Tess of the dUrbervilles - Page 208/283

XLV

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.