苔丝

General Editor's Preface
Map of Hardy's Wessex
Map of Locations in Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Introduction
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Thomas Hardy
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES
Explanatory Notes

书摘
Having packed up her luggage so that it could be sent to her later, she started in a hired trap for the little town of Stourcastle, through which it was necessary to pass on her journey, now in a direction almost opposite to that of her first adventuring.On the curve of the nearest hill she looked back regretfully at Mariott and her father's house, although she had been so anxious to get away.
Her kindred dwelling there would probably continue their daily lives as heretofore, with no great diminution of plesure in their consciousness, although she would be far off and they deprived of her smile. In a few days the children would engage in their games as merrily as ever, without the sense of any gap left by her departure. This leaving of the younger children she had decided to be for the best: were she to remain, they would probably gain less good by her precepts than harm by her example.
She went throuagh Stourcastle without pausing, and onward to a junction of highways, where she could await a carrier's van that ran to the south-west; for the railways which engirdled this interior tract of country had never yet struck acroes it. While waiting, however, there came along a farmer in his spring-cart, driving approximately in the direction that she wished to pursue. Though he was a stranger to her she accepted his offer of a scat beside him, ignoring that its motive was a mere tribute to her countenance. He was going to Weatherbury, and by
accompanying him thither she could walk the remainder of the distance instead of travtlling in the van by way of Casterbridge.
THE event of Tess Durbeyfield's return from the manor of her bogus kinsfolk was rumoured abroad, if rumour be not too large a word for a space ora square mile. In the afternoon several young girls of Marlott,former schoolfellows and cquaintances of Tess, called to see her;arriving dressed in their best starched and ironed, as became visitors to a person who had made a transcendent conquest (as they supposed); and sat round the room looking at her with great curiosity. For the fact that it was this said thirty-first cousin Mr d'Urberville who had fallen in love with her, a gentleman not altogether local, whose reputation as a reckless gallant and heartbreaker was beginning to spread beyond the immediate boundaries of Trantridge, lent Tess's supposed position,by its fearsomeness, a far higher fascination than it would have exercised if unhazardous.
Their interest, was so deep that the younger ones whispered when her back was turned; "How pretty she is—and how that best frock do set her off! I believe it cost an immense deal, and that it was a gift from him."
Tess, who was reaching up to get the tea-things from the corner-cupboard, did not hear these commentaries. If she had heard them she might soon have set her friends right on the matter. But her mother heard,and Joan's simple vanity, having been denied the hope of a dashing marriage, fed itself as well as it could upon the sensation or a dashing flirtation. Upon the whole she felt gratified, even though such a limited and evanescent triumph should involve her daughter's
reputation; it might end in marriage yet, and in the warmth of her responsiveness to their admiration she invited her visitors to stay to tea.
Their chatter, their laughter, their good-humoured innuendoes,above all, their flashes and flickerings ofenvy, revived Tess's spirits also;and as the evening wore on she caught the infection of their excitement,and grew almost gay. The marble hardness left her face, she moved with something of her old bounding step, and flushed in all her young beauty.
At moments, in spite of thought,she would reply to their inquiries with a manner of superiority, as if recognizing that her experiences in the field of courtship had indeed been slightly enviable. But so far was she from being, in the words of Robert South, "in love with her own ruin", that the illusion was transient as lightning;cold reason came back to mock her spasmodic weakness; the ghastliness of her momentary pride would convict her, and recall her to reserved listlessness again.
And the despondency of the next morning's dawn, when it was no longer Sunday, but Monday; and no best clothes;and the laughing visitors were gone, and she awoke alone in her old bed, the innocent youngsr children breathing softly around her. In place of the excite-ment of her return and the interest it had inspired, she saw before her a long and stony highway which she had to tread, without aid, and with little sympathy. Her depression was then terrible, and she could have hidden herself in a tomb.
THIS penitential mood kept her from naming the wedding-dty. The beginning of November found its date still in abeyance, though he asked her at the moat tempting times. But Tess's desire seemed to be for perpetual betrothal, in which everything should remain az it was then.
The meads were changing now; but it wa still warm enough in early afternoons before milking to idle there awhile, and the state of dairy-work at this time of year allowed a spare hour for idling. Looking over the damp sod in the direction of the sun a glistening ripple of gossamer web was visible to their eyes under the luminary, like the track of moonlight on the sea. Gnats, knowing nothing of their brief glorification, wandered across the shimmer of this pathway, irradiatd as if they bore fire within them; then passed out of its line, and were quite extinct, in the presence of these things he would remind her that the date was still the question.
Or he would ask her at night, when he accompanied her on some mission invented by Mrs Crick to give him the opportunity. This was mostly a journey to the farm-house on the slopes above the vale, to inquire how the advanced cows were getting on in the straw-barton to which they were relegated. For it was a time of the year that brought great changes to the world of kine. Batches of the animals were sent away daily to this lying-in hospital, where they lived on straw till their calves were born, after which event, and as soon as the calfeould walk,
mother and offspring were driven back to the dairy. In the interval which elapsed before the calves were sold there was, of course, little milking to be done, but as soon as the calf had been taken away the milkmaids would have to set to work as usual.
Returning from one of these dark walks they reached a great gravel cliffimmediatety over the levels, where they stood still and listened. The water was now high in the streams, squirting through the weirs and tinkling under culverts; the smallest gulleys were all, full; there was' no taking short cuts anywhere, and foot-passengers were compelled to follow the permanent ways. From the whole extent of the invisible vale came a multitudinous intonation: it forced upon their fancy that a great city lay beJow them, and that the murmur was the vociferation of its populace.
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