第68章 At Shaston(3)

'I can't talk to you any longer,Jude!'she said,the tragic contralto note having come back as of old.'It is getting too dark to stay together like this,after playing morbid Good Friday tunes that make one feel what one shouldn't!...We mustn't sit and talk in this way any more.Yes -you must go away,for you mistake me!I am very much the reverse of what you say so cruelly -Oh,Jude,it was cruel to say that!Yet I can't tell you the truth -I should shock you by letting you know how I give way to my impulses,and how much I feel that I shouldn't have been provided with attractiveness unless it were meant to be exercised!Some women's love of being loved is insatiable;and so,often,is their love of loving;and in the last case they may find that they can't give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop's licence to receive it.

But you are so straightforward,Jude,that you can't understand me!...

Now you must go.I am sorry my husband is not at home.'

'Are you?'

'I perceive I have said that in mere convention!Honestly I don't think I am sorry.It does not matter,either way,sad to say!'

As they had overdone the grasp of hands some time sooner,she touched his fingers but lightly when he went out now.He had hardly gone from the door when,with a dissatisfied look,she jumped on a form and opened the iron casement of a window beneath which he was passing in the path without.'When do you leave here to catch your train,Jude?'she asked.

He looked up in some surprise.'The coach that runs to meet it goes in three-quarters of an hour or so.'

'What will you do with yourself for the time?'

'Oh -wander about,I suppose.Perhaps I shall go and sit in the old church.'

'It does seem hard of me to pack you off so!You have thought enough of churches,Heaven knows,without going into one in the dark.Stay there.'

'Where?'

'Where you are.I can talk to you better like this than when you were inside....It was so kind and tender of you to give up half a day's work to come to see me!...You are Joseph the dreamer of dreams,dear Jude.And a tragic Don Quixote.And sometimes you are St.Stephen,who,while they were stoning him,could see Heaven opened.Oh,my poor friend and comrade,you'll suffer yet!'

Now that the high window-sill was between them,so that he could not get at her,she seemed not to mind indulging in a frankness she had feared at close quarters.

'I have been thinking,'she continued,still in the tone of one brimful of feeling,'that the social moulds civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns.I am called Mrs.Richard Phillotson,living a calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name.

But I am not really Mrs.Richard Phillotson,but a woman tossed about,all alone,with aberrant passions,and unaccountable antipathies....Now you mustn't wait longer,or you will lose the coach.Come and see me again.

You must come to the house then.'

'Yes!'said Jude.'When shall it be?'

'To-morrow week.Good-bye -good-bye!'She stretched out her hand and stroked his forehead pitifully -just once.Jude said good-bye,and went away into the darkness.

Passing along Bimport Street he thought he heard the wheels of the coach departing,and,truly enough,when he reached the Duke's Arms in the Market Place the coach had gone.It was impossible for him to get to the station on foot in time for this train,and he settled himself perforce to wait for the next -the last to Melchester that night.

He wandered about awhile,obtained something to eat;and then,having another half-hour on his hands,his feet involuntarily took him through the venerable graveyard of Trinity Church,with its avenues of limes,in the direction of the schools again.They were entirely in darkness.

She had said she lived over the way at Old-Grove Place,a house which he soon discovered from her deion of its antiquity.

A glimmering candlelight shone from a front window,the shutters being yet unclosed.He could see the interior clearly -the floor sinking a couple of steps below the road without,which had become raised during the centuries since the house was built.Sue,evidently just come in,as standing with her hat on in this front parlour or sitting-room,whose walls were lined with wainscoting of panelled oak reaching from floor to ceiling,the latter being crossed by huge moulded beams only a little way above her head.The mantelpiece was of the same heavy deion,carved with Jacobean pilasters and scroll-work.The centuries did,indeed,ponderously overhang a young wife who passed her time here.

She had opened a rosewood work-box,and was looking at a photograph.

Having contemplated it a little while she pressed it against her bosom,and put it again in its place.

Then becoming aware that she had not obscured the windows she came forward to do so,candle in hand.It was too dark for her to see Jude without,but he could see her face distinctly,and there was an unmistakable tearfulness about the dark,long-lashed eyes.

She closed the shutters,and Jude turned away to pursue his solitary journey home.'Whose photograph was she looking at?'he said.He had once given her his;but she had others,he knew.Yet it was his,surely?

He knew he should go to see her again,according to her invitation.

Those earnest men he read of,the saints,whom Sue,with gentle irreverence,called his demi-gods,would have shunned such encounters if they doubted their own strength.But he could not.He might fast and pray during the whole interval,but the human was more powerful in him than the Divine.