home, there was no time to lose. Her experience of short hirings
had been such that she was determined to accept no more.
Thus she went forward from farm to farm in the direction of the place
whence Marian had written to her, which she determined to make use of
as a last shift only, its rumoured stringencies being the reverse of
tempting. First she inquired for the lighter kinds of employment,
and, as acceptance in any variety of these grew hopeless, applied
next for the less light, till, beginning with the dairy and poultry
tendance that she liked best, she ended with the heavy and course
pursuits which she liked least--work on arable land: work of such
roughness, indeed, as she would never have deliberately voluteered
for.
Towards the second evening she reached the irregular chalk table-land
or plateau, bosomed with semi-globular tumuli--as if Cybele the
Many-breasted were supinely extended there--which stretched between
the valley of her birth and the valley of her love.
Here the air was dry and cold, and the long cart-roads were blown
white and dusty within a few hours after rain. There were few trees,
or none, those that would have grown in the hedges being mercilessly
plashed down with the quickset by the tenant-farmers, the natural
enemies of tree, bush, and brake. In the middle distance ahead of
her she could see the summits of Bulbarrow and of Nettlecombe Tout,
and they seemed friendly. They had a low and unassuming aspect from
this upland, though as approached on the other side from Blackmoor
in her childhood they were as lofty bastions against the sky.
Southerly, at many miles' distance, and over the hills and ridges
coastward, she could discern a surface like polished steel: it was
the English Channel at a point far out towards France.
Before her, in a slight depression, were the remains of a village.
She had, in fact, reached Flintcomb-Ash, the place of Marian's
sojourn. There seemed to be no help for it; hither she was doomed to
come. The stubborn soil around her showed plainly enough that the
kind of labour in demand here was of the roughest kind; but it was
time to rest from searching, and she resolved to stay, particularly
as it began to rain. At the entrance to the village was a cottage
whose gable jutted into the road, and before applying for a lodging
she stood under its shelter, and watched the evening close in.
'Who would think I was Mrs Angel Clare!' she said.
The wall felt warm to her back and shoulders, and she found that
immediately within the gable was the cottage fireplace, the heat of
which came through the bricks. She warmed her hands upon them, and
also put her cheek--red and moist with the drizzle--against their
comforting surface. The wall seemed to be the only friend she had.
She had so little wish to leave it that she could have stayed there
all night.
Tess could hear the occupants of the cottage--gathered together after
their day's labour--talking to each other within, and the rattle of
their supper-plates was also audible. But in the village-street she
had seen no soul as yet. The solitude was at last broken by the
approach of one feminine figure, who, though the evening was cold,
