Tess of the d'Urbervilles

he village of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the
beautiful Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor, aforesaid, an engirdled and
secluded region, for the most part untrodden as yet by tourist or
landscape-painter, though within a four hours’ journey from London.

It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made by viewing it from the
summits of the hills that surround it—except perhaps during the
droughts of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather
is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous, and miry
ways.

This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are
never brown and the springs never dry, is bounded on the south by the
bold chalk ridge that embraces the prominences of Hambledon Hill,
Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, and Bubb Down. The
traveller from the coast, who, after plodding northward for a score of
miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the verge
of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted to behold,
extended like a map beneath him, a country differing absolutely from
that which he has passed through. Behind him the hills are open, the
sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed character
to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the
atmosphere colourless. Here, in the valley, the world seems to be
constructed upon a smaller and more delicate scale; the fields are mere
paddocks, so reduced that from this height their hedgerows appear a
network of dark green threads overspreading the paler green of the
grass. The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with
azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that
hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Arable
lands are few and limited; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a
broad rich mass of grass and trees, mantling minor hills and dales
within the major. Such is the Vale of Blackmoor.

The district is of historic, no less than of topographical interest.
The Vale was known in former times as the Forest of White Hart, from a
curious legend of King Henry III’s reign, in which the killing by a
certain Thomas de la Lynd of a beautiful white hart which the king had
run down and spared, was made the occasion of a heavy fine. In those
days, and till comparatively recent times, the country was densely
wooded. Even now, traces of its earlier condition are to be found in
the old oak copses and irregular belts of timber that yet survive upon
its slopes, and the hollow-trunked trees that shade so many of its
pastures.

The forests have departed, but some old customs of their shades remain.
Many, however, linger only in a metamorphosed or disguised form. The
May-Day dance, for instance, was to be discerned on the afternoon under
notice, in the guise of the club revel, or “club-walking,” as it was
there called.

It was an interesting event to the younger inhabitants of Marlott,
though its real interest was not observed by the participators in the
ceremony. Its singularity lay less in the retention of a custom of
walking in procession and dancing on each anniversary than in the
members being solely women. In men’s clubs such celebrations were,
though expiring, less uncommon; but either the natural shyness of the
softer sex, or a sarcastic attitude on the part of male relatives, had
denuded such women’s clubs as remained (if any other did) of this their
glory and consummation. The club of Marlott alone lived to uphold the
local Cerealia. It had walked for hundreds of years, if not as
benefit-club, as votive sisterhood of some sort; and it walked still.

The banded ones were all dressed in white gowns—a gay survival from Old
Style days, when cheerfulness and May-time were synonyms—days before
the habit of taking long views had reduced emotions to a monotonous
average. Their first exhibition of themselves was in a processional
march of two and two round the parish. Ideal and real clashed slightly
as the sun lit up their figures against the green hedges and
creeper-laced house-fronts; for, though the whole troop wore white
garments, no two whites were alike among them. Some approached pure
blanching; some had a bluish pallor; some worn by the older characters
(which had possibly lain by folded for many a year) inclined to a
cadaverous tint, and to a Georgian style.

In addition to the distinction of a white frock, every woman and girl
carried in her right hand a peeled willow wand, and in her left a bunch
of white flowers. The peeling of the former, and the selection of the
latter, had been an operation of personal care.

There were a few middle-aged and even elderly women in the train, their
silver-wiry hair and wrinkled faces, scourged by time and trouble,
having almost a grotesque, certainly a pathetic, appearance in such a
jaunty situation. In a true view, perhaps, there was more to be
gathered and told of each anxious and experienced one, to whom the
years were drawing nigh when she should say, “I have no pleasure in
them,” than of her juvenile comrades. But let the elder be passed over
here for those under whose bodices the life throbbed quick and warm.

The young girls formed, indeed, the majority of the band, and their
heads of luxuriant hair reflected in the sunshine every tone of gold,
and black, and brown. Some had beautiful eyes, others a beautiful nose,
others a beautiful mouth and figure: few, if any, had all. A difficulty
of arranging their lips in this crude exposure to public scrutiny, an
inability to balance their heads, and to dissociate self-consciousness
from their features, was apparent in them, and showed that they were
genuine country girls, unaccustomed to many eyes.

And as each and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each had
a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some
affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which,
though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will. They
were all cheerful, and many of them merry.

They came round by The Pure Drop Inn, and were turning out of the high
road to pass through a wicket-gate into the meadows, when one of the
women said—

“The Load-a-Lord! Why, Tess Durbeyfield, if there isn’t thy father
riding hwome in a carriage!”

A young member of the band turned her head at the exclamation. She was
a fine and handsome girl—not handsomer than some others, possibly—but
her mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes added eloquence to
colour and shape. She wore a red ribbon in her hair, and was the only
one of the white company who could boast of such a pronounced
adornment. As she looked round Durbeyfield was seen moving along the
road in a chaise belonging to The Pure Drop, driven by a frizzle-headed
brawny damsel with her gown-sleeves rolled above her elbows. This was
the cheerful servant of that establishment, who, in her part of
factotum, turned groom and ostler at times. Durbeyfield, leaning back,
and with his eyes closed luxuriously, was waving his hand above his
head, and singing in a slow recitative—

“I’ve-got-a-gr’t-family-vault-at-Kingsbere—and
knighted-forefathers-in-lead-coffins-there!”

The clubbists tittered, except the girl called Tess—in whom a slow heat
seemed to rise at the sense that her father was making himself foolish
in their eyes.

“He’s tired, that’s all,” she said hastily, “and he has got a lift
home, because our own horse has to rest to-day.”

“Bless thy simplicity, Tess,” said her companions. “He’s got his
market-nitch. Haw-haw!”

“Look here; I won’t walk another inch with you, if you say any jokes
about him!” Tess cried, and the colour upon her cheeks spread over her
face and neck. In a moment her eyes grew moist, and her glance drooped
to the ground. Perceiving that they had really pained her they said no
more, and order again prevailed. Tess’s pride would not allow her to
turn her head again, to learn what her father’s meaning was, if he had
any; and thus she moved on with the whole body to the enclosure where
there was to be dancing on the green. By the time the spot was reached
she had recovered her equanimity, and tapped her neighbour with her
wand and talked as usual.

Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of emotion
untinctured by experience. The dialect was on her tongue to some
extent, despite the village school: the characteristic intonation of
that dialect for this district being the voicing approximately rendered
by the syllable UR, probably as rich an utterance as any to be found in
human speech. The pouted-up deep red mouth to which this syllable was
native had hardly as yet settled into its definite shape, and her lower
lip had a way of thrusting the middle of her top one upward, when they
closed together after a word.

Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still. As she walked along
to-day, for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could sometimes
see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her
eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now
and then.

Yet few knew, and still fewer considered this. A small minority, mainly
strangers, would look long at her in casually passing by, and grow
momentarily fascinated by her freshness, and wonder if they would ever
see her again: but to almost everybody she was a fine and picturesque
country girl, and no more.

Nothing was seen or heard further of Durbeyfield in his triumphal
chariot under the conduct of the ostleress, and the club having entered
the allotted space, dancing began. As there were no men in the company,
the girls danced at first with each other, but when the hour for the
close of labour drew on, the masculine inhabitants of the village,
together with other idlers and pedestrians, gathered round the spot,
and appeared inclined to negotiate for a partner.

Among these on-lookers were three young men of a superior class,
carrying small knapsacks strapped to their shoulders, and stout sticks
in their hands. Their general likeness to each other, and their
consecutive ages, would almost have suggested that they might be, what
in fact they were, brothers. The eldest wore the white tie, high
waistcoat, and thin-brimmed hat of the regulation curate; the second
was the normal undergraduate; the appearance of the third and youngest
would hardly have been sufficient to characterize him; there was an
uncribbed, uncabined aspect in his eyes and attire, implying that he
had hardly as yet found the entrance to his professional groove. That
he was a desultory tentative student of something and everything might
only have been predicted of him.

These three brethren told casual acquaintance that they were spending
their Whitsun holidays in a walking tour through the Vale of Blackmoor,
their course being south-westerly from the town of Shaston on the
north-east.

They leant over the gate by the highway, and inquired as to the meaning
of the dance and the white-frocked maids. The two elder of the brothers
were plainly not intending to linger more than a moment, but the
spectacle of a bevy of girls dancing without male partners seemed to
amuse the third, and make him in no hurry to move on. He unstrapped his
knapsack, put it, with his stick, on the hedge-bank, and opened the
gate.

“What are you going to do, Angel?” asked the eldest.

“I am inclined to go and have a fling with them. Why not all of us—just
for a minute or two—it will not detain us long?”

“No—no; nonsense!” said the first. “Dancing in public with a troop of
country hoydens—suppose we should be seen! Come along, or it will be
dark before we get to Stourcastle, and there’s no place we can sleep at
nearer than that; besides, we must get through another chapter of A
Counterblast to Agnosticism before we turn in, now I have taken the
trouble to bring the book.”

“All right—I’ll overtake you and Cuthbert in five minutes; don’t stop;
I give my word that I will, Felix.”

The two elder reluctantly left him and walked on, taking their
brother’s knapsack to relieve him in following, and the youngest
entered the field.

“This is a thousand pities,” he said gallantly, to two or three of the
girls nearest him, as soon as there was a pause in the dance. “Where
are your partners, my dears?”

“They’ve not left off work yet,” answered one of the boldest. “They’ll
be here by and by. Till then, will you be one, sir?”

“Certainly. But what’s one among so many!”

“Better than none. ’Tis melancholy work facing and footing it to one of
your own sort, and no clipsing and colling at all. Now, pick and
choose.”

“’Ssh—don’t be so for’ard!” said a shyer girl.

The young man, thus invited, glanced them over, and attempted some
discrimination; but, as the group were all so new to him, he could not
very well exercise it. He took almost the first that came to hand,
which was not the speaker, as she had expected; nor did it happen to be
Tess Durbeyfield. Pedigree, ancestral skeletons, monumental record, the
d’Urberville lineaments, did not help Tess in her life’s battle as yet,
even to the extent of attracting to her a dancing-partner over the
heads of the commonest peasantry. So much for Norman blood unaided by
Victorian lucre.

The name of the eclipsing girl, whatever it was, has not been handed
down; but she was envied by all as the first who enjoyed the luxury of
a masculine partner that evening. Yet such was the force of example
that the village young men, who had not hastened to enter the gate
while no intruder was in the way, now dropped in quickly, and soon the
couples became leavened with rustic youth to a marked extent, till at
length the plainest woman in the club was no longer compelled to foot
it on the masculine side of the figure.

The church clock struck, when suddenly the student said that he must
leave—he had been forgetting himself—he had to join his companions. As
he fell out of the dance his eyes lighted on Tess Durbeyfield, whose
own large orbs wore, to tell the truth, the faintest aspect of reproach
that he had not chosen her. He, too, was sorry then that, owing to her
backwardness, he had not observed her; and with that in his mind he
left the pasture.

On account of his long delay he started in a flying-run down the lane
westward, and had soon passed the hollow and mounted the next rise. He
had not yet overtaken his brothers, but he paused to get breath, and
looked back. He could see the white figures of the girls in the green
enclosure whirling about as they had whirled when he was among them.
They seemed to have quite forgotten him already.

All of them, except, perhaps, one. This white shape stood apart by the
hedge alone. From her position he knew it to be the pretty maiden with
whom he had not danced. Trifling as the matter was, he yet
instinctively felt that she was hurt by his oversight. He wished that
he had asked her; he wished that he had inquired her name. She was so
modest, so expressive, she had looked so soft in her thin white gown
that he felt he had acted stupidly.

However, it could not be helped, and turning, and bending himself to a
rapid walk, he dismissed the subject from his mind.