by Thomas Hardy
“No, we didn’t.” Jude by this time wished he was out of such an uncongenial atmosphere; but he ordered the beer, which was promptly brought.
Arabella tasted it. “Ugh!” she said.
Jude tasted. “What’s the matter with it?” he asked. “I don’t understand 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 seems all right.”
“Adulterated — I can’t touch it!” She mentioned three or four ingredients that she detected 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 they went on their way. It was now nearly dark, and as soon as they had withdrawn from the lights of the town they walked closer together, till they touched each other. She wondered why he did not put his arm round her waist, but he did not; he merely said what to himself seemed a quite bold enough thing: “Take my arm.”
She took it, thoroughly, up to the shoulder. He felt the warmth of her body against his, and putting his stick under his other arm held with 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 they could see the white highway ascending before them in the gloom. From this point the only way of getting to Arabella’s was by going up the incline, and dipping again into her valley on the right. Before they had climbed far they were nearly run into by two men who had been walking on the grass unseen.
“These lovers — you find ‘em out o’ doors in all seasons and weathers — lovers and homeless dogs only,” said one of the men as they 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 the hint, and encircling her waist with his arm, pulled her to him and kissed her.
They walked now no longer arm in arm but, as she had desired, clasped together. After all, what did it matter since it was dark, said Jude to himself. When they were half-way up the long hill they paused as by arrangement, and he kissed her again. They reached the top, and he 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 cottage at half-past three, intending to be sitting down again to the New Testament by half-past five. It was nine o’clock when, with another embrace, 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 so odd otherwise, and as if she had been out alone in the dark. He gave way, and followed her in. Immediately that the door was opened he found, in addition to her parents, several neighbours sitting round. They all spoke in a congratulatory manner, and took him seriously as Arabella’s intended partner.
They did not belong to his set or circle, and he felt out of place and embarrassed. He had not meant this: a mere afternoon of pleasant walking with Arabella, that was all he had meant. He did not stay longer than to speak to her stepmother, a simple, quiet woman without features or character; and bidding them all good night plunged with a sense of relief into the track over the down.
But that sense was only temporary: Arabella soon re-asserted her sway in his soul. He walked as if he felt himself to be another man from the Jude of yesterday. What were his books to him? what were his intentions, hitherto adhered to so strictly, as to not wasting a single minute of time day by day? “Wasting!” It depended on your point of view to define that: he was just living for the first time: not wasting life. It was better to love a woman than to be a graduate, or a parson; ay, or a pope!
When he got back to the house his aunt had gone to bed, and a general consciousness of his neglect seemed written on the face of all things confronting him. He went upstairs without a light, and the dim interior of his room accosted him with sad inquiry. There lay his book open, just as he had left it, and the capital letters on the title-page regarded him with fixed reproach in the grey starlight, like the unclosed eyes of a dead man:
— š‘™— ”™‘˜—š—.
Jude had to leave early next morning for his usual week of absence at lodgings; and it was with a sense of futility that he threw into his basket upon his tools and other necessaries the unread book he had brought with him.
He kept his impassioned doings a secret almost from himself. Arabella, on the contrary, made them public among all her friends and acquaintance.
Retracing by the light of dawn the road he had followed a few hours earlier under cover of darkness, with his sweetheart by his side, he reached the bottom of the hill, where he walked slowly, and stood still. He was on the spot where he had given her the first kiss. As the sun had only just risen it was possible that nobody had passed there since. Jude looked on the ground and sighed. He looked closely, and could just discern in the damp dust the imprints of their feet as they had stood locked in each other’s arms. She was not there now, and “the embroidery of imagination upon the stuff of nature” so depicted her past presence that a void was in his heart which 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 could see her again as he had promised would have been his intensest wish if he had had only the week to live.
An hour and a half later Arabella came along the same way with her two companions of the Saturday. She passed unheedingly the scene of the kiss, and the willow that marked it, though chattering freely on the subject to the other two.
“And what did he tell ‘ee next?”
“Then he said — ” And she related almost word for word some of his tenderest speeches. If Jude had been behind the fence he would have felt not a little surprised at learning how very few of his sayings and 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 of latent sensuousness: “I’ve got him to care for me: yes! But I want him to more than care for me; I want him to have me — to marry me! I must have him. I can’t do without him. He’s the sort of man I long for. I shall go mad if I can’t give myself to him altogether! I felt 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?” she asked.
“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 an innocent, and have done wi’ it!”
“As a husband.”
“As a husband.”
“A countryman that’s honourable and serious-minded such as he; God forbid that I should say a sojer, or sailor, or commercial gent from the towns, or any of them that be slippery with poor women! I’d do no friend that harm!”
“Well, such as he, of course!”
Arabella’s companions looked at each other, and turning up their eyes in droll
ery 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 that way! … But suppose he isn’t honourable? A woman had better not have tried it!”
“Nothing venture nothing have! Besides, you make sure that he’s honourable before you begin. You’d be safe enough with yours. I wish I had the chance! Lots of girls do it; or do you think they’d get married at all?”
Arabella pursued her way in silent thought. “I’ll try it!” she whispered; but not to them.
CHAPTER VIII
One week’s end Jude was as usual walking out to his aunt’s at Marygreen from his lodging in Alfredston, a walk which now had large attractions for him quite other than his desire to see his aged and morose relative. He diverged to the right before ascending the hill with the single purpose of gaining, on his way, a glimpse of Arabella that should not come into the reckoning of regular appointments. Before quite reaching the homestead his alert eye perceived the top of her head moving quickly hither and thither over the garden hedge. Entering the gate he found that three young unfattened pigs had escaped from their sty by leaping clean over the top, and that she was endeavouring unassisted to drive them in through the door which she had set open. The lines of her countenance changed from the rigidity of business to the softness of love when she saw Jude, and she bent her eyes languishingly upon him. The animals took advantage of the pause by doubling and bolting out of the way.
“They were only put in this morning!” she cried, stimulated to pursue in spite of her lover’s presence. “They were drove from Spaddleholt Farm only yesterday, where Father bought ‘em at a stiff price enough. They are wanting to get home again, the stupid toads! Will you shut the garden gate, dear, and help me to get ‘em in. There are no men folk at home, only Mother, and they’ll be lost if we don’t mind.”
He set himself to assist, and dodged this way and that over the potato rows and the cabbages. Every now and then they ran together, when he caught her for a moment and kissed her. The first pig was got back promptly; the second with some difficulty; the third a long-legged creature, was more obstinate and agile. He plunged through a hole in the garden hedge, and into the lane.
“He’ll be lost if I don’t follow ‘n!” said she. “Come along with me!”
She rushed in full pursuit out of the garden, Jude alongside her, barely contriving to keep the fugitive in sight. Occasionally they would shout to some boy to stop the animal, but he always wriggled past and ran on as before.
“Let me take your hand, darling,” said Jude. “You are getting out of breath.” She gave him her now hot hand with apparent willingness, and they trotted along together.
“This comes of driving ‘em home,” she remarked. “They always know the way back if you do that. They ought to have been carted over.”
By this time the pig had reached an unfastened gate admitting to the open down, across which he sped with all the agility his little legs afforded. As soon as the pursuers had entered and ascended to the top of the high ground it became apparent that they would have to run all the way to the farmer’s if they wished to get at him. From this summit he could be seen as a minute speck, following an unerring line towards his old home.
“It is no good!” cried Arabella. “He’ll be there long before we get there. It don’t matter now we know he’s not lost or stolen on the way. They’ll see it is ours, and send un back. Oh dear, how hot I be!”
Without relinquishing her hold of Jude’s hand she swerved aside and flung herself down on the sod under a stunted thorn, precipitately pulling Jude on to his knees at the same time.
“Oh, I ask pardon — I nearly threw you down, didn’t I! But I am so tired!”
She lay supine, and straight as an arrow, on the sloping sod of this hill-top, gazing up into the blue miles of sky, and still retaining her warm hold of Jude’s hand. He reclined on his elbow near her.
“We’ve run all this way for nothing,” she went on, her form heaving and falling in quick pants, her face flushed, her full red lips parted, and a fine dew of perspiration on her skin. “Well — why don’t you speak, deary?”
“I’m blown too. It was all up hill.”
They were in absolute solitude — the most apparent of all solitudes, that of empty surrounding space. Nobody could be nearer than a mile to them without their seeing him. They were, in fact, on one of the summits of the county, and the distant landscape around Christminster could be discerned from where they lay. But Jude did not think of that then.
“Oh, I can see such a pretty thing up this tree,” said Arabella. “A sort of a — caterpillar, of the most loveliest green and yellow you ever came across!”
“Where?” said Jude, sitting up.
“You can’t see him there — you must come here,” said she.
He bent nearer and put his head in front of hers. “No — I can’t see it,” he said.
“Why, on the limb there where it branches off — close to the moving leaf — there!” She gently pulled him down beside her.
“I don’t see it,” he repeated, the back of his head against her cheek. “But I can, perhaps, standing up.” He stood accordingly, placing himself in the direct line of her gaze.
“How stupid you are!” she said crossly, turning away her face.
“I don’t care to see it, dear: why should I?” he replied looking down upon her. “Get up, Abby.”
“Why?”
“I want you to let me kiss you. I’ve been waiting to ever so long!”
She rolled round her face, remained a moment looking deedily aslant at him; then with a slight curl of the lip sprang to her feet, and exclaiming abruptly “I must mizzle!” walked off quickly homeward. Jude followed and rejoined her.
“Just one!” he coaxed.
“Shan’t!” she said.
He, surprised: “What’s the matter?”
She kept her two lips resentfully together, and Jude followed her like a pet lamb till she slackened her pace and walked beside him, talking calmly on indifferent subjects, and always checking him if he tried to take her hand or clasp her waist. Thus they descended to the precincts of her father’s homestead, and Arabella went in, nodding good-bye to him with a supercilious, affronted air.
“I expect I took too much liberty with her, somehow,” Jude said to himself, as he withdrew with a sigh and went on to Marygreen.
On Sunday morning the interior of Arabella’s home was, as usual, the scene of a grand weekly cooking, the preparation of the special Sunday dinner. Her father was shaving before a little glass hung on the mullion of the window, and her mother and Arabella herself were shelling beans hard by. A neighbour passed on her way home from morning service at the nearest church, and seeing Donn engaged at the window with the razor, nodded and came in.
She at once spoke playfully to Arabella: “I zeed ‘ee running with ‘un — hee-hee! I hope ‘tis coming to something?”
Arabella merely threw a look of consciousness into her face without raising her eyes.
“He’s for Christminster, I hear, as soon as he can get there.”
“Have you heard that lately — quite lately?” asked Arabella with a jealous, tigerish indrawing of breath.
“Oh no! But it has been known a long time that it is his plan. He’s on’y waiting here for an opening. Ah well: he must walk about with somebody, I s’pose. Young men don’t mean much now-a-days. ‘Tis a sip here and a sip there with ‘em. ‘Twas different in my time.”
When the gossip had departed Arabella said suddenly to her mother: “I want you and Father to go and inquire how the Edlins be, this evening after tea. Or no — there’s evening service at Fensworth — you can walk to that.”
“Oh? What’s up to-night, then?”
“Nothing. Only I want the house to myself. He’s shy; and I can’t get un to come in when you are here. I s
hall let him slip through my fingers if I don’t mind, much as I care for ‘n!”
“If it is fine we med as well go, since you wish.”
In the afternoon Arabella met and walked with Jude, who had now for weeks ceased to look into a book of Greek, Latin, or any other tongue. They wandered up the slopes till they reached the green track along the ridge, which they followed to the circular British earth-bank adjoining, Jude thinking of the great age of the trackway, and of the drovers who had frequented it, probably before the Romans knew the country. Up from the level lands below them floated the chime of church bells. Presently they were reduced to one note, which quickened, and stopped.
“Now we’ll go back,” said Arabella, who had attended to the sounds.
Jude assented. So long as he was near her he minded little where he was. When they arrived at her house he said lingeringly: “I won’t come in. Why are you in such a hurry to go in to-night? It is not near dark.”
“Wait a moment,” said she. She tried the handle of the door and found it locked.
“Ah — they are gone to church,” she added. And searching behind the scraper she found the key and unlocked the door. “Now, you’ll come in a moment?” she asked lightly. “We shall be all alone.”
“Certainly,” said Jude with alacrity, the case being unexpectedly altered.
Indoors they went. Did he want any tea? No, it was too late: he would rather sit and talk to her. She took off her jacket and hat, and they sat down — naturally enough close together.
“Don’t touch me, please,” she said softly. “I am part egg-shell. Or perhaps I had better put it in a safe place.” She began unfastening the collar of her gown.
“What is it?” said her lover.
“An egg — a cochin’s egg. I am hatching a very rare sort. I carry it about everywhere with me, and it will get hatched in less than three weeks.”
“Where do you carry it?”
“Just here.” She put her hand into her bosom and drew out the egg, which was wrapped in wool, outside it being a piece of pig’s bladder, in case of accidents. Having exhibited it to him she put it back, “Now mind you don’t come near me. I don’t want to get it broke, and have to begin another.”
