Chapter 57 Chapter fifty-six

Mrs. Brooks, the owner and mistress of the Heron, owner of all the luxurious furniture, was not a particularly busybody.This poor woman, who has bound herself so long to the digital fiends of making or losing money, has become so materialized that she has little interest in anything other than how to get money out of her tenants pocket Interested.Nevertheless, Angel Clare's visit to her two wealthy lodgers, Mr. and Mrs. d'Urbervilles, was so unusual in its timing and manner that it prompted Her feminine curiosity, which she had always repressed because she thought it useless except for the rental business.

Tess spoke to her husband standing at the door, instead of going into the dining-room, Mrs Brooks stood in her own drawing-room, the door of which was ajar, so that she could hear the conversation between the two sad souls half a sentence—I don't know if that conversation can be called a conversation.She heard Tess come back up the stairs, heard Claire get up and go out, and shut the front door behind him as he went out.Then she heard the upper door shut, and knew that it was Tess entering her room.As the young lady was not quite dressed, Mrs. Brooks knew that Tess would not be coming downstairs for a moment.

So she went upstairs softly, and stood at the door of the front room, which served as a drawing-room, behind which were fitted folding doors in the usual way, and another room (this one which served as a bedroom) used) connected together.Mrs. Brooks's best apartment was upstairs, and was now rented by d'Urberville.Now the back room is quiet, but there are voices from the front room. All she could discern at first was a single syllable, repeated in a low, groaning tone, like the voice of a soul bound to the Ixion steamer— ①Ixionian wheel (Ixionian wheel), according to Greek mythology, Ixion, the king of the Lapithians, claimed to have had an affair with Hera, so he was sent to hell to suffer and was tied to a fire wheel It never stops.

"Oh-oh-oh!" Then there was a pause, then another heavy sigh, followed by— "Oh-oh-oh!" The landlord looked in through the keyhole.She could only see a small part of the room, but in the small part she saw, a corner of the breakfast table was exposed. The breakfast on the table was already set, and there were two chairs beside it.From Tess's position she was kneeling in front of a chair with her head on the seat; her head was in her hands, the hem of her dressing gown and the lace of her nightgown were trailing on the floor behind her, her feet stretched out. On the carpet, no mending socks were worn, and slippers were taken off.That indescribable, desperate grunt came from her mouth.

Then a man's voice came from the adjacent bedroom—— "What happened to you?" She didn't answer, just continued to moan, and the tone of her moaning was not so much an explanation as she was talking to herself.It's not so much a soliloquy, it's better to say it's heartfelt.Mrs. Brooks could only hear part of it: "And now my dear dear husband has come back for me... and I don't know it!... You have deceived me so cruelly... You have never ceased to deceive me—no—you Never stopped cheating on me! My brother and sister, and my mother, they need help - that's all you do to impress me... You say my husband will never come back - never; you And laughed at me, saying how stupid I was, waiting for him!... Then I believed you and listened to you!... But just now he came back! Now he's gone again, for the second time, and now I Lost him forever... From now on, he will never love me again--only hate me! Ah, yes, I have lost him now because of--you!" She said in the Writhing in pain in the chair, she turned her head towards the door, and Mrs. Brooks saw the pained expression on her face; her lips were bleeding from the bite of her teeth, and she saw her eyes closed, and her long eyelashes were wet with tears , on the face.She went on: "He's dying—he looks dying! . . . My sin didn't kill me, it killed him! . . . Oh, you've ruined my life . . . I begged you to have mercy on me and not to ruin me, but you ruined me! . . . My real husband will never, ever—oh, God—I can't bear— —I can't stand it!"

The men in the bedroom said many harsh words; there was a rustling of dresses; Tess jumped up.Mrs. Brooks, thinking that Tess was going to rush out, hurried back downstairs. But Tess did not rush out, for the sitting-room door was not open.Mrs. Brooks, however, felt that it was not safe to peek at the landing again, and retired downstairs to her sitting-room. Although she was listening downstairs, she couldn't hear anything, so she went into the kitchen to finish what she had left of her breakfast.Presently she was out of the kitchen again, and was doing some sewing in the front room on the ground floor, while she waited for the bell to be rang to clear the table, because she wanted to go herself and see what had happened.As she sat there, she heard a slight creaking of the floor above her head, as if someone was walking on it, and soon the movement upstairs was explained, for she heard the sound of a dress scraping on the banister, and heard the sound of the front door. There was a sound of opening and closing, and Tess was seen walking out of the gate and down the street.She was dressed as when she had come, exactly as a rich lady would wear when she went out, the only difference being that her hat and the veil of black feathers had been pulled down over her face.

Nor did Mrs. Brooks hear a farewell word from her two lodgers at the door, neither for a while nor for a long time.They may have quarreled, or Mr. d'Urberville was still asleep, for he was not a morning person. She went back to the back room, and sat in her own room to continue her sewing.The female lodger did not come back, and the male lodger did not ring the bell.Mrs. Brooks wondered why he hadn't risen, and what the man who had been here so early in the morning had to do with the couple upstairs.She thought about it and leaned back in the chair. As she leaned back, her eyes wandered casually up to the ceiling, and were drawn to a small dot in the middle of the white ceiling that she hadn't seen before.When she first saw the dot, it was the size of a biscuit, but it quickly expanded to the size of the palm of her hand, and then she saw that it was red.In the middle of the rectangular white ceiling, a small red dot appeared on it, which looked like a huge ace of hearts.

Mrs. Brooks wondered and became suspicious.She stood on the table and touched the red spot on the ceiling with her finger.The red spot was wet and to her felt like blood. She got off the table, walked out of the living room, and went upstairs, intending to go into the bedroom at the back of the living room.However, she had become a timid woman now, and she dared not turn the handle on the door.She listened again. There was only a regular ticking sound in the room, but there was no movement at all. Tick, tick, tick. Mrs. Brooks hurried downstairs, opened the front door, and ran out into the street.At this time a man passed by, this man had worked in a neighboring villa, so she knew him.She begged the man to come in and go upstairs with her.Because she was worried about what had happened to one of her lodgers.The worker followed her up the stairs.

She opened the door of the living room, stood aside, let the worker in, and then she followed him in.The living room was empty, and the breakfast was still on the table, with coffee, eggs, and cold ham, but the breakfast hadn't been moved at all, just like when she had just put it on, except that the meat-cutting knife was missing.So she asked the workman to go through the folding door into the adjoining bedroom to have a look. He opened the folding door, took a step or two, and immediately retreated nervously. "Oh my god, the man in the bed is dead! I think he was killed with a table knife - blood was all over the floor."

They immediately called the police, and there were noisy footsteps in the villa that had been very quiet recently. In front of the group of people, there was a surgeon.Although the wound was not big, the tip of the knife had pierced the deceased's heart. The deceased was lying on his back on the bed, his face was pale, his body was stiff, and he was already dead, as if he had barely moved after being stabbed.A quarter of an hour later, news spread through all the streets and villas of this fashionable city that a man who had just visited the city had been murdered in his bed.