Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy [best large ereader TXT] 📗

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 today; 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