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,
dairy-men, 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 he 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 men.
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 classroom, 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 drownded 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?"
"Oh 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.
"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?"
"Oh 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.
"I suppose, Jude, it is odd that you should see me like this
and all my things hanging there? Yet what nonsense!
They are only a woman's clothes--sexless cloth and linen.... I
wish I didn't feel so ill and sick! Will you dry my clothes now?
Please do, Jude, and I'll get a lodging by and by. It is not
late yet."
"No, you shan't, if you are ill. You must stay here. Dear, dear Sue,
what can I get for you?"
"I don't know! I can't help shivering. I wish I could get warm."
Jude put on her his great-coat in addition, and then ran out to the nearest
public-house, whence he returned with a little bottle in his hand.
"Here's six of best brandy," he said. "Now you drink it, dear;
all of it."
"I can't out of the bottle, can I?" Jude fetched the glass from
the dressing-table, and administered the spirit in some water.
She gasped a little, but gulped it down, and lay back in the armchair.
She then began to relate circumstantially her experiences since they
had parted; but in the middle of her story her voice faltered,
her head nodded, and she ceased. She was in a sound sleep.
Jude, dying of anxiety lest she should have caught a chill which might
permanently injure her, was glad to hear the regular breathing.
He softly went nearer to her, and observed that a warm flush now rosed
her hitherto blue cheeks, and felt that her hanging hand was no
longer cold. Then he stood with his back to the fire regarding her,
and saw in her almost a divinity.
