Page 517 - tess-of-the-durbervilles

ing examples either of temperance, soberness, or chastity.
The father, and even the mother, had got drunk at times,
the younger children seldom had gone to church, and the
eldest daughter had made queer unions. By some means
the village had to be kept pure. So on this, the first Lady-
Day on which the Durbeyfields were expellable, the house,
being roomy, was required for a carter with a large family;
and Widow Joan, her daughters Tess and ‘Liza-Lu, the boy
Abraham, and the younger children had to go elsewhere.
On the evening preceding their removal it was getting
dark betimes by reason of a drizzling rain which blurred
the sky. As it was the last night they would spend in the
village which had been their home and birthplace, Mrs
Durbeyfield, ‘Liza-Lu, and Abraham had gone out to bid
some friends goodbye, and Tess was keeping house till they
should return.
She was kneeling in the window-bench, her face close to
the casement, where an outer pane of rain-water was slid-
ing down the inner pane of glass. Her eyes rested on the
web of a spider, probably starved long ago, which had been
mistakenly placed in a corner where no flies ever came, and
shivered in the slight draught through the casement. Tess
was reflecting on the position of the household, in which
she perceived her own evil influence. Had she not come
home, her mother and the children might probably have
been allowed to stay on as weekly tenants. But she had been
observed almost immediately on her return by some people
of scrupulous character and great influence: they had seen
her idling in the churchyard, restoring as well as she could

517