in glimpses, when she heard footsteps behind her back, and in a few
moments she was overtaken by a man. He stepped up alongside Tess and
said--
'Good night, my pretty maid': to which she civilly replied.
The light still remaining in the sky lit up her face, though the
landscape was nearly dark. The man turned and stared hard at her.
'Why, surely, it is the young wench who was at Trantridge awhile--
young Squire d'Urberville's friend? I was there at that time, though
I don't live there now.'
She recognized in him the well-to-do boor whom Angel had knocked down
at the inn for addressing her coarsely. A spasm of anguish shot
through her, and she returned him no answer.
'Be honest enough to own it, and that what I said in the town was
true, though your fancy-man was so up about it--hey, my sly one? You
ought to beg my pardon for that blow of his, considering.'
Still no answer came from Tess. There seemed only one escape for her
hunted soul. She suddenly took to her heels with the speed of the
wind, and, without looking behind her, ran along the road till she
came to a gate which opened directly into a plantation. Into this
she plunged, and did not pause till she was deep enough in its shade
to be safe against any possibility of discovery.
Under foot the leaves were dry, and the foliage of some holly bushes
which grew among the deciduous trees was dense enough to keep off
draughts. She scraped together the dead leaves till she had formed
them into a large heap, making a sort of nest in the middle. Into
this Tess crept.
Such sleep as she got was naturally fitful; she fancied she heard
strange noises, but persuaded herself that they were caused by the
breeze. She thought of her husband in some vague warm clime on the
other side of the globe, while she was here in the cold. Was there
another such a wretched being as she in the world? Tess asked
herself; and, thinking of her wasted life, said, 'All is vanity.'
She repeated the words mechanically, till she reflected that this
was a most inadequate thought for modern days. Solomon had thought
as far as that more than two thousand years ago; she herself,
though not in the van of thinkers, had got much further. If all
were only vanity, who would mind it? All was, alas, worse than
vanity--injustice, punishment, exaction, death. The wife of Angel
Clare put her hand to her brow, and felt its curve, and the edges of
her eye-sockets perceptible under the soft skin, and thought as she
did so that a time would come when that bone would be bare. 'I wish
it were now,' she said.
In the midst of these whimsical fancies she heard a new strange sound
among the leaves. It might be the wind; yet there was scarcely any
wind. Sometimes it was a palpitation, sometimes a flutter; sometimes
it was a sort of gasp or gurgle. Soon she was certain that the
noises came from wild creatures of some kind, the more so when,
originating in the boughs overhead, they were followed by the fall
of a heavy body upon the ground. Had she been ensconced here under
