Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (637 page)

“Indeed I don’t,” said Sue.

“Oh, I thought you might have, even if he’s not really yours. Decency is decency, any hour of the twenty-four.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Sue stiffly. “He is mine, if you come to that!”

“He wasn’t yesterday.”

Sue coloured roseate, and said, “How do you know?”

“From your manner when you talked to me at the door. Well, my dear, you’ve been quick about it, and I expect my visit last night helped it on — ha-ha! But I don’t want to get him away from you.”

Sue looked out at the rain, and at the dirty toilet-cover, and at the detached tail of Arabella’s hair hanging on the looking-glass, just as it had done in Jude’s time; and wished she had not come. In the pause there was a knock at the door, and the chambermaid brought in a telegram for “Mrs. Cartlett.”

Arabella opened it as she lay, and her ruffled look disappeared.

“I am much obliged to you for your anxiety about me,” she said blandly when the maid had gone; “but it is not necessary you should feel it. My man finds he can’t do without me after all, and agrees to stand by the promise to marry again over here that he has made me all along. See here! This is in answer to one from me.” She held out the telegram for Sue to read, but Sue did not take it. “He asks me to come back. His little corner public in Lambeth would go to pieces without me, he says. But he isn’t going to knock me about when he has had a drop, any more after we are spliced by English law than before! … As for you, I should coax Jude to take me before the parson straight off, and have done with it, if I were in your place. I say it as a friend, my dear.”

“He’s waiting to, any day,” returned Sue, with frigid pride.

“Then let him, in Heaven’s name. Life with a man is more businesslike after it, and money matters work better. And then, you see, if you have rows, and he turns you out of doors, you can get the law to protect you, which you can’t otherwise, unless he half-runs you through with a knife, or cracks your noddle with a poker. And if he bolts away from you — I say it friendly, as woman to woman, for there’s never any knowing what a man med do — you’ll have the sticks o’ furniture, and won’t be looked upon as a thief. I shall marry my man over again, now he’s willing, as there was a little flaw in the first ceremony. In my telegram last night which this is an answer to, I told him I had almost made it up with Jude; and that frightened him, I expect! Perhaps I should quite have done it if it hadn’t been for you,” she said laughing; “and then how different our histories might have been from to-day! Never such a tender fool as Jude is if a woman seems in trouble, and coaxes him a bit! Just as he used to be about birds and things. However, as it happens, it is just as well as if I had made it up, and I forgive you. And, as I say, I’d advise you to get the business legally done as soon as possible. You’ll find it an awful bother later on if you don’t.”

“I have told you he is asking me to marry him — to make our natural marriage a legal one,” said Sue, with yet more dignity. “It was quite by my wish that he didn’t the moment I was free.”

“Ah, yes — you are a oneyer too, like myself,” said Arabella, eyeing her visitor with humorous criticism. “Bolted from your first, didn’t you, like me?”

“Good morning! — I must go,” said Sue hastily.

“And I, too, must up and off!” replied the other, springing out of bed so suddenly that the soft parts of her person shook. Sue jumped aside in trepidation. “Lord, I am only a woman — not a six-foot sojer! … Just a moment, dear,” she continued, putting her hand on Sue’s arm. “I really did want to consult Jude on a little matter of business, as I told him. I came about that more than anything else. Would he run up to speak to me at the station as I am going? You think not. Well, I’ll write to him about it. I didn’t want to write it, but never mind — I will.”

CHAPTER III

When Sue reached home Jude was awaiting her at the door to take the initial step towards their marriage. She clasped his arm, and they went along silently together, as true comrades oft-times do. He saw that she was preoccupied, and forbore to question her.

“Oh Jude — I’ve been talking to her,” she said at last. “I wish I hadn’t! And yet it is best to be reminded of things.”

“I hope she was civil.”

“Yes. I — I can’t help liking her — just a little bit! She’s not an ungenerous nature; and I am so glad her difficulties have all suddenly ended.” She explained how Arabella had been summoned back, and would be enabled to retrieve her position. “I was referring to our old question. What Arabella has been saying to me has made me feel more than ever how hopelessly vulgar an institution legal marriage is — a sort of trap to catch a man — I can’t bear to think of it. I wish I hadn’t promised to let you put up the banns this morning!”

“Oh, don’t mind me. Any time will do for me. I thought you might like to get it over quickly, now.”

“Indeed, I don’t feel any more anxious now than I did before. Perhaps with any other man I might be a little anxious; but among the very few virtues possessed by your family and mine, dear, I think I may set staunchness. So I am not a bit frightened about losing you, now I really am yours and you really are mine. In fact, I am easier in my mind than I was, for my conscience is clear about Richard, who now has a right to his freedom. I felt we were deceiving him before.”

“Sue, you seem when you are like this to be one of the women of some grand old civilization, whom I used to read about in my bygone, wasted, classical days, rather than a denizen of a mere Christian country. I almost expect you to say at these times that you have just been talking to some friend whom you met in the Via Sacra, about the latest news of Octavia or Livia; or have been listening to Aspasia’s eloquence, or have been watching Praxiteles chiselling away at his latest Venus, while Phryne made complaint that she was tired of posing.”

They had now reached the house of the parish clerk. Sue stood back, while her lover went up to the door. His hand was raised to knock when she said: “Jude!”

He looked round.

“Wait a minute, would you mind?”

He came back to her.

“Just let us think,” she said timidly. “I had such a horrid dream one night! … And Arabella — ”

“What did Arabella say to you?” he asked.

“Oh, she said that when people were tied up you could get the law of a man better if he beat you — and how when couples quarrelled… Jude, do you think that when you must have me with you by law, we shall be so happy as we are now? The men and women of our family are very generous when everything depends upon their goodwill, but they always kick against compulsion. Don’t you dread the attitude that insensibly arises out of legal obligation? Don’t you think it is destructive to a passion whose essence is its gratuitousness?”

“Upon my word, love, you are beginning to frighten me, too, with all this foreboding! Well, let’s go back and think it over.”

Her face brightened. “Yes — so we will!” said she. And they turned from the clerk’s door, Sue taking his arm and murmuring as they walked on homeward:

Can you keep the bee from ranging,

Or the ring-dove’s neck from changing?

No! Nor fetter’d love…

They thought it over, or postponed thinking. Certainly they postponed action, and seemed to live on in a dreamy paradise. At the end of a fortnight or three weeks matters remained unadvanced, and no banns were announced to the ears of any Aldbrickham congregation.

Whilst they were postponing and postponing thus a letter and a newspaper arrived before breakfast one morning from Arabella. Seeing the handwriting Jude went up to Sue’s room and told her, and as soon as she was dressed she hastened down. Sue opened the newspaper; Jude the letter. After glancing at the paper she held across the first page to him with her finger on a paragraph; but he was so absorbed in his letter that he did not turn awhile.

“Look!” said she.

He looked and read. The paper was one that circulated in South London only, and the marked advertisement was simply the announcement of a marriage at St. John’s Church, Waterloo Road, under the names, “Cartlett —  — Donn”; the united pair being Arabella and the inn-keeper.

“Well, it is satisfactory,” said Sue complacently. “Though, after this, it seems rather low to do likewise, and I am glad. However, she is provided for now in a way, I suppose, whatever her faults, poor thing. It is nicer that we are able to think that, than to be uneasy about her. I ought, too, to write to Richard and ask him how he is getting on, perhaps?”

But Jude’s attention was still absorbed. Having merely glanced at the announcement he said in a disturbed voice: “Listen to this letter. What shall I say or do?”

The Three Horns, Lambeth.

Dear Jude (I won’t be so distant as to call you Mr. Fawley), — I send to-day a newspaper, from which useful document you will learn that I was married over again to Cartlett last Tuesday. So that business is settled right and tight at last. But what I write about more particular is that private affair I wanted to speak to you on when I came down to Aldbrickham. I couldn’t very well tell it to your lady friend, and should much have liked to let you know it by word of mouth, as I could have explained better than by letter. The fact is, Jude, that, though I have never informed you before, there was a boy born of our marriage, eight months after I left you, when I was at Sydney, living with my father and mother. All that is easily provable. As I had separated from you before I thought such a thing was going to happen, and I was over there, and our quarrel had been sharp, I did not think it convenient to write about the birth. I was then looking out for a good situation, so my parents took the child, and he has been with them ever since. That was why I did not mention it when I met you in Christminster, nor at the law proceedings. He is now of an intelligent age, of course, and my mother and father have lately written to say that, as they have rather a hard struggle over there, and I am settled comfortably here, they don’t see why they should be encumbered with the child any longer, his parents being alive. I would have him with me here in a moment, but he is not old enough to be of any use in the bar nor will be for years and years, and naturally Cartlett might think him in the way. They have, however, packed him off to me in charge of some friends who happened to be coming home, and I must ask you to take him when he arrives, for I don’t know what to do with him. He is lawfully yours, that I solemnly swear. If anybody says he isn’t, call them brimstone liars, for my sake. Whatever I may have done before or afterwards, I was honest to you from the time we were married till I went away, and I remain, yours, &c.,

Arabella Cartlett.

Sue’s look was one of dismay. “What will you do, dear?” she asked faintly.

Jude did not reply, and Sue watched him anxiously, with heavy breaths.

“It hits me hard!” said he in an under-voice. “It
may
be true! I can’t make it out. Certainly, if his birth was exactly when she says, he’s mine. I cannot think why she didn’t tell me when I met her at Christminster, and came on here that evening with her! … Ah — I do remember now that she said something about having a thing on her mind that she would like me to know, if ever we lived together again.”

“The poor child seems to be wanted by nobody!” Sue replied, and her eyes filled.

Jude had by this time come to himself. “What a view of life he must have, mine or not mine!” he said. “I must say that, if I were better off, I should not stop for a moment to think whose he might be. I would take him and bring him up. The beggarly question of parentage — what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care. That excessive regard of parents for their own children, and their dislike of other people’s, is, like class-feeling, patriotism, save-your-own-soul-ism, and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom.”

Sue jumped up and kissed Jude with passionate devotion. “Yes — so it is, dearest! And we’ll have him here! And if he isn’t yours it makes it all the better. I do hope he isn’t — though perhaps I ought not to feel quite that! If he isn’t, I should like so much for us to have him as an adopted child!”

“Well, you must assume about him what is most pleasing to you, my curious little comrade!” he said. “I feel that, anyhow, I don’t like to leave the unfortunate little fellow to neglect. Just think of his life in a Lambeth pothouse, and all its evil influences, with a parent who doesn’t want him, and has, indeed, hardly seen him, and a stepfather who doesn’t know him. ‘Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived!’ That’s what the boy —
my
boy, perhaps, will find himself saying before long!”

“Oh no!”

“As I was the petitioner, I am really entitled to his custody, I suppose.”

“Whether or no, we must have him. I see that. I’ll do the best I can to be a mother to him, and we can afford to keep him somehow. I’ll work harder. I wonder when he’ll arrive?”

“In the course of a few weeks, I suppose.”

“I wish — When shall we have courage to marry, Jude?”

“Whenever you have it, I think I shall. It remains with you entirely, dear. Only say the word, and it’s done.”

“Before the boy comes?”

“Certainly.”

“It would make a more natural home for him, perhaps,” she murmured.

Jude thereupon wrote in purely formal terms to request that the boy should be sent on to them as soon as he arrived, making no remark whatever on the surprising nature of Arabella’s information, nor vouchsafing a single word of opinion on the boy’s paternity, nor on whether, had he known all this, his conduct towards her would have been quite the same.

In the down-train that was timed to reach Aldbrickham station about ten o’clock the next evening, a small, pale child’s face could be seen in the gloom of a third-class carriage. He had large, frightened eyes, and wore a white woollen cravat, over which a key was suspended round his neck by a piece of common string: the key attracting attention by its occasional shine in the lamplight. In the band of his hat his half-ticket was stuck. His eyes remained mostly fixed on the back of the seat opposite, and never turned to the window even when a station was reached and called. On the other seat were two or three passengers, one of them a working woman who held a basket on her lap, in which was a tabby kitten. The woman opened the cover now and then, whereupon the kitten would put out its head, and indulge in playful antics. At these the fellow-passengers laughed, except the solitary boy bearing the key and ticket, who, regarding the kitten with his saucer eyes, seemed mutely to say: “All laughing comes from misapprehension. Rightly looked at there is no laughable thing under the sun.”