Tess returns to Marlott and her father dies

Tess returns to Marlott when 'Liza-Lu arrives with word that their mother is dying and the family is already struggling to manage. Tess chooses family duty over the remainder of her employment, reaches home on foot through the night, and becomes her mother’s nurse. Her father’s sudden death then makes the family’s precarious position materially worse: as the last of the three Durbeyfield lives covered by the cottage lease, he had been the final barrier to the landlord’s taking the property for his own labourers. The homecoming that reunites Tess with her family therefore becomes the hinge between urgent care and homelessness.

The Call from Home

Before her employment term at Flintcomb-Ash has ended, 'Liza-Lu finds Tess at her lodging and tells her that their mother is gravely ill. Their father, too, is not well; instead of undertaking ordinary labour, he complains that a man of his high family ought not to be made to work as a common labourer. The contrast is sharp: the family faces immediate practical need, while John Durbeyfield imagines that his aristocratic ancestry should secure him support.

Tess takes time to absorb the news, then decides she must go home. Her agreement does not expire until Old Lady-Day, April 6, but she judges the remaining interval short enough to risk leaving early. As 'Liza-Lu is too tired to begin the journey that evening, Tess prepares to go first: she tells Marian and Izz what has happened and asks them to make the best of her case to the farmer, feeds and beds her sister, packs what she can carry in a withy basket, and sets out with 'Liza-Lu to follow the next morning.

The Night Journey and Return

Tess leaves at ten o’clock and walks the fifteen miles to Marlott in the cold darkness around the spring equinox. She takes by-lanes and continues across lonely country, with thoughts of her mother displacing the fears she might otherwise have felt. At midnight, from Bulbarrow, she looks down toward the shadowed vale; later she passes through Nuttlebury, where the sleeping village offers no human company or interruption to her progress.

At three in the morning she enters Marlott. On the way she passes the field where, as a club-girl, she had first seen Angel Clare, recalling that he had not danced with her and that the disappointment still remained. Her attention turns to the family house: newly thatched with money Tess had sent, it feels almost part of her own body and life. A light at her mother’s bedroom window, briefly obscured by a waving branch, and the house’s familiar appearance make her recognize the change in her homecoming—the illness that has unsettled the family.

She enters quietly so as not to disturb anyone. A neighbour keeping watch tells her that her mother is no better, though she is asleep. Tess makes herself breakfast and then takes her place as nurse in the bedroom. In the morning, the children’s unexpected growth makes the time she has been away palpable; tending to their needs draws her attention out of her own troubles. Her return is thus not just a journey back to a place but a rapid resumption of responsibility for a household whose ordinary supports are failing.

From Illness to Bereavement

For a time, the immediate crisis appears to concern Tess’s mother, while John Durbeyfield remains seated at home with an indistinct complaint of ill health. Then, as Tess is digging and wondering whether Angel has returned to her father’s house, a sister runs to tell her that their mother is somewhat better but the people gathered at home believe their father is dead. 'Liza-Lu confirms that he collapsed; the doctor attending their mother says his heart had grown in and that there is no hope for him.

The reversal is sudden: the person believed to be dying has improved, while the apparently less urgent illness has ended in death. Tess’s first response is disbelief, because she had understood her father to be only a little ill. The news is not merely an emotional shock. It also changes the family’s legal and economic circumstances, so that bereavement immediately carries the prospect of losing their home.

The Lease and the Family’s Displacement

John’s life has a practical value beyond his own activity: he is the last of the three family members whose lives keep the house and premises under lease. The tenant-farmer has long wanted the cottage accommodation for regular labourers, who lack sufficient housing. The narrative also notes that villagers disapprove of “liviers,” like small freeholders, for their independence; once the lease ends, it is not renewed. John’s death therefore removes the last protection against the landlord’s claim on the property.

The family’s old ancestry offers no remedy. The narrator places their fall from the status of the d’Urbervilles beside the fate they once imposed, in their county’s aristocratic days, on people without land. The image of alternating rise and decline makes the Durbeyfields’ loss part of a larger rhythm of social change, but it does not soften its immediate effect: the family’s household is exposed to eviction precisely when Tess has returned to care for them. Her homecoming concludes not with restored security, but with a new crisis that will drive the family from Marlott.