Music Welcome to Snuescast, podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us on snuescast.com and follow us on Instagram at snuescast to find behind the scenes content. If you enjoy our show, you can support us by writing a review on the Apple Podcasts app. Please know that we read and appreciate every single one, and it makes our show more discoverable to new listeners. If you would like to get an email once a week with upcoming sleep stories and other news, subscribe to this newsletter at snoozecast.com This episode is dedicated to a listener named Kastari and brought to you by Dancing on the Green. Tonight we'll read an excerpt from Tess of the Gerberville's A novel by Thomas Hardy published in 1891. Hardy's writing often explores what he calls the ache of modernism. and this theme is notable in TAS, which,

as one critic noted, portrays the energy of traditional ways and the strength of the forces that are destroying them. Now considered a major work of its time, it received mixed reviews when it first appeared in part because it challenged the morals of late Victorian England. Let's get cozy.

Close your eyes. Let's get cozy.

Close your eyes.

Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now, take a few deep breaths. village of Marlotte. Leia Midn, the north-eastern undulations of the beautiful veil of Blakemore or Blackmore, an ingurtled and secluded region for the most part untraught in as yet by tourist or landscape painter, though within a four-hours journey from London. It is a veil 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 distraction with its narrow and myri 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 bridge. The traveler from the coast, who, after plotting northward for a score of miles over downs and cornlands, 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. Behind him the hills are open. The sun blazes down upon filled so large as to give an un-enclosed character to the landscape. The lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere, colorless. 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, over spreading the baler green of the grass. The atmosphere beneath is

langrous and is so tinged with blue that what artists call the middle distance part takes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Airebolaans 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 veil of black moor. The district is of historic, no less than of topographical interest. The veil was known in former times as the forest of white heart, from a curious legend of King Henry III's reign, in which the killing by a certain Thomas Dela Linde of a beautiful white heart which the king had run down and spared was made the occasion of a heavy fine. in those days, until comparatively recent times, the country was densely wooded. Even now, traces of its earlier condition are to be found in the old oak cops 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 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 younger inhabitants of Marlotte, though its real interest was not observed by the participators in the ceremony. Its singularity lay less in the retention of a custom of walking in procession and dancing on each anniversary, than in the members being solely women. In men's clubs, such celebrations were, though expiring, less common. The club of Marlotte alone had walked for hundreds of years, if not as benefit club, as votive sisterhood of some sort, and it walked still. The bandit ones were all dressed in white gowns, a happy survival from old-style days, cheerfulness and may-time were synonyms. Days before the habit of taking long views had reduced emotions to a monotonous average. first exhibition of themselves was in a processional march of two and two round the parish. Ideal and real clash slightly as the sun lit up their figures against the green Hedge and creeper-laced housefronts. For, though the whole troop wore white garments, no two whites were alike among them, some approached pure blanching, some had a bluish pallor. Some wore by the older characters, which had possibly lain by folded for many a year, inclined to a cadaverist tint and to a Georgian style.

In addition to the distinction of a white frog, every woman and girl carried in her right hand appealed Willow on and in her left a bunch of white flowers. the peeling of the former and the selection of the latter had been an operation of personal care. There were some middle aged and elderly women in the train with silvery, wiery hair and wrinkled faces. The young girls formed, indeed, the majority of the band, and their heads of luxuriant hair reflected in the sunshine every tone of gold, black and brown. Some had beautiful eyes, others a beautiful nose, others a beautiful mouth, and inability to balance their heads and to dissociate self-consciousness from their features, was apparent in them and showed that they were genuine country girls on a custom to many eyes. And as each and all of them were warmed without by the sun.

So each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in. Some dream, some affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which, though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on as hopes will. They were all cheerful and many of them married. They We came round by the pure drop in and we were turning out of the high road to pass through a wicked gate into the meadows when one of the women said, The Lord, Lord, why test Derbyfield if there isn't thy father riding home in a carriage? A young member of the band turned her head at the exclamation. She was a fine and handsome girl, not handsome or thin some others possibly, but her peony mouth and large innocent eyes added eloquence to color and shape. She wore a red ribbon in her hair and was the only one of the white company who could boast of such a pronounced adornment. As she looked round, Derbyfield was seen moving among the road in a chase belonging to the pure drop, driven by a frizzle-headed, brony damsel, with her gown sleeves rolled above her elbows.

This was the cheerful servant of that establishment, who, in her part, turned groom and Nostleur at times, Derbyfield leaning back and with his eyes closed luxuriously, was waving his hand above his head and singing in a slow recitative. I've got a great family vault at King's Bear, and knighted for fathers in lead coffins air. The clubbest, tittered, except the girl called Tess, in whom a slow heat seemed to, at the sense that her father was making himself foolish in their eyes. He's tired, that's all. She said hastily. And he's got a lift home because our own horse has to rest today. Bless thy simplicity, Tess. Set her companions. He's got his market niche. Ha ha. Look here. I won't walk another inch with you if you say any jokes about him.

Tess cried, and the color upon her cheeks spread over her face and neck. In a moment her eyes grew moist, and her glance drooped to the ground. receiving that they had really painted her.

They said no more. to the ground. Perceiving that they had really

painted her, they set no more, and order again prevailed. Tess' pride would not allow her to turn her head again to learn what her father's meaning was, if he had any, and thus she moved on with the whole body to the enclosure where there was to be dancing on the green. By the time the spot was reached, she had recovered her equanimity and tapped her neighbor with her wand and talked as usual. Test Derby Field at this time of her life was a mere vessel of emotion, untinctured by experience. The dialect was on her tongue to some extent, despite the village school. The characteristic intonation of that dialect for this district, being the voicing approximately rendered by the syllable, er. Probably as rich an utterance as any to be found in human speech. The pouted up deep red mouth to which this syllable was native had hardly as yet settled into its definite shape. And her lower lip had a way of thrusting the middle of her top one upward, when they closed together after a word. Faces of her childhood lurked in her aspect still. As she walked along today, for all her handsome womanliness, you could sometimes see her 12th year in her cheeks, or her 9th sparkling from her eyes, and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then. Yet few knew, and still few were considered this, a small minority, mainly strangers, would look long at her, in casually passing by, and grow momentarily fascinated by her freshness, and wonder if they would ever see her again. to almost everybody, she was a fine and picturesque country girl and no more. Nothing was seen or heard further of Derbyfield in his triumphal chariot under the conduct of the Osleris. the club having entered the launted space, dancing began. As there were no men in the company, the girls danced at first with each other. But when the hour for the clues of labor drew on the masculine inhabitants of the village, together with other itlers and pedestrians gathered round the spot and appeared inclined to negotiate for partner partner. Among these onlookers were three young men of a superior class carrying small napsacks strapped to their shoulders and stout sticks in their hands, their general likeness to each other, and their consecutive ages, would almost have suggested that they might be what in fact they were. Brothers, the eldest wore the white tie, high waistcoat, and thin-brimmed hat of the regulation curate. The second was the normal undergraduate. The appearance of the third and youngest would hardly have been sufficient to characterize him. There was an uncrypt aspect in his eyes and a tire, implying that he had hardly as yet found the entrance to his professional groove. That he was a desultory tentative student of something and everything might only have been predicted of him. These three, brethren, told Casual Aquaintains that they were spending their wit-son holidays in a walking tour through the veil of blackmore. Their course being south-westernly from the town of Shaston on the northeast. They lends over the gate by the highway and inquired as to the meaning of the dance and the white frocked maids. The two elder of the brothers were plainly not intending to linger more than a moment. But the spectacle of a bevy of girls dancing without male partners seemed to amuse the third and make him in no hurry to move on. He unstrapped his knapsack, put it with his stick on the hedge bank and opened the gate. What are you gonna do, Angel? Ask the eldest? I'm inclined to go and have a fling with them. Why not all of us just for a minute or two? It won't detain us long. No, no, nonsense. Said the first, dancing in public with a troop of country hoydans? Suppose we should be seen. Come along. It will be dark before we get to Starracasal. And there's no place we can sleep at nearer than that. Besides, we must get through another chapter of a counterblast to agnosticism before we turn in. Now I have taken the trouble to bring the book. All right, I'll catch up to you in Cuthbert in five minutes. Don't stop. I give my word that I will, Felix." The two elder reluctantly left him, taking their brothers' knapsack to relieve him and following, and the youngest entered the field. This is a thousand pitties. He said gallantly to two or three of the girls nearest him. As soon as there was a pause in the dance, where are your partners, my dears? They've not left off work yet, answered one of the boldest. They'll be here by and by. Till then, will you be one, sir? Certainly. But once won among so many, better than none. Tis melancholy work, facing and footing, to one of your own sort, and no clipsing and calling at all. Now pick and choose. Shhh, don't be so forward. Set a shy or girl. The young man, thus invited, glanced them over and attempted some discrimination, but as the group were all so new to him, he could not very well exercise it. He took almost the first that came to hand, which was not the speaker as she had expected, nor did it happen to be Tess Derbyfield. Pedigree, ancestral skeletons, monumental record, the Derbyville linaments did not help tests in her life's battle as yet, even to the extent of attracting to her a dancing partner over the heads of the Communist Peasantry. so much for Norman Blood, unated by Victorian Lucre. The name of the Eclipse-ing Girl, whatever it was, has not been handed down. But she was envied by all as the first to enjoy the luxury of a masculine partner that evening. Yet such was the force of example that the effilage young men who had not hastened to enter the gate while no intruder was in the way. Now, dropped in quickly, and soon the couples became leavened with rustic youth to a market extent. Till it length, the plainest woman in the club was no longer compelled to foot it on the masculine side of the figure,

the church clock struck. When suddenly the students said that he must leave, he had been forgetting himself, he had to join his companions. as he fell out of the dance, his eyes lighted on test Derbyfield, whose own large orbs were to tell the truth. The faintest aspect of reproach that he had not chosen her. He too was sorry then that owing to her backwardness, he had not observed her, and with that in his mind he left the pasture. account of his long delay. he started in a flying run down the lane westward and had soon passed the hollow and mounted the next rise. He had not yet overtaken his brothers, but he paused to get breath and look back. He could see the white figures of the girls in the green enclosure whirling about as they had whirled when he was among them. They seemed to have quite forgotten him already. All of them except perhaps one. This white shape stood apart by the hedge alone. From her position, he knew it to be the pretty maiden, with whom he had not danced. Tri-flang as the matter was, he yet instinctively felt that she He was hurt by his oversight.

He wished that he had asked her. He wished that he had inquired her name. She was so modest, so expressive. She had looked so soft in her thin white gown that he felt he had acted stupidly. However, it could not be helped and turning and bending himself to a rapid walk, he dismissed the subject from his mind. As for Tess Derbafield, she did not so easily dislodge the incident from her consideration she had no spirit to

dance again for a long time, though she might have had plenty of partners. And ah, they did not speak so nicely as the strange young man had done.

It was not till the rays of the sun had absorbed the young strangers,

retreating figure on the hill, that she shook off her temporary sadness and answered her would-be partner. And though firmative, she remained with her comrades till dusk, and participated with a certain zest in the dancing.