Tess of the dUrbervilles | Page 3

to send a horse and carriage to me
immed'ately, to carry me hwome. And in the bottom o' the carriage they
be to put a noggin o' rum in a small bottle, and chalk it up to my
account. And when you've done that goo on to my house with the
basket, and tell my wife to put away that washing, because she needn't
finish it, and wait till I come hwome, as I've news to tell her."
As the lad stood in a dubious attitude, Durbeyfield put his hand in his
pocket, and produced a shilling, one of the chronically few that he
possessed.
"Here's for your labour, lad."
This made a difference in the young man's estimate of the position.
"Yes, Sir John. Thank 'ee. Anything else I can do for 'ee, Sir John?"
"Tell 'em at hwome that I should like for supper,--well, lamb's fry if
they can get it; and if they can't, black-pot; and if they can't get that,
well chitterlings will do."
"Yes, Sir John."
The boy took up the basket, and as he set out the notes of a brass band
were heard from the direction of the village.

"What's that?" said Durbeyfield. "Not on account o' I?"
"'Tis the women's club-walking, Sir John. Why, your da'ter is one o' the
members."
"To be sure--I'd quite forgot it in my thoughts of greater things! Well,
vamp on to Marlott, will ye, and order that carriage, and maybe I'll
drive round and inspect the club."
The lad departed, and Durbeyfield lay waiting on the grass and daisies
in the evening sun. Not a soul passed that way for a long while, and the
faint notes of the band were the only human sounds audible within the
rim of blue hills.

II
The village of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the
beautiful Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor, aforesaid, an engirdled and
secluded region, for the most part untrodden as yet by tourist or
landscape-painter, though within a four hours' journey from London.
It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made by viewing it from the
summits of the hills that surround it--except perhaps during the
droughts of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad
weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous, and
miry ways.
This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are never
brown and the springs never dry, is bounded on the south by the bold
chalk ridge that embraces the prominences of Hambledon Hill,
Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, and Bubb Down.
The traveller from the coast, who, after plodding northward for a score
of miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the
verge of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted to behold,
extended like a map beneath him, a country differing absolutely from
that which he has passed through. Behind him the hills are open, the
sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed character

to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the
atmosphere colourless. Here, in the valley, the world seems to be
constructed upon a smaller and more delicate scale; the fields are mere
paddocks, so reduced that from this height their hedgerows appear a
network of dark green threads overspreading the paler green of the
grass. The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with
azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue,
while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Arable lands
are few and limited; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a broad
rich mass of grass and trees, mantling minor hills and dales within the
major. Such is the Vale of Blackmoor.
The district is of historic, no less than of topographical interest. The
Vale was known in former times as the Forest of White Hart, from a
curious legend of King Henry III's reign, in which the killing by a
certain Thomas de la Lynd of a beautiful white hart which the king had
run down and spared, was made the occasion of a heavy fine. In those
days, and till comparatively recent times, the country was densely
wooded. Even now, traces of its earlier condition are to be found in the
old oak copses and irregular belts of timber that yet survive upon its
slopes, and the hollow-trunked trees that shade so many of its pastures.
The forests have departed, but some old customs of their shades remain.
Many, however, linger only in a metamorphosed or disguised form.
The May-Day dance, for instance, was to be discerned on the afternoon
under notice, in the guise of the club revel, or "club-walking," as it was
there called.
It was an interesting event to the