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.
Phase the Third: The Rally
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.
