LITMIR.BIZ

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the horse while I walk through the bushes till I come to some road or house, and ascertain exactly our whereabouts, I’ll deposit you here willingly. When I come back I’ll give you full directions, and if you insist upon walking you may; or you may ride—at your pleasure.”

      She accepted these terms, and slid off on the near side, though not till he had stolen a cursory kiss. He sprang down on the other side.

      “I suppose I must hold the horse?” said she.

      “Oh no; it’s not necessary,” replied Alec, patting the panting creature. “He’s had enough of it for to-night.”

      He turned the horse’s head into the bushes, hitched him on to a bough, and made a sort of couch or nest for her in the deep mass of dead leaves.

      “Now, you sit there,” he said. “The leaves have not got damp as yet. Just give an eye to the horse—it will be quite sufficient.”

      He took a few steps away from her, but, returning, said, “By the bye, Tess, your father has a new cob to-day. Somebody gave it to him.”

      “Somebody? You!”

      D’Urberville nodded.

      “O how very good of you that is!” she exclaimed, with a painful sense of the awkwardness of having to thank him just then.

      “And the children have some toys.”

      “I didn’t know—you ever sent them anything!” she murmured, much moved. “I almost wish you had not—yes, I almost wish it!”

      “Why, dear?”

      “It—hampers me so.”

      “Tessy—don’t you love me ever so little now?”

      “I’m grateful,” she reluctantly admitted. “But I fear I do not—” The sudden vision of his passion for herself as a factor in this result so distressed her that, beginning with one slow tear, and then following with another, she wept outright.

      “Don’t cry, dear, dear one! Now sit down here, and wait till I come.” She passively sat down amid the leaves he had heaped, and shivered slightly. “Are you cold?” he asked.

      “Not very—a little.”

      He touched her with his fingers, which sank into her as into down. “You have only that puffy muslin dress on—how’s that?”

      “It’s my best summer one. ’Twas very warm when I started, and I didn’t know I was going to ride, and that it would be night.”

      “Nights grow chilly in September. Let me see.” He pulled off a light overcoat that he had worn, and put it round her tenderly. “That’s it—now you’ll feel warmer,” he continued. “Now, my pretty, rest there; I shall soon be back again.”

      Having buttoned the overcoat round her shoulders he plunged into the webs of vapour which by this time formed veils between the trees. She could hear the rustling of the branches as he ascended the adjoining slope, till his movements were no louder than the hopping of a bird, and finally died away. With the setting of the moon the pale light lessened, and Tess became invisible as she fell into reverie upon the leaves where he had left her.

      In the meantime Alec d’Urberville had pushed on up the slope to clear his genuine doubt as to the quarter of The Chase they were in. He had, in fact, ridden quite at random for over an hour, taking any turning that came to hand in order to prolong companionship with her, and giving far more attention to Tess’s moonlit person than to any wayside object. A little rest for the jaded animal being desirable, he did not hasten his search for landmarks. A clamber over the hill into the adjoining vale brought him to the fence of a highway whose contours he recognized, which settled the question of their whereabouts. D’Urberville thereupon turned back; but by this time the moon had quite gone down, and partly on account of the fog The Chase was wrapped in thick darkness, although morning was not far off. He was obliged to advance with outstretched hands to avoid contact with the boughs, and discovered that to hit the exact spot from which he had started was at first entirely beyond him. Roaming up and down, round and round, he at length heard a slight movement of the horse close at hand; and the sleeve of his overcoat unexpectedly caught his foot.

      “Tess!” said d’Urberville.

      There was no answer. The obscurity was now so great that he could see absolutely nothing but a pale nebulousness at his feet, which represented the white muslin figure he had left upon the dead leaves. Everything else was blackness alike. D’Urberville stooped; and heard a gentle regular breathing. He knelt and bent lower, till her breath warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers. She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears.

      Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Above them rose the primaeval yews and oaks of The Chase, in which there poised gentle roosting birds in their last nap; and about them stole the hopping rabbits and hares. But, might some say, where was Tess’s guardian angel? where was the providence of her simple faith? Perhaps, like that other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking, or he was pursuing, or he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and not to be awaked.

      Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order. One may, indeed, admit the possibility of a retribution lurking in the present catastrophe. Doubtless some of Tess d’Urberville’s mailed ancestors rollicking home from a fray had dealt the same measure even more ruthlessly towards peasant girls of their time. But though to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children may be a morality good enough for divinities, it is scorned by average human nature; and it therefore does not mend the matter.

      As Tess’s own people down in those retreats are never tired of saying among each other in their fatalistic way: “It was to be.” There lay the pity of it. An immeasurable social chasm was to divide our heroine’s personality thereafter from that previous self of hers who stepped from her mother’s door to try her fortune at Trantridge poultry-farm.

End of Phase the First

      Phase the Second:

       Maiden No More

       Table of Contents

      XII

       Table of Contents

      The basket was heavy and the bundle was large, but she lugged them along like a person who did not find her especial burden in material things. Occasionally she stopped to rest in a mechanical way by some gate or post; and then, giving the baggage another hitch upon her full round arm, went steadily on again.

      It was a Sunday morning in late October, about four months after Tess Durbeyfield’s arrival at Trantridge, and some few weeks subsequent to the night ride in The Chase. The time was not long past daybreak, and the yellow luminosity upon the horizon behind her back lighted the ridge towards which her face was set—the barrier of the vale wherein she had of late been a stranger—which she would have to climb over to reach her birthplace. The ascent was gradual on this side, and the soil and scenery differed much from those within Blakemore Vale. Even the character and accent of the two peoples had shades of difference, despite the amalgamating effects of a roundabout railway; so that, though less than twenty miles from the place of her sojourn at Trantridge, her native village had seemed a far-away spot. The field-folk shut in there traded northward and westward, travelled, courted, and married northward and westward, thought northward and westward; those on this side mainly directed their energies and attention to the east and south.

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