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 degrees, parishes as counties, counties as provinces and kingdoms.

On one point she was resolved:  there should be no more d’Urberville air-castles in the dreams and deeds of her new life.  She would be the dairymaid Tess, and nothing more.  Her mother knew Tess’s feeling on this point so well, though no words had passed between them on the subject, that she never alluded to the knightly ancestry now.

Yet such is human inconsistency that one of the interests of the new place to her was the accidental virtues of its lying near her forefathers’ country (for they were not Blakemore men, though her mother was Blakemore to the bone).  The dairy called Talbothays, for which she was bound, stood not remotely from some of the former estates of the d’Urbervilles, near the great family vaults of her granddames and their powerful husbands.  She would be able to look at them, and think not only that d’Urberville, like Babylon, had fallen, but that the individual innocence of a humble descendant could lapse as silently.  All the while she wondered if any strange good thing might come of her being in her ancestral land; and some spirit within her rose automatically as the sap in the twigs.  It was unexpected youth, surging up anew after its temporary check, and bringing with it hope, and the invincible instinct towards self-delight.

END OF PHASE THE SECOND

Phase the Third:  The Rally

XVI

On a thyme-scented, bird-hatching morning in May, between two and three years after the return from Trantridge—­silent, reconstructive years for Tess Durbeyfield—­she left her home for the second time.

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 Marlott 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 pleasure 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.