VII
FROM that week Jude Fawley and Sue walked no more in the town of Aldbrickham.
Whither they had gone nobody knew, chiefly because nobody cared to know.
Any one sufficiently curious to trace the steps of such an obscure pair
might have discovered without great trouble that they had taken advantage
of his adaptive craftsmanship to enter on a shifting, almost nomadic,
life, which was not without its pleasantness for a time.
Wherever Jude heard of free-stone work to be done, thither he went,
choosing by preference places remote from his old haunts and Sue's.
He laboured at a job, long or briefly, till it was finished;
and then moved on.
Two whole years and a half passed thus. Sometimes he might have been
found shaping the mullions of a country mansion, sometimes setting
the parapet of a town-hall, sometimes ashlaring an hotel at Sandbourne,
sometimes a museum at Casterbridge, sometimes as far down as Exonbury,
sometimes at Stoke-Barehills. Later still he was at Kennetbridge,
a thriving town not more than a dozen miles south of Marygreen,
this being his nearest approach to the village where he was known;
for he had a sensitive dread of being questioned as to his life and
fortunes by those who had been acquainted with him during his ardent young
manhood of study and promise, and his brief and unhappy married life at
that time.
At some of these places he would be detained for months, at others only
a few weeks. His curious and sudden antipathy to ecclesiastical work,
both episcopal and noncomformist, which had risen in him when suffering
under a smarting sense of misconception, remained with him in cold blood,
less from any fear of renewed censure than from an ultra-conscientiousness
which would not allow him to seek a living out of those who would
disapprove of his ways; also, too, from a sense of inconsistency between
his former dogmas and his present practice, hardly a shred of the beliefs
with which he had first gone up to Christminster now remaining with him.
He was mentally approaching the position which Sue had occupied when
he first met her.
On a Saturday evening in May, nearly three years after Arabella's
recognition of Sue and himself at the agricultural show,
some of those who there encountered each other met again.
It was the spring fair at Kennetbridge, and, though this ancient
trade-meeting had much dwindled from its dimensions of former times,
the long straight street of the borough presented a lively scene
about midday. At this hour a light trap, among other vehicles,
was driven into the town by the north road, and up to the door
of a temperance inn. There alighted two women, one the driver,
an ordinary country person, the other a finely built figure in
the deep mourning of a widow. Her sombre suit, of pronounced cut,
caused her to appear a little out of place in the medley and bustle
of a provincial fair.
"I will just find out where it is, Anny," said the widow-lady
to her companion, when the horse and cart had been taken by a man
who came forward: "and then I'll come back, and meet you here;
and we'll go in and have something to eat and drink. I begin to feel
quite a sinking."
"With all my heart," said the other. "Though I would sooner
have put up at the Chequers or The Jack. You can't get much
at these temperance houses."
"Now, don't you give way to gluttonous desires, my child,"
said the woman in weeds reprovingly. "This is the proper place.
Very well: we'll meet in half an hour, unless you come with me to
find out where the site of the new chapel is?"
"I don't care to. You can tell me."
The companions then went their several ways, the one in crape walking firmly
along with a mien of disconnection from her miscellaneous surroundings.
Making inquiries she came to a hoarding, within which were excavations
denoting the foundations of a building; and on the boards without one or two
large posters announcing that the foundation-stone of the chapel about to be
erected would be laid that afternoon at three o'clock by a London preacher
of great popularity among his body.
Having ascertained thus much the immensely weeded widow retraced her steps,
and gave herself leisure to observe the movements of the fair.
By and by her attention was arrested by a little stall of cakes
and ginger-breads, standing between the more pretentious erections
of trestles and canvas. It was covered with an immaculate cloth,
and tended by a young woman apparently unused to the business,
she being accompanied by a boy with an octogenarian face,
who assisted her.
"Upon my--senses!" murmured the widow to herself. "His wife Sue--
if she is so!" She drew nearer to the stall. "How do you do,
Mrs. Fawley?" she said blandly.
Sue changed colour and recognized Arabella through the crape veil.
"How are you, Mrs. Cartlett?" she said stiffly. And then perceiving
Arabella's garb her voice grew sympathetic in spite of herself.
"What?--you have lost----"
"My poor husband. Yes. He died suddenly, six weeks ago,
leaving me none too well off, though he was a kind husband to me.
But whatever profit there is in public-house keeping goes
to them that brew the liquors, and not to them that retail
'em.... And you, my little old man! You don't know me,
I expect?"
"Yes, I do. You be the woman I thought wer my mother for a bit,
till I found you wasn't," replied Father Time, who had learned to use
the Wessex tongue quite naturally by now.
"All right. Never mind. I am a friend."
"Juey," said Sue suddenly, "go down to the station platform with this tray--
there's another train coming in, I think."
When he was gone Arabella continued: "He'll never be a beauty,
will he, poor chap! Does he know I am his mother really?"
"No. He thinks there is some mystery about his parentage--that's all.
Jude is going to tell him when he is a little older."
"But how do you come to be doing this? I am surprised."
"It is only a temporary occupation--a fancy of ours while we
are in a difficulty."
"Then you are living with him still?"
"Yes."
"Married?"
"Of course."
"Any children?"
"Two."
"And another coming soon, I see."
Sue writhed under the hard and direct questioning, and her tender
little mouth began to quiver.
"Lord--I mean goodness gracious--what is there to cry about?
Some folks would be proud enough!"
"It is not that I am ashamed--not as you think! But it seems
such a terribly tragic thing to bring beings into the world--
so presumptuous--that I question my right to do it sometimes!"
"Take it easy, my dear.... But you don't tell me why you do
such a thing as this? Jude used to be a proud sort of chap--
above any business almost, leave alone keeping a standing."
"Perhaps my husband has altered a little since then.
I am sure he is not proud now!" And Sue's lips quivered again.
"I am doing this because he caught a chill early in the year while
putting up some stonework of a music-hall, at Quartershot, which he had
to do in the rain, the work having to be executed by a fixed day.
He is better than he was; but it has been a long, weary time!
We have had an old widow friend with us to help us through it; but she's
leaving soon."
"Well, I am respectable too, thank God, and of a serious way
of thinking since my loss. Why did you choose to sell gingerbreads?"
"That's a pure accident. He was brought up to the baking business,
and it occurred to him to try his hand at these, which he can make
without coming out of doors. We call them Christminster cakes.
They are a great success."
"I never saw any like 'em. Why, they are windows and towers,
and pinnacles! And upon my word they are very nice."
She had helped herself, and was unceremoniously munching one of
the cakes.
"Yes. They are reminiscences of the Christminster Colleges.
Traceried windows, and cloisters, you see. It was a whim of his
to do them in pastry."
"Still harping on Christminster--even in his cakes!" laughed Arabella.
"Just like Jude. A ruling passion. What a queer fellow he is, and always
will be!"
Sue sighed, and she looked her distress at hearing him criticized.
"Don't you think he is? Come now; you do, though you are so fond of him!"
"Of course Christminster is a sort of fixed vision with him,
which I suppose he'll never be cured of believing in.
He still thinks it a great centre of high and fearless thought,
instead of what it is, a nest of commonplace schoolmasters whose
characteristic is timid obsequiousness to tradition."
Arabella was quizzing Sue with more regard of how she was speaking than of
what she was saying. "How odd to hear a woman selling cakes talk like that!"
she said. "Why don't you go back to school-keeping?"
She shook her head. "They won't have me."
"Because of the divorce, I suppose?"
"That and other things. And there is no reason to wish it.
We gave up all ambition, and were never so happy in our lives till
his illness came."
"Where are you living?"
"I don't care to say."
"Here in Kennetbridge?"
Sue's manner showed Arabella that her random guess was right.
"Here comes the boy back again," continued Arabella.
"My boy and Jude's!"
Sue's eyes darted a spark. "You needn't throw that in my face!"
she cried.
"Very well--though I half-feel as if I should like to have him
with me! ... But Lord, I don't want to take him from 'ee--ever I
should sin to speak so profane--though I should think you must
have enough of your own! He's in very good hands, that I know;
and I am not the woman to find fault with what the Lord has ordained.
I've reached a more resigned frame of mind."
"Indeed! I wish I had been able to do so."
"You should try," replied the widow, from the serene heights of a
soul conscious not only of spiritual but of social superiority.
"I make no boast of my awakening, but I'm not what I was.
After Cartlett's death I was passing the chapel in the street
next ours, and went into it for shelter from a shower of rain.
I felt a need of some sort of support under my loss, and,
as 'twas righter than gin, I took to going there regular,
and found it a great comfort. But I've left London now, you know,
and at present I am living at Alfredston, with my friend Anny,
to be near my own old country. I'm not come here to the fair
to-day. There's to be the foundation-stone of a new chapel laid this
afternoon by a popular London preacher, and I drove over with Anny.
Now I must go back to meet her."
Then Arabella wished Sue good-bye, and went on.
