Tess Durbeyfield's route on this memorable morning lay amid the

north-eastern undulations of the Vale in which she had been born, and

in which her life had unfolded. The Vale of Blackmoor was to her the

world, and its inhabitants the races thereof. From the gates and

stiles of Marlott she had looked down its length in the wondering

days of infancy, and what had been mystery to her then was not

much less than mystery to her now. She had seen daily from her

chamber-window towers, villages, faint white mansions; above all,

the town of Shaston standing majestically on its height; its windows

shining like lamps in the evening sun. She had hardly ever visited

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the place, only a small tract even of the Vale and its environs being

known to her by close inspection. Much less had she been far outside

the valley. Every contour of the surrounding hills was as personal

to her as that of her relatives' faces; but for what lay beyond, her

judgment was dependent on the teaching of the village school, where

she had held a leading place at the time of her leaving, a year or

two before this date.

In those early days she had been much loved by others of her own

sex and age, and had used to be seen about the village as one of

three--all nearly of the same year--walking home from school side

by side; Tess the middle one--in a pink print pinafore, of a finely

reticulated pattern, worn over a stuff frock that had lost its

original colour for a nondescript tertiary--marching on upon long

stalky legs, in tight stockings which had little ladder-like holes

at the knees, torn by kneeling in the roads and banks in search of

vegetable and mineral treasures; her then earth-coloured hair hanging

like pot-hooks; the arms of the two outside girls resting round the

waist of Tess; her arms on the shoulders of the two supporters.

As Tess grew older, and began to see how matters stood, she felt

quite a Malthusian towards her mother for thoughtlessly giving her so

many little sisters and brothers, when it was such a trouble to nurse

and provide for them. Her mother's intelligence was that of a happy

child: Joan Durbeyfield was simply an additional one, and that not

the eldest, to her own long family of waiters on Providence.

However, Tess became humanely beneficent towards the small ones,

and to help them as much as possible she used, as soon as she left

school, to lend a hand at haymaking or harvesting on neighbouring

farms; or, by preference, at milking or butter-making processes,

which she had learnt when her father had owned cows; and being

deft-fingered it was a kind of work in which she excelled.




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