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 had plainly no skill
as a dialectician. Although Tess had not heard
the beginning of the address, she learnt what the text
had been from its constant iteration—
“O foolish galatians, who
hath bewitched you, that ye
should not obey the truth, before
whose eyes Jesus Christ
hath been evidently set forth, crucified
among you?”
Tess was all the more interested, as she stood listening
behind, in finding that the preacher’s doctrine
was a vehement form of the view of Angel’s father,
and her interest intensified when the speaker began
to detail his own spiritual experiences of how he had
come by those views. He had, he said, been the
greatest of sinners. He had scoffed; he had
wantonly associated with the reckless and the lewd.
But a day of awakening had come, and, in a human sense,
it had been brought about mainly by the influence
of a certain clergyman, whom he had at first grossly
insulted; but whose parting words had sunk into his
heart, and had remained there, till by the grace of
Heaven they had worked this change in him, and made
him what they saw him.
But more startling to Tess than the doctrine had been
the voice, which, impossible as it seemed, was precisely
that of Alec d’Urberville. Her face fixed
in painful suspense, she came round to the front of
the barn, and passed before it. The low winter
sun beamed directly upon the great double-doored entrance
on this side; one of the doors being open, so that
the rays stretched far in over the threshing-floor
to the preacher and his audience, all snugly sheltered
from the northern breeze. The listeners were
entirely villagers, among them being the man whom
she had seen carrying the red paint-pot on a former
memorable occasion. But her attention was given
to the central figure, who stood upon some sacks of
corn, facing the people and the door. The three
o’clock sun shone full upon him, and the strange
enervating conviction that her seducer confronted
her, which had been gaining ground in Tess ever since
she had heard his words distinctly, was at last established
as a fact indeed.
Phase the Sixth: The Convert
