VII
The next day Jude Fawley was pausing in his bedroom with the slopingceiling, looking at the books on the table, and then at the blackmark on the plaster above them, made by the smoke of his lamp in pastmonths.
It was Sunday afternoon, four-and-twenty hours after his meeting withArabella Donn. During the whole bygone week he had been resolving toset this afternoon apart for a special purpose,--the re-reading ofhis Greek Testament--his new one, with better type than his old copy,following Griesbach's text as amended by numerous correctors, andwith variorum readings in the margin. He was proud of the book,having obtained it by boldly writing to its London publisher, a thinghe had never done before.
He had anticipated much pleasure in this afternoon's reading, underthe quiet roof of his great-aunt's house as formerly, where he nowslept only two nights a week. But a new thing, a great hitch, hadhappened yesterday in the gliding and noiseless current of his life,and he felt as a snake must feel who has sloughed off its winterskin, and cannot understand the brightness and sensitiveness of itsnew one.
He would not go out to meet her, after all. He sat down, opened thebook, and with his elbows firmly planted on the table, and his handsto his temples, began at the beginning:
HE KAINE DIATHEKE
Had he promised to call for her? Surely he had! She would waitindoors, poor girl, and waste all her afternoon on account of him.There was a something in her, too, which was very winning, apart frompromises. He ought not to break faith with her. Even though he hadonly Sundays and week-day evenings for reading he could afford oneafternoon, seeing that other young men afforded so many. Afterto-day he would never probably see her again. Indeed, it would beimpossible, considering what his plans were.
In short, as if materially, a compelling arm of extraordinarymuscular power seized hold of him--something which had nothing incommon with the spirits and influences that had moved him hitherto.This seemed to care little for his reason and his will, nothing forhis so-called elevated intentions, and moved him along, as a violentschoolmaster a schoolboy he has seized by the collar, in a directionwhich tended towards the embrace of a woman for whom he had norespect, and whose life had nothing in common with his own exceptlocality.
HE KAINE DIATHEKE was no more heeded, and the predestinate Judesprang up and across the room. Foreseeing such an event he hadalready arrayed himself in his best clothes. In three minutes he wasout of the house and descending by the path across the wide vacanthollow of corn-ground which lay between the village and the isolatedhouse of Arabella in the dip beyond the upland.
As he walked he looked at his watch. He could be back in two hours,easily, and a good long time would still remain to him for readingafter tea.
Passing the few unhealthy fir-trees and cottage where the pathjoined the highway he hastened along, and struck away to the left,descending the steep side of the country to the west of the BrownHouse. Here at the base of the chalk formation he neared the brookthat oozed from it, and followed the stream till he reached herdwelling. A smell of piggeries came from the back, and the gruntingof the originators of that smell. He entered the garden, and knockedat the door with the knob of his stick.
Somebody had seen him through the window, for a male voice on theinside said:
"Arabella! Here's your young man come coorting! Mizzle, my girl!"
Jude winced at the words. Courting in such a businesslike aspect asit evidently wore to the speaker was the last thing he was thinkingof. He was going to walk with her, perhaps kiss her; but "courting"was too coolly purposeful to be anything but repugnant to his ideas.The door was opened and he entered, just as Arabella came downstairsin radiant walking attire.
"Take a chair, Mr. What's-your-name?" said her father, an energetic,black-whiskered man, in the same businesslike tones Jude had heardfrom outside.
"I'd rather go out at once, wouldn't you?" she whispered to Jude.
"Yes," said he. "We'll walk up to the Brown House and back, we cando it in half an hour."
Arabella looked so handsome amid her untidy surroundings that he feltglad he had come, and all the misgivings vanished that had hithertohaunted him.
First they clambered to the top of the great down, during whichascent he had occasionally to take her hand to assist her. Thenthey bore off to the left along the crest into the ridgeway, whichthey followed till it intersected the high-road at the BrownHouse aforesaid, the spot of his former fervid desires to beholdChristminster. But he forgot them now. He talked the commonestlocal twaddle to Arabella with greater zest than he would have feltin discussing all the philosophies with all the Dons in the recentlyadored university, and passed the spot where he had knelt to Dianaand Phoebus without remembering that there were any such people inthe mythology, or that the sun was anything else than a usefullamp for illuminating Arabella's face. An indescribable lightnessof heel served to lift him along; and Jude, the incipient scholar,prospective D.D., professor, bishop, or what not, felt himselfhonoured and glorified by the condescension of this handsome countrywench in agreeing to take a walk with him in her Sunday frock andribbons.
They reached the Brown House barn--the point at which he had plannedto turn back. While looking over the vast northern landscape fromthis spot they were struck by the rising of a dense volume of smokefrom the neighbourhood of the little town which lay beneath them at adistance of a couple of miles.
"It is a fire," said Arabella. "Let's run and see it--do! It is notfar!"
The tenderness which had grown up in Jude's bosom left him no will tothwart her inclination now--which pleased him in affording him excusefor a longer time with her. They started off down the hill almost ata trot; but on gaining level ground at the bottom, and walking amile, they found that the spot of the fire was much further off thanit had seemed.
Having begun their journey, however, they pushed on; but it was nottill five o'clock that they found themselves on the scene,--thedistance being altogether about half-a-dozen miles from Marygreen,and three from Arabella's. The conflagration had been got underby the time they reached it, and after a short inspection of themelancholy ruins they retraced their steps--their course lyingthrough the town of Alfredston.
Arabella said she would like some tea, and they entered an inn of aninferior class, and gave their order. As it was not for beer theyhad a long time to wait. The maid-servant recognized Jude, andwhispered her surprise to her mistress in the background, that he,the student "who kept hisself up so particular," should have suddenlydescended so low as to keep company with Arabella. The latterguessed what was being said, and laughed as she met the serious andtender gaze of her lover--the low and triumphant laugh of a carelesswoman who sees she is winning her game.
They sat and looked round the room, and at the picture of Samson andDelilah which hung on the wall, and at the circular beer-stains onthe table, and at the spittoons underfoot filled with sawdust. Thewhole aspect of the scene had that depressing effect on Jude whichfew places can produce like a tap-room on a Sunday evening whenthe setting sun is slanting in, and no liquor is going, and theunfortunate wayfarer finds himself with no other haven of rest.
It began to grow dusk. They could not wait longer, really, for thetea, they said. "Yet what else can we do?" asked Jude. "It is athree-mile walk for you."
"I suppose we can have some beer," said Arabella.
"Beer, oh yes. I had forgotten that. Somehow it seems odd to cometo a public-house for beer on a Sunday evening."
"But we didn't."
"No, we didn't." Jude by this time wished he was out of such anuncongenial atmosphere; but he ordered the beer, which was promptlybrought.
Arabella tasted it. "Ugh!" she said.
Jude tasted. "What's the matter with it?" he asked. "I don'tunderstand beer very much now, it is true. I like it well enough,but it is bad to read on, and I find coffee better. But this seemsall right."
"Adulterated--I can't touch it!" She mentioned three or fouringredients that she de
tected in the liquor beyond malt and hops,much to Jude's surprise.
"How much you know!" he said good-humouredly.
Nevertheless she returned to the beer and drank her share, and theywent on their way. It was now nearly dark, and as soon as they hadwithdrawn from the lights of the town they walked closer together,till they touched each other. She wondered why he did not put hisarm round her waist, but he did not; he merely said what to himselfseemed a quite bold enough thing: "Take my arm."
She took it, thoroughly, up to the shoulder. He felt the warmth ofher body against his, and putting his stick under his other arm heldwith his right hand her right as it rested in its place.
"Now we are well together, dear, aren't we?" he observed.
"Yes," said she; adding to herself: "Rather mild!"
"How fast I have become!" he was thinking.
Thus they walked till they reached the foot of the upland, where theycould see the white highway ascending before them in the gloom. Fromthis point the only way of getting to Arabella's was by going up theincline, and dipping again into her valley on the right. Before theyhad climbed far they were nearly run into by two men who had beenwalking on the grass unseen.
"These lovers--you find 'em out o' doors in all seasons andweathers--lovers and homeless dogs only," said one of the men asthey vanished down the hill.
Arabella tittered lightly.
"Are we lovers?" asked Jude.
"You know best."
"But you can tell me?"
For answer she inclined her head upon his shoulder. Jude took thehint, and encircling her waist with his arm, pulled her to him andkissed her.
They walked now no longer arm in arm but, as she had desired, claspedtogether. After all, what did it matter since it was dark, said Judeto himself. When they were half-way up the long hill they paused asby arrangement, and he kissed her again. They reached the top, andhe kissed her once more.
"You can keep your arm there, if you would like to," she said gently.
He did so, thinking how trusting she was.
Thus they slowly went towards her home. He had left his cottageat half-past three, intending to be sitting down again to the NewTestament by half-past five. It was nine o'clock when, with anotherembrace, he stood to deliver her up at her father's door.
She asked him to come in, if only for a minute, as it would seem soodd otherwise, and as if she had been out alone in the dark. He gaveway, and followed her in. Immediately that the door was opened hefound, in addition to her parents, several neighbours sitting round.They all spoke in a congratulatory manner, and took him seriously asArabella's intended partner.
They did not belong to his set or circle, and he felt out of placeand embarrassed. He had not meant this: a mere afternoon ofpleasant walking with Arabella, that was all he had meant. He didnot stay longer than to speak to her stepmother, a simple, quietwoman without features or character; and bidding them all good nightplunged with a sense of relief into the track over the down.
But that sense was only temporary: Arabella soon re-asserted hersway in his soul. He walked as if he felt himself to be another manfrom the Jude of yesterday. What were his books to him? what werehis intentions, hitherto adhered to so strictly, as to not wasting asingle minute of time day by day? "Wasting!" It depended on yourpoint of view to define that: he was just living for the firsttime: not wasting life. It was better to love a woman than to be agraduate, or a parson; ay, or a pope!
When he got back to the house his aunt had gone to bed, and a generalconsciousness of his neglect seemed written on the face of all thingsconfronting him. He went upstairs without a light, and the diminterior of his room accosted him with sad inquiry. There lay hisbook open, just as he had left it, and the capital letters on thetitle-page regarded him with fixed reproach in the grey starlight,like the unclosed eyes of a dead man:
HE KAINE DIATHEKE
* * * * * *
Jude had to leave early next morning for his usual week of absence atlodgings; and it was with a sense of futility that he threw into hisbasket upon his tools and other necessaries the unread book he hadbrought with him.
He kept his impassioned doings a secret almost from himself.Arabella, on the contrary, made them public among all her friendsand acquaintances.
Retracing by the light of dawn the road he had followed a few hoursearlier under cover of darkness, with his sweetheart by his side, hereached the bottom of the hill, where he walked slowly, and stoodstill. He was on the spot where he had given her the first kiss. Asthe sun had only just risen it was possible that nobody had passedthere since. Jude looked on the ground and sighed. He lookedclosely, and could just discern in the damp dust the imprints oftheir feet as they had stood locked in each other's arms. She wasnot there now, and "the embroidery of imagination upon the stuff ofnature" so depicted her past presence that a void was in his heartwhich nothing could fill. A pollard willow stood close to the place,and that willow was different from all other willows in the world.Utter annihilation of the six days which must elapse before he couldsee her again as he had promised would have been his intensest wishif he had had only the week to live.
An hour and a half later Arabella came along the same way with hertwo companions of the Saturday. She passed unheedingly the scene ofthe kiss, and the willow that marked it, though chattering freely onthe subject to the other two.
"And what did he tell 'ee next?"
"Then he said--" And she related almost word for word some of histenderest speeches. If Jude had been behind the fence he would havefelt not a little surprised at learning how very few of his sayingsand doings on the previous evening were private.
"You've got him to care for 'ee a bit, 'nation if you han't!"murmured Anny judicially. "It's well to be you!"
In a few moments Arabella replied in a curiously low, hungry tone oflatent sensuousness: "I've got him to care for me: yes! But I wanthim to more than care for me; I want him to have me--to marry me! Imust have him. I can't do without him. He's the sort of man I longfor. I shall go mad if I can't give myself to him altogether! Ifelt I should when I first saw him!"
"As he is a romancing, straightfor'ard, honest chap, he's to be had,and as a husband, if you set about catching him in the right way."
Arabella remained thinking awhile. "What med be the right way?" sheasked.
"Oh you don't know--you don't!" said Sarah, the third girl.
"On my word I don't!--No further, that is, than by plain courting,and taking care he don't go too far!"
The third girl looked at the second. "She DON'T know!"
"'Tis clear she don't!" said Anny.
"And having lived in a town, too, as one may say! Well, we can teach'ee som'at then, as well as you us."
"Yes. And how do you mean--a sure way to gain a man? Take me for aninnocent, and have done wi' it!"
"As a husband."
"As a husband."
"A countryman that's honourable and serious-minded such as he; Godforbid that I should say a sojer, or sailor, or commercial gent fromthe towns, or any of them that be slippery with poor women! I'd dono friend that harm!"
"Well, such as he, of course!"
Arabella's companions looked at each other, and turning up their eyesin drollery began smirking. Then one went up close to Arabella, and,although nobody was near, imparted some information in a low tone,the other observing curiously the effect upon Arabella.
"Ah!" said the last-named slowly. "I own I didn't think of thatway! ... But suppose he ISN'T honourable? A woman had better nothave tried it!"
"Nothing venture nothing have! Besides, you make sure that he'shonourable before you begin. You'd be safe enough with yours. Iwish I had the chance! Lots of girls do it; or do you think they'dget married at all?"
Arabella pursued her way in silent thought. "I'll try it!" shewhispered; but not to them.