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whose interest in Tess's excursion immediately superseded her own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.