第38章

It lacked the intensely blue atmosphere of the rival vale, and its heavy soils and scents; the new air was clear, bracing, ethereal.The river itself, which nourished the grass and cows of these renowned dairies, flowed not like the streams in Blackmoor.Those were slow, silent, often turbid; flowing over beds of mud into which the incautious wader might sink and vanish unawares.The Froom waters were clear as the pure River of Life shown to the Evangelist, rapid as the shadow of a cloud, with pebbly shallows that prattled to the sky all day long.There the water-flower was the lily;the crowfoot here.

Either the change in the quality of the air from heavy to light, or the sense of being amid new scenes where there were no invidious eyes upon her, sent up her spirits wonderfully.Her hopes mingled with the sunshine in an ideal photosphere which surrounded her as she bounded along against the soft south wind.She heard a pleasant voice in every breeze, and in every bird's note seemed to lurk a joy.

Her face had latterly changed with changing states of mind, continually fluctuating between beauty and ordinariness, according as the thoughts were gay or grave.One day she was pink and flawless; another pale and tragical.When she was pink she was feeling less than when pale; her more perfect beauty accorded with her less elevated mood; her more intense mood with her less perfect beauty.It was her best face physically that was now set against the south wind.

The irresistible, universal, automatic tendency to find sweet pleasure somewhere, which pervades all life, from the meanest to the highest, had at length mastered Tess.Being even now only a young woman of twenty, one who mentally and sentimentally had not finished growing, it was impossible that any event should have left upon her an impression that was not in time capable of transmutation.

And thus her spirits, and her thankfulness, and her hopes, rose higher and higher.She tried several ballads, but found them inadequate; till, recollecting the psalter that her eyes had so often wandered over of a Sunday morning before she had eaten of the tree of knowledge, she chanted:

`O ye Sun and Moon...O ye Stars...ye Green Things upon the Earth...ye Fowls of the Air Beasts and Cattle...Children of Men...bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever!'

She suddenly stopped and murmured: `But perhaps I don't quite know the Lord as yet.'

And probably the half-unconscious rhapsody was a Fetichistic utterance in a Monotheistic setting; women whose chief companions are the forms and forces of outdoor Nature retain in their souls far more of the Pagan fantasy of their remote forefathers than of the systematized religion taught their race at later date.However, Tess found at least approximate expression for her feelings in the old Benedicite that she had lisped from infancy; and it was enough.Such high contentment with such a slight initial performance as that of having started towards a means of independent living was a part of the Durbeyfield temperament.Tess really wished to walk uprightly, while her father did nothing of the kind; but she resembled him in being content with immediate and small achievements, and in having no mind for laborious effort towards such petty social advancement as could alone be effected by a family so heavily handicapped as the once powerful d'Urbervilles were now.

There was, it might be said, the energy of her mother's unexpended family, as well as the natural energy of Tess's years, rekindled after the experience which had so overwhelmed her for the time.Let the truth be told - women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, and again look about them with an interested eye.While there's life there's hope is a conviction not so entirely unknown to the `betrayed' as some amiable theorists would have us believe.

Tess Durbeyfield, then, in good heart, and full of zest for life, descended the Egdon slopes lower and lower towards the dairy of her pilgrimage.

The marked difference, in the final particular, between the rival vales now showed itself.The secret of Blackmoor was best discovered from the heights around; to read aright the valley before her it was necessary to descend into its midst.When Tess had accomplished this feat she found herself to be standing on a carpeted level, which stretched to the east and west as far as the eye could reach.

The river had stolen from the higher tracts and brought in particles to the vale all this horizontal land; and now, exhausted, aged, and attenuated, lay serpentining along through the midst of its former spoils.

Not quite sure of her direction Tess stood still upon the hemmed expanse of verdant flatness, like a fly on a billiard-table of indefinite length, and of no more consequence to the surroundings than that fly.The sole effect of her presence upon the placid valley so far has been to excite the mind of a solitary heron, which, after descending to the ground not far from her path, stood with neck erect, looking at her.

Suddenly there arose from all parts of the lowland a prolonged and repeated call--`Waow! waow! waow!'

From the furthest east to the furthest west the cries spread as if by contagion, accompanied in some cases by the barking of a dog.It was not the expression of the valley's consciousness that beautiful Tess had arrived, but the ordinary announcement of milking-time - half-past four o'clock, when the dairymen set about getting in the cows.