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.
She went through Stourcastle without pausing and onward to a junction
of highways, where she could await a carrier's van that ran to the
south-west; for the railways which engirdled this interior tract of
country had never yet struck across it. While waiting, however,
there came along a farmer in his spring cart, driving approximately
in the direction that she wished to pursue. Though he was a stranger
to her she accepted his offer of a seat beside him, ignoring that
its motive was a mere tribute to her countenance. He was going to
Weatherbury, and by accompanying him thither she could walk the
remainder of the distance instead of travelling in the van by way of
Casterbridge. Tess did not stop at Weatherbury, after this long drive, further than
to make a slight nondescript meal at noon at a cottage to which the
farmer recommended her. Thence she started on foot, basket in hand,
to reach the wide upland of heath dividing this district from the
low-lying meads of a further valley in which the dairy stood that was
the aim and end of her day's pilgrimage.
Tess had never before visited this part of the country, and yet she
felt akin to the landscape. Not so very far to the left of her she
could discern a dark patch in the scenery, which inquiry confirmed
her in supposing to be trees marking the environs of Kingsbere--in
the church of which parish the bones of her ancestors--her useless
ancestors--lay entombed.