Tess of the d'Urbervilles

LIX

The city of Wintoncester, that fine old city, aforetime capital of
Wessex, lay amidst its convex and concave downlands in all the
brightness and warmth of a July morning. The gabled brick, tile, and
freestone houses had almost dried off for the season their integument
of lichen, the streams in the meadows were low, and in the sloping High
Street, from the West Gateway to the mediæval cross, and from the
mediæval cross to the bridge, that leisurely dusting and sweeping was
in progress which usually ushers in an old-fashioned market-day.

From the western gate aforesaid the highway, as every Wintoncestrian
knows, ascends a long and regular incline of the exact length of a
measured mile, leaving the houses gradually behind. Up this road from
the precincts of the city two persons were walking rapidly, as if
unconscious of the trying ascent—unconscious through preoccupation and
not through buoyancy. They had emerged upon this road through a narrow,
barred wicket in a high wall a little lower down. They seemed anxious
to get out of the sight of the houses and of their kind, and this road
appeared to offer the quickest means of doing so. Though they were
young, they walked with bowed heads, which gait of grief the sun’s rays
smiled on pitilessly.

One of the pair was Angel Clare, the other a tall budding creature—half
girl, half woman—a spiritualized image of Tess, slighter than she, but
with the same beautiful eyes—Clare’s sister-in-law, ’Liza-Lu. Their
pale faces seemed to have shrunk to half their natural size. They moved
on hand in hand, and never spoke a word, the drooping of their heads
being that of Giotto’s “Two Apostles”.

When they had nearly reached the top of the great West Hill the clocks
in the town struck eight. Each gave a start at the notes, and, walking
onward yet a few steps, they reached the first milestone, standing
whitely on the green margin of the grass, and backed by the down, which
here was open to the road. They entered upon the turf, and, impelled by
a force that seemed to overrule their will, suddenly stood still,
turned, and waited in paralyzed suspense beside the stone.

The prospect from this summit was almost unlimited. In the valley
beneath lay the city they had just left, its more prominent buildings
showing as in an isometric drawing—among them the broad cathedral
tower, with its Norman windows and immense length of aisle and nave,
the spires of St Thomas’s, the pinnacled tower of the College, and,
more to the right, the tower and gables of the ancient hospice, where
to this day the pilgrim may receive his dole of bread and ale. Behind
the city swept the rotund upland of St Catherine’s Hill; further off,
landscape beyond landscape, till the horizon was lost in the radiance
of the sun hanging above it.

Against these far stretches of country rose, in front of the other city
edifices, a large red-brick building, with level gray roofs, and rows
of short barred windows bespeaking captivity, the whole contrasting
greatly by its formalism with the quaint irregularities of the Gothic
erections. It was somewhat disguised from the road in passing it by
yews and evergreen oaks, but it was visible enough up here. The wicket
from which the pair had lately emerged was in the wall of this
structure. From the middle of the building an ugly flat-topped
octagonal tower ascended against the east horizon, and viewed from this
spot, on its shady side and against the light, it seemed the one blot
on the city’s beauty. Yet it was with this blot, and not with the
beauty, that the two gazers were concerned.

Upon the cornice of the tower a tall staff was fixed. Their eyes were
riveted on it. A few minutes after the hour had struck something moved
slowly up the staff, and extended itself upon the breeze. It was a
black flag.

“Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Æschylean
phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. And the d’Urberville knights and
dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent
themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long
time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As
soon as they had strength, they arose, joined hands again, and went on.