to
recount experiences which would show the absurdity of that idea.
He told of wondrous conversions of evil livers of which
he had been the instrument, not only amongst the poor,
but amongst the rich and well to do, and he
also candidly admitted many failures. As an instance of the latter,
he mentioned the case of a young upstart squire named d'urberville,
living some forty miles off in the neighborhood of Trantridge,
not one of the ancient d'Urbervilles of Kingsby are in
other places. Asked his son that curiously historic, worn out
family with its ghostly legend of the coach and four
oh no, the original d'urberville's decayed and disappeared sixty or
eighty years ago, at least I believe. So. This seems
to be a new family which has taken the name
for the credit of the former knightly line. I hope
they are spurious, I am sure, But it is odd
to hear you express interest in old families. I thought
you set less store by them, even than I you
misapprehend me, father, you often do, said Angel, with a
little impatience. Politically, I am skeptical as to the virtue
of their being old, some of the wise, even among
themselves a claim against their own succession, as Hamlet puts it,
but lyrically, dramatically, and even historically, I am tenderly attached
to them. This distinction, though by no means a subtle one,
was yet too subtle for mister Clare the elder, and
he went on with the story he had been about
to relate, which was that, after the death of the
senior so called d'urberville, the young man developed the most
culpable passions, though he had a blind mother whose can
should have made him no better. A knowledge of his
career having come to the ears of mister Clare. When
he was in that part of the country preaching missionary sermons,
he boldly took occasion to speak to the delinquent on
his spiritual state. Though he was a stranger occupying another's pulpit,
he had felt this to be his duty, and took
for his text the words from Saint Luke, thou fool
this night, thy soul shall be required of thee. The
young man much resented this directness of attack, and in
the war of words which followed when they met, he
did not scruple publicly to insult mister Clare without respect
for his gray hairs. Angel flushed with distress. Dear father,
he said, sadly, I wish you would not expose yourself
to such gratuitous pain from scoundrels. Pain, said his father,
his rugged face shining in the ardor of self abdigation.
The only pain to me was pain on his account,
poor foolish young man, Do you supposed his incensed words
could give me any pain or even his blows be reviled.
We bless being persecuted, We suffer it being defamed. We
entreat We are made as the filth of the world,
and as the off scouring of all things, unto this day,
those ancient and noble words of the Corinthians are strictly
true at this present hour, not blows, father, He did
not proceed to blows. No, he did not. Though I
have borne blows from men in a mad state of intoxication,
No a times, my boy, What then I have saved
them from the guilt of murdering their own flesh and
blood thereby, and they have lived to thank me and
praise God. May this young man do the same, said
angel fervently. But I fear otherwise from what you say.
We'll hope nevertheless, said mister Clare. And I continue to
pray for him, though on this side of the grave
we shall probably never meet again. But after all, one
of those poor words of mine may spring up in
his heart as a good seed some day now. As always,
Claire's father was sanguine as a child, and though the
younger could not accept his parent's narrow dogma, he revered
his practice and recognized the hero under the Pietist Perhaps
he revered his father's practice even more now than ever,
seeing that in the question of making Tessy his wife,
his father had not once thought of inquiring whether she
were well provided or penniless, the same unworldliness with what
had necessitated Angels getting a living as a farmer, and
would probably keep his brothers in the position of poor
parsons for the term of their activities. Yet Angel admired
it none the less. Indeed, despite his own heterodoxy, Angel
often felt that he was nearer to his father on
the human side than was either of his brethren. End
of Chapter twenty six.