Motion Picture Classic (1923, 1924, 1926)

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Fictionized by permission from the Marshall Neilan production of the screen adaptation by Dorothy Farnum of Thomas Hardy's famous novel IT all seemed so queer like, thought Tess, watching the hot red moon behind, the haystacks. Harvest moon again, a farm dog baying somewhere beyond the downs, the doves making a sound like running water in the thatched eaves, and she sitting here in the dimsey — waiting Like as if, thought Tess, it was meant somehow. Always it was that way, things just seemed to happen. She was like that leaf there blown along the ground by the wind. It had to go the way the wind sent it, and the wind was strong and cruel. There was no use trying to hold against the wind. Her arms which had been cradling something invisible fell listlessly at her sides. Leaves — blown into the hedges — or into bonfires — leaves blown among tall stones, strange, grey, old stones — "I must be fey !" Tess whispered, "why should I always be dreaming of stones standing on end ? And yet — it frightens me sore — that dream " a shudder ran thru her slight frame, "they're so cold " Thru the shadows a deeper shadow was moving toward her. Tess knew well who came, yet she watched him coming with horror washing in a chill tide over her soul. The moonflashed night became another night when the Wessex woods and fields of her childhood had looked to her waking eyes unfamiliar under a pallid moon, like the dead body of a loved friend. In the pale light the face that she lifted to Angel Clare was stamped with fear. "Why, Tess!" he said, in that gentleman's voice of his that was the echo of another voice, "Why, Tess, my dear little girl — did I startle you?" Fear and the weight of memory slipped from her spirit as she looked up into the sensitive, clear-cut face that made her think of Saint Michael's in the stained glass window of the church. Angel Clare was beautiful. rather than handsome, but his slight figure in its rough homespun farm garb had a man's „„ „ -, . . , „, strength. Yesterday he had lifted He gave me no peace, Tess pleaded, but . °, , ■ \ ■ t I knew 'twas not the right way of loving. a slck sheeP in hi% arms and ... I begged him to let me go" carried it from the fields to the byre, crooning to it all the way like a mother soothing a sick child. And today she had seen that nervous, slender hand double into a fist and knock down a hulking yokel who was teasing a dairymaid. "No I beant afeard — I'm not afraid," she corrected herself, cheeks scorched with shame of her uncouth tongue. Angel Clare laughed as he sat down on the bench beside her. But there was no mockery in the sound, rather a rushing tenderness. "Dont be ashamed of your Wessex dialect. Tess ! With your face it gives you a charming air of a great lady masquerading as a milkmaid — for you have birth and family in every line of you !" (Fifty-six)