feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_5_part_6.txt
feat_book_id: Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xl
feat_summary_id: chapter xl
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter XL", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase5-chapter35-44", "summary": "After depositing the diamonds in the bank, Angel sends Tess more money. He meets the former Talbothays milkmaid Izz Huett who tells him of her love for him. He asks her to go to Brazil will him, and she agrees. When he asks if she loves him more than Tess does, she answers \"nobody could love'ee more than Tess did. Angel apologizes and goes to Brazil, and yet again, Izz is devastated", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  
  At breakfast Brazil was the topic, and all endeavoured to take a
  hopeful view of Clare's proposed experiment with that country's soil,
  notwithstanding the discouraging reports of some farm-labourers who
  had emigrated thither and returned home within the twelve months.
  After breakfast Clare went into the little town to wind up such
  trifling matters as he was concerned with there, and to get from
  the local bank all the money he possessed.  On his way back he
  encountered Miss Mercy Chant by the church, from whose walls she
  seemed to be a sort of emanation.  She was carrying an armful of
  Bibles for her class, and such was her view of life that events which
  produced heartache in others wrought beatific smiles upon her--an
  enviable result, although, in the opinion of Angel, it was obtained
  by a curiously unnatural sacrifice of humanity to mysticism.
  
  She had learnt that he was about to leave England, and observed what
  an excellent and promising scheme it seemed to be.
  
  "Yes; it is a likely scheme enough in a commercial sense, no doubt,"
  he replied.  "But, my dear Mercy, it snaps the continuity of
  existence.  Perhaps a cloister would be preferable."
  
  "A cloister!  O, Angel Clare!"
  
  "Well?"
  
  "Why, you wicked man, a cloister implies a monk, and a monk Roman
  Catholicism."
  
  "And Roman Catholicism sin, and sin damnation.  Thou art in a parlous
  state, Angel Clare."
  
  "_I_ glory in my Protestantism!" she said severely.
  
  Then Clare, thrown by sheer misery into one of the demoniacal moods
  in which a man does despite to his true principles, called her close
  to him, and fiendishly whispered in her ear the most heterodox ideas
  he could think of.  His momentary laughter at the horror which
  appeared on her fair face ceased when it merged in pain and anxiety
  for his welfare.
  
  "Dear Mercy," he said, "you must forgive me.  I think I am going
  crazy!"
  
  She thought that he was; and thus the interview ended, and Clare
  re-entered the Vicarage.  With the local banker he deposited the
  jewels till happier days should arise.  He also paid into the bank
  thirty pounds--to be sent to Tess in a few months, as she might
  require; and wrote to her at her parents' home in Blackmoor Vale to
  inform her of what he had done.  This amount, with the sum he had
  already placed in her hands--about fifty pounds--he hoped would be
  amply sufficient for her wants just at present, particularly as in
  an emergency she had been directed to apply to his father.
  
  He deemed it best not to put his parents into communication with her
  by informing them of her address; and, being unaware of what had
  really happened to estrange the two, neither his father nor his
  mother suggested that he should do so.  During the day he left the
  parsonage, for what he had to complete he wished to get done quickly.
  
  As the last duty before leaving this part of England it was necessary
  for him to call at the Wellbridge farmhouse, in which he had spent
  with Tess the first three days of their marriage, the trifle of rent
  having to be paid, the key given up of the rooms they had occupied,
  and two or three small articles fetched away that they had left
  behind.  It was under this roof that the deepest shadow ever thrown
  upon his life had stretched its gloom over him.  Yet when he had
  unlocked the door of the sitting-room and looked into it, the memory
  which returned first upon him was that of their happy arrival on a
  similar afternoon, the first fresh sense of sharing a habitation
  conjointly, the first meal together, the chatting by the fire with
  joined hands.
  
  The farmer and his wife were in the field at the moment of his visit,
  and Clare was in the rooms alone for some time.  Inwardly swollen
  with a renewal of sentiment that he had not quite reckoned with, he
  went upstairs to her chamber, which had never been his.  The bed
  was smooth as she had made it with her own hands on the morning of
  leaving.  The mistletoe hung under the tester just as he had placed
  it.  Having been there three or four weeks it was turning colour, and
  the leaves and berries were wrinkled.  Angel took it down and crushed
  it into the grate.  Standing there, he for the first time doubted
  whether his course in this conjecture had been a wise, much less
  a generous, one.  But had he not been cruelly blinded?  In the
  incoherent multitude of his emotions he knelt down at the bedside
  wet-eyed.  "O Tess!  If you had only told me sooner, I would have
  forgiven you!" he mourned.
  
  Hearing a footstep below, he rose and went to the top of the stairs.
  At the bottom of the flight he saw a woman standing, and on her
  turning up her face recognized the pale, dark-eyed Izz Huett.
  
  "Mr Clare," she said, "I've called to see you and Mrs Clare, and to
  inquire if ye be well.  I thought you might be back here again."
  
  This was a girl whose secret he had guessed, but who had not yet
  guessed his; an honest girl who loved him--one who would have made as
  good, or nearly as good, a practical farmer's wife as Tess.
  
  "I am here alone," he said; "we are not living here now."  Explaining
  why he had come, he asked, "Which way are you going home, Izz?"
  
  "I have no home at Talbothays Dairy now, sir," she said.
  
  "Why is that?"
  
  Izz looked down.
  
  "It was so dismal there that I left!  I am staying out this way."
  She pointed in a contrary direction, the direction in which he was
  journeying.
  
  "Well--are you going there now?  I can take you if you
  wish for a lift."
  
  Her olive complexion grew richer in hue.
  
  "Thank 'ee, Mr Clare," she said.
  
  He soon found the farmer, and settled the account for his rent and
  the few other items which had to be considered by reason of the
  sudden abandonment of the lodgings.  On Clare's return to his horse
  and gig, Izz jumped up beside him.
  
  "I am going to leave England, Izz," he said, as they drove on.
  "Going to Brazil."
  
  "And do Mrs Clare like the notion of such a journey?" she asked.
  
  "She is not going at present--say for a year or so.  I am going out
  to reconnoitre--to see what life there is like."
  
  They sped along eastward for some considerable distance, Izz making
  no observation.
  
  "How are the others?" he inquired.  "How is Retty?"
  
  "She was in a sort of nervous state when I zid her last; and so thin
  and hollow-cheeked that 'a do seem in a decline.  Nobody will ever
  fall in love wi' her any more," said Izz absently.
  
  "And Marian?"
  
  Izz lowered her voice.
  
  "Marian drinks."
  
  "Indeed!"
  
  "Yes.  The dairyman has got rid of her."
  
  "And you!"
  
  "I don't drink, and I bain't in a decline.  But--I am no great things
  at singing afore breakfast now!"
  
  "How is that?  Do you remember how neatly you used to turn ''Twas
  down in Cupid's Gardens' and 'The Tailor's Breeches' at morning
  milking?"
  
  "Ah, yes!  When you first came, sir, that was.  Not when you had been
  there a bit."
  
  "Why was that falling-off?"
  
  Her black eyes flashed up to his face for one moment by way of
  answer.
  
  "Izz!--how weak of you--for such as I!" he said, and fell into
  reverie.  "Then--suppose I had asked YOU to marry me?"
  
  "If you had I should have said 'Yes', and you would have married a
  woman who loved 'ee!"
  
  "Really!"
  
  "Down to the ground!" she whispered vehemently.  "O my God! did you
  never guess it till now!"
  
  By-and-by they reached a branch road to a village.
  
  "I must get down.  I live out there," said Izz abruptly, never having
  spoken since her avowal.
  
  Clare slowed the horse.  He was incensed against his fate, bitterly
  disposed towards social ordinances; for they had cooped him up in a
  corner, out of which there was no legitimate pathway.  Why not be
  revenged on society by shaping his future domesticities loosely,
  instead of kissing the pedagogic rod of convention in this ensnaring
  manner?
  
  "I am going to Brazil alone, Izz," said he.  "I have separated from
  my wife for personal, not voyaging, reasons.  I may never live with
  her again.  I may not be able to love you; but--will you go with me
  instead of her?"
  
  "You truly wish me to go?"
  
  "I do.  I have been badly used enough to wish for relief.  And you at
  least love me disinterestedly."
  
  "Yes--I will go," said Izz, after a pause.
  
  "You will?  You know what it means, Izz?"
  
  "It means that I shall live with you for the time you are over
  there--that's good enough for me."
  
  "Remember, you are not to trust me in morals now.  But I ought
  to remind you that it will be wrong-doing in the eyes of
  civilization--Western civilization, that is to say."
  
  "I don't mind that; no woman do when it comes to agony-point, and
  there's no other way!"
  
  "Then don't get down, but sit where you are."
  
  He drove past the cross-roads, one mile, two miles, without showing
  any signs of affection.
  
  "You love me very, very much, Izz?" he suddenly asked.
  
  "I do--I have said I do!  I loved you all the time we was at the
  dairy together!"
  
  "More than Tess?"
  
  She shook her head.
  
  "No," she murmured, "not more than she."
  
  "How's that?"
  
  "Because nobody could love 'ee more than Tess did! ...  She would
  have laid down her life for 'ee.  I could do no more."
  
  Like the prophet on the top of Peor, Izz Huett would fain have spoken
  perversely at such a moment, but the fascination exercised over her
  rougher nature by Tess's character compelled her to grace.
  
  Clare was silent; his heart had risen at these straightforward words
  from such an unexpected unimpeachable quarter.  In his throat was
  something as if a sob had solidified there.  His ears repeated, "SHE
  WOULD HAVE LAID DOWN HER LIFE FOR 'EE.  I COULD DO NO MORE!"
  
  "Forget our idle talk, Izz," he said, turning the horse's head
  suddenly.  "I don't know what I've been saying!  I will now drive
  you back to where your lane branches off."
  
  "So much for honesty towards 'ee!  O--how can I bear it--how can
  I--how can I!"
  
  Izz Huett burst into wild tears, and beat her forehead as she saw
  what she had done.
  
  "Do you regret that poor little act of justice to an absent one?
  O, Izz, don't spoil it by regret!"
  
  She stilled herself by degrees.
  
  "Very well, sir.  Perhaps I didn't know what I was saying, either,
  wh--when I agreed to go!  I wish--what cannot be!"
  
  "Because I have a loving wife already."
  
  "Yes, yes!  You have!"
  
  They reached the corner of the lane which they had passed half an
  hour earlier, and she hopped down.
  
  "Izz--please, please forget my momentary levity!" he cried.  "It was
  so ill-considered, so ill-advised!"
  
  "Forget it?  Never, never!  O, it was no levity to me!"
  
  He felt how richly he deserved the reproach that the wounded cry
  conveyed, and, in a sorrow that was inexpressible, leapt down and
  took her hand.
  
  "Well, but, Izz, we'll part friends, anyhow?  You don't know what
  I've had to bear!"
  
  She was a really generous girl, and allowed no further bitterness to
  mar their adieux.
  
  "I forgive 'ee, sir!" she said.
  
  "Now, Izz," he said, while she stood beside him there, forcing
  himself to the mentor's part he was far from feeling; "I want you to
  tell Marian when you see her that she is to be a good woman, and not
  to give way to folly.  Promise that, and tell Retty that there are
  more worthy men than I in the world, that for my sake she is to act
  wisely and well--remember the words--wisely and well--for my sake.
  I send this message to them as a dying man to the dying; for I shall
  never see them again.  And you, Izzy, you have saved me by your
  honest words about my wife from an incredible impulse towards folly
  and treachery.  Women may be bad, but they are not so bad as men in
  these things!  On that one account I can never forget you.  Be always
  the good and sincere girl you have hitherto been; and think of me as
  a worthless lover, but a faithful friend.  Promise."
  
  She gave the promise.
  
  "Heaven bless and keep you, sir.  Goodbye!"
  
  He drove on; but no sooner had Izz turned into the lane, and Clare
  was out of sight, than she flung herself down on the bank in a fit of
  racking anguish; and it was with a strained unnatural face that she
  entered her mother's cottage late that night.  Nobody ever was told
  how Izz spent the dark hours that intervened between Angel Clare's
  parting from her and her arrival home.
  
  Clare, too, after bidding the girl farewell, was wrought to aching
  thoughts and quivering lips.  But his sorrow was not for Izz.  That
  evening he was within a feather-weight's turn of abandoning his road
  to the nearest station, and driving across that elevated dorsal line
  of South Wessex which divided him from his Tess's home.  It was
  neither a contempt for her nature, nor the probable state of her
  heart, which deterred him.
  
  No; it was a sense that, despite her love, as corroborated by Izz's
  admission, the facts had not changed.  If he was right at first,
  he was right now.  And the momentum of the course on which he
  had embarked tended to keep him going in it, unless diverted by
  a stronger, more sustained force than had played upon him this
  afternoon.  He could soon come back to her.  He took the train that
  night for London, and five days after shook hands in farewell of his
  brothers at the port of embarkation.
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter XL
target: After depositing the diamonds in the bank, Angel sends Tess more money. He meets the former Talbothays milkmaid Izz Huett who tells him of her love for him. He asks her to go to Brazil will him, and she agrees. When he asks if she loves him more than Tess does, she answers "nobody could love'ee more than Tess did. Angel apologizes and goes to Brazil, and yet again, Izz is devastated