Thomas Hardy

Two on a Tower Thomas Hardy

On an early winter afternoon, clear but not cold, when the vegetable world was a weirdmultitude of skeletons through whose ribs the sun shone freely, a gleaming landau came toa pause on the crest of a hill in Wessex. The spot was where the old Melchester Road, which the carriage had hitherto followed, was joined by a drive that led round into a parkat no great distance off. The footman alighted, and went to the occupant of the carriage, a lady about eight- or nineand-twenty. She was looking through the opening afforded by a field-gate at the undulatingstretch of country beyond. In pursuance of some remark from her the servant looked in thesame direction. The central feature of the middle distance, as they beheld it, was a circular isolated hill, ofno great elevation, which placed itself in strong chromatic contrast with a wide acreage ofsurrounding arable by being covered with fir-trees. The trees were all of one size and age, so that their tips assumed the precise curve of the hill they grew upon. This pine-cladprotuberance was yet further marked out from the general landscape by having on itssummit a tower in the form of a classical column, which, though partly immersed in theplantation, rose above the tree-tops to a considerable height. Upon this object the eyes oflady and servant were bent.'Then there is no road leading near it?' she asked.'Nothing nearer than where we are now, my lady.''Then drive home, ' she said after a moment. And the carriage rolled on its way. A few days later, the same lady, in the same carriage, passed that spot again. Her eyes, asbefore, turned to the distant tower.'Nobbs, ' she said to the coachman, 'could you find your way home through that field, so asto get near the outskirts of the plantation where the column is?'The coachman regarded the field. 'Well, my lady, ' he observed, 'in dry weather we mightdrive in there by inching and pinching, and so get across by Five-and-Twenty Acres, allbeing well. But the ground is so heavy after these rains that perhaps it would hardly besafe to try it