estimating her father-in-law by his sons. Her present condition was
precisely one which would have enlisted the sympathies of old Mr and
Mrs Clare. Their hearts went out of them at a bound towards extreme
cases, when the subtle mental troubles of the less desperate among
mankind failed to win their interest or regard. In jumping at
Publicans and Sinners they would forget that a word might be said for
the worries of Scribes and Pharisees; and this defect or limitation
might have recommended their own daughter-in-law to them at this
moment as a fairly choice sort of lost person for their love.
Thereupon she began to plod back along the road by which she had come
not altogether full of hope, but full of a conviction that a crisis
in her life was approaching. No crisis, apparently, had supervened;
and there was nothing left for her to do but to continue upon that
starve-acre farm till she could again summon courage to face the
Vicarage. She did, indeed, take sufficient interest in herself to
throw up her veil on this return journey, as if to let the world see
that she could at least exhibit a face such as Mercy Chant could
not show. But it was done with a sorry shake of the head. 'It is
nothing--it is nothing!' she said. 'Nobody loves it; nobody sees it.
Who cares about the looks of a castaway like me!'
Her journey back was rather a meander than a march. It had no
sprightliness, no purpose; only a tendency. Along the tedious length
of Benvill Lane she began to grow tired, and she leant upon gates and
paused by milestones.
She did not enter any house till, at the seventh or eighth mile, she
descended the steep long hill below which lay the village or townlet
of Evershead, where in the morning she had breakfasted with such
contrasting expectations. The cottage by the church, in which she
again sat down, was almost the first at that end of the village, and
while the woman fetched her some milk from the pantry, Tess, looking
down the street, perceived that the place seemed quite deserted.
'The people are gone to afternoon service, I suppose?' she said.
'No, my dear,' said the old woman. ''Tis too soon for that; the
bells hain't strook out yet. They be all gone to hear the preaching
in yonder barn. A ranter preaches there between the services--an
excellent, fiery, Christian man, they say. But, Lord, I don't go to
hear'n! What comes in the regular way over the pulpit is hot enough
for I.'
Tess soon went onward into the village, her footsteps echoing against
the houses as though it were a place of the dead. Nearing the
central part, her echoes were intruded on by other sounds; and seeing
the barn not far off the road, she guessed these to be the utterances
of the preacher.
His voice became so distinct in the still clear air that she could
soon catch his sentences, though she was on the closed side of
the barn. The sermon, as might be expected, was of the extremest
antinomian type; on justification by faith, as expounded in the
theology of St Paul. This fixed idea of the rhapsodist was delivered
with animated enthusiasm, in a manner entirely declamatory, for he
