feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_5_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapters 21-24
feat_summary_id: chapters 21-24
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapters 21-24", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219151046/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary-and-analysis/phase-the-third-the-rally-chapters-2124", "summary": "The entire dairy is paralyzed when the milk does not begin to turn to butter. It is suggested that the butter won't come because \"Perhaps somebody in the house is in love.\" Mr. Crick doesn't believe the superstition but instead tells a rather raucous story about a man who had gotten a young girl pregnant. Tess hears the tale, and while others laugh at the story, she rushes outside because the story of Jack Dollop is too real for her. Eventually, the butter begins to form in the churn, and all settles down at the farm. The resident milkmaids, Retty Priddle, Izz Huett, and Marian, take turns gawking at Angel by peeking at him from their room as he moves through the farmyard. Tess does not engage in the girls' sport, and Marian suggests that Angel is in love with Tess, that \"he likes Tess Durbeyfield best.\" All the maids are in love with Angel, but even they seem to sense that Tess and Angel are beginning to show signs of love for each other. It is mid-July, and the weather has turned quite warm, both morning and night, in the Blackmoor Valley. One Sunday, the four maids ready themselves for church. On their way, as a heavy summer downpour had flooded the rivers and creeks, an overflowing creek stops them. Coming from the direction opposite the church is Angel. He volunteers to carry each girl across the swollen current so that their Sunday frocks are not ruined. All of them, including Tess, are shocked and delighted that Angel would spontaneously extend an opportunity for each of them to be held so close to their \"ideal man.\" As Angel crosses the creek with Tess, he hints at his feelings for her, telling her that \"he has undergone three-quarters of the labour entirely for the sake of the fourth-quarter\" and that he \"did not expect such an event today.\" When Tess replies that she also had not anticipated the heavy rains and swollen creek, Angel realizes that Tess does not realize his meaning. Feeling that he is taking unfair advantage of an accidental situation, Angel carries her the rest of the way across and deposits her with her friends. When Angel again leaves, Tess' companions tell her that, although Angel likes her best, he is meant to marry another woman, chosen by his family. During the hot summer at Talbothays, the relationship between Tess and Angel grows as Hardy notes \"It was impossible that the most fanciful love should not grow passionate. The ready bosoms existing there were impregnated by their surroundings.\" Angel secretly watches Tess as she works and musters the courage to tell her of his love for her.", "analysis": "In Crick's telling the story of Jack Dollop, Hardy shows us the dark, real side of humor whereupon many jokes are based. The butt of the joke is usually some person or profession that we might see as humorous. But Tess has lived the tale of Jack Dollop, and she cannot bear being \"ridiculed\" even though no one at Talbothays knows her story. When Angel carries Tess across the swollen creek and his preference for her becomes obvious to her companions, the other young ladies are not hurtful or vindictive, as the women at The Slopes were when they realized Alec's preference for Tess. Of the girls at Talbothays, Hardy says \"The differences which distinguished them as individuals were abstracted by passion, and each was but portion of one organism called sex. There was so much frankness and so little jealousy because there was no hope.\" In fact, they later tell Tess of the woman Angel's family has selected for him to marry and do so without spite or resentfulness. Instead, they \"talked, and ached, and wept till sleep charmed their sorrow away.\" Hardy presents Angel's character more fully in this chapter. Angel is a man very much intellectually challenged by his world, a man who studies its contradictions and who uses a most subtle approach when he makes his overtures to Tess. Angel, although he is the son of a minister, has difficulty with the religion, the church, and church doctrine. He is a naturalist who seeks his answers in the world that he can relate to, \"preferr sermons in stones to sermons in churches and chapels on fine summer days.\" Yet his actions to aid the young ladies when crossing the flooded creek and his remarks alluding to the Jacob/Leah/Rachel story from Genesis, suggest a more complex character steeped in Christian teachings, but who questions some of the practices of the institution itself.  Angel is an intellectual free thinker who approaches his environment with thoughtful deliberation and careful consideration. His approach to other people is not as aloof as we may be inclined to believe; he prefers not to abuse his position or stand with others. This can be clearly seen at the creek, \"It reminded Angel that he was somewhat unfairly taking advantage of an accidental position, and he went no further with it.\" It is also, as mentioned earlier, a way in which Angel's behavior directly contrasts with Alec d'Urberville's behavior. Glossary Touchwood dried, decayed wood or dried fungus used as tinder. almanack  almanac. handkercher  handkerchief. Ballyragging bullying, intimidating, or browbeating. pummy ground apples used in making cider. fagged to have worked hard and become very tired;  to have served as a servant. Thermidorean weather here, warm summer months; Thermidor is a reference to the month from July 19 to August 17 in the French calendar, instituted in 1793 after the Revolution. enervating depriving of strength, force, vigor, etc.; weakening physically, mentally, or morally. Ethiopic hot, African-like scorching of the farmland and pasture."}
text: 
  
  There was a great stir in the milk-house just after breakfast.  The
  churn revolved as usual, but the butter would not come.  Whenever
  this happened the dairy was paralyzed.  Squish, squash echoed the
  milk in the great cylinder, but never arose the sound they waited
  for.
  
  Dairyman Crick and his wife, the milkmaids Tess, Marian, Retty
  Priddle, Izz Huett, and the married ones from the cottages; also
  Mr Clare, Jonathan Kail, old Deborah, and the rest, stood gazing
  hopelessly at the churn; and the boy who kept the horse going outside
  put on moon-like eyes to show his sense of the situation.  Even the
  melancholy horse himself seemed to look in at the window in inquiring
  despair at each walk round.
  
  "'Tis years since I went to Conjuror Trendle's son in Egdon--years!"
  said the dairyman bitterly.  "And he was nothing to what his father
  had been.  I have said fifty times, if I have said once, that I DON'T
  believe in en; though 'a do cast folks' waters very true.  But I
  shall have to go to 'n if he's alive.  O yes, I shall have to go to
  'n, if this sort of thing continnys!"
  
  Even Mr Clare began to feel tragical at the dairyman's desperation.
  
  "Conjuror Fall, t'other side of Casterbridge, that they used to call
  'Wide-O', was a very good man when I was a boy," said Jonathan Kail.
  "But he's rotten as touchwood by now."
  
  "My grandfather used to go to Conjuror Mynterne, out at Owlscombe,
  and a clever man a' were, so I've heard grandf'er say," continued Mr
  Crick.  "But there's no such genuine folk about nowadays!"
  
  Mrs Crick's mind kept nearer to the matter in hand.
  
  "Perhaps somebody in the house is in love," she said tentatively.
  "I've heard tell in my younger days that that will cause it.  Why,
  Crick--that maid we had years ago, do ye mind, and how the butter
  didn't come then--"
  
  "Ah yes, yes!--but that isn't the rights o't.  It had nothing to do
  with the love-making.  I can mind all about it--'twas the damage to
  the churn."
  
  He turned to Clare.
  
  "Jack Dollop, a 'hore's-bird of a fellow we had here as milker at one
  time, sir, courted a young woman over at Mellstock, and deceived her
  as he had deceived many afore.  But he had another sort o' woman to
  reckon wi' this time, and it was not the girl herself.  One Holy
  Thursday of all days in the almanack, we was here as we mid be now,
  only there was no churning in hand, when we zid the girl's mother
  coming up to the door, wi' a great brass-mounted umbrella in her
  hand that would ha' felled an ox, and saying 'Do Jack Dollop work
  here?--because I want him!  I have a big bone to pick with he, I
  can assure 'n!'  And some way behind her mother walked Jack's young
  woman, crying bitterly into her handkercher.  'O Lard, here's a
  time!' said Jack, looking out o' winder at 'em.  'She'll murder me!
  Where shall I get--where shall I--?  Don't tell her where I be!'
  And with that he scrambled into the churn through the trap-door, and
  shut himself inside, just as the young woman's mother busted into
  the milk-house.  'The villain--where is he?' says she.  'I'll claw
  his face for'n, let me only catch him!'  Well, she hunted about
  everywhere, ballyragging Jack by side and by seam, Jack lying
  a'most stifled inside the churn, and the poor maid--or young woman
  rather--standing at the door crying her eyes out.  I shall never
  forget it, never! 'Twould have melted a marble stone!  But she
  couldn't find him nowhere at all."
  
  The dairyman paused, and one or two words of comment came from the
  listeners.
  
  Dairyman Crick's stories often seemed to be ended when they were not
  really so, and strangers were betrayed into premature interjections
  of finality; though old friends knew better.  The narrator went on--
  
  "Well, how the old woman should have had the wit to guess it I could
  never tell, but she found out that he was inside that there churn.
  Without saying a word she took hold of the winch (it was turned by
  handpower then), and round she swung him, and Jack began to flop
  about inside.  'O Lard! stop the churn! let me out!' says he, popping
  out his head.  'I shall be churned into a pummy!'  (He was a cowardly
  chap in his heart, as such men mostly be).  'Not till ye make amends
  for ravaging her virgin innocence!' says the old woman.  'Stop the
  churn you old witch!' screams he.  'You call me old witch, do ye, you
  deceiver!' says she, 'when ye ought to ha' been calling me mother-law
  these last five months!'  And on went the churn, and Jack's bones
  rattled round again.  Well, none of us ventured to interfere; and at
  last 'a promised to make it right wi' her.  'Yes--I'll be as good as
  my word!' he said.  And so it ended that day."
  
  While the listeners were smiling their comments there was a
  quick movement behind their backs, and they looked round.  Tess,
  pale-faced, had gone to the door.
  
  "How warm 'tis to-day!" she said, almost inaudibly.
  
  It was warm, and none of them connected her withdrawal with the
  reminiscences of the dairyman.  He went forward and opened the door
  for her, saying with tender raillery--
  
  "Why, maidy" (he frequently, with unconscious irony, gave her this
  pet name), "the prettiest milker I've got in my dairy; you mustn't
  get so fagged as this at the first breath of summer weather, or we
  shall be finely put to for want of 'ee by dog-days, shan't we, Mr
  Clare?"
  
  "I was faint--and--I think I am better out o' doors," she said
  mechanically; and disappeared outside.
  
  Fortunately for her the milk in the revolving churn at that moment
  changed its squashing for a decided flick-flack.
  
  "'Tis coming!" cried Mrs Crick, and the attention of all was called
  off from Tess.
  
  That fair sufferer soon recovered herself externally; but she
  remained much depressed all the afternoon. When the evening milking
  was done she did not care to be with the rest of them, and went out
  of doors, wandering along she knew not whither.  She was wretched--O
  so wretched--at the perception that to her companions the dairyman's
  story had been rather a humorous narration than otherwise; none of
  them but herself seemed to see the sorrow of it; to a certainty, not
  one knew how cruelly it touched the tender place in her experience.
  The evening sun was now ugly to her, like a great inflamed wound in
  the sky.  Only a solitary cracked-voice reed-sparrow greeted her from
  the bushes by the river, in a sad, machine-made tone, resembling that
  of a past friend whose friendship she had outworn.
  
  In these long June days the milkmaids, and, indeed, most of the
  household, went to bed at sunset or sooner, the morning work before
  milking being so early and heavy at a time of full pails.  Tess
  usually accompanied her fellows upstairs.  To-night, however, she was
  the first to go to their common chamber; and she had dozed when the
  other girls came in.  She saw them undressing in the orange light
  of the vanished sun, which flushed their forms with its colour; she
  dozed again, but she was reawakened by their voices, and quietly
  turned her eyes towards them.
  
  Neither of her three chamber-companions had got into bed.  They were
  standing in a group, in their nightgowns, barefooted, at the window,
  the last red rays of the west still warming their faces and necks and
  the walls around them.  All were watching somebody in the garden with
  deep interest, their three faces close together: a jovial and round
  one, a pale one with dark hair, and a fair one whose tresses were
  auburn.
  
  "Don't push!  You can see as well as I," said Retty, the
  auburn-haired and youngest girl, without removing her eyes from the
  window.
  
  "'Tis no use for you to be in love with him any more than me, Retty
  Priddle," said jolly-faced Marian, the eldest, slily.  "His thoughts
  be of other cheeks than thine!"
  
  Retty Priddle still looked, and the others looked again.
  
  "There he is again!" cried Izz Huett, the pale girl with dark damp
  hair and keenly cut lips.
  
  "You needn't say anything, Izz," answered Retty.  "For I zid you
  kissing his shade."
  
  "WHAT did you see her doing?" asked Marian.
  
  "Why--he was standing over the whey-tub to let off the whey, and the
  shade of his face came upon the wall behind, close to Izz, who was
  standing there filling a vat.  She put her mouth against the wall and
  kissed the shade of his mouth; I zid her, though he didn't."
  
  "O Izz Huett!" said Marian.
  
  A rosy spot came into the middle of Izz Huett's cheek.
  
  "Well, there was no harm in it," she declared, with attempted
  coolness.  "And if I be in love wi'en, so is Retty, too; and so be
  you, Marian, come to that."
  
  Marian's full face could not blush past its chronic pinkness.
  
  "I!" she said.  "What a tale!  Ah, there he is again!  Dear
  eyes--dear face--dear Mr Clare!"
  
  "There--you've owned it!"
  
  "So have you--so have we all," said Marian, with the dry frankness of
  complete indifference to opinion.  "It is silly to pretend otherwise
  amongst ourselves, though we need not own it to other folks.  I would
  just marry 'n to-morrow!"
  
  "So would I--and more," murmured Izz Huett.
  
  "And I too," whispered the more timid Retty.
  
  The listener grew warm.
  
  "We can't all marry him," said Izz.
  
  "We shan't, either of us; which is worse still," said the eldest.
  "There he is again!"
  
  They all three blew him a silent kiss.
  
  "Why?" asked Retty quickly.
  
  "Because he likes Tess Durbeyfield best," said Marian, lowering her
  voice.  "I have watched him every day, and have found it out."
  
  There was a reflective silence.
  
  "But she don't care anything for 'n?" at length breathed Retty.
  
  "Well--I sometimes think that too."
  
  "But how silly all this is!" said Izz Huett impatiently.  "Of course
  he won't marry any one of us, or Tess either--a gentleman's son,
  who's going to be a great landowner and farmer abroad!  More likely
  to ask us to come wi'en as farm-hands at so much a year!"
  
  One sighed, and another sighed, and Marian's plump figure sighed
  biggest of all.  Somebody in bed hard by sighed too.  Tears came into
  the eyes of Retty Priddle, the pretty red-haired youngest--the last
  bud of the Paridelles, so important in the county annals.  They
  watched silently a little longer, their three faces still close
  together as before, and the triple hues of their hair mingling.  But
  the unconscious Mr Clare had gone indoors, and they saw him no more;
  and, the shades beginning to deepen, they crept into their beds.
  In a few minutes they heard him ascend the ladder to his own room.
  Marian was soon snoring, but Izz did not drop into forgetfulness for
  a long time.  Retty Priddle cried herself to sleep.
  
  The deeper-passioned Tess was very far from sleeping even then.  This
  conversation was another of the bitter pills she had been obliged to
  swallow that day.  Scarce the least feeling of jealousy arose in her
  breast.  For that matter she knew herself to have the preference.
  Being more finely formed, better educated, and, though the youngest
  except Retty, more woman than either, she perceived that only the
  slightest ordinary care was necessary for holding her own in Angel
  Clare's heart against these her candid friends.  But the grave
  question was, ought she to do this?  There was, to be sure, hardly a
  ghost of a chance for either of them, in a serious sense; but there
  was, or had been, a chance of one or the other inspiring him with a
  passing fancy for her, and enjoying the pleasure of his attentions
  while he stayed here.  Such unequal attachments had led to marriage;
  and she had heard from Mrs Crick that Mr Clare had one day asked, in
  a laughing way, what would be the use of his marrying a fine lady,
  and all the while ten thousand acres of Colonial pasture to feed,
  and cattle to rear, and corn to reap.  A farm-woman would be the
  only sensible kind of wife for him.  But whether Mr Clare had spoken
  seriously or not, why should she, who could never conscientiously
  allow any man to marry her now, and who had religiously determined
  that she never would be tempted to do so, draw off Mr Clare's
  attention from other women, for the brief happiness of sunning
  herself in his eyes while he remained at Talbothays?
  
  
  
  
  They came downstairs yawning next morning; but skimming and milking
  were proceeded with as usual, and they went indoors to breakfast.
  Dairyman Crick was discovered stamping about the house.  He had
  received a letter, in which a customer had complained that the butter
  had a twang.
  
  "And begad, so 't have!" said the dairyman, who held in his left hand
  a wooden slice on which a lump of butter was stuck. "Yes--taste for
  yourself!"
  
  Several of them gathered round him; and Mr Clare tasted, Tess tasted,
  also the other indoor milkmaids, one or two of the milking-men, and
  last of all Mrs Crick, who came out from the waiting breakfast-table.
  There certainly was a twang.
  
  The dairyman, who had thrown himself into abstraction to better
  realize the taste, and so divine the particular species of noxious
  weed to which it appertained, suddenly exclaimed--
  
  "'Tis garlic! and I thought there wasn't a blade left in that mead!"
  
  Then all the old hands remembered that a certain dry mead, into which
  a few of the cows had been admitted of late, had, in years gone by,
  spoilt the butter in the same way.  The dairyman had not recognized
  the taste at that time, and thought the butter bewitched.
  
  "We must overhaul that mead," he resumed; "this mustn't continny!"
  
  All having armed themselves with old pointed knives, they went out
  together.  As the inimical plant could only be present in very
  microscopic dimensions to have escaped ordinary observation, to
  find it seemed rather a hopeless attempt in the stretch of rich
  grass before them.  However, they formed themselves into line, all
  assisting, owing to the importance of the search; the dairyman at
  the upper end with Mr Clare, who had volunteered to help; then
  Tess, Marian, Izz Huett, and Retty; then Bill Lewell, Jonathan, and
  the married dairywomen--Beck Knibbs, with her wooly black hair and
  rolling eyes; and flaxen Frances, consumptive from the winter damps
  of the water-meads--who lived in their respective cottages.
  
  With eyes fixed upon the ground they crept slowly across a strip of
  the field, returning a little further down in such a manner that,
  when they should have finished, not a single inch of the pasture but
  would have fallen under the eye of some one of them.  It was a most
  tedious business, not more than half a dozen shoots of garlic being
  discoverable in the whole field; yet such was the herb's pungency
  that probably one bite of it by one cow had been sufficient to season
  the whole dairy's produce for the day.
  
  Differing one from another in natures and moods so greatly as they
  did, they yet formed, bending, a curiously uniform row--automatic,
  noiseless; and an alien observer passing down the neighbouring lane
  might well have been excused for massing them as "Hodge".  As they
  crept along, stooping low to discern the plant, a soft yellow gleam
  was reflected from the buttercups into their shaded faces, giving
  them an elfish, moonlit aspect, though the sun was pouring upon their
  backs in all the strength of noon.
  
  Angel Clare, who communistically stuck to his rule of taking part
  with the rest in everything, glanced up now and then.  It was not,
  of course, by accident that he walked next to Tess.
  
  "Well, how are you?" he murmured.
  
  "Very well, thank you, sir," she replied demurely.
  
  As they had been discussing a score of personal matters only
  half-an-hour before, the introductory style seemed a little
  superfluous.  But they got no further in speech just then.  They
  crept and crept, the hem of her petticoat just touching his gaiter,
  and his elbow sometimes brushing hers.  At last the dairyman, who
  came next, could stand it no longer.
  
  "Upon my soul and body, this here stooping do fairly make my back
  open and shut!" he exclaimed, straightening himself slowly with an
  excruciated look till quite upright.  "And you, maidy Tess, you
  wasn't well a day or two ago--this will make your head ache finely!
  Don't do any more, if you feel fainty; leave the rest to finish it."
  
  Dairyman Crick withdrew, and Tess dropped behind.  Mr Clare also
  stepped out of line, and began privateering about for the weed.  When
  she found him near her, her very tension at what she had heard the
  night before made her the first to speak.
  
  "Don't they look pretty?" she said.
  
  "Who?"
  
  "Izzy Huett and Retty."
  
  Tess had moodily decided that either of these maidens would make a
  good farmer's wife, and that she ought to recommend them, and obscure
  her own wretched charms.
  
  "Pretty?  Well, yes--they are pretty girls--fresh looking.  I have
  often thought so."
  
  "Though, poor dears, prettiness won't last long!"
  
  "O no, unfortunately."
  
  "They are excellent dairywomen."
  
  "Yes: though not better than you."
  
  "They skim better than I."
  
  "Do they?"
  
  Clare remained observing them--not without their observing him.
  
  "She is colouring up," continued Tess heroically.
  
  "Who?"
  
  "Retty Priddle."
  
  "Oh!  Why it that?"
  
  "Because you are looking at her."
  
  Self-sacrificing as her mood might be, Tess could not well go further
  and cry, "Marry one of them, if you really do want a dairywoman and
  not a lady; and don't think of marrying me!"  She followed Dairyman
  Crick, and had the mournful satisfaction of seeing that Clare
  remained behind.
  
  From this day she forced herself to take pains to avoid him--never
  allowing herself, as formerly, to remain long in his company, even if
  their juxtaposition were purely accidental.  She gave the other three
  every chance.
  
  Tess was woman enough to realize from their avowals to herself that
  Angel Clare had the honour of all the dairymaids in his keeping, and
  her perception of his care to avoid compromising the happiness of
  either in the least degree bred a tender respect in Tess for what she
  deemed, rightly or wrongly, the self-controlling sense of duty shown
  by him, a quality which she had never expected to find in one of the
  opposite sex, and in the absence of which more than one of the simple
  hearts who were his house-mates might have gone weeping on her
  pilgrimage.
  
  
  
  
  The hot weather of July had crept upon them unawares, and the
  atmosphere of the flat vale hung heavy as an opiate over the
  dairy-folk, the cows, and the trees.  Hot steaming rains fell
  frequently, making the grass where the cows fed yet more rank, and
  hindering the late hay-making in the other meads.
  
  It was Sunday morning; the milking was done; the outdoor milkers
  had gone home.  Tess and the other three were dressing themselves
  rapidly, the whole bevy having agreed to go together to Mellstock
  Church, which lay some three or four miles distant from the
  dairy-house.  She had now been two months at Talbothays, and this
  was her first excursion.
  
  All the preceding afternoon and night heavy thunderstorms had hissed
  down upon the meads, and washed some of the hay into the river; but
  this morning the sun shone out all the more brilliantly for the
  deluge, and the air was balmy and clear.
  
  The crooked lane leading from their own parish to Mellstock ran along
  the lowest levels in a portion of its length, and when the girls
  reached the most depressed spot they found that the result of the
  rain had been to flood the lane over-shoe to a distance of some fifty
  yards.  This would have been no serious hindrance on a week-day; they
  would have clicked through it in their high pattens and boots quite
  unconcerned; but on this day of vanity, this Sun's-day, when flesh
  went forth to coquet with flesh while hypocritically affecting
  business with spiritual things; on this occasion for wearing their
  white stockings and thin shoes, and their pink, white, and lilac
  gowns, on which every mud spot would be visible, the pool was an
  awkward impediment.  They could hear the church-bell calling--as yet
  nearly a mile off.
  
  "Who would have expected such a rise in the river in summer-time!"
  said Marian, from the top of the roadside bank on which they had
  climbed, and were maintaining a precarious footing in the hope of
  creeping along its slope till they were past the pool.
  
  "We can't get there anyhow, without walking right through it, or else
  going round the Turnpike way; and that would make us so very late!"
  said Retty, pausing hopelessly.
  
  "And I do colour up so hot, walking into church late, and all the
  people staring round," said Marian, "that I hardly cool down again
  till we get into the That-it-may-please-Thees."
  
  While they stood clinging to the bank they heard a splashing round
  the bend of the road, and presently appeared Angel Clare, advancing
  along the lane towards them through the water.
  
  Four hearts gave a big throb simultaneously.
  
  His aspect was probably as un-Sabbatarian a one as a dogmatic
  parson's son often presented; his attire being his dairy clothes,
  long wading boots, a cabbage-leaf inside his hat to keep his head
  cool, with a thistle-spud to finish him off.  "He's not going to
  church," said Marian.
  
  "No--I wish he was!" murmured Tess.
  
  Angel, in fact, rightly or wrongly (to adopt the safe phrase of
  evasive controversialists), preferred sermons in stones to sermons in
  churches and chapels on fine summer days.  This morning, moreover,
  he had gone out to see if the damage to the hay by the flood was
  considerable or not.  On his walk he observed the girls from a long
  distance, though they had been so occupied with their difficulties of
  passage as not to notice him.  He knew that the water had risen at
  that spot, and that it would quite check their progress.  So he had
  hastened on, with a dim idea of how he could help them--one of them
  in particular.
  
  The rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed quartet looked so charming in their
  light summer attire, clinging to the roadside bank like pigeons on a
  roof-slope, that he stopped a moment to regard them before coming
  close.  Their gauzy skirts had brushed up from the grass innumerable
  flies and butterflies which, unable to escape, remained caged in
  the transparent tissue as in an aviary.  Angel's eye at last fell
  upon Tess, the hindmost of the four; she, being full of suppressed
  laughter at their dilemma, could not help meeting his glance
  radiantly.
  
  He came beneath them in the water, which did not rise over his long
  boots; and stood looking at the entrapped flies and butterflies.
  
  "Are you trying to get to church?" he said to Marian, who was in
  front, including the next two in his remark, but avoiding Tess.
  
  "Yes, sir; and 'tis getting late; and my colour do come up so--"
  
  "I'll carry you through the pool--every Jill of you."
  
  The whole four flushed as if one heart beat through them.
  
  "I think you can't, sir," said Marian.
  
  "It is the only way for you to get past.  Stand still.  Nonsense--you
  are not too heavy!  I'd carry you all four together.  Now, Marian,
  attend," he continued, "and put your arms round my shoulders, so.
  Now!  Hold on. That's well done."
  
  Marian had lowered herself upon his arm and shoulder as directed, and
  Angel strode off with her, his slim figure, as viewed from behind,
  looking like the mere stem to the great nosegay suggested by hers.
  They disappeared round the curve of the road, and only his sousing
  footsteps and the top ribbon of Marian's bonnet told where they were.
  In a few minutes he reappeared.  Izz Huett was the next in order upon
  the bank.
  
  "Here he comes," she murmured, and they could hear that her lips were
  dry with emotion.  "And I have to put my arms round his neck and look
  into his face as Marian did."
  
  "There's nothing in that," said Tess quickly.
  
  "There's a time for everything," continued Izz, unheeding.  "A time
  to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; the first is now
  going to be mine."
  
  "Fie--it is Scripture, Izz!"
  
  "Yes," said Izz, "I've always a' ear at church for pretty verses."
  
  Angel Clare, to whom three-quarters of this performance was a
  commonplace act of kindness, now approached Izz.  She quietly and
  dreamily lowered herself into his arms, and Angel methodically
  marched off with her.  When he was heard returning for the third time
  Retty's throbbing heart could be almost seen to shake her.  He went
  up to the red-haired girl, and while he was seizing her he glanced at
  Tess.  His lips could not have pronounced more plainly, "It will soon
  be you and I."  Her comprehension appeared in her face; she could not
  help it.  There was an understanding between them.
  
  Poor little Retty, though by far the lightest weight, was the most
  troublesome of Clare's burdens.  Marian had been like a sack of meal,
  a dead weight of plumpness under which he has literally staggered.
  Izz had ridden sensibly and calmly.  Retty was a bunch of hysterics.
  
  However, he got through with the disquieted creature, deposited her,
  and returned.  Tess could see over the hedge the distant three in a
  group, standing as he had placed them on the next rising ground.  It
  was now her turn.  She was embarrassed to discover that excitement at
  the proximity of Mr Clare's breath and eyes, which she had contemned
  in her companions, was intensified in herself; and as if fearful of
  betraying her secret, she paltered with him at the last moment.
  
  "I may be able to clim' along the bank perhaps--I can clim' better
  than they.  You must be so tired, Mr Clare!"
  
  "No, no, Tess," said he quickly.  And almost before she was aware,
  she was seated in his arms and resting against his shoulder.
  
  "Three Leahs to get one Rachel," he whispered.
  
  "They are better women than I," she replied, magnanimously sticking
  to her resolve.
  
  "Not to me," said Angel.
  
  He saw her grow warm at this; and they went some steps in silence.
  
  "I hope I am not too heavy?" she said timidly.
  
  "O no.  You should lift Marian!  Such a lump.  You are like an
  undulating billow warmed by the sun.  And all this fluff of muslin
  about you is the froth."
  
  "It is very pretty--if I seem like that to you."
  
  "Do you know that I have undergone three-quarters of this labour
  entirely for the sake of the fourth quarter?"
  
  "No."
  
  "I did not expect such an event to-day."
  
  "Nor I...  The water came up so sudden."
  
  That the rise in the water was what she understood him to refer to,
  the state of breathing belied.  Clare stood still and inclinced his
  face towards hers.
  
  "O Tessy!" he exclaimed.
  
  The girl's cheeks burned to the breeze, and she could not look into
  his eyes for her emotion.  It reminded Angel that he was somewhat
  unfairly taking advantage of an accidental position; and he went no
  further with it.  No definite words of love had crossed their lips
  as yet, and suspension at this point was desirable now. However,
  he walked slowly, to make the remainder of the distance as long as
  possible; but at last they came to the bend, and the rest of their
  progress was in full view of the other three.  The dry land was
  reached, and he set her down.
  
  Her friends were looking with round thoughtful eyes at her and him,
  and she could see that they had been talking of her.  He hastily bade
  them farewell, and splashed back along the stretch of submerged road.
  
  The four moved on together as before, till Marian broke the silence
  by saying--
  
  "No--in all truth; we have no chance against her!"  She looked
  joylessly at Tess.
  
  "What do you mean?" asked the latter.
  
  "He likes 'ee best--the very best!  We could see it as he brought
  'ee.  He would have kissed 'ee, if you had encouraged him to do it,
  ever so little."
  
  "No, no," said she.
  
  The gaiety with which they had set out had somehow vanished; and
  yet there was no enmity or malice between them.  They were generous
  young souls; they had been reared in the lonely country nooks where
  fatalism is a strong sentiment, and they did not blame her.  Such
  supplanting was to be.
  
  Tess's heart ached.  There was no concealing from herself the fact
  that she loved Angel Clare, perhaps all the more passionately from
  knowing that the others had also lost their hearts to him.  There is
  contagion in this sentiment, especially among women.  And yet that
  same hungry nature had fought against this, but too feebly, and the
  natural result had followed.
  
  "I will never stand in your way, nor in the way of either of you!"
  she declared to Retty that night in the bedroom (her tears running
  down).  "I can't help this, my dear!  I don't think marrying is in
  his mind at all; but if he were ever to ask me I should refuse him,
  as I should refuse any man."
  
  "Oh! would you?  Why?" said wondering Retty.
  
  "It cannot be!  But I will be plain.  Putting myself quite on one
  side, I don't think he will choose either of you."
  
  "I have never expected it--thought of it!" moaned Retty.  "But O! I
  wish I was dead!"
  
  The poor child, torn by a feeling which she hardly understood, turned
  to the other two girls who came upstairs just then.
  
  "We be friends with her again," she said to them.  "She thinks no
  more of his choosing her than we do."
  
  So the reserve went off, and they were confiding and warm.
  
  "I don't seem to care what I do now," said Marian, whose mood was
  turned to its lowest bass.  "I was going to marry a dairyman at
  Stickleford, who's asked me twice; but--my soul--I would put an end
  to myself rather'n be his wife now!  Why don't ye speak, Izz?"
  
  "To confess, then," murmured Izz, "I made sure to-day that he was
  going to kiss me as he held me; and I lay still against his breast,
  hoping and hoping, and never moved at all.  But he did not.  I don't
  like biding here at Talbothays any longer!  I shall go hwome."
  
  The air of the sleeping-chamber seemed to palpitate with the
  hopeless passion of the girls.  They writhed feverishly under the
  oppressiveness of an emotion thrust on them by cruel Nature's law--an
  emotion which they had neither expected nor desired.  The incident
  of the day had fanned the flame that was burning the inside of their
  hearts out, and the torture was almost more than they could endure.
  The differences which distinguished them as individuals were
  abstracted by this passion, and each was but portion of one organism
  called sex.  There was so much frankness and so little jealousy
  because there was no hope.  Each one was a girl of fair common sense,
  and she did not delude herself with any vain conceits, or deny her
  love, or give herself airs, in the idea of outshining the others.
  The full recognition of the futility of their infatuation, from a
  social point of view; its purposeless beginning; its self-bounded
  outlook; its lack of everything to justify its existence in the eye
  of civilization (while lacking nothing in the eye of Nature); the one
  fact that it did exist, ecstasizing them to a killing joy--all this
  imparted to them a resignation, a dignity, which a practical and
  sordid expectation of winning him as a husband would have destroyed.
  
  They tossed and turned on their little beds, and the cheese-wring
  dripped monotonously downstairs.
  
  "B' you awake, Tess?" whispered one, half-an-hour later.
  
  It was Izz Huett's voice.
  
  Tess replied in the affirmative, whereupon also Retty and Marian
  suddenly flung the bedclothes off them, and sighed--
  
  "So be we!"
  
  "I wonder what she is like--the lady they say his family have looked
  out for him!"
  
  "I wonder," said Izz.
  
  "Some lady looked out for him?" gasped Tess, starting.  "I have never
  heard o' that!"
  
  "O yes--'tis whispered; a young lady of his own rank, chosen by his
  family; a Doctor of Divinity's daughter near his father's parish of
  Emminster; he don't much care for her, they say.  But he is sure to
  marry her."
  
  They had heard so very little of this; yet it was enough to build up
  wretched dolorous dreams upon, there in the shade of the night.  They
  pictured all the details of his being won round to consent, of the
  wedding preparations, of the bride's happiness, of her dress and
  veil, of her blissful home with him, when oblivion would have fallen
  upon themselves as far as he and their love were concerned.  Thus
  they talked, and ached, and wept till sleep charmed their sorrow
  away.
  
  After this disclosure Tess nourished no further foolish thought that
  there lurked any grave and deliberate import in Clare's attentions
  to her.  It was a passing summer love of her face, for love's own
  temporary sake--nothing more. And the thorny crown of this sad
  conception was that she whom he really did prefer in a cursory way
  to the rest, she who knew herself to be more impassioned in nature,
  cleverer, more beautiful than they, was in the eyes of propriety far
  less worthy of him than the homelier ones whom he ignored.
  
  
  
  
  Amid the oozing fatness and warm ferments of the Froom Vale, at a
  season when the rush of juices could almost be heard below the hiss
  of fertilization, it was impossible that the most fanciful love
  should not grow passionate.  The ready bosoms existing there were
  impregnated by their surroundings.
  
  July passed over their heads, and the Thermidorean weather which came
  in its wake seemed an effort on the part of Nature to match the state
  of hearts at Talbothays Dairy.  The air of the place, so fresh in the
  spring and early summer, was stagnant and enervating now.  Its heavy
  scents weighed upon them, and at mid-day the landscape seemed lying
  in a swoon. Ethiopic scorchings browned the upper slopes of the
  pastures, but there was still bright green herbage here where the
  watercourses purled.  And as Clare was oppressed by the outward
  heats, so was he burdened inwardly by waxing fervour of passion for
  the soft and silent Tess.
  
  The rains having passed, the uplands were dry.  The wheels of the
  dairyman's spring-cart, as he sped home from market, licked up the
  pulverized surface of the highway, and were followed by white ribands
  of dust, as if they had set a thin powder-train on fire.  The cows
  jumped wildly over the five-barred barton-gate, maddened by the
  gad-fly; Dairyman Crick kept his shirt-sleeves permanently rolled up
  from Monday to Saturday; open windows had no effect in ventilation
  without open doors, and in the dairy-garden the blackbirds and
  thrushes crept about under the currant-bushes, rather in the manner
  of quadrupeds than of winged creatures.  The flies in the kitchen
  were lazy, teasing, and familiar, crawling about in the unwonted
  places, on the floors, into drawers, and over the backs of the
  milkmaids' hands. Conversations were concerning sunstroke; while
  butter-making, and still more butter-keeping, was a despair.
  
  They milked entirely in the meads for coolness and convenience,
  without driving in the cows.  During the day the animals obsequiously
  followed the shadow of the smallest tree as it moved round the stem
  with the diurnal roll; and when the milkers came they could hardly
  stand still for the flies.
  
  On one of these afternoons four or five unmilked cows chanced to
  stand apart from the general herd, behind the corner of a hedge,
  among them being Dumpling and Old Pretty, who loved Tess's hands
  above those of any other maid.  When she rose from her stool under a
  finished cow, Angel Clare, who had been observing her for some time,
  asked her if she would take the aforesaid creatures next.  She
  silently assented, and with her stool at arm's length, and the pail
  against her knee, went round to where they stood.  Soon the sound of
  Old Pretty's milk fizzing into the pail came through the hedge, and
  then Angel felt inclined to go round the corner also, to finish off a
  hard-yielding milcher who had strayed there, he being now as capable
  of this as the dairyman himself.
  
  All the men, and some of the women, when milking, dug their foreheads
  into the cows and gazed into the pail.  But a few--mainly the younger
  ones--rested their heads sideways.  This was Tess Durbeyfield's
  habit, her temple pressing the milcher's flank, her eyes fixed on
  the far end of the meadow with the quiet of one lost in meditation.
  She was milking Old Pretty thus, and the sun chancing to be on the
  milking-side, it shone flat upon her pink-gowned form and her white
  curtain-bonnet, and upon her profile, rendering it keen as a cameo
  cut from the dun background of the cow.
  
  She did not know that Clare had followed her round, and that he sat
  under his cow watching her.  The stillness of her head and features
  was remarkable: she might have been in a trance, her eyes open, yet
  unseeing.  Nothing in the picture moved but Old Pretty's tail and
  Tess's pink hands, the latter so gently as to be a rhythmic pulsation
  only, as if they were obeying a reflex stimulus, like a beating
  heart.
  
  How very lovable her face was to him.  Yet there was nothing ethereal
  about it; all was real vitality, real warmth, real incarnation.  And
  it was in her mouth that this culminated.  Eyes almost as deep and
  speaking he had seen before, and cheeks perhaps as fair; brows as
  arched, a chin and throat almost as shapely; her mouth he had seen
  nothing to equal on the face of the earth.  To a young man with the
  least fire in him that little upward lift in the middle of her red
  top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening.  He had never before
  seen a woman's lips and teeth which forced upon his mind with such
  persistent iteration the old Elizabethan simile of roses filled with
  snow.  Perfect, he, as a lover, might have called them off-hand.  But
  no--they were not perfect.  And it was the touch of the imperfect
  upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was
  that which gave the humanity.
  
  Clare had studied the curves of those lips so many times that he
  could reproduce them mentally with ease: and now, as they again
  confronted him, clothed with colour and life, they sent an _aura_
  over his flesh, a breeze through his nerves, which well nigh produced
  a qualm; and actually produced, by some mysterious physiological
  process, a prosaic sneeze.
  
  She then became conscious that he was observing her; but she would
  not show it by any change of position, though the curious dream-like
  fixity disappeared, and a close eye might easily have discerned that
  the rosiness of her face deepened, and then faded till only a tinge
  of it was left.
  
  The influence that had passed into Clare like an excitation from the
  sky did not die down.  Resolutions, reticences, prudences, fears,
  fell back like a defeated battalion.  He jumped up from his seat,
  and, leaving his pail to be kicked over if the milcher had such a
  mind, went quickly towards the desire of his eyes, and, kneeling down
  beside her, clasped her in his arms.
  
  Tess was taken completely by surprise, and she yielded to his embrace
  with unreflecting inevitableness.  Having seen that it was really her
  lover who had advanced, and no one else, her lips parted, and she
  sank upon him in her momentary joy, with something very like an
  ecstatic cry.
  
  He had been on the point of kissing that too tempting mouth, but he
  checked himself, for tender conscience' sake.
  
  "Forgive me, Tess dear!" he whispered.  "I ought to have asked.
  I--did not know what I was doing.  I do not mean it as a liberty.
  I am devoted to you, Tessy, dearest, in all sincerity!"
  
  Old Pretty by this time had looked round, puzzled; and seeing two
  people crouching under her where, by immemorial custom, there should
  have been only one, lifted her hind leg crossly.
  
  "She is angry--she doesn't know what we mean--she'll kick over the
  milk!" exclaimed Tess, gently striving to free herself, her eyes
  concerned with the quadruped's actions, her heart more deeply
  concerned with herself and Clare.
  
  She slipped up from her seat, and they stood together, his arm still
  encircling her.  Tess's eyes, fixed on distance, began to fill.
  
  "Why do you cry, my darling?" he said.
  
  "O--I don't know!" she murmured.
  
  As she saw and felt more clearly the position she was in she became
  agitated and tried to withdraw.
  
  "Well, I have betrayed my feeling, Tess, at last," said he, with a
  curious sigh of desperation, signifying unconsciously that his heart
  had outrun his judgement.  "That I--love you dearly and truly I need
  not say.  But I--it shall go no further now--it distresses you--I am
  as surprised as you are.  You will not think I have presumed upon
  your defencelessness--been too quick and unreflecting, will you?"
  
  "N'--I can't tell."
  
  He had allowed her to free herself; and in a minute or two the
  milking of each was resumed.  Nobody had beheld the gravitation of
  the two into one; and when the dairyman came round by that screened
  nook a few minutes later, there was not a sign to reveal that
  the markedly sundered pair were more to each other than mere
  acquaintance.  Yet in the interval since Crick's last view of them
  something had occurred which changed the pivot of the universe for
  their two natures; something which, had he known its quality, the
  dairyman would have despised, as a practical man; yet which was based
  upon a more stubborn and resistless tendency than a whole heap of
  so-called practicalities.  A veil had been whisked aside; the tract
  of each one's outlook was to have a new horizon thenceforward--for a
  short time or for a long.
  
  
  END OF PHASE THE THIRD
  
  
  
  
  
  Phase the Fourth: The Consequence
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapters 21-24
target: The entire dairy is paralyzed when the milk does not begin to turn to butter. It is suggested that the butter won't come because "Perhaps somebody in the house is in love." Mr. Crick doesn't believe the superstition but instead tells a rather raucous story about a man who had gotten a young girl pregnant. Tess hears the tale, and while others laugh at the story, she rushes outside because the story of Jack Dollop is too real for her. Eventually, the butter begins to form in the churn, and all settles down at the farm. The resident milkmaids, Retty Priddle, Izz Huett, and Marian, take turns gawking at Angel by peeking at him from their room as he moves through the farmyard. Tess does not engage in the girls' sport, and Marian suggests that Angel is in love with Tess, that "he likes Tess Durbeyfield best." All the maids are in love with Angel, but even they seem to sense that Tess and Angel are beginning to show signs of love for each other. It is mid-July, and the weather has turned quite warm, both morning and night, in the Blackmoor Valley. One Sunday, the four maids ready themselves for church. On their way, as a heavy summer downpour had flooded the rivers and creeks, an overflowing creek stops them. Coming from the direction opposite the church is Angel. He volunteers to carry each girl across the swollen current so that their Sunday frocks are not ruined. All of them, including Tess, are shocked and delighted that Angel would spontaneously extend an opportunity for each of them to be held so close to their "ideal man." As Angel crosses the creek with Tess, he hints at his feelings for her, telling her that "he has undergone three-quarters of the labour entirely for the sake of the fourth-quarter" and that he "did not expect such an event today." When Tess replies that she also had not anticipated the heavy rains and swollen creek, Angel realizes that Tess does not realize his meaning. Feeling that he is taking unfair advantage of an accidental situation, Angel carries her the rest of the way across and deposits her with her friends. When Angel again leaves, Tess' companions tell her that, although Angel likes her best, he is meant to marry another woman, chosen by his family. During the hot summer at Talbothays, the relationship between Tess and Angel grows as Hardy notes "It was impossible that the most fanciful love should not grow passionate. The ready bosoms existing there were impregnated by their surroundings." Angel secretly watches Tess as she works and musters the courage to tell her of his love for her.
feat_summary_analysis: In Crick's telling the story of Jack Dollop, Hardy shows us the dark, real side of humor whereupon many jokes are based. The butt of the joke is usually some person or profession that we might see as humorous. But Tess has lived the tale of Jack Dollop, and she cannot bear being "ridiculed" even though no one at Talbothays knows her story. When Angel carries Tess across the swollen creek and his preference for her becomes obvious to her companions, the other young ladies are not hurtful or vindictive, as the women at The Slopes were when they realized Alec's preference for Tess. Of the girls at Talbothays, Hardy says "The differences which distinguished them as individuals were abstracted by passion, and each was but portion of one organism called sex. There was so much frankness and so little jealousy because there was no hope." In fact, they later tell Tess of the woman Angel's family has selected for him to marry and do so without spite or resentfulness. Instead, they "talked, and ached, and wept till sleep charmed their sorrow away." Hardy presents Angel's character more fully in this chapter. Angel is a man very much intellectually challenged by his world, a man who studies its contradictions and who uses a most subtle approach when he makes his overtures to Tess. Angel, although he is the son of a minister, has difficulty with the religion, the church, and church doctrine. He is a naturalist who seeks his answers in the world that he can relate to, "preferr sermons in stones to sermons in churches and chapels on fine summer days." Yet his actions to aid the young ladies when crossing the flooded creek and his remarks alluding to the Jacob/Leah/Rachel story from Genesis, suggest a more complex character steeped in Christian teachings, but who questions some of the practices of the institution itself.  Angel is an intellectual free thinker who approaches his environment with thoughtful deliberation and careful consideration. His approach to other people is not as aloof as we may be inclined to believe; he prefers not to abuse his position or stand with others. This can be clearly seen at the creek, "It reminded Angel that he was somewhat unfairly taking advantage of an accidental position, and he went no further with it." It is also, as mentioned earlier, a way in which Angel's behavior directly contrasts with Alec d'Urberville's behavior. Glossary Touchwood dried, decayed wood or dried fungus used as tinder. almanack  almanac. handkercher  handkerchief. Ballyragging bullying, intimidating, or browbeating. pummy ground apples used in making cider. fagged to have worked hard and become very tired;  to have served as a servant. Thermidorean weather here, warm summer months; Thermidor is a reference to the month from July 19 to August 17 in the French calendar, instituted in 1793 after the Revolution. enervating depriving of strength, force, vigor, etc.; weakening physically, mentally, or morally. Ethiopic hot, African-like scorching of the farmland and pasture.