by Thomas Hardy
He found an ample supply of theological books in the city book-shops, and with these his studies were recommenced in a different spirit and direction from his former course. As a relaxation from the Fathers, and such stock works as Paley and Butler, he read Newman, Pusey, and many other modern lights. He hired a harmonium, set it up in his lodging, and practised chants thereon, single and double.
III.-II.
“TO-MORROW is OUR GRAND day, you know. Where shall we go?”
“I have leave from three till nine. Wherever we can get to and come back from in that time. Not ruins, Jude—I don’t care for them.”
“Well—Wardour Castle. And then we can do Fonthill if we like—all in the same afternoon.”bm
“Wardour is Gothic ruins—and I hate Gothic!”
“No. Quite otherwise. It is a classic building—Corinthian, I think; with a lot of pictures.”
“Ah—that will do. I like the sound of Corinthian. We’ll go.” Their conversation had run thus some few weeks later, and next morning they prepared to start. Every detail of the outline was a facet reflecting a sparkle to Jude, and he did not venture to meditate on the life of inconsistency he was leading. His Sue’s conduct was one lovely conundrum to him; he could say no more.
There duly came the charm of calling at the College door for her; her emergence in a nunlike simplicity of costume that was rather enforced than desired; the traipsing along to the station, the porters’ “B’your leave!,” the screaming of the trains—everything formed the basis of a beautiful crystallization. Nobody stared at Sue, because she was so plainly dressed, which comforted Jude in the thought that only himself knew the charms those habiliments subdued. A matter of ten pounds spent in a drapery-shop, which had no connection with her real life or her real self, would have set all Melchester staring. The guard of the train thought they were lovers, and put them into a compartment all by themselves.
“That’s a good intention wasted!” said she.
Jude did not respond. He thought the remark unnecessarily cruel, and partly untrue.
They reached the Park and Castle and wandered through the picture-galleries, Jude stopping by preference in front of the devotional pictures by Del Sarto, Guido Reni, Spagnoletto, Sassoferrato, Carlo Dolci,bn and others. Sue paused patiently beside him, and stole critical looks into his face as, regarding the Virgins, Holy Families, and Saints, it grew reverent and abstracted. When she had thoroughly estimated him at this, she would move on and wait for him before a Lely or Reynolds.bo It was evident that her cousin deeply interested her, as one might be interested in a man puzzling out his way along a labyrinth from which one had one’s self escaped.
When they came out a long time still remained to them, and Jude proposed that as soon as they had had something to eat they should walk across the high country to the north of their present position, and intercept the train of another railway leading back to Melchester, at a station about seven miles off Sue, who was inclined for any adventure that would intensify the sense of her day’s freedom, readily agreed; and away they went, leaving the adjoining station behind them.
It was indeed open country, wide and high. They talked and bounded on, Jude cutting from a little covert a long walking-stick for Sue as tall as herself, with a great crook, which made her look like a shepherdess. About half-way on their journey they crossed a main road running due east and west—the old road from London to Land’s End. They paused, and looked up and down it for a moment, and remarked upon the desolation which had come over this once lively thoroughfare, while the wind dipped to earth and scooped straws and hay-stems from the ground.
They crossed the road and passed on, but during the next half-mile Sue seemed to grow tired, and Jude began to be distressed for her. They had walked a good distance altogether, and if they could not reach the other station it would be rather awkward. For a long time there was no cottage visible on the wide expanse of down and turnip-land; but presently they came to a sheepfold, and next to the shepherd, pitching hurdles. He told them that the only house near was his mother’s and his, pointing to a little dip ahead from which a faint blue smoke arose, and recommended them to go on and rest there.
This they did, and entered the house, admitted by an old woman without a single tooth, to whom they were as civil as strangers can be when their only chance of rest and shelter lies in the favour of the householder.
“A nice little cottage,” said Jude.
“O, I don’t know about the niceness. I shall have to thatch it soon, and where the thatch is to come from I can’t tell, for straw do get that dear, that ’twill soon be cheaper to cover your house wi’ chainey plates than thatch.”
They sat resting, and the shepherd came in. “Don’t ’ee mind I,” he said with a deprecating wave of the hand; “bide here as long as ye will. But mid you be thinking o’ getting back to Melchester to-night by train? Because you’ll never do it in this world, since you don’t know the lie of the country. I don’t mind going with ye some o’ the ways, but even then the train mid be gone.”
They started up.
“You can bide here, you know, over the night—can’t ‘em, mother? The place is welcome to ye. ’Tis hard lying, rather, but volk may do worse.” He turned to Jude and asked privately: “Be you a married couple?”1
“Hsh—no!” said Jude.
“O—I meant nothing ba’dy—not I! Well then, she can go into mother’s room, and you and I can lie in the outer chimmer after they’ve gone through. I can call ye soon enough to catch the first train back. You’ve lost this one now.”
On consideration they decided to close with this offer, and drew up and shared with the shepherd and his mother the boiled bacon and greens for supper.
“I rather like this,” said Sue, while their entertainers were clearing away the dishes. “Outside all laws except gravitation and germination.”
“You only think you like it; you don’t: you are quite a product of civilization,” said Jude, a recollection of her engagement reviving his soreness a little.
“Indeed I am not, Jude. I like reading and all that, but I crave to get back to the life of my infancy and its freedom.”
“Do you remember it so well? You seem to me to have nothing unconventional at all about you.”
“O, haven’t I! You don’t know what’s inside me.”
“What?”
“The Ishmaelite.”bp
“An urban miss is what you are.”
She looked severe disagreement, and turned away.
The shepherd aroused them the next morning, as he had said. It was bright and clear, and the four miles to the train were accomplished pleasantly. When they had reached Melchester, and walked to the Close, and the gables of the old building in which she was again to be immured rose before Sue’s eyes, she looked a little scared. “I expect I shall catch it!” she murmured.
They rang the great bell and waited.
“0, I bought something for you, which I had nearly forgotten,” she said quickly, searching her pocket. “It is a new little photograph of me. Would you like it?”
“Would I!” He took it gladly, and the porter came. There seemed to be an ominous glance on his face when he opened the gate. She passed in, looking back at Jude, and waving her hand.
III.-III.
THE SEVENTY YOUNG WOMEN, of ages varying in the main from nineteen to one-and-twenty, though several were older, who at this date filled the species of nunnery known as the Training-School at Melchester, formed a very mixed community, which included the daughters of mechanics, curates, surgeons, shopkeepers, farmers, dairymen, soldiers, sailors, and villagers. They sat in the large school-room of the establishment on the evening previously described, and word was passed round that Sue Bridehead had not come in at closing-time.
“She went out with her young man,” said a second-year’s student, who knew about young men. “And Miss Traceley saw her at the station with him. She’ll have it hot when she does come.”
“She said h
e was her cousin,” observed a youthful new girl.
“That excuse has been made a little too often in this school to be effectual in saving our souls,” said the head girl of the year, drily.
The fact was that, only twelve months before, there had occurred a lamentable seduction of one of the pupils, who had made the same statement in order to gain meetings with her lover. The affair had created a scandal, and the management had consequently been rough on cousins ever since.
At nine o’clock the names were called, Sue’s being pronounced three times sonorously by Miss Traceley without eliciting an answer.
At a quarter past nine the seventy stood up to sing the “Evening Hymn,” and then knelt down to prayers. After prayers they went in to supper, and every girl’s thought was, Where is Sue Bridehead? Some of the students, who had seen Jude from the window, felt that they would not mind risking her punishment for the pleasure of being kissed by such a kindly-faced young man. Hardly one among them believed in the cousinship.
Half-an-hour later they all lay in their cubicles, their tender feminine faces upturned to the flaring gas-jets which at intervals stretched down the long dormitories, every face bearing the legend “The Weaker” upon it, as the penalty of the sex wherein they were moulded, which by no possible exertion of their willing hearts and abilities could be made strong while the inexorable laws of nature remain what they are. They formed a pretty, suggestive, pathetic sight, of whose pathos and beauty they were themselves unconscious, and would not discover till, amid the storms and strains of after-years, with their injustice, loneliness, child-bearing, and bereavement, their minds would revert to this experience as to something which had been allowed to slip past them insufficiently regarded.
One of the mistresses came in to turn out the lights, and before doing so gave a final glance at Sue’s cot, which remained empty, and at her little dressing-table at the foot, which, like all the rest, was ornamented with various girlish trifles, framed photographs being not the least conspicuous among them. Sue’s table had a moderate show, two men in their filigree and velvet frames standing together beside her looking-glass.
“Who are these men—did she ever say?” asked the mistress. “Strictly speaking, relations’ portraits only are allowed on these tables, you know.”
“One—the middle-aged man,” said a student in the next bed—“is the schoolmaster she served under—Mr. Phillotson.”
“And the other—this undergraduate in cap and gown—who is he?”
“He is a friend, or was. She has never told his name.”
“Was it either of these two who came for her?”
“No.”
“You are sure ’twas not the undergraduate?”
“Quite. He was a young man with a black beard.”
The lights were promptly extinguished, and till they fell asleep the girls indulged in conjectures about Sue, and wondered what games she had carried on in London and at Christminster before she came here, some of the more restless ones getting out of bed and looking from the mullioned windows at the vast west front of the Cathedral opposite, and the spire rising behind it.
When they awoke the next morning they glanced into Sue’s nook, to find it still without a tenant. After the early lessons by gas-light, in half-toilet, and when they had come up to dress for breakfast, the bell of the entrance gate was heard to ring loudly. The mistress of the dormitory went away, and presently came back to say that the Principal’s orders were that nobody was to speak to Bridehead without permission.
When, accordingly, Sue came into the dormitory to hastily tidy herself, looking flushed and tired, she went to her cubicle in silence, none of them coming out to greet her or to make inquiry. When they had gone downstairs they found that she did not follow them into the dining-hall to breakfast, and they then learnt that she had been severely reprimanded, and ordered to a solitary room for a week, there to be confined, and take her meals, and do all her reading.
At this the seventy murmured, the sentence being, they thought, too severe. A round robin was prepared and sent in to the Principal, asking for a remission of Sue’s punishment. No notice was taken. Towards evening, when the geography mistress began dictating her subject, the girls in the class sat with folded arms.
“You mean that you are not going to work?” said the mistress at last. “I may as well tell you that it has been ascertained that the young man Bridehead stayed out with was not her cousin, for the very good reason that she has no such relative. We have written to Christminster to ascertain.”
“We are willing to take her word,” said the head girl.
“This young man was discharged from his work at Christminster for drunkenness and blasphemy in public-houses, and he has come here to live, entirely to be near her.”
However, they remained stolid and motionless, and the mistress left the room to inquire from her superiors what was to be done.
Presently, towards dusk, the pupils, as they sat, heard exclamations from the first-year’s girls in an adjoining class-room, and one rushed in to say that Sue Bridehead had got out of the back window of the room in which she had been confined, escaped in the dark across the lawn, and disappeared. How she had managed to get out of the garden nobody could tell, as it was bounded by the river at the bottom, and the side door was locked.
They went and looked at the empty room, the casement between the middle mullions of which stood open. The lawn was again searched with a lantern, every bush and shrub being examined, but she was nowhere hidden. Then the porter of the front gate was interrogated, and on reflection he said that he remembered hearing a sort of splashing in the stream at the back, but he had taken no notice, thinking some ducks had come down the river from above.
“She must have walked through the river!” said a mistress.
“Or drounded herself,” said the porter.
The mind of the matron was horrified—not so much at the possible death of Sue as at the possible half-column detailing that event in all the newspapers, which, added to the scandal of the year before, would give the College an unenviable notoriety for many months to come.
More lanterns were procured, and the river examined; and then, at last, on the opposite shore, which was open to the fields, some little boot-tracks were discerned in the mud, which left no doubt that the too excitable girl had waded through a depth of water reaching nearly to her shoulders—for this was the chief river of the county, and was mentioned in all the geography books with respect. As Sue had not brought disgrace upon the school by drowning herself, the matron began to speak superciliously of her, and to express gladness that she was gone.
On the self-same evening Jude sat in his lodgings by the Close Gate. Often at this hour after dusk he would enter the silent Close, and stand opposite the house that contained Sue, and watch the shadows of the girls’ heads passing to and fro upon the blinds, and wish he had nothing else to do but to sit reading and learning all day what many of the thoughtless inmates despised. But to-night, having finished tea and brushed himself up, he was deep in the perusal of the Twenty-ninth Volume of Pusey’s Library of the Fathers, a set of books which he had purchased of a second-hand dealer at a price that seemed to him to be one of miraculous cheapness for that invaluable work. He fancied he heard something rattle lightly against his window ; then he heard it again. Certainly somebody had thrown gravel. He rose and gently lifted the sash.
“Jude!” (from below).
“Sue!”
“Yes—it is! Can I come up without being seen?”
“O yes!”
“Then don’t come down. Shut the window.”
Jude waited, knowing that she could enter easily enough, the front door being opened merely by a knob which anybody could turn, as in most old country towns. He palpitated at the thought that she had fled to him in her trouble as he had fled to her in his. What counterparts they were! He unlatched the door of his room, heard a stealthy rustle on the dark stairs, and in a moment she appeared in the light of
his lamp. He went up to seize her hand, and found she was clammy as a marine deity, and that her clothes clung to her like the robes upon the figures in the Parthenon frieze.bq
“I’m so cold!” she said through her chattering teeth. “Can I come by your fire, Jude?”
She crossed to his little grate and very little fire, but as the water dripped from her as she moved, the idea of drying herself was absurd. “Whatever have you done, darling?” he asked, with alarm, the tender epithet slipping out unawares.
“Walked through the largest river in the county—that’s what I’ve done! They locked me up for being out with you; and it seemed so unjust that I couldn’t bear it, so I got out of the window and escaped across the stream!” She had begun the explanation in her usual slightly independent tones, but before she had finished the thin pink lips trembled, and she could hardly refrain from crying.
“Dear Sue!” he said. “You must take off all your things! And let me see—you must borrow some from the landlady. I’ll ask her.”
“No, no! Don’t let her know, for God’s sake! We are so near the school that they’ll come after me!”
“Then you must put on mine. You don’t mind?”
“O no.”
“My Sunday suit, you know. It is close here.” In fact, everything was close and handy in Jude’s single chamber, because there was not room for it to be otherwise. He opened a drawer, took out his best dark suit, and giving the garments a shake, said, “Now, how long shall I give you?”
“Ten minutes.”
Jude left the room and went into the street, where he walked up and down. A clock struck half-past seven, and he returned. Sitting in his only arm-chair he saw a slim and fragile being masquerading as himself on a Sunday, so pathetic in her defencelessness that his heart felt big with the sense of it. On two other chairs before the fire were her wet garments. She blushed as he sat down beside her, but only for a moment.
