He heard something behind him, the brush of feet. Turning, he saw over the prostrate columns another figure; then, before he was aware, another was at hand on the right, under a trilithon, and another on the left. The dawn shone full on the front of the man westward, and Clare could discern from this that he was tall and walked as if trained. They all closed in with evident purpose. Her story, then, was true! Springing to his feet, he looked around for a weapon, loose stone, means of escape, anything. By this time the nearest man was upon him.
“It is no use, sir,” he said. “There are sixteen of us on the plain, and the whole country is reared.”
“Let her finish her sleep!” he implored in a whisper of the men as they gathered round.
When they saw where she lay, which they had not done till then, they showed no objection and stood watching her, as still as the pillars around. He went to the stone and bent over her, holding one poor little hand; her breathing now was quick and small, like that of a lesser creature than a woman. All waited in the growing light, their faces and hands as if they were silvered, the remainder of their figures dark, the stones glistening green-grey, the plain still a mass of shade. Soon the light was strong, and a ray shone upon her unconscious form, peering under her eyelids and waking her.
“What is it, Angel?” she said, starting up. “Have they come for me?”
“Yes, dearest,” he said. “They have come.”
“It is as it should be,” she murmured. “Angel, I am almost glad—yes, glad! This happiness could not have lasted. It was too much. I have had enough, and now I shall not live for you to despise me!”
She stood up, shook herself, and went forward, neither of the men having moved.
“I am ready,” she said quietly.
59
THE CITY OF Wintoncester, that fine old city, aforetime capital of Wessex, lay amidst its convex and concave downlands in all the brightness and warmth of a July morning. The gabled brick, tile, and freestone houses had almost dried off for the season their integument of lichen, the streams in the meadows were low, and in the sloping High Street, from the West Gateway to the mediæval cross and from the mediaeval cross to the bridge, that leisurely dusting and sweeping was in progress which usually ushers in an old-fashioned market-day.
From the western gate aforesaid the highway, as every Win toncestrian knows, ascends a long and regular incline of the exact length of a measured mile, leaving the houses gradually behind. Up this road from the precincts of the city two persons were walking rapidly, as if unconscious of the trying ascent—unconscious through preoccupation and not through buoyancy. They had emerged upon this road through a narrow, barred wicket in a high wall a little lower down. They seemed anxious to get out of the sight of the houses and of their kind, and this road appeared to offer the quickest means of doing so. Though they were young, they walked with bowed heads, which gait of grief the sun’s rays smiled on pitilessly.
One of the pair was Angel Clare, the other a tall budding creature—half girl, half woman—a spiritualized image of Tess, slighter than she, but with the same beautiful eyes—Clare’s sister-in-law, Liza-Lu. Their pale faces seemed to have shrunk to half their natural size. They moved on hand in hand and never spoke a word, the drooping of their heads being that of Giotto’s Two Apostles.
When they had nearly reached the top of the great West Hill, the clocks in the town struck eight. Each gave a start at the notes, and walking onward yet a few steps, they reached the first milestone, standing whitely on the green margin of the grass, and backed by the down, which here was open to the road. They entered upon the turf and, impelled by a force that seemed to overrule their will, suddenly stood still, turned, and waited in paralysed suspense beside the stone.
The prospect from this summit was almost unlimited. In the valley beneath lay the city they had just left, its more prominent buildings showing as in an isometric drawing—among them the broad cathedral tower, with its Norman windows and immense length of aisle and nave, the spires of St. Thomas‘, the pinnacled tower of the College, and, more to the right, the tower and gables of the ancient hospice, where to this day the pilgrim may receive his dole of bread and ale. Behind the city swept the rotund upland of St. Catherine’s Hill; further off, landscape beyond landscape, till the horizon was lost in the radiance of the sun hanging above it.
Against these far stretches of country rose, in front of the other city edifices, a large red-brick building, with level grey roofs and rows of short, barred windows bespeaking captivity, the whole contrasting greatly by its formalism with the quaint irregularities of the Gothic erections. It was somewhat disguised from the road in passing it by yews and evergreen oaks, but it was visible enough up here. The wicket from which the pair had lately emerged was in the wall of this structure. From the middle of the building an ugly, flat-topped, octagonal tower ascended against the east horizon, and viewed from this spot, on its shady side and against the light, it seemed the one blot on the city’s beauty. Yet it was with this blot, and not with the beauty, that the two gazers were concerned.
Upon the cornice of the tower a tall staff was fixed. Their eyes were riveted on it. A few minutes after the hour had struck, something moved slowly up the staff and extended itself upon the breeze. It was a black flag.
“Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. And the d‘Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless; the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength, they arose, joined hands again, and went on.
THE END
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
WORKS BY THOMAS HARDY
Desperate Remedies, 1871 novel
Under the Greenwood Tree, 1872 novel
A Pair of Blue Eyes, 1873 novel
Far from the Madding Crowd, 1874 novel
The Hand of Ethelberta, 1876 novel
The Return of the Native, 1878 novel
The Trumpet-Major, 1880 novel
A Laodicean, 1881 novel
Two on a Tower, 1882 novel
The Mayor of Casterbridge, 1886 novel
The Woodlanders, 1887 novel
Wessex Tales, 1888 tales
A Group of Noble Dames, 1891 tales
Tess of the d‘Urbervilles, 1891 novel
Life Little Ironies, 1894 tales
Jude the Obscure, 1895 novel
Poems of the Past and Present, 1901 poems
The Dynasts, 1904-08 dramatic poem
Timme’s Laughingstocks and Other Verse, 1909 poems
A Changed Man, The Waiting Supper, and Other Tales, 1913 tales
Satires of Circumstance, 1914 poems
Selected Poems, 1916 poems
Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses, 1917 poems
Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses, 1922 poems
The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall, 1923 verse drama
Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles, 1925 poems
Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres, 1928 poems
COLLECTIONS
The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy. Ed. Richard Little Purdy and Michael Millgate. 7 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978-88.
The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hardy. Ed. Samuel Hynes. 3 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982-85.
The New Wessex Edition. Ed. P. N. Furbank. 22 vols. London: Macmillan, 1974-78.
The Personal Notebooks of Thomas Hardy. Ed. Richard H. Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.
Thomas Hardy’s Personal Writings: Prefaces, Literary Opinions, Reminiscences. Ed. Harold Orel. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1966.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Thomas Hardy. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
Bullen, J. B. The Expressive Eye: Fiction and Perception in the Works of Thomas Hardy. New York: Oxford University Press,
1986.
Butler, Lance St. John. Alternative Hardy. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989.
Casagrande, Peter J. Tess of the d‘Urbervilles: Unorthodox Beauty. New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1992.
Daleski, H. M. Thomas Hardy and the Paradoxes of Love. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997.
Drabble, Margaret, ed. The Genius of Thomas Hardy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.
Garson, Marjorie. Hardy’s Fables of Integrity: Woman, Body, Text. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Gatrell, Simon. Hardy the Creator: A Textual Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Gittings, Robert. The Older Hardy. London: Heinemann, 1978.
—. The Younger Hardy. London: Heinemann, 1975.
Goode, John. Thomas Hardy: The Offensive Truth. New York: B. Blackwell, 1988.
Hardy, Thomas. The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy. Originally published in two volumes under the name of Florence Emily Hardy, 1928, 1930. New ed. Michael Millgate. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985.
Jekel, Pamela. Thomas Hardy’s Heroines: A Chorus of Priorities. Troy, NY: Whitson, 1986.
Kramer, Dale, ed. Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Thomas Hardy. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1979.
—ed. Critical Essays on Thomas Hardy: The Novels. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1990.
Laird, J. T. The Shaping of Tess of the d‘Urbervilles. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
La Valley, Albert J., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Tess of the d‘Urbervilles. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969.
Miller, J. Hillis. Thomas Hardy: Distance and Desire. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1972.
Millgate, Michael. Thomas Hardy: A Biography. New York: Random House, 1982.
Morgan, Rosemarie. Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy. London: Routledge, 1988.
Page, Norman, ed. Thomas Hardy: The Writer and His Background. London: Bell & Hyman, 1980.
Pinion, F. B. Hardy the Writer: Surveys and Assessments. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990.
Sprechman, Ellen Lew. Seeing Women as Men: Role Reversal in the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1995.
Stave, Shirley A. The Decline of the Goddess: Nature, Culture, and Women in Thomas Hardy’s Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995.
Wright, Terence R. Hardy and the Erotic. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988.
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Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
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