Tess of the dUrbervilles - Page 214/283

D'Urberville read and re-read this letter, and seemed to quiz himself

cynically. He also read some passages from memoranda as he walked

till his face assumed a calm, and apparently the image of Tess no

longer troubled his mind. She meanwhile had kept along the edge of the hill by which lay her

nearest way home. Within the distance of a mile she met a solitary

shepherd. "What is the meaning of that old stone I have passed?" she asked of

him. "Was it ever a Holy Cross?"

"Cross--no; 'twer not a cross! 'Tis a thing of ill-omen, Miss. It

was put up in wuld times by the relations of a malefactor who was

tortured there by nailing his hand to a post and afterwards hung.

The bones lie underneath. They say he sold his soul to the devil,

and that he walks at times."

She felt the petite mort at this unexpectedly gruesome information,

and left the solitary man behind her. It was dusk when she drew near

to Flintcomb-Ash, and in the lane at the entrance to the hamlet she

approached a girl and her lover without their observing her. They

were talking no secrets, and the clear unconcerned voice of the young

woman, in response to the warmer accents of the man, spread into the

chilly air as the one soothing thing within the dusky horizon, full

of a stagnant obscurity upon which nothing else intruded. For a

moment the voices cheered the heart of Tess, till she reasoned that

this interview had its origin, on one side or the other, in the same

attraction which had been the prelude to her own tribulation. When

she came close, the girl turned serenely and recognized her, the

young man walking off in embarrassment. The woman was Izz Huett,

whose interest in Tess's excursion immediately superseded her own

proceedings. Tess did not explain very clearly its results, and Izz,

who was a girl of tact, began to speak of her own little affair, a

phase of which Tess had just witnessed.

"He is Amby Seedling, the chap who used to sometimes come and help at

Talbothays," she explained indifferently. "He actually inquired and

found out that I had come here, and has followed me. He says he's

been in love wi' me these two years. But I've hardly answered him."

XLVI

Several days had passed since her futile journey, and Tess was

afield. The dry winter wind still blew, but a screen of thatched

hurdles erected in the eye of the blast kept its force away from her.

On the sheltered side was a turnip-slicing machine, whose bright blue

hue of new paint seemed almost vocal in the otherwise subdued scene.

Opposite its front was a long mound or "grave", in which the roots

had been preserved since early winter. Tess was standing at the

uncovered end, chopping off with a bill-hook the fibres and earth

from each root, and throwing it after the operation into the slicer.

A man was turning the handle of the machine, and from its trough

came the newly-cut swedes, the fresh smell of whose yellow chips

was accompanied by the sounds of the snuffling wind, the smart swish

of the slicing-blades, and the choppings of the hook in Tess's

leather-gloved hand.