LVI

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 curiousity 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

Advertisement..

down as useless save in its bearings to 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.




Most Popular