Chapter: 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.

 The next day, a Sunday, Jude plans to read his New Greek testament. But eventually, all his good intentions evaporate, and he goes off to visit Arabella, promising himself that he will return in two hours. Arabella's father accepts Jude as his daughter's suitor, but Jude is embarrassed at this interpretation. He goes out walking with Arabella, and before he knows it, they have walked a great distance. They are forced to stop at an inn for tea, but only beer is available. Later, they walk home together in the dark, often stealing kisses, and Jude returns home quite late in the evening. His Greek and Latin are forgotten and he is obsessed with Arabella. Arabella discusses her success with Jude with her friends, and they advise her to seduce him so that he will be forced to marry her if she becomes pregnant.

