Chapter: At this memorable date of his life he was, one Saturday, returning
from Alfredston to Marygreen about three o'clock in the afternoon.
It was fine, warm, and soft summer weather, and he walked with his
tools at his back, his little chisels clinking faintly against the
larger ones in his basket.  It being the end of the week he had left
work early, and had come out of the town by a round-about route which
he did not usually frequent, having promised to call at a flour-mill
near Cresscombe to execute a commission for his aunt.

He was in an enthusiastic mood.  He seemed to see his way to living
comfortably in Christminster in the course of a year or two, and
knocking at the doors of one of those strongholds of learning of
which he had dreamed so much.  He might, of course, have gone there
now, in some capacity or other, but he preferred to enter the city
with a little more assurance as to means than he could be said to
feel at present.  A warm self-content suffused him when he considered
what he had already done.  Now and then as he went along he turned
to face the peeps of country on either side of him.  But he hardly
saw them; the act was an automatic repetition of what he had been
accustomed to do when less occupied; and the one matter which really
engaged him was the mental estimate of his progress thus far.

"I have acquired quite an average student's power to read the
common ancient classics, Latin in particular."  This was true,
Jude possessing a facility in that language which enabled him with
great ease to himself to beguile his lonely walks by imaginary
conversations therein.

"I have read two books of the _Iliad_, besides being pretty familiar
with passages such as the speech of Phoenix in the ninth book,
the fight of Hector and Ajax in the fourteenth, the appearance of
Achilles unarmed and his heavenly armour in the eighteenth, and the
funeral games in the twenty-third. I have also done some Hesiod, a
little scrap of Thucydides, and a lot of the Greek Testament...  I
wish there was only one dialect all the same.

"I have done some mathematics, including the first six and the
eleventh and twelfth books of Euclid; and algebra as far as simple
equations.

"I know something of the Fathers, and something of Roman and English
history.

"These things are only a beginning.  But I shall not make much
farther advance here, from the difficulty of getting books.  Hence I
must next concentrate all my energies on settling in Christminster.
Once there I shall so advance, with the assistance I shall there
get, that my present knowledge will appear to me but as childish
ignorance.  I must save money, and I will; and one of those colleges
shall open its doors to me--shall welcome whom now it would spurn,
if I wait twenty years for the welcome.

"I'll be D.D. before I have done!"

And then he continued to dream, and thought he might become even a
bishop by leading a pure, energetic, wise, Christian life.  And what
an example he would set!  If his income were L5000 a year, he would
give away L4500 in one form and another, and live sumptuously (for
him) on the remainder.  Well, on second thoughts, a bishop was
absurd.  He would draw the line at an archdeacon.  Perhaps a man
could be as good and as learned and as useful in the capacity of
archdeacon as in that of bishop.  Yet he thought of the bishop again.

"Meanwhile I will read, as soon as I am settled in Christminster,
the books I have not been able to get hold of here: Livy, Tacitus,
Herodotus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes--"

"Ha, ha, ha!  Hoity-toity!"  The sounds were expressed in light
voices on the other side of the hedge, but he did not notice them.
His thoughts went on:

"--Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Epictetus, Seneca,
Antoninus.  Then I must master other things: the Fathers thoroughly;
Bede and ecclesiastical history generally; a smattering of Hebrew--I
only know the letters as yet--"

"Hoity-toity!"

"--but I can work hard.  I have staying power in abundance, thank
God! and it is that which tells.... Yes, Christminster shall be my
Alma Mater; and I'll be her beloved son, in whom she shall be well
pleased."

In his deep concentration on these transactions of the future Jude's
walk had slackened, and he was now standing quite still, looking
at the ground as though the future were thrown thereon by a magic
lantern.  On a sudden something smacked him sharply in the ear, and
he became aware that a soft cold substance had been flung at him, and
had fallen at his feet.

A glance told him what it was--a piece of flesh, the characteristic
part of a barrow-pig, which the countrymen used for greasing their
boots, as it was useless for any other purpose.  Pigs were rather
plentiful hereabout, being bred and fattened in large numbers in
certain parts of North Wessex.

On the other side of the hedge was a stream, whence, as he now for
the first time realized, had come the slight sounds of voices and
laughter that had mingled with his dreams.  He mounted the bank and
looked over the fence.  On the further side of the stream stood a
small homestead, having a garden and pig-sties attached; in front of
it, beside the brook, three young women were kneeling, with buckets
and platters beside them containing heaps of pigs' chitterlings,
which they were washing in the running water.  One or two pairs of
eyes slyly glanced up, and perceiving that his attention had at last
been attracted, and that he was watching them, they braced themselves
for inspection by putting their mouths demurely into shape and
recommencing their rinsing operations with assiduity.

"Thank you!" said Jude severely.

"I DIDN'T throw it, I tell you!" asserted one girl to her neighbour,
as if unconscious of the young man's presence.

"Nor I," the second answered.

"Oh, Anny, how can you!" said the third.

"If I had thrown anything at all, it shouldn't have been THAT!"

"Pooh!  I don't care for him!"  And they laughed and continued their
work, without looking up, still ostentatiously accusing each other.

Jude grew sarcastic as he wiped his face, and caught their remarks.

"YOU didn't do it--oh no!" he said to the up-stream one of the three.

She whom he addressed was a fine dark-eyed girl, not exactly
handsome, but capable of passing as such at a little distance,
despite some coarseness of skin and fibre.  She had a round and
prominent bosom, full lips, perfect teeth, and the rich complexion
of a Cochin hen's egg.  She was a complete and substantial female
animal--no more, no less; and Jude was almost certain that to her was
attributable the enterprise of attracting his attention from dreams
of the humaner letters to what was simmering in the minds around him.

"That you'll never be told," said she deedily.

"Whoever did it was wasteful of other people's property."

"Oh, that's nothing."

"But you want to speak to me, I suppose?"

"Oh yes; if you like to."

"Shall I clamber across, or will you come to the plank above here?"

Perhaps she foresaw an opportunity; for somehow or other the eyes
of the brown girl rested in his own when he had said the words, and
there was a momentary flash of intelligence, a dumb announcement of
affinity _in posse_ between herself and him, which, so far as Jude
Fawley was concerned, had no sort of premeditation in it.  She saw
that he had singled her out from the three, as a woman is singled out
in such cases, for no reasoned purpose of further acquaintance, but
in commonplace obedience to conjunctive orders from headquarters,
unconsciously received by unfortunate men when the last intention of
their lives is to be occupied with the feminine.

Springing to her feet, she said: "Bring back what is lying there."

Jude was now aware that no message on any matter connected with her
father's business had prompted her signal to him.  He set down his
basket of tools, picked up the scrap of offal, beat a pathway for
himself with his stick, and got over the hedge.  They walked in
parallel lines, one on each bank of the stream, towards the small
plank bridge.  As the girl drew nearer to it, she gave without Jude
perceiving it, an adroit little suck to the interior of each of her
cheeks in succession, by which curious and original manoeuvre she
brought as by magic upon its smooth and rotund surface a perfect
dimple, which she was able to retain there as long as she continued
to smile.  This production of dimples at will was a not unknown
operation, which many attempted, but only a few succeeded in
accomplishing.

They met in the middle of the plank, and Jude, tossing back her
missile, seemed to expect her to explain why she had audaciously
stopped him by this novel artillery instead of by hailing him.

But she, slyly looking in another direction, swayed herself backwards
and forwards on her hand as it clutched the rail of the bridge; till,
moved by amatory curiosity, she turned her eyes critically upon him.

"You don't think _I_ would shy things at you?"

"Oh no."

"We are doing this for my father, who naturally doesn't want anything
thrown away.  He makes that into dubbin."  She nodded towards the
fragment on the grass.

"What made either of the others throw it, I wonder?" Jude asked,
politely accepting her assertion, though he had very large doubts as
to its truth.

"Impudence.  Don't tell folk it was I, mind!"

"How can I?  I don't know your name."

"Ah, no.  Shall I tell it to you?"

"Do!"

"Arabella Donn.  I'm living here."

"I must have known it if I had often come this way.  But I mostly go
straight along the high-road."

"My father is a pig-breeder, and these girls are helping me wash the
innerds for black-puddings and such like."

They talked a little more and a little more, as they stood regarding
each other and leaning against the hand-rail of the bridge.  The
unvoiced call of woman to man, which was uttered very distinctly
by Arabella's personality, held Jude to the spot against his
intention--almost against his will, and in a way new to his
experience.  It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that till this
moment Jude had never looked at a woman to consider her as such, but
had vaguely regarded the sex as beings outside his life and purposes.
He gazed from her eyes to her mouth, thence to her bosom, and to her
full round naked arms, wet, mottled with the chill of the water, and
firm as marble.

"What a nice-looking girl you are!" he murmured, though the words had
not been necessary to express his sense of her magnetism.

"Ah, you should see me Sundays!" she said piquantly.

"I don't suppose I could?" he answered

"That's for you to think on.  There's nobody after me just now,
though there med be in a week or two."  She had spoken this without
a smile, and the dimples disappeared.

Jude felt himself drifting strangely, but could not help it.  "Will
you let me?"

"I don't mind."

By this time she had managed to get back one dimple by turning
her face aside for a moment and repeating the odd little sucking
operation before mentioned, Jude being still unconscious of more than
a general impression of her appearance.  "Next Sunday?" he hazarded.
"To-morrow, that is?"

"Yes."

"Shall I call?"

"Yes."

She brightened with a little glow of triumph, swept him almost
tenderly with her eyes in turning, and retracing her steps down the
brookside grass rejoined her companions.

Jude Fawley shouldered his tool-basket and resumed his lonely way,
filled with an ardour at which he mentally stood at gaze.  He had
just inhaled a single breath from a new atmosphere, which had
evidently been hanging round him everywhere he went, for he knew not
how long, but had somehow been divided from his actual breathing as
by a sheet of glass.  The intentions as to reading, working, and
learning, which he had so precisely formulated only a few minutes
earlier, were suffering a curious collapse into a corner, he knew not
how.

"Well, it's only a bit of fun," he said to himself, faintly conscious
that to common sense there was something lacking, and still more
obviously something redundant in the nature of this girl who had
drawn him to her which made it necessary that he should assert mere
sportiveness on his part as his reason in seeking her--something in
her quite antipathetic to that side of him which had been occupied
with literary study and the magnificent Christminster dream.  It had
been no vestal who chose THAT missile for opening her attack on him.
He saw this with his intellectual eye, just for a short fleeting
while, as by the light of a falling lamp one might momentarily see an
inscription on a wall before being enshrouded in darkness.  And then
this passing discriminative power was withdrawn, and Jude was lost to
all conditions of things in the advent of a fresh and wild pleasure,
that of having found a new channel for emotional interest hitherto
unsuspected, though it had lain close beside him.  He was to meet
this enkindling one of the other sex on the following Sunday.

Meanwhile the girl had joined her companions, and she silently
resumed her flicking and sousing of the chitterlings in the pellucid
stream.

"Catched un, my dear?" laconically asked the girl called Anny.

"I don't know.  I wish I had thrown something else than that!"
regretfully murmured Arabella.

"Lord! he's nobody, though you med think so.  He used to drive old
Drusilla Fawley's bread-cart out at Marygreen, till he 'prenticed
himself at Alfredston.  Since then he's been very stuck up, and
always reading.  He wants to be a scholar, they say."

"Oh, I don't care what he is, or anything about 'n.  Don't you think
it, my child!"

"Oh, don't ye!  You needn't try to deceive us!  What did you stay
talking to him for, if you didn't want un?  Whether you do or whether
you don't, he's as simple as a child.  I could see it as you courted
on the bridge, when he looked at 'ee as if he had never seen a woman
before in his born days.  Well, he's to be had by any woman who can
get him to care for her a bit, if she likes to set herself to catch
him the right way."




The next day Jude Fawley was pausing in his bedroom with the sloping
ceiling, looking at the books on the table, and then at the black
mark on the plaster above them, made by the smoke of his lamp in past
months.

It was Sunday afternoon, four-and-twenty hours after his meeting with
Arabella Donn.  During the whole bygone week he had been resolving to
set this afternoon apart for a special purpose,--the re-reading of
his Greek Testament--his new one, with better type than his old copy,
following Griesbach's text as amended by numerous correctors, and
with variorum readings in the margin.  He was proud of the book,
having obtained it by boldly writing to its London publisher, a thing
he had never done before.

He had anticipated much pleasure in this afternoon's reading, under
the quiet roof of his great-aunt's house as formerly, where he now
slept only two nights a week.  But a new thing, a great hitch, had
happened yesterday in the gliding and noiseless current of his life,
and he felt as a snake must feel who has sloughed off its winter
skin, and cannot understand the brightness and sensitiveness of its
new one.

He would not go out to meet her, after all.  He sat down, opened the
book, and with his elbows firmly planted on the table, and his hands
to his temples, began at the beginning:


   HE KAINE DIATHEKE


Had he promised to call for her?  Surely he had!  She would wait
indoors, poor girl, and waste all her afternoon on account of him.
There was a something in her, too, which was very winning, apart from
promises.  He ought not to break faith with her.  Even though he had
only Sundays and week-day evenings for reading he could afford one
afternoon, seeing that other young men afforded so many.  After
to-day he would never probably see her again.  Indeed, it would be
impossible, considering what his plans were.

In short, as if materially, a compelling arm of extraordinary
muscular power seized hold of him--something which had nothing in
common with the spirits and influences that had moved him hitherto.
This seemed to care little for his reason and his will, nothing for
his so-called elevated intentions, and moved him along, as a violent
schoolmaster a schoolboy he has seized by the collar, in a direction
which tended towards the embrace of a woman for whom he had no
respect, and whose life had nothing in common with his own except
locality.


HE KAINE DIATHEKE was no more heeded, and the predestinate Jude
sprang up and across the room.  Foreseeing such an event he had
already arrayed himself in his best clothes.  In three minutes he was
out of the house and descending by the path across the wide vacant
hollow of corn-ground which lay between the village and the isolated
house of Arabella in the dip beyond the upland.

As he walked he looked at his watch.  He could be back in two hours,
easily, and a good long time would still remain to him for reading
after tea.

Passing the few unhealthy fir-trees and cottage where the path
joined the highway he hastened along, and struck away to the left,
descending the steep side of the country to the west of the Brown
House.  Here at the base of the chalk formation he neared the brook
that oozed from it, and followed the stream till he reached her
dwelling.  A smell of piggeries came from the back, and the grunting
of the originators of that smell.  He entered the garden, and knocked
at the door with the knob of his stick.

Somebody had seen him through the window, for a male voice on the
inside said:

"Arabella!  Here's your young man come coorting!  Mizzle, my girl!"

Jude winced at the words.  Courting in such a businesslike aspect as
it evidently wore to the speaker was the last thing he was thinking
of.  He was going to walk with her, perhaps kiss her; but "courting"
was too coolly purposeful to be anything but repugnant to his ideas.
The door was opened and he entered, just as Arabella came downstairs
in radiant walking attire.

"Take a chair, Mr. What's-your-name?" said her father, an energetic,
black-whiskered man, in the same businesslike tones Jude had heard
from outside.

"I'd rather go out at once, wouldn't you?" she whispered to Jude.

"Yes," said he.  "We'll walk up to the Brown House and back, we can
do it in half an hour."

Arabella looked so handsome amid her untidy surroundings that he felt
glad he had come, and all the misgivings vanished that had hitherto
haunted him.

First they clambered to the top of the great down, during which
ascent he had occasionally to take her hand to assist her.  Then
they bore off to the left along the crest into the ridgeway, which
they followed till it intersected the high-road at the Brown
House aforesaid, the spot of his former fervid desires to behold
Christminster.  But he forgot them now.  He talked the commonest
local twaddle to Arabella with greater zest than he would have felt
in discussing all the philosophies with all the Dons in the recently
adored university, and passed the spot where he had knelt to Diana
and Phoebus without remembering that there were any such people in
the mythology, or that the sun was anything else than a useful
lamp for illuminating Arabella's face.  An indescribable lightness
of heel served to lift him along; and Jude, the incipient scholar,
prospective D.D., professor, bishop, or what not, felt himself
honoured and glorified by the condescension of this handsome country
wench in agreeing to take a walk with him in her Sunday frock and
ribbons.

They reached the Brown House barn--the point at which he had planned
to turn back.  While looking over the vast northern landscape from
this spot they were struck by the rising of a dense volume of smoke
from the neighbourhood of the little town which lay beneath them at a
distance of a couple of miles.

"It is a fire," said Arabella.  "Let's run and see it--do!  It is not
far!"

The tenderness which had grown up in Jude's bosom left him no will to
thwart her inclination now--which pleased him in affording him excuse
for a longer time with her.  They started off down the hill almost at
a trot; but on gaining level ground at the bottom, and walking a
mile, they found that the spot of the fire was much further off than
it had seemed.

Having begun their journey, however, they pushed on; but it was not
till five o'clock that they found themselves on the scene,--the
distance being altogether about half-a-dozen miles from Marygreen,
and three from Arabella's.  The conflagration had been got under
by the time they reached it, and after a short inspection of the
melancholy ruins they retraced their steps--their course lying
through the town of Alfredston.

Arabella said she would like some tea, and they entered an inn of an
inferior class, and gave their order.  As it was not for beer they
had a long time to wait.  The maid-servant recognized Jude, and
whispered her surprise to her mistress in the background, that he,
the student "who kept hisself up so particular," should have suddenly
descended so low as to keep company with Arabella.  The latter
guessed what was being said, and laughed as she met the serious and
tender gaze of her lover--the low and triumphant laugh of a careless
woman who sees she is winning her game.

They sat and looked round the room, and at the picture of Samson and
Delilah which hung on the wall, and at the circular beer-stains on
the table, and at the spittoons underfoot filled with sawdust.  The
whole aspect of the scene had that depressing effect on Jude which
few places can produce like a tap-room on a Sunday evening when
the setting sun is slanting in, and no liquor is going, and the
unfortunate wayfarer finds himself with no other haven of rest.

It began to grow dusk.  They could not wait longer, really, for the
tea, they said.  "Yet what else can we do?" asked Jude.  "It is a
three-mile walk for you."

"I suppose we can have some beer," said Arabella.

"Beer, oh yes.  I had forgotten that.  Somehow it seems odd to come
to a public-house for beer on a Sunday evening."

"But we didn't."

"No, we didn't." Jude by this time wished he was out of such an
uncongenial atmosphere; but he ordered the beer, which was promptly
brought.

Arabella tasted it.  "Ugh!" she said.

Jude tasted.  "What's the matter with it?" he asked.  "I don't
understand beer very much now, it is true.  I like it well enough,
but it is bad to read on, and I find coffee better.  But this seems
all right."

"Adulterated--I can't touch it!"  She mentioned three or four
ingredients that she detected in the liquor beyond malt and hops,
much to Jude's surprise.

"How much you know!" he said good-humouredly.

Nevertheless she returned to the beer and drank her share, and they
went on their way.  It was now nearly dark, and as soon as they had
withdrawn from the lights of the town they walked closer together,
till they touched each other.  She wondered why he did not put his
arm round her waist, but he did not; he merely said what to himself
seemed a quite bold enough thing: "Take my arm."

She took it, thoroughly, up to the shoulder.  He felt the warmth of
her body against his, and putting his stick under his other arm held
with his right hand her right as it rested in its place.

"Now we are well together, dear, aren't we?" he observed.

"Yes," said she; adding to herself: "Rather mild!"

"How fast I have become!" he was thinking.

Thus they walked till they reached the foot of the upland, where they
could see the white highway ascending before them in the gloom.  From
this point the only way of getting to Arabella's was by going up the
incline, and dipping again into her valley on the right.  Before they
had climbed far they were nearly run into by two men who had been
walking on the grass unseen.

"These lovers--you find 'em out o' doors in all seasons and
weathers--lovers and homeless dogs only," said one of the men as
they vanished down the hill.

Arabella tittered lightly.

"Are we lovers?" asked Jude.

"You know best."

"But you can tell me?"

For answer she inclined her head upon his shoulder.  Jude took the
hint, and encircling her waist with his arm, pulled her to him and
kissed her.

They walked now no longer arm in arm but, as she had desired, clasped
together.  After all, what did it matter since it was dark, said Jude
to himself.  When they were half-way up the long hill they paused as
by arrangement, and he kissed her again.  They reached the top, and
he kissed her once more.

"You can keep your arm there, if you would like to," she said gently.

He did so, thinking how trusting she was.

Thus they slowly went towards her home.  He had left his cottage
at half-past three, intending to be sitting down again to the New
Testament by half-past five.  It was nine o'clock when, with another
embrace, he stood to deliver her up at her father's door.

She asked him to come in, if only for a minute, as it would seem so
odd otherwise, and as if she had been out alone in the dark.  He gave
way, and followed her in.  Immediately that the door was opened he
found, in addition to her parents, several neighbours sitting round.
They all spoke in a congratulatory manner, and took him seriously as
Arabella's intended partner.

They did not belong to his set or circle, and he felt out of place
and embarrassed.  He had not meant this: a mere afternoon of
pleasant walking with Arabella, that was all he had meant.  He did
not stay longer than to speak to her stepmother, a simple, quiet
woman without features or character; and bidding them all good night
plunged with a sense of relief into the track over the down.

But that sense was only temporary: Arabella soon re-asserted her
sway in his soul.  He walked as if he felt himself to be another man
from the Jude of yesterday.  What were his books to him? what were
his intentions, hitherto adhered to so strictly, as to not wasting a
single minute of time day by day?  "Wasting!"  It depended on your
point of view to define that: he was just living for the first
time: not wasting life.  It was better to love a woman than to be a
graduate, or a parson; ay, or a pope!

When he got back to the house his aunt had gone to bed, and a general
consciousness of his neglect seemed written on the face of all things
confronting him.  He went upstairs without a light, and the dim
interior of his room accosted him with sad inquiry.  There lay his
book open, just as he had left it, and the capital letters on the
title-page regarded him with fixed reproach in the grey starlight,
like the unclosed eyes of a dead man:


   HE KAINE DIATHEKE


     *     *     *     *     *     *


Jude had to leave early next morning for his usual week of absence at
lodgings; and it was with a sense of futility that he threw into his
basket upon his tools and other necessaries the unread book he had
brought with him.

He kept his impassioned doings a secret almost from himself.
Arabella, on the contrary, made them public among all her friends
and acquaintances.

Retracing by the light of dawn the road he had followed a few hours
earlier under cover of darkness, with his sweetheart by his side, he
reached the bottom of the hill, where he walked slowly, and stood
still.  He was on the spot where he had given her the first kiss.  As
the sun had only just risen it was possible that nobody had passed
there since.  Jude looked on the ground and sighed.  He looked
closely, and could just discern in the damp dust the imprints of
their feet as they had stood locked in each other's arms.  She was
not there now, and "the embroidery of imagination upon the stuff of
nature" so depicted her past presence that a void was in his heart
which nothing could fill.  A pollard willow stood close to the place,
and that willow was different from all other willows in the world.
Utter annihilation of the six days which must elapse before he could
see her again as he had promised would have been his intensest wish
if he had had only the week to live.

An hour and a half later Arabella came along the same way with her
two companions of the Saturday.  She passed unheedingly the scene of
the kiss, and the willow that marked it, though chattering freely on
the subject to the other two.

"And what did he tell 'ee next?"

"Then he said--"  And she related almost word for word some of his
tenderest speeches.  If Jude had been behind the fence he would have
felt not a little surprised at learning how very few of his sayings
and doings on the previous evening were private.

"You've got him to care for 'ee a bit, 'nation if you han't!"
murmured Anny judicially.  "It's well to be you!"

In a few moments Arabella replied in a curiously low, hungry tone of
latent sensuousness: "I've got him to care for me: yes!  But I want
him to more than care for me; I want him to have me--to marry me!  I
must have him.  I can't do without him.  He's the sort of man I long
for.  I shall go mad if I can't give myself to him altogether!  I
felt I should when I first saw him!"

"As he is a romancing, straightfor'ard, honest chap, he's to be had,
and as a husband, if you set about catching him in the right way."

Arabella remained thinking awhile.  "What med be the right way?" she
asked.

"Oh you don't know--you don't!" said Sarah, the third girl.

"On my word I don't!--No further, that is, than by plain courting,
and taking care he don't go too far!"

The third girl looked at the second.  "She DON'T know!"

"'Tis clear she don't!" said Anny.

"And having lived in a town, too, as one may say!  Well, we can teach
'ee som'at then, as well as you us."

"Yes.  And how do you mean--a sure way to gain a man?  Take me for an
innocent, and have done wi' it!"

"As a husband."

"As a husband."

"A countryman that's honourable and serious-minded such as he; God
forbid that I should say a sojer, or sailor, or commercial gent from
the towns, or any of them that be slippery with poor women!  I'd do
no friend that harm!"

"Well, such as he, of course!"

Arabella's companions looked at each other, and turning up their eyes
in drollery began smirking.  Then one went up close to Arabella, and,
although nobody was near, imparted some information in a low tone,
the other observing curiously the effect upon Arabella.

"Ah!" said the last-named slowly.  "I own I didn't think of that
way! ...  But suppose he ISN'T honourable?  A woman had better not
have tried it!"

"Nothing venture nothing have!  Besides, you make sure that he's
honourable before you begin.  You'd be safe enough with yours.  I
wish I had the chance!  Lots of girls do it; or do you think they'd
get married at all?"

Arabella pursued her way in silent thought.  "I'll try it!" she
whispered; but not to them.




One week's end Jude was as usual walking out to his aunt's at
Marygreen from his lodging in Alfredston, a walk which now had large
attractions for him quite other than his desire to see his aged and
morose relative.  He diverged to the right before ascending the hill
with the single purpose of gaining, on his way, a glimpse of Arabella
that should not come into the reckoning of regular appointments.
Before quite reaching the homestead his alert eye perceived the top
of her head moving quickly hither and thither over the garden hedge.
Entering the gate he found that three young unfattened pigs had
escaped from their sty by leaping clean over the top, and that she
was endeavouring unassisted to drive them in through the door which
she had set open.  The lines of her countenance changed from the
rigidity of business to the softness of love when she saw Jude, and
she bent her eyes languishingly upon him.  The animals took advantage
of the pause by doubling and bolting out of the way.

"They were only put in this morning!" she cried, stimulated to pursue
in spite of her lover's presence.  "They were drove from Spaddleholt
Farm only yesterday, where Father bought 'em at a stiff price enough.
They are wanting to get home again, the stupid toads!  Will you shut
the garden gate, dear, and help me to get 'em in.  There are no men
folk at home, only Mother, and they'll be lost if we don't mind."

He set himself to assist, and dodged this way and that over the
potato rows and the cabbages.  Every now and then they ran together,
when he caught her for a moment and kissed her.  The first pig was
got back promptly; the second with some difficulty; the third a
long-legged creature, was more obstinate and agile.  He plunged
through a hole in the garden hedge, and into the lane.

"He'll be lost if I don't follow 'n!" said she.  "Come along with
me!"

She rushed in full pursuit out of the garden, Jude alongside her,
barely contriving to keep the fugitive in sight.  Occasionally they
would shout to some boy to stop the animal, but he always wriggled
past and ran on as before.

"Let me take your hand, darling," said Jude.  "You are getting out of
breath."  She gave him her now hot hand with apparent willingness,
and they trotted along together.

"This comes of driving 'em home," she remarked.  "They always know
the way back if you do that.  They ought to have been carted over."

By this time the pig had reached an unfastened gate admitting to the
open down, across which he sped with all the agility his little legs
afforded.  As soon as the pursuers had entered and ascended to the
top of the high ground it became apparent that they would have to run
all the way to the farmer's if they wished to get at him.  From this
summit he could be seen as a minute speck, following an unerring line
towards his old home.

"It is no good!" cried Arabella.  "He'll be there long before we get
there.  It don't matter now we know he's not lost or stolen on the
way.  They'll see it is ours, and send un back.  Oh dear, how hot I
be!"

Without relinquishing her hold of Jude's hand she swerved aside and
flung herself down on the sod under a stunted thorn, precipitately
pulling Jude on to his knees at the same time.

"Oh, I ask pardon--I nearly threw you down, didn't I!  But I am so
tired!"

She lay supine, and straight as an arrow, on the sloping sod of this
hill-top, gazing up into the blue miles of sky, and still retaining
her warm hold of Jude's hand.  He reclined on his elbow near her.

"We've run all this way for nothing," she went on, her form heaving
and falling in quick pants, her face flushed, her full red lips
parted, and a fine dew of perspiration on her skin.  "Well--why don't
you speak, deary?"

"I'm blown too.  It was all up hill."

They were in absolute solitude--the most apparent of all solitudes,
that of empty surrounding space.  Nobody could be nearer than a mile
to them without their seeing him.  They were, in fact, on one of the
summits of the county, and the distant landscape around Christminster
could be discerned from where they lay.  But Jude did not think of
that then.

"Oh, I can see such a pretty thing up this tree," said Arabella.  "A
sort of a--caterpillar, of the most loveliest green and yellow you
ever came across!"

"Where?" said Jude, sitting up.

"You can't see him there--you must come here," said she.

He bent nearer and put his head in front of hers.  "No--I can't see
it," he said.

"Why, on the limb there where it branches off--close to the moving
leaf--there!"  She gently pulled him down beside her.

"I don't see it," he repeated, the back of his head against her
cheek.  "But I can, perhaps, standing up."  He stood accordingly,
placing himself in the direct line of her gaze.

"How stupid you are!" she said crossly, turning away her face.

"I don't care to see it, dear: why should I?" he replied looking
down upon her.  "Get up, Abby."

"Why?"

"I want you to let me kiss you.  I've been waiting to ever so long!"

She rolled round her face, remained a moment looking deedily aslant
at him; then with a slight curl of the lip sprang to her feet, and
exclaiming abruptly "I must mizzle!" walked off quickly homeward.
Jude followed and rejoined her.

"Just one!" he coaxed.

"Shan't!" she said.

He, surprised: "What's the matter?"

She kept her two lips resentfully together, and Jude followed her
like a pet lamb till she slackened her pace and walked beside him,
talking calmly on indifferent subjects, and always checking him if
he tried to take her hand or clasp her waist.  Thus they descended
to the precincts of her father's homestead, and Arabella went in,
nodding good-bye to him with a supercilious, affronted air.

"I expect I took too much liberty with her, somehow," Jude said to
himself, as he withdrew with a sigh and went on to Marygreen.

On Sunday morning the interior of Arabella's home was, as usual,
the scene of a grand weekly cooking, the preparation of the special
Sunday dinner.  Her father was shaving before a little glass hung on
the mullion of the window, and her mother and Arabella herself were
shelling beans hard by.  A neighbour passed on her way home from
morning service at the nearest church, and seeing Donn engaged at
the window with the razor, nodded and came in.

She at once spoke playfully to Arabella: "I zeed 'ee running with
'un--hee-hee! I hope 'tis coming to something?"

Arabella merely threw a look of consciousness into her face without
raising her eyes.

"He's for Christminster, I hear, as soon as he can get there."

"Have you heard that lately--quite lately?" asked Arabella with a
jealous, tigerish indrawing of breath.

"Oh no!  But it has been known a long time that it is his plan.  He's
on'y waiting here for an opening.  Ah well: he must walk about with
somebody, I s'pose.  Young men don't mean much now-a-days. 'Tis a sip
here and a sip there with 'em.  'Twas different in my time."

When the gossip had departed Arabella said suddenly to her mother:
"I want you and Father to go and inquire how the Edlins be, this
evening after tea.  Or no--there's evening service at Fensworth--you
can walk to that."

"Oh?  What's up to-night, then?"

"Nothing.  Only I want the house to myself.  He's shy; and I can't
get un to come in when you are here.  I shall let him slip through my
fingers if I don't mind, much as I care for 'n!"

"If it is fine we med as well go, since you wish."

In the afternoon Arabella met and walked with Jude, who had now
for weeks ceased to look into a book of Greek, Latin, or any other
tongue.  They wandered up the slopes till they reached the green
track along the ridge, which they followed to the circular British
earth-bank adjoining, Jude thinking of the great age of the trackway,
and of the drovers who had frequented it, probably before the Romans
knew the country.  Up from the level lands below them floated the
chime of church bells.  Presently they were reduced to one note,
which quickened, and stopped.

"Now we'll go back," said Arabella, who had attended to the sounds.

Jude assented.  So long as he was near her he minded little where he
was.  When they arrived at her house he said lingeringly: "I won't
come in.  Why are you in such a hurry to go in to-night?  It is not
near dark."

"Wait a moment," said she.  She tried the handle of the door and
found it locked.

"Ah--they are gone to church," she added.  And searching behind the
scraper she found the key and unlocked the door.  "Now, you'll come
in a moment?" she asked lightly.  "We shall be all alone."

"Certainly," said Jude with alacrity, the case being unexpectedly
altered.

Indoors they went.  Did he want any tea?  No, it was too late: he
would rather sit and talk to her.  She took off her jacket and hat,
and they sat down--naturally enough close together.

"Don't touch me, please," she said softly.  "I am part egg-shell. Or
perhaps I had better put it in a safe place."  She began unfastening
the collar of her gown.

"What is it?" said her lover.

"An egg--a cochin's egg.  I am hatching a very rare sort.  I carry it
about everywhere with me, and it will get hatched in less than three
weeks."

"Where do you carry it?"

"Just here."  She put her hand into her bosom and drew out the egg,
which was wrapped in wool, outside it being a piece of pig's bladder,
in case of accidents.  Having exhibited it to him she put it back,
"Now mind you don't come near me.  I don't want to get it broke, and
have to begin another."

"Why do you do such a strange thing?"

"It's an old custom.  I suppose it is natural for a woman to want to
bring live things into the world."

"It is very awkward for me just now," he said, laughing.

"It serves you right.  There--that's all you can have of me"

She had turned round her chair, and, reaching over the back of it,
presented her cheek to him gingerly.

"That's very shabby of you!"

"You should have catched me a minute ago when I had put the egg down!
There!" she said defiantly, "I am without it now!"  She had quickly
withdrawn the egg a second time; but before he could quite reach her
she had put it back as quickly, laughing with the excitement of her
strategy.  Then there was a little struggle, Jude making a plunge for
it and capturing it triumphantly.  Her face flushed; and becoming
suddenly conscious he flushed also.

They looked at each other, panting; till he rose and said: "One kiss,
now I can do it without damage to property; and I'll go!"

But she had jumped up too.  "You must find me first!" she cried.

Her lover followed her as she withdrew.  It was now dark inside the
room, and the window being small he could not discover for a long
time what had become of her, till a laugh revealed her to have rushed
up the stairs, whither Jude rushed at her heels.

 One weekend as he walks home from Alfredston, Jude makes an accounting of what he has accomplished to the age of nineteen. He believes he has some fluency in Latin and Greek, both Homeric and Biblical; he has studied some mathematics, theology, and history. What he does not yet know he will learn at Christminster, where books and instruction await him. As soon as he saves more money he will be off. He dreams of getting his D.D. and becoming a bishop or perhaps an archdeacon. He is brought back to reality by being hit on the ear by something, and he realizes that on the other side of the hedge is a pig farm and he hears girls' voices. After a bantering conversation as to who threw the pig's offal at him, Jude asks one of the three girls if she wants to meet him. They do meet on a plank bridge across the stream alongside which the girls have been working; the girl is Arabella Donn. Jude finds her attractive, aware of girls as such for the first time. Arabella easily maneuvers Jude into calling on her the next day, a Sunday. When he walks off again, his single-minded concentration on getting to Christminster fades before the onrush of new emotions. On Sunday afternoon, which he has set aside to read in his new Greek Testament, Jude easily convinces himself to keep his date with Arabella. In going for a walk they pass the Brown House, from which eminence Jude has often looked out at Christminster. Walking farther than intended, they stop at an inn for tea, sitting in a room on the wall of which is a picture of Samson and Delilah. Unable to get tea, they settle for beer, and Jude is surprised at Arabella's knowledge of its ingredients. They then walk to Arabella's house in the dark, several times stopping to kiss, Jude finally holding her close as they walk. As he walks home later, Jude is impatient of the fact that he must wait a whole week to see her again. Next day, Arabella declares to her two girl friends she wants to marry Jude, and they tease her because she says she doesn't know how to make sure she gets him. One of them whispers to her, and she obviously has told Arabella to let Jude get her pregnant. Passing the Donn farm one weekend on his way home from Alfredston. Jude encounters Arabella chasing some newly acquired pigs which have got out of the sty. Giving up the chase of the last one, they lie down on a hilltop, and when Arabella can't get Jude to caress her as she wishes she pretends to be affronted and goes off home. When the next day, Sunday, Arabella hears talk of Jude's going to Christminster, she decides to get him to make love to her, in short, to carry out the plan suggested by her girl friends. She arranges to get her parents out of the house that evening, and when she and Jude are alone in the house she teases him with a cochin's egg she is carrying in her bosom to hatch, an old custom, she says. Exciting Jude by removing it and replacing it several times, Arabella gets him to pursue her. She disappears upstairs and Jude follows her. Obviously they make love.

