VI
MEANWHILE a middle-aged man was dreaming a dream of great beauty
concerning the writer of the above letter. He was Richard Phillotson,
who had recently removed from the mixed village school at Lumsdon
near Christminster, to undertake a large boys' school in his native
town of Shaston, which stood on a hill sixty miles to the south-west
as the crow flies.
A glance at the place and its accessories was almost enough
to reveal that the schoolmaster's plans and dreams so long
indulged in had been abandoned for some new dream with which
neither the Church nor literature had much in common.
Essentially an unpractical man, he was now bent on making
and saving money for a practical purpose--that of keeping
a wife, who, if she chose, might conduct one of the girls'
schools adjoining his own; for which purpose he had advised her
to go into training, since she would not marry him offhand.
About the time that Jude was removing from Marygreen to Melchester,
and entering on adventures at the latter place with Sue,
the schoolmaster was settling down in the new school-house
at Shaston. All the furniture being fixed, the books shelved,
and the nails driven, he had begun to sit in his parlour during
the dark winter nights and re-attempt some of his old studies--
one branch of which had included Roman-Britannic antiquities--
an unremunerative labour for a national school-master but
a subject, that, after his abandonment of the university scheme,
had interested him as being a comparatively unworked mine;
practicable to those who, like himself, had lived in lonely spots
where these remains were abundant, and were seen to compel inferences
in startling contrast to accepted views on the civilization of
that time.
A resumption of this investigation was the outward and apparent
hobby of Phillotson at present--his ostensible reason for going
alone into fields where causeways, dykes, and tumuli abounded,
or shutting himself up in his house with a few urns, tiles, and mosaics
he had collected, instead of calling round upon his new neighbours,
who for their part had showed themselves willing enough to be friendly
with him. But it was not the real, or the whole, reason, after all.
Thus on a particular evening in the month, when it had grown quite late--
to near midnight, indeed--and the light of his lamp, shining from his
window at a salient angle of the hill-top town over infinite miles
of valley westward, announced as by words a place and person given
over to study, he was not exactly studying.
The interior of the room--the books, the furniture,
the schoolmaster's loose coat, his attitude at the table,
even the flickering of the fire, bespoke the same dignified
tale of undistracted research--more than creditable to a man
who had had no advantages beyond those of his own making.
And yet the tale, true enough till latterly, was not true now.
What he was regarding was not history. They were historic notes,
written in a bold womanly hand at his dictation some months before,
and it was the clerical rendering of word after word that
absorbed him.
He presently took from a drawer a carefully tied bundle
of letters, few, very few, as correspondence counts nowadays.
Each was in its envelope just as it had arrived, and the handwriting
was of the same womanly character as the historic notes.
He unfolded them one by one and read them musingly.
At first sight there seemed in these small documents to be
absolutely nothing to muse over. They were straightforward,
frank letters, signed "Sue B--"; just such ones as would
be written during short absences, with no other thought
than their speedy destruction, and chiefly concerning books
in reading and other experiences of a training school,
forgotten doubtless by the writer with the passing of the day
of their inditing. In one of them--quite a recent note--
the young woman said that she had received his considerate letter,
and that it was honourable and generous of him to say he would
not come to see her oftener than she desired (the school being
such an awkward place for callers, and because of her strong
wish that her engagement to him should not be known, which it
would infallibly be if he visited her often). Over these phrases
the school-master pored. What precise shade of satisfaction was
to be gathered from a woman's gratitude that the man who loved
her had not been often to see her? The problem occupied him,
distracted him.
He opened another drawer, and found therein an envelope, from which
he drew a photograph of Sue as a child, long before he had known her,
standing under trellis-work with a little basket in her hand.
There was another of her as a young woman, her dark eyes
and hair making a very distinct and attractive picture of her,
which just disclosed, too, the thoughtfulness that lay behind her
lighter moods. It was a duplicate of the one she had given Jude,
and would have given to any man. Phillotson brought it half-way
to his lips, but withdrew it in doubt at her perplexing phrases:
ultimately kissing the dead pasteboard with all the passionateness,
and more than all the devotion, of a young man of eighteen.
The schoolmaster's was an unhealthy-looking, old-fashioned face,
rendered more old-fashioned by his style of shaving.
A certain gentlemanliness had been imparted to it by nature,
suggesting an inherent wish to do rightly by all.
His speech was a little slow, but his tones were sincere enough
to make his hesitation no defect. His greying hair was curly,
and radiated from a point in the middle of his crown.
There were four lines across his forehead, and he only wore
spectacles when reading at night. It was almost certainly
a renunciation forced upon him by his academic purpose,
rather than a distaste for women, which had hitherto kept him
from closing with one of the sex in matrimony.
Such silent proceedings as those of this evening were repeated
many and oft times when he was not under the eye of the boys,
whose quick and penetrating regard would frequently become
almost intolerable to the self-conscious master in his present
anxious care for Sue, making him, in the grey hours of morning,
dread to meet anew the gimlet glances, lest they should read
what the dream within him was.
He had honourably acquiesced in Sue's announced wish that he was
not often to visit her at the training school; but at length,
his patience being sorely tried, he set out one Saturday afternoon
to pay her an unexpected call. There the news of her departure--
expulsion as it might almost have been considered--was flashed upon
him without warning or mitigation as he stood at the door expecting
in a few minutes to behold her face; and when he turned away he could
hardly see the road before him.
Sue had, in fact, never written a line to her suitor on the subject,
although it was fourteen days old. A short reflection told him that this
proved nothing, a natural delicacy being as ample a reason for silence
as any degree of blameworthiness.
They had informed him at the school where she was living, and having
no immediate anxiety about her comfort his thoughts took the direction
of a burning indignation against the training school committee.
In his bewilderment Phillotson entered the adjacent cathedral,
just now in a direly dismantled state by reason of the repairs.
He sat down on a block of freestone, regardless of the dusty imprint
it made on his breeches; and his listless eyes following the movements
of the workmen he presently became aware that the reputed culprit,
Sue's lover Jude, was one amongst them.
Jude had never spoken to his former hero since the meeting
by the model of Jerusalem. Having inadvertently witnessed
Phillotson's tentative courtship of Sue in the lane there had
grown up in the younger man's mind a curious dislike to think
of the elder, to meet him, to communicate in any way with him;
and since Phillotson's success in obtaining at least her
promise had become known to Jude, he had frankly recognized
that he did not wish to see or hear of his senior any more,
learn anything of his pursuits, or even imagine again
what excellencies might appertain to his character. On this
very day of the schoolmaster's visit Jude was expecting Sue,
as she had promised; and when therefore he saw the school
master in the nave of the building, saw, moreover, that he was
coming to speak to him, he felt no little embarrassment;
which Phillotson's own embarrassment prevented his observing.
Jude joined him, and they both withdrew from the other workmen to the spot
where Phillotson had been sitting. Jude offered him a piece of sackcloth
for a cushion, and told him it was dangerous to sit on the bare block.
"Yes; yes," said Phillotson abstractedly, as he reseated himself,
his eyes resting on the ground as if he were trying to remember
where he was. "I won't keep you long. It was merely that I
have heard that you have seen my little friend Sue recently.
It occurred to me to speak to you on that account. I merely want to ask
about her."
"I think I know what!" Jude hurriedly said. "About her escaping
from the training school, and her coming to me?"
"Yes."
"Well"--Jude for a moment felt an unprincipled and fiendish
wish to annihilate his rival at all cost. By the exercise
of that treachery which love for the same woman renders possible
to men the most honourable in every other relation of life,
he could send off Phillotson in agony and defeat by saying
that the scandal was true, and that Sue had irretrievably
committed herself with him. But his action did not respond
for a moment to his animal instinct; and what he said was, "I am
glad of your kindness in coming to talk plainly to me about it.
You know what they say?--that I ought to marry her."
"What!"
"And I wish with all my soul I could!"
Phillotson trembled, and his naturally pale face acquired a corpselike
sharpness in its lines. "I had no idea that it was of this nature!
God forbid!"
"No, no!" said Jude aghast. "I thought you understood?
I mean that were I in a position to marry her, or someone,
and settle down, instead of living in lodgings here and there,
I should be glad!"
What he had really meant was simply that he loved her.
"But--since this painful matter has been opened up--what really happened?"
asked Phillotson, with the firmness of a man who felt that a sharp smart
now was better than a long agony of suspense hereafter. "Cases arise,
and this is one, when even ungenerous questions must be put to make false
assumptions impossible, and to kill scandal."
Jude explained readily; giving the whole series of adventures,
including the night at the shepherd's, her wet arrival at his lodging,
her indisposition from her immersion, their vigil of discussion,
and his seeing her off next morning.
"Well now," said Phillotson at the conclusion, "I take it as your final word,
and I know I can believe you, that the suspicion which led to her rustication
is an absolutely baseless one?"
"It is," said Jude solemnly. "Absolutely. So help me God!"
The schoolmaster rose. Each of the twain felt that the interview could
not comfortably merge in a friendly discussion of their recent experiences,
after the manner of friends; and when Jude had taken him round, and shown
him some features of the renovation which the old cathedral was undergoing,
Phillotson bade the young man good-day and went away.
This visit took place about eleven o'clock in the morning;
but no Sue appeared. When Jude went to his dinner at one
he saw his beloved ahead of him in the street leading up
from the North Gate, walking as if no way looking for him.
Speedily overtaking her he remarked that he had asked her to come
to him at the cathedral, and she had promised.
"I have been to get my things from the college," she said--
an observation which he was expected to take as an answer,
though it was not one. Finding her to be in this evasive mood
he felt inclined to give her the information so long withheld.
"You have not seen Mr. Phillotson to-day?" he ventured to inquire.
"I have not. But I am not going to be cross-examined about him;
and if you ask anything more I won't answer!"
"It is very odd that--" He stopped, regarding her.
"What?"
"That you are often not so nice in your real presence as you
are in your letters!"
"Does it really seem so to you?" said she, smiling with quick curiosity.
"Well, that's strange; but I feel just the same about you, Jude. When you are
gone away I seem such a coldhearted----"
As she knew his sentiment towards her Jude saw that they
were getting upon dangerous ground. It was now, he thought,
that he must speak as an honest man.
But he did not speak, and she continued: "It was that which made me write
and say--I didn't mind your loving me--if you wanted to, much!"
The exultation he might have felt at what that implied, or seemed to imply,
was nullified by his intention, and he rested rigid till he began:
"I have never told you----"
"Yes you have," murmured she.
"I mean, I have never told you my history--all of it."
"But I guess it. l know nearly."
Jude looked up. Could she possibly know of that morning performance
of his with Arabella; which in a few months had ceased to be a marriage
more completely than by death? He saw that she did not.
"I can't quite tell you here in the street," he went on with a gloomy tongue.
"And you had better not come to my lodgings. Let us go in here."
The building by which they stood was the market-house, it
was the only place available; and they entered, the market
being over, and the stalls and areas empty. He would have
preferred a more congenial spot, but, as usually happens,
in place of a romantic field or solemn aisle for his tale,
it was told while they walked up and down over a floor
littered with rotten cabbage-leaves, and amid all the usual
squalors of decayed vegetable matter and unsaleable refuse.
He began and finished his brief narrative, which merely
led up to the information that he had married a wife
some years earlier, and that his wife was living still.
Almost before her countenance had time to change she hurried out
the words,
"Why didn't you tell me before!"
"I couldn't. It seemed so cruel to tell it."
"To yourself, Jude. So it was better to be cruel to me!"
"No, dear darling!" cried Jude passionately. He tried to take
her hand, but she withdrew it. Their old relations of confidence
seemed suddenly to have ended, and the antagonisms of sex
to sex were left without any counter-poising predilections.
She was his comrade, friend, unconscious sweetheart no longer;
and her eyes regarded him in estranged silence.
"I was ashamed of the episode in my life which brought about the marriage,"
he continued. "I can't explain it precisely now. I could have done it if you
had taken it differently!"
"But how can I?" she burst out. "Here I have been saying, or writing, that--
that you might love me, or something of the sort!--just out of charity--
and all the time--oh, it is perfectly damnable how things are!" she said,
stamping her foot in a nervous quiver.
"You take me wrong, Sue! I never thought you cared for me at all,
till quite lately; so I felt it did not matter! Do you care
for me, Sue?--you know how I mean?--I don't like 'out of charity'
at all!"
It was a question which in the circumstances Sue did not choose to answer.
"I suppose she--your wife--is--a very pretty woman even if she's wicked?"
she asked quickly.
"She's pretty enough, as far as that goes."
"Prettier than I am, no doubt!"
"You are not the least alike. And I have never seen her for years....
But she's sure to come back--they always do!"
"How strange of you to stay apart from her like this!"
said Sue, her trembling lip and lumpy throat belying her irony.
"You, such a religious man. How will the demi-gods in
your Pantheon--I mean those legendary persons you call saints--
intercede for you after this? Now if I had done such
a thing it would have been different, and not remarkable,
for I at least don't regard marriage as a sacrament.
Your theories are not so advanced as your practice!"
"Sue, you are terribly cutting when you like to be--a perfect Voltaire!
But you must treat me as you will!"
When she saw how wretched he was she softened, and trying to blink
away her sympathetic tears said with all the winning reproachfulness
of a heart-hurt woman: "Ah--you should have told me before you
gave me that idea that you wanted to be allowed to love me!
I had no feeling before that moment at the railway-station, except--"
For once Sue was as miserable as he, in her attempts to keep herself free
from emotion, and her less than half-success.
"Don't cry, dear!" he implored.
"I am--not crying--because I meant to--love you; but because of your
want of--confidence!"
They were quite screened from the market-square without,
and he could not help putting out his arm towards her waist.
His momentary desire was the means of her rallying. "No, no!"
she said, drawing back stringently, and wiping her eyes.
"Of course not! It would be hypocrisy to pretend that it
would be meant as from my cousin; and it can't be in any
other way."
They moved on a dozen paces, and she showed herself recovered.
It was distracting to Jude, and his heart would have ached less had
she appeared anyhow but as she did appear; essentially large-minded
and generous on reflection, despite a previous exercise of those
narrow womanly humours on impulse that were necessary to give
her sex.
"I don't blame you for what you couldn't help," she said, smiling.
"How should I be so foolish? I do blame you a little bit
for not telling me before. But, after all, it doesn't matter.
We should have had to keep apart, you see, even if this had not been
in your life."
"No, we shouldn't, Sue! This is the only obstacle."
"You forget that I must have loved you, and wanted to be
your wife, even if there had been no obstacle," said Sue,
with a gentle seriousness which did not reveal her mind.
"And then we are cousins, and it is bad for cousins
to marry. And--I am engaged to somebody else. As to our going
on together as we were going, in a sort of friendly way,
the people round us would have made it unable to continue.
Their views of the relations of man and woman are limited,
as is proved by their expelling me from the school.
Their philosophy only recognizes relations based on animal desire.
The wide field of strong attachment where desire plays, at least,
only a secondary part, is ignored by them--the part of--who is it?--
Venus Urania."
Her being able to talk learnedly showed that she was mistress
of herself again; and before they parted she had almost regained
her vivacious glance, her reciprocity of tone, her gay manner,
and her second-thought attitude of critical largeness towards
others of her age and sex.
He could speak more freely now. "There were several reasons
against my telling you rashly. One was what I have said;
another, that it was always impressed upon me that I ought
not to marry--that I belonged to an odd and peculiar family--
the wrong breed for marriage."
"Ah--who used to say that to you?"
"My great-aunt. She said it always ended badly with us Fawleys."
"That's strange. My father used to say the same to me!"
They stood possessed by the same thought, ugly enough, even as an assumption:
that a union between them, had such been possible, would have meant a terrible
intensification of unfitness--two bitters in one dish.
"Oh, but there can't be anything in it!" she said with nervous lightness.
"Our family have been unlucky of late years in choosing mates--
that's all."
And then they pretended to persuade themselves that all that had
happened was of no consequence, and that they could still be cousins
and friends and warm correspondents, and have happy genial times
when they met, even if they met less frequently than before.
Their parting was in good friendship, and yet Jude's last look into
her eyes was tinged with inquiry, for he felt that he did not even
now quite know her mind.
