Chapter 59 from Tess英国文学导读.pdf

Chapter 59 from Tess of the D’Urbervilles Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment Chapter LIX 1. The city of Wintoncester, that fine old city, aforetime capital of Wessex, lay amidst its convex and concave downlands in all the brightness and warmth of a July morning. The gabled brick, tile, and freestone houses had almost dried off for the season their integument of lichen, the streams in the meadows were low, and in the sloping High Street, from the West Gateway to the mediaeval cross, and from the mediaeval cross to the bridge, that leisurely dusting and sweeping was in progress which usually ushers in an old-fashioned market-day. 2. From the western gate aforesaid the highway, as every Wintoncestrian knows, ascends a long and regular incline of the exact length of a measured mile, leaving the houses gradually behind. Up this road from the precincts of the city two persons were walking rapidly, as if unconscious of the trying ascent--unconscious through preoccupation and not through buoyancy. They had emerged upon this road through a narrow barred wicket in a high wall a little lower down. They seemed anxious to get out of the sight of the houses and of their kind, and this road appeared to offer the quickest means of doing so. Though they were young they walked with bowed heads, which gait of grief the suns rays smiled on pitilessly. 3. One of the pair was Angel Clare, the other a tall budding creature--half girl, half woman--a spiritualized image of Tess, slighter than she, but with the same beautiful eyes--Clares sister-in-law, Liza-Lu. Their pale faces seemed to have shrunk to half their natural size. They moved on hand in hand, and never spoke a word, the drooping of their heads being that of Giottos Two Apostles. 4. When they had nearly reached the top of the great West Hill the clocks in the town struck eight. Each ga