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.
