Tess of the d'Urbervilles

LV

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
in 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 well nigh 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. That hunger for affection too long withheld was for the time
displaced by an almost physical sense of an implacable past which still
engirdled her. It intensified her consciousness of error to a practical
despair; the break of continuity between her earlier and present
existence, which she had hoped for, had not, after all, taken place.
Bygones would never be complete bygones till she was a bygone herself.

Thus absorbed, she recrossed the northern part of Long-Ash Lane at
right angles, and presently saw before her the road ascending whitely
to the upland along whose margin the remainder of her journey lay. Its
dry pale surface stretched severely onward, unbroken by a single
figure, vehicle, or mark, save some occasional brown horse-droppings
which dotted its cold aridity here and there. While slowly breasting
this ascent Tess became conscious of footsteps behind her, and turning
she saw approaching that well-known form—so strangely accoutred as the
Methodist—the one personage in all the world she wished not to
encounter alone on this side of the grave.

There was not much time, however, for thought or elusion, and she
yielded as calmly as she could to the necessity of letting him overtake
her. She saw that he was excited, less by the speed of his walk than by
the feelings within him.

“Tess!” he said.

She slackened speed without looking round.

“Tess!” he repeated. “It is I—Alec d’Urberville.”

She then looked back at him, and he came up.

“I see it is,” she answered coldly.

“Well—is that all? Yet I deserve no more! Of course,” he added, with a
slight laugh, “there is something of the ridiculous to your eyes in
seeing me like this. But—I must put up with that.... I heard you had
gone away; nobody knew where. Tess, you wonder why I have followed
you?”

“I do, rather; and I would that you had not, with all my heart!”

“Yes—you may well say it,” he returned grimly, as they moved onward
together, she with unwilling tread. “But don’t mistake me; I beg this
because you may have been led to do so in noticing—if you did notice
it—how your sudden appearance unnerved me down there. It was but a
momentary faltering; and considering what you have been to me, it was
natural enough. But will helped me through it—though perhaps you think
me a humbug for saying it—and immediately afterwards I felt that of all
persons in the world whom it was my duty and desire to save from the
wrath to come—sneer if you like—the woman whom I had so grievously
wronged was that person. I have come with that sole purpose in
view—nothing more.”

There was the smallest vein of scorn in her words of rejoinder: “Have
you saved yourself? Charity begins at home, they say.”

“I have done nothing!” said he indifferently. “Heaven, as I have been
telling my hearers, has done all. No amount of contempt that you can
pour upon me, Tess, will equal what I have poured upon myself—the old
Adam of my former years! Well, it is a strange story; believe it or
not; but I can tell you the means by which my conversion was brought
about, and I hope you will be interested enough at least to listen.
Have you ever heard the name of the parson of Emminster—you must have
done do?—old Mr Clare; one of the most earnest of his school; one of
the few intense men left in the Church; not so intense as the extreme
wing of Christian believers with which I have thrown in my lot, but
quite an exception among the Established clergy, the younger of whom
are gradually attenuating the true doctrines by their sophistries, till
they are but the shadow of what they were. I only differ from him on
the question of Church and State—the interpretation of the text, ‘Come
out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord’—that’s all. He
is one who, I firmly believe, has been the humble means of saving more
souls in this country than any other man you can name. You have heard
of him?”

“I have,” she said.

“He came to Trantridge two or three years ago to preach on behalf of
some missionary society; and I, wretched fellow that I was, insulted
him when, in his disinterestedness, he tried to reason with me and show
me the way. He did not resent my conduct, he simply said that some day
I should receive the first-fruits of the Spirit—that those who came to
scoff sometimes remained to pray. There was a strange magic in his
words. They sank into my mind. But the loss of my mother hit me most;
and by degrees I was brought to see daylight. Since then my one desire
has been to hand on the true view to others, and that is what I was
trying to do to-day; though it is only lately that I have preached
hereabout. The first months of my ministry have been spent in the North
of England among strangers, where I preferred to make my earliest
clumsy attempts, so as to acquire courage before undergoing that
severest of all tests of one’s sincerity, addressing those who have
known one, and have been one’s companions in the days of darkness. If
you could only know, Tess, the pleasure of having a good slap at
yourself, I am sure—”

“Don’t go on with it!” she cried passionately, as she turned away from
him to a stile by the wayside, on which she bent herself. “I can’t
believe in such sudden things! I feel indignant with you for talking to
me like this, when you know—when you know what harm you’ve done me!
You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making
the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a
fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your
pleasure in heaven by becoming converted! Out upon such—I don’t believe
in you—I hate it!”

“Tess,” he insisted; “don’t speak so! It came to me like a jolly new
idea! And you don’t believe me? What don’t you believe?”

“Your conversion. Your scheme of religion.”

“Why?”

She dropped her voice. “Because a better man than you does not believe
in such.”

“What a woman’s reason! Who is this better man?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“Well,” he declared, a resentment beneath his words seeming ready to
spring out at a moment’s notice, “God forbid that I should say I am a
good man—and you know I don’t say any such thing. I am new to goodness,
truly; but newcomers see furthest sometimes.”

“Yes,” she replied sadly. “But I cannot believe in your conversion to a
new spirit. Such flashes as you feel, Alec, I fear don’t last!”

Thus speaking she turned from the stile over which she had been
leaning, and faced him; whereupon his eyes, falling casually upon the
familiar countenance and form, remained contemplating her. The inferior
man was quiet in him now; but it was surely not extracted, nor even
entirely subdued.

“Don’t look at me like that!” he said abruptly.

Tess, who had been quite unconscious of her action and mien, instantly
withdrew the large dark gaze of her eyes, stammering with a flush, “I
beg your pardon!” And there was revived in her the wretched sentiment
which had often come to her before, that in inhabiting the fleshly
tabernacle with which Nature had endowed her she was somehow doing
wrong.

“No, no! Don’t beg my pardon. But since you wear a veil to hide your
good looks, why don’t you keep it down?”

She pulled down the veil, saying hastily, “It was mostly to keep off
the wind.”

“It may seem harsh of me to dictate like this,” he went on; “but it is
better that I should not look too often on you. It might be dangerous.”

“Ssh!” said Tess.

“Well, women’s faces have had too much power over me already for me not
to fear them! An evangelist has nothing to do with such as they; and it
reminds me of the old times that I would forget!”

After this their conversation dwindled to a casual remark now and then
as they rambled onward, Tess inwardly wondering how far he was going
with her, and not liking to send him back by positive mandate.
Frequently when they came to a gate or stile they found painted thereon
in red or blue letters some text of Scripture, and she asked him if he
knew who had been at the pains to blazon these announcements. He told
her that the man was employed by himself and others who were working
with him in that district, to paint these reminders that no means might
be left untried which might move the hearts of a wicked generation.

At length the road touched the spot called “Cross-in-Hand.” Of all
spots on the bleached and desolate upland this was the most forlorn. It
was so far removed from the charm which is sought in landscape by
artists and view-lovers as to reach a new kind of beauty, a negative
beauty of tragic tone. The place took its name from a stone pillar
which stood there, a strange rude monolith, from a stratum unknown in
any local quarry, on which was roughly carved a human hand. Differing
accounts were given of its history and purport. Some authorities stated
that a devotional cross had once formed the complete erection thereon,
of which the present relic was but the stump; others that the stone as
it stood was entire, and that it had been fixed there to mark a
boundary or place of meeting. Anyhow, whatever the origin of the relic,
there was and is something sinister, or solemn, according to mood, in
the scene amid which it stands; something tending to impress the most
phlegmatic passer-by.

“I think I must leave you now,” he remarked, as they drew near to this
spot. “I have to preach at Abbot’s-Cernel at six this evening, and my
way lies across to the right from here. And you upset me somewhat too,
Tessy—I cannot, will not, say why. I must go away and get strength....
How is it that you speak so fluently now? Who has taught you such good
English?”

“I have learnt things in my troubles,” she said evasively.

“What troubles have you had?”

She told him of the first one—the only one that related to him.

D’Urberville was struck mute. “I knew nothing of this till now!” he
next murmured. “Why didn’t you write to me when you felt your trouble
coming on?”

She did not reply; and he broke the silence by adding: “Well—you will
see me again.”

“No,” she answered. “Do not again come near me!”

“I will think. But before we part come here.” He stepped up to the
pillar. “This was once a Holy Cross. Relics are not in my creed; but I
fear you at moments—far more than you need fear me at present; and to
lessen my fear, put your hand upon that stone hand, and swear that you
will never tempt me—by your charms or ways.”

“Good God—how can you ask what is so unnecessary! All that is furthest
from my thought!”

“Yes—but swear it.”

Tess, half frightened, gave way to his importunity; placed her hand
upon the stone and swore.

“I am sorry you are not a believer,” he continued; “that some
unbeliever should have got hold of you and unsettled your mind. But no
more now. At home at least I can pray for you; and I will; and who
knows what may not happen? I’m off. Goodbye!”

He turned to a hunting-gate in the hedge and, without letting his eyes
again rest upon her, leapt over and struck out across the down in the
direction of Abbot’s-Cernel. As he walked his pace showed perturbation,
and by-and-by, as if instigated by a former thought, he drew from his
pocket a small book, between the leaves of which was folded a letter,
worn and soiled, as from much re-reading. D’Urberville opened the
letter. It was dated several months before this time, and was signed by
Parson Clare.

The letter began by expressing the writer’s unfeigned joy at
d’Urberville’s conversion, and thanked him for his kindness in
communicating with the parson on the subject. It expressed Mr Clare’s
warm assurance of forgiveness for d’Urberville’s former conduct and his
interest in the young man’s plans for the future. He, Mr Clare, would
much have liked to see d’Urberville in the Church to whose ministry he
had devoted so many years of his own life, and would have helped him to
enter a theological college to that end; but since his correspondent
had possibly not cared to do this on account of the delay it would have
entailed, he was not the man to insist upon its paramount importance.
Every man must work as he could best work, and in the method towards
which he felt impelled by the Spirit.

D’Urberville read and re-read this letter, and seemed to quiz himself
cynically. He also read some passages from memoranda as he walked till
his face assumed a calm, and apparently the image of Tess no longer
troubled his mind.

She meanwhile had kept along the edge of the hill by which lay her
nearest way home. Within the distance of a mile she met a solitary
shepherd.

“What is the meaning of that old stone I have passed?” she asked of
him. “Was it ever a Holy Cross?”

“Cross—no; ’twer not a cross! ’Tis a thing of ill-omen, Miss. It was
put up in wuld times by the relations of a malefactor who was tortured
there by nailing his hand to a post and afterwards hung. The bones lie
underneath. They say he sold his soul to the devil, and that he walks
at times.”

She felt the petite mort at this unexpectedly gruesome information,
and left the solitary man behind her. It was dusk when she drew near to
Flintcomb-Ash, and in the lane at the entrance to the hamlet she
approached a girl and her lover without their observing her. They were
talking no secrets, and the clear unconcerned voice of the young woman,
in response to the warmer accents of the man, spread into the chilly
air as the one soothing thing within the dusky horizon, full of a
stagnant obscurity upon which nothing else intruded. For a moment the
voices cheered the heart of Tess, till she reasoned that this interview
had its origin, on one side or the other, in the same attraction which
had been the prelude to her own tribulation. When she came close, the
girl turned serenely and recognized her, the young man walking off in
embarrassment. The woman was Izz Huett, whose interest in Tess’s
excursion immediately superseded her own proceedings. Tess did not
explain very clearly its results, and Izz, who was a girl of tact,
began to speak of her own little affair, a phase of which Tess had just
witnessed.

“He is Amby Seedling, the chap who used to sometimes come and help at
Talbothays,” she explained indifferently. “He actually inquired and
found out that I had come here, and has followed me. He says he’s been
in love wi’ me these two years. But I’ve hardly answered him.”