This passage is excerpted from Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, originally published in 1891.
In this scene, Tess and her younger brother are taking beehives to
deliver to another town in the early morning hours.
When they had passed the little town of Stourcastle, dumbly
somnolent under its thick brown thatch, they reached higher
ground. Still higher, on their left, the elevation called
Bulbarrow, or Bealbarrow, well-nigh the highest in South
Wessex, swelled into the sky, engirdled by its earthen trenches.
From hereabout the long road was fairly level for some
distance onward. They mounted in front of the waggon, and
Abraham grew reflective.
“Tess!” he said in a preparatory tone, after a silence.
“Yes, Abraham.”
“Bain’t you glad that we’ve become gentlefolk?”
“Not particular glad.”
“But you be glad that you ‘m going to marry a gentleman?”
“What?” said Tess, lifting her face.
“That our great relation will help ‘ee to marry a gentleman.”
“I? Our great relation? We have no such relation. What has put
that into your head?”
“I heard ‘em talking about it up at Rolliver’s when I went to
find father. There’s a rich lady of our family out at Trantridge,
and mother said that if you claimed kin with the lady, she’d put
‘ee in the way of marrying a gentleman.”
His sister became abruptly still, and lapsed into a pondering
silence. Abraham talked on, rather for the pleasure of utterance
than for audition, so that his sister’s abstraction was of no
account. He leant back against the hives, and with upturned
face made observations on the stars, whose cold pulses were
beating amid the black hollows above, in serene dissociation
from these two wisps of human life. He asked how far away
those twinklers were, and whether God was on the other side of
them. But ever and anon his childish prattle recurred to what
impressed his imagination even more deeply than the wonders
of creation. If Tess were made rich by marrying a gentleman,
would she have money enough to buy a spyglass so large that it
would draw the stars as near to her as Nettlecombe-Tout?
The renewed subject, which seemed to have impregnated
the whole family, filled Tess with impatience.
“Never mind that now!” she exclaimed.
“Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?”
“Yes.”
“All like ours?”
“I don’t know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be
like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and
sound—a few blighted.”
“Which do we live on—a splendid one or a blighted one?”
“A blighted one.”
“‘Tis very unlucky that we didn’t pitch on a sound one, when
there were so many more of ‘em!”
“Yes.”
“Is it like that really, Tess?” said Abraham, turning to her
much impressed, on reconsideration of this rare information.
“How would it have been if we had pitched on a sound one?”
“Well, father wouldn’t have coughed and creeped about as
he does, and wouldn’t have got too tipsy to go on this journey;
and mother wouldn’t have been always washing, and never
getting finished.”
“And you would have been a rich lady ready-made, and not
have had to be made rich by marrying a gentleman?”
“O Aby, don’t—don’t talk of that any more!”
Left to his reflections Abraham soon grew drowsy. Tess was
not skilful in the management of a horse, but she thought that
she could take upon herself the entire conduct of the load for
the present and allow Abraham to go to sleep if he wished to
do so. She made him a sort of nest in front of the hives, in such
a manner that he could not fall, and, taking the reins into her
own hands, jogged on as before.
Prince required but slight attention, lacking energy for
superfluous movements of any sort. With no longer a
companion to distract her, Tess fell more deeply into reverie
than ever, her back leaning against the hives. The mute
procession past her shoulders of trees and hedges became
attached to fantastic scenes outside reality, and the occasional
heave of the wind became the sigh of some immense sad soul,
conterminous with the universe in space, and with history in
time.
Then, examining the mesh of events in her own life, she
seemed to see the vanity of her father’s pride; the gentlemanly
suitor awaiting herself in her mother’s fancy; to see him as a
grimacing personage, laughing at her poverty and her shrouded
knightly ancestry. Everything grew more and more
extravagant, and she no longer knew how time passed. A
sudden jerk shook her in her seat, and Tess awoke from the
sleep into which she, too, had fallen.
In this scene, Tess and her younger brother are taking beehives to
deliver to another town in the early morning hours.
When they had passed the little town of Stourcastle, dumbly
somnolent under its thick brown thatch, they reached higher
ground. Still higher, on their left, the elevation called
Bulbarrow, or Bealbarrow, well-nigh the highest in South
Wessex, swelled into the sky, engirdled by its earthen trenches.
From hereabout the long road was fairly level for some
distance onward. They mounted in front of the waggon, and
Abraham grew reflective.
“Tess!” he said in a preparatory tone, after a silence.
“Yes, Abraham.”
“Bain’t you glad that we’ve become gentlefolk?”
“Not particular glad.”
“But you be glad that you ‘m going to marry a gentleman?”
“What?” said Tess, lifting her face.
“That our great relation will help ‘ee to marry a gentleman.”
“I? Our great relation? We have no such relation. What has put
that into your head?”
“I heard ‘em talking about it up at Rolliver’s when I went to
find father. There’s a rich lady of our family out at Trantridge,
and mother said that if you claimed kin with the lady, she’d put
‘ee in the way of marrying a gentleman.”
His sister became abruptly still, and lapsed into a pondering
silence. Abraham talked on, rather for the pleasure of utterance
than for audition, so that his sister’s abstraction was of no
account. He leant back against the hives, and with upturned
face made observations on the stars, whose cold pulses were
beating amid the black hollows above, in serene dissociation
from these two wisps of human life. He asked how far away
those twinklers were, and whether God was on the other side of
them. But ever and anon his childish prattle recurred to what
impressed his imagination even more deeply than the wonders
of creation. If Tess were made rich by marrying a gentleman,
would she have money enough to buy a spyglass so large that it
would draw the stars as near to her as Nettlecombe-Tout?
The renewed subject, which seemed to have impregnated
the whole family, filled Tess with impatience.
“Never mind that now!” she exclaimed.
“Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?”
“Yes.”
“All like ours?”
“I don’t know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be
like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and
sound—a few blighted.”
“Which do we live on—a splendid one or a blighted one?”
“A blighted one.”
“‘Tis very unlucky that we didn’t pitch on a sound one, when
there were so many more of ‘em!”
“Yes.”
“Is it like that really, Tess?” said Abraham, turning to her
much impressed, on reconsideration of this rare information.
“How would it have been if we had pitched on a sound one?”
“Well, father wouldn’t have coughed and creeped about as
he does, and wouldn’t have got too tipsy to go on this journey;
and mother wouldn’t have been always washing, and never
getting finished.”
“And you would have been a rich lady ready-made, and not
have had to be made rich by marrying a gentleman?”
“O Aby, don’t—don’t talk of that any more!”
Left to his reflections Abraham soon grew drowsy. Tess was
not skilful in the management of a horse, but she thought that
she could take upon herself the entire conduct of the load for
the present and allow Abraham to go to sleep if he wished to
do so. She made him a sort of nest in front of the hives, in such
a manner that he could not fall, and, taking the reins into her
own hands, jogged on as before.
Prince required but slight attention, lacking energy for
superfluous movements of any sort. With no longer a
companion to distract her, Tess fell more deeply into reverie
than ever, her back leaning against the hives. The mute
procession past her shoulders of trees and hedges became
attached to fantastic scenes outside reality, and the occasional
heave of the wind became the sigh of some immense sad soul,
conterminous with the universe in space, and with history in
time.
Then, examining the mesh of events in her own life, she
seemed to see the vanity of her father’s pride; the gentlemanly
suitor awaiting herself in her mother’s fancy; to see him as a
grimacing personage, laughing at her poverty and her shrouded
knightly ancestry. Everything grew more and more
extravagant, and she no longer knew how time passed. A
sudden jerk shook her in her seat, and Tess awoke from the
sleep into which she, too, had fallen.