its dark background of The Chase; also the dates of the baby's birth
and death; also her own birthday; and every other day individualized
by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought
one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there
was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that
of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day
which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving
no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less
surely there. When was it? Why did she not feel the chill of each
yearly encounter with such a cold relation? She had Jeremy Taylor's
thought that some time in the future those who had known her would
say: 'It is the ----th, the day that poor Tess Durbeyfield died'; and
there would be nothing singular to their minds in the statement. Of
that day, doomed to be her terminus in time through all the ages, she
did not know the place in month, week, season or year.
Almost at a leap Tess thus changed from simple girl to complex woman.
Symbols of reflectiveness passed into her face, and a note of tragedy
at times into her voice. Her eyes grew larger and more eloquent.
She became what would have been called a fine creature; her aspect
was fair and arresting; her soul that of a woman whom the turbulent
experiences of the last year or two had quite failed to demoralize.
But for the world's opinion those experiences would have been simply
a liberal education.
She had held so aloof of late that her trouble, never generally
known, was nearly forgotten in Marlott. But it became evident to her
that she could never be really comfortable again in a place which
had seen the collapse of her family's attempt to 'claim kin'--and,
through her, even closer union--with the rich d'Urbervilles. At
least she could not be comfortable there till long years should have
obliterated her keen consciousness of it. Yet even now Tess felt the
pulse of hopeful life still warm within her; she might be happy in
some nook which had no memories. To escape the past and all that
appertained thereto was to annihilate it, and to do that she would
have to get away.
Was once lost always lost really true of chastity? she would ask
herself. She might prove it false if she could veil bygones. The
recuperative power which pervaded organic nature was surely not
denied to maidenhood alone.
She waited a long time without finding opportunity for a new
departure. A particularly fine spring came round, and the stir of
germination was almost audible in the buds; it moved her, as it moved
the wild animals, and made her passionate to go. At last, one day in
early May, a letter reached her from a former friend of her mother's,
to whom she had addressed inquiries long before--a person whom she
had never seen--that a skilful milkmaid was required at a dairy-house
many miles to the southward, and that the dairyman would be glad to
have her for the summer months.
It was not quite so far off as could have been wished; but it was
probably far enough, her radius of movement and repute having been
so small. To persons of limited spheres, miles are as geographical
