XV
"By experience," says Roger Ascham, "we find out a short way by
a long wandering." Not seldom that long wandering unfits us for
further travel, and of what use is our experience to us then? Tess
Durbeyfield's experience was of this incapacitating kind. At last
she had learned what to do; but who would now accept her doing?
If before going to the d'Urbervilles' she had vigorously moved under
the guidance of sundry gnomic texts and phrases known to her and to
the world in general, no doubt she would never have been imposed on.
But it had not been in Tess's power--nor is it in anybody's power--to
feel the whole truth of golden opinions while it is possible to
profit by them. She--and how many more--might have ironically said
to God with Saint Augustine: "Thou hast counselled a better course
than Thou hast permitted."
She remained at her father's house during the winter months, plucking
fowls, or cramming turkeys and geese, or making clothes for her
sisters and brothers out of some finery which d'Urberville had given
her, and she had put by with contempt. Apply to him she would not.
But she would often clasp her hands behind her head and muse when she
was supposed to be working hard.
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