Tess of the dUrbervilles - Page 241/283

To go that night would be a gain of twelve-hours; but her sister

was too tired to undertake such a distance till the morrow. Tess

ran down to where Marian and Izz lived, informed them of what had

happened, and begged them to make the best of her case to the farmer.

Returning, she got Lu a supper, and after that, having tucked the

younger into her own bed, packed up as many of her belongings as

would go into a withy basket, and started, directing Lu to follow

her next morning.

L

She plunged into the chilly equinoctial darkness as the clock struck

ten, for her fifteen miles' walk under the steely stars. In lonely

districts night is a protection rather than a danger to a noiseless

pedestrian, and knowing this, Tess pursued the nearest course along

by-lanes that she would almost have feared in the day-time; but

marauders were wanting now, and spectral fears were driven out of

her mind by thoughts of her mother. Thus she proceeded mile after

mile, ascending and descending till she came to Bulbarrow, and about

midnight looked from that height into the abyss of chaotic shade

which was all that revealed itself of the vale on whose further side

she was born. Having already traversed about five miles on the

upland, she had now some ten or eleven in the lowland before her

journey would be finished. The winding road downwards became just

visible to her under the wan starlight as she followed it, and

soon she paced a soil so contrasting with that above it that the

difference was perceptible to the tread and to the smell. It was the

heavy clay land of Blackmoor Vale, and a part of the Vale to which

turnpike-roads had never penetrated. Superstitions linger longest on

these heavy soils. Having once been forest, at this shadowy time it

seemed to assert something of its old character, the far and the near

being blended, and every tree and tall hedge making the most of its

presence. The harts that had been hunted here, the witches that had

been pricked and ducked, the green-spangled fairies that "whickered"

at you as you passed;--the place teemed with beliefs in them still,

and they formed an impish multitude now.

At Nuttlebury she passed the village inn, whose sign creaked in

response to the greeting of her footsteps, which not a human soul

heard but herself. Under the thatched roofs her mind's eye beheld

relaxed tendons and flaccid muscles, spread out in the darkness

beneath coverlets made of little purple patchwork squares, and

undergoing a bracing process at the hands of sleep for renewed labour

on the morrow, as soon as a hint of pink nebulosity appeared on

Hambledon Hill. At three she turned the last corner of the maze of lanes she had

threaded, and entered Marlott, passing the field in which as a

club-girl she had first seen Angel Clare, when he had not danced

with her; the sense of disappointment remained with her yet. In the

direction of her mother's house she saw a light. It came from the

bedroom window, and a branch waved in front of it and made it wink at

her. As soon as she could discern the outline of the house--newly

thatched with her money--it had all its old effect upon Tess's

imagination. Part of her body and life it ever seemed to be; the

slope of its dormers, the finish of its gables, the broken courses of

brick which topped the chimney, all had something in common with her

personal character. A stupefaction had come into these features, to

her regard; it meant the illness of her mother.