by Thomas Hardy
There was another peculiarity—this a modern one—which Shaston appeared to owe to its site. It was the resting-place and headquarters of the proprietors of wandering vans, shows, shooting-galleries, and other itinerant concerns, whose business lay largely at fairs and markets. As strange wild birds are seen assembled on some lofty promontory, meditatively pausing for longer flights, or to return by the course they followed thither, so here, in this cliff-town, stood in stultified silence the yellow and green caravans bearing names not local, as if surprised by a change in the landscape so violent as to hinder their further progress; and here they usually remained all the winter till they turned to seek again their old tracks in the following spring.
It was to this breezy and whimsical spot that Jude ascended from the nearest station for the first time in his life about four o’clock one afternoon, and entering on the summit of the peak after a toilsome climb, passed the first houses of the aerial town; and drew towards the school-house. The hour was too early; the pupils were still in school, humming small, like a swarm of gnats; and he withdrew a few steps along Abbey Walk, whence he regarded the spot which fate had made the home of all he loved best in the world. In front of the schools, which were extensive and stone-built, grew two enormous beeches with smooth mouse-coloured trunks, as such trees will only grow on chalk uplands. Within the mullioned and transomed windows he could see the black, brown, and flaxen crowns of the scholars over the sills, and to pass the time away he walked down to the level terrace where the Abbey gardens once had spread, his heart throbbing in spite of him.
Unwilling to enter till the children were dismissed he remained here till young voices could be heard in the open air, and girls in white pinafores over red and blue frocks appeared dancing along the paths which the abbess, prioress, sub-prioress, and fifty nuns had demurely paced three centuries earlier. Retracing his steps he found that he had waited too long, and that Sue had gone out into the town at the heels of the last scholar, Mr. Phillotson having been absent all the afternoon at a teachers’ meeting at Shottsford.
Jude went into the empty schoolroom and sat down, the girl who was sweeping the floor having informed him that Mrs. Phillotson would be back again in a few minutes. A piano stood near—actually the old piano that Phillotson had possessed at Marygreen—and though the dark afternoon almost prevented him seeing the notes Jude touched them in his humble way, and could not help modulating into the hymn which had so affected him in the previous week.
A figure moved behind him, and thinking it was still the girl with the broom Jude took no notice, till the person came close and laid her fingers lightly upon his bass hand. The imposed hand was a little one he seemed to know, and he turned.
“Don’t stop,” said Sue. “I like it. I learnt it before I left Melchester. They used to play it in the Training School.”
“I can’t strum before you! Play it for me.”
“O well—I don’t mind.”
Sue sat down, and her rendering of the piece, though not remarkable, seemed divine as compared with his own. She, like him, was evidently touched—to her own surprise—by the recalled air; and when she had finished, and he moved his hand towards hers, it met his own half-way. Jude grasped it—just as he had done before her marriage.
“It is odd,” she said, in a voice quite changed, “that I should care about that air; because———”
“Because what?”
“I am not that sort—quite.”
“Not easily moved?”
“I didn’t quite mean that.”
“O, but you are one of that sort, for you are just like me at heart!”
“But not at head.”
She played on, and suddenly turned round; and by an unpremeditated instinct each clasped the other’s hand again.
She uttered a forced little laugh as she relinquished his quickly. “How funny!” she said. “I wonder what we both did that for?”
“I suppose because we are both alike, as I said before.”
“Not in our thoughts! Perhaps a little in our feelings.”
“And they rule thoughts.... Isn’t it enough to make one blaspheme that the composer of that hymn is one of the most commonplace men I ever met!”
“What—you know him?”
“I went to see him.”
“O you goose—to do just what I should have done! Why did you?”
“Because we are not alike,” he said drily.
“Now we’ll have some tea,” said Sue. “Shall we have it here instead of in my house? It is no trouble to get the kettle and things brought in. We don’t live at the school, you know, but in that ancient dwelling across the way called Old-Grove Place. It is so antique and dismal that it depresses me dreadfully. Such houses are very well to visit, but not to live in—I feel crushed into the earth by the weight of so many previous lives there spent. In a new place like these schools there is only your own life to support. Sit down, and I’ll tell Ada to bring the tea-things across.”
He waited in the light of the stove, the door of which she flung open before going out, and when she returned, followed by the maiden with tea, they sat down by the same light, assisted by the blue rays of a spirit-lamp under the brass kettle on the stand.
“This is one of your wedding-presents to me,” she said, signifying the latter.
“Yes,” said Jude.
The kettle of his gift sang with some satire in its note, to his mind; and to change the subject he said, “Do you know of any good readable edition of the uncanonical books of the New Testament?ci You don’t read them in the school, I suppose?”
“O dear no!—’twould alarm the neighbourhood.... Yes, there is one. I am not familiar with it now, though I was interested in it when my former friend was alive. Cowper’s Apocryphal Gospels.”
“That sounds like what I want.” His thoughts, however, reverted with a twinge to the “former friend”—by whom she meant, as he knew, the University comrade of her earlier days. He wondered if she talked of him to Phillotson.
“The Gospel of Nicodemus is very nice,” she went on, to keep him from his jealous thoughts, which she read clearly, as she always did. Indeed when they talked on an indifferent subject, as now, there was ever a second silent conversation passing between their emotions, so perfect was the reciprocity between them. “It is quite like the genuine article. All cut up into verses, too; so that it is like one of the other evangelists read in a dream, when things are the same, yet not the same. But, Jude, do you take an interest in those questions still? Are you getting up Apologetica?”cj
“Yes. I am reading Divinity harder than ever.”
She regarded him curiously.
“Why do you look at me like that?” said Jude.
“Oh—why do you want to know?”
“I am sure you can tell me anything I may be ignorant of in that subject. You must have learnt a lot of everything from your dear dead friend! ”
“We won’t get on to that now!” she coaxed. “Will you be carving out at that church again next week, where you learnt the pretty hymn?”
“Yes, perhaps.”
“That will be very nice. Shall I come and see you there? It is in this direction, and I could come any afternoon by train for half-anhour?”
“No. Don’t come!”
“What—aren’t we going to be friends, then, any longer, as we used to be?” “No.”
“I didn’t know that. I thought you were always going to be kind to me!”
“No, I am not.”
“What have I done, then? I am sure I thought we two—” The tremolock in her voice caused her to break off.
“Sue, I sometimes think you are a flirt,” said he abruptly.
There was a momentary pause, till she suddenly jumped up; and to his surprise he saw by the kettle-flame that her face was flushed.
“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 p
laying 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—O 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?”
“O—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,cl dear Jude. And a tragic Don Quixote. And sometimes you are St. Stephen, who, while they were stoning him, could see Heaven opened. 0 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 description of its antiquity.
A glimmering candle-light 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, was 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 description, 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.
IV.-II.
HOWEVER, IF GOD DISPOSED not, woman did. The next morning but one brought him this note from her:“Don’t come next week. On your own account don’t! We were too free, under the influence of that morbid hymn and the twilight. Think no more than you can help of
SUSANNA FLORENCE MARY.”
The disappointment was keen. He knew her mood, the look of her face, when she subscribed herself at length thus. But whatever her mood he could not say she was wrong in her view. He replied:“I acquiesce. You are right. It is a lesson in renunciation which I suppose I ought to learn at this season.
JUDE.”
He despatched the note on Easter Eve, and there seemed a finality in their decisions. But other forces and laws than theirs were in operation. On Easter Monday morning he received a message from the Widow Edlin, whom he had directed to telegraph if anything serious happened:“Your aunt is sinking. Come at once.”
He threw down his tools and went. Three and a half hours later he was crossing the downs about Marygreen, and presently plunged into the concave field across which the short cut was made to the village. As he ascended on the other side a labouring man, who had been watching his approach from a gate across the path, moved uneasily, and prepared to speak. “I can see in his face that she is dead,” said Jude. “Poor Aunt Drusilla!”
It was as he had supposed, and Mrs. Edlin had sent out the man to break the news to him.
“She wouldn’t have knowed ’ee. She lay like a doll wi’ glass eyes; so it didn’t matter that you wasn’t here,” said he.
Jude went on to the house, and in the afternoon, when everything was done, and the layers-outcm had finished their beer, and gone, he sat down alone in the silent place. It was absolutely necessary to communicate with Sue, though two or three days earlier they had agreed to mutual severance. He wrote in the briefest terms:“Aunt Drusilla is dead, having been taken almost suddenly. The funeral is on Friday afternoon.”
He remained in and about Marygreen through the intervening days, went out on Friday morning to see that the grave was finished, and wondered if Sue would come. She had not written, and that seemed to signify rather that she would come than that she would not. Having timed her by her only possible train, he locked the door about mid-day, and crossed the hollow field to the verge of the upland by the Brown House, where he stood and looked over the vast prospect northwards, and over the nearer landscape in which Alfredston stood. Two miles behind it a jet of white steam was travelling from the left to the right of the picture.
There was a long time to wait, even now, till he would know if she had arrived. He did wait, however, and at last a small hired vehicle
pulled up at the bottom of the hill, and a person alighted, the conveyance going back, while the passenger began ascending the hill. He knew her; and she looked so slender to-day that it seemed as if she might be crushed in the intensity of a too passionate embrace—such as it was not for him to give. Two-thirds of the way up her head suddenly took a solicitous poise, and he knew that she had at that moment recognized him. Her face soon began a pensive smile, which lasted till, having descended a little way, he met her.
“I thought,” she began with nervous quickness, “that it would be so sad to let you attend the funeral alone! And so—at the last moment—I came.”
“Dear faithful Sue!” murmured Jude.
With the elusiveness of her curious double nature, however, Sue did not stand still for any further greeting, though it wanted some time to the burial. A pathos so unusually compounded as that which attached to this hour was unlikely to repeat itself for years, if ever, and Jude would have paused, and meditated, and conversed. But Sue either saw it not at all, or, seeing it more than he, would not allow herself to feel it.
The sad and simple ceremony was soon over, their progress to the church being almost at a trot, the bustling undertaker having a more important funeral an hour later, three miles off. Drusilla was put into the new ground, quite away from her ancestors. Sue and Jude had gone side by side to the grave, and now sat down to tea in the familiar house; their lives united at least in this last attention to the dead.