Bab Bab 2 · Chapter II An Interview

. Chapter II An Interview

The 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.