feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_20_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 21
feat_summary_id: chapter 21
feat_summary: {"name": "Phase III: \"The Rally,\" Chapter Twenty-One", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-21", "summary": "One day there's a crisis at the dairy: they can't make the butter come . The churn goes around and around, but the cream just goes swish, swish, and doesn't thicken into butter. Everyone is paralyzed--their livelihood at the farm depends on their ability to sell butter in London. Dairyman Crick is almost ready to call on a local conjuror for some magical spell or charm to make the butter come. Mrs. Crick has another idea. Perhaps, she suggests, someone in the house is in love? She's heard that that can cause it. But Dairyman Crick remembers the story his wife is referring to. It wasn't because someone was in love, it's because a girl had been seduced, and her lover had hidden himself in the huge churn to hide from the girl's mother, who was understandably angry. It's really a funny story--the girl's mother starts turning the churn, which paddles the young man inside repeatedly. But Tess doesn't think it's very funny--it reminds her too much of her own history. She starts to escape outside, and just then they hear the sound of the cream turning to butter, so no one notices that she's upset. That night, she goes to bed early, and is dozing when the other three girls come up to go to bed. They think she's asleep, so they speak softly amongst themselves about how much they're all in love with Angel. They know he's more interested in Tess, though, but they're too generous and fair to hold it against her. Tess blushes, but doesn't say anything, and the other three go to bed and cry themselves to sleep. They all wonder whether Angel might marry a dairywoman instead of a fine lady, since a dairywoman would make a better farmer's wife. Tess knows that Angel does prefer her to her friends, but has to ask herself whether she has any moral right to try to keep him to herself, when she doesn't feel that she can allow any man to marry her.", "analysis": ""}
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?
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Phase III: "The Rally," Chapter Twenty-One
target: One day there's a crisis at the dairy: they can't make the butter come . The churn goes around and around, but the cream just goes swish, swish, and doesn't thicken into butter. Everyone is paralyzed--their livelihood at the farm depends on their ability to sell butter in London. Dairyman Crick is almost ready to call on a local conjuror for some magical spell or charm to make the butter come. Mrs. Crick has another idea. Perhaps, she suggests, someone in the house is in love? She's heard that that can cause it. But Dairyman Crick remembers the story his wife is referring to. It wasn't because someone was in love, it's because a girl had been seduced, and her lover had hidden himself in the huge churn to hide from the girl's mother, who was understandably angry. It's really a funny story--the girl's mother starts turning the churn, which paddles the young man inside repeatedly. But Tess doesn't think it's very funny--it reminds her too much of her own history. She starts to escape outside, and just then they hear the sound of the cream turning to butter, so no one notices that she's upset. That night, she goes to bed early, and is dozing when the other three girls come up to go to bed. They think she's asleep, so they speak softly amongst themselves about how much they're all in love with Angel. They know he's more interested in Tess, though, but they're too generous and fair to hold it against her. Tess blushes, but doesn't say anything, and the other three go to bed and cry themselves to sleep. They all wonder whether Angel might marry a dairywoman instead of a fine lady, since a dairywoman would make a better farmer's wife. Tess knows that Angel does prefer her to her friends, but has to ask herself whether she has any moral right to try to keep him to herself, when she doesn't feel that she can allow any man to marry her.