第110章

He had, he said, been the greatest of sinners.He had scoffed; he had wantonly associated with the reckless and the lewd.But a day of awakening had come, and, in a human sense, it had been brought about mainly by the influence of a certain clergyman, whom he had at first grossly insulted; but whose parting words had sunk into his heart, and had remained there, till by the grace of Heaven they had worked this change in him, and made him what they saw him.

But more startling to Tess than the doctrine had been the voice, which, impossible as it seemed, was precisely that of Alec d'Urberville.Her face fixed in painful suspense she came round to the front of the barn, and passed before it.The low winter sun beamed directly upon the great double-doored entrance on this side; one of the doors being open, so that the rays stretched far in over the threshing-floor to the preacher and his audience, all snugly sheltered from the northern breeze.The listeners were entirely villagers, among them being the man whom she had seen carrying the red paint-pot on a former memorable occasion.But her attention was given to the central figure, who stood upon some sacks of corn, facing the people and the door.

The three o'clock sun shone full upon him, and the strange enervating conviction that her seducer confronted her, which had been gaining ground in Tess ever since she had heard his words distinctly, was at last established as a fact indeed.END OF PHASE THE FIFTH PHASE THE SIXTH The Convert Chapter 45 Till this moment she had never seen or heard from d'Urberville since her departure from Trantridge.

The rencounter came at a heavy moment, one of all moments calculated to permit its impact with the least emotional shock.But such was unreasoning memory that, though he stood there openly and palpably a converted man, who was sorrowing for his past irregularities, a fear overcame her, paralyzing her movement so that she neither retreated nor advanced.

To think of what emanated from that countenance when she saw it last, and to behold it now! There was the same handsome unpleasantness of mien, but now he wore neatly trimmed, old-fashioned whiskers, the sable moustache having disappeared; and his dress was half-clerical, a modification which had changed his expression sufficiently to abstract the dandyism from his features, and to hinder for a second her belief in his identity.

To Tess's sense there was, just at first, a ghastly bizarrerie , a grim incongruity, in the march of these solemn words of Scripture out of such a mouth.This too familiar intonation, less than four years earlier, had brought to her ears expressions of such divergent purpose that her heart became quite sick at the irony of the contrast.

It was less a reform than a transfiguration.The former curves of sensuousness were now modulated to lines of devotional passion.The lip-shapes that had meant seductiveness were now made to express supplication; the glow on the cheek that yesterday could be translated as riotousness was evangelized to-day into the splendour of pious rhetoric; animalism had become fanaticism;Paganism Paulinism; the bold rolling eye that had flashed upon her form in the old time with such mastery now beamed with the rude energy of a theolatry that was almost ferocious.Those black angularities which his face had used to put on when his wishes were thwarted now did duty in picturing the incorrigible backslider who would insist upon turning again to his wallowing in the mire.

The lineaments, as such, seemed to complain.They had been diverted from their hereditary connotation to signify impressions for which Nature did not intend them.Strange that their very elevation was a misapplication, that to raise seemed to falsify.

Yet could it be so? She would admit the ungenerous sentiment no longer.

D'Urberville was not the first wicked man who had turned away from his wickedness to save his soul alive, and why should she deem it unnatural to him? It was but the usage of thought which had been jarred in her at hearing good new words in bad old notes.The greater the sinner the greater the saint; it was not necessary to dive far into Christian history to discover that.

Such impressions as these moved her vaguely, and without strict definiteness.

As soon as the nerveless pause of her surprise would allow her to stir, her impulse was to pass on out of his sight.He had obviously not discerned her yet in her position against the sun.

But the moment that she moved again he recognized her.The effect upon her old lover was electric, far stronger than the effect of his presence upon her.His fire, the tumultuous ring of his eloquence, seemed to go out of him.His lip struggled and trembled under the words that lay upon it; but deliver them it could not as long as she faced him.His eyes, after their first glance upon her face, hung confusedly in every other direction but hers, but came back in a desperate leap every few seconds.This paralysis lasted, however, but a short time; for Tess's energies returned with the atrophy of his, and she walked as fast as she was able past the barn and onward.

As soon as she could reflect it appalled her, this change in their relative platforms.He who had wrought her undoing was now on the side of the Spirit, while she remained unregenerate.And, as in the legend, it had resulted that her Cyprian image had suddenly appeared upon his altar, whereby the fire of the priest had been wellnigh extinguished.

She went on without turning her head.Her back seemed to be endowed with a sensitiveness to ocular beams - even her clothing - so alive was she to a fancied gaze which might be resting upon her from the outside of that barn.All the way along to this point her heart had been heavy with an inactive sorrow; now there was a change in the quality of its trouble.