Chapter: Phillotson was sitting up late, as was often his custom, trying to
get together the materials for his long-neglected hobby of Roman
antiquities.  For the first time since reviving the subject he felt a
return of his old interest in it.  He forgot time and place, and when
he remembered himself and ascended to rest it was nearly two o'clock.

His preoccupation was such that, though he now slept on the other
side of the house, he mechanically went to the room that he and his
wife had occupied when he first became a tenant of Old-Grove Place,
which since his differences with Sue had been hers exclusively.
He entered, and unconsciously began to undress.

There was a cry from the bed, and a quick movement.  Before the
schoolmaster had realized where he was he perceived Sue starting up
half-awake, staring wildly, and springing out upon the floor on the
side away from him, which was towards the window.  This was somewhat
hidden by the canopy of the bedstead, and in a moment he heard her
flinging up the sash.  Before he had thought that she meant to do
more than get air she had mounted upon the sill and leapt out.  She
disappeared in the darkness, and he heard her fall below.

Phillotson, horrified, ran downstairs, striking himself sharply
against the newel in his haste.  Opening the heavy door he ascended
the two or three steps to the level of the ground, and there on the
gravel before him lay a white heap.  Phillotson seized it in his
arms, and bringing Sue into the hall seated her on a chair, where he
gazed at her by the flapping light of the candle which he had set
down in the draught on the bottom stair.

She had certainly not broken her neck.  She looked at him with eyes
that seemed not to take him in; and though not particularly large in
general they appeared so now.  She pressed her side and rubbed her
arm, as if conscious of pain; then stood up, averting her face, in
evident distress at his gaze.

"Thank God--you are not killed!  Though it's not for want of
trying--not much hurt I hope?"

Her fall, in fact, had not been a serious one, probably owing to the
lowness of the old rooms and to the high level of the ground without.
Beyond a scraped elbow and a blow in the side she had apparently
incurred little harm.

"I was asleep, I think!" she began, her pale face still turned away
from him.  "And something frightened me--a terrible dream--I thought
I saw you--"  The actual circumstances seemed to come back to her,
and she was silent.

Her cloak was hanging at the back of the door, and the wretched
Phillotson flung it round her.  "Shall I help you upstairs?" he asked
drearily; for the significance of all this sickened him of himself
and of everything.

"No thank you, Richard.  I am very little hurt.  I can walk."

"You ought to lock your door," he mechanically said, as if lecturing
in school.  "Then no one could intrude even by accident."

"I have tried--it won't lock.  All the doors are out of order."

The aspect of things was not improved by her admission.  She ascended
the staircase slowly, the waving light of the candle shining on her.
Phillotson did not approach her, or attempt to ascend himself till he
heard her enter her room.  Then he fastened up the front door, and
returning, sat down on the lower stairs, holding the newel with one
hand, and bowing his face into the other.  Thus he remained for a
long long time--a pitiable object enough to one who had seen him;
till, raising his head and sighing a sigh which seemed to say that
the business of his life must be carried on, whether he had a wife or
no, he took the candle and went upstairs to his lonely room on the
other side of the landing.

No further incident touching the matter between them occurred till
the following evening, when, immediately school was over, Phillotson
walked out of Shaston, saying he required no tea, and not informing
Sue where he was going.  He descended from the town level by a steep
road in a north-westerly direction, and continued to move downwards
till the soil changed from its white dryness to a tough brown clay.
He was now on the low alluvial beds


   Where Duncliffe is the traveller's mark,
   And cloty Stour's a-rolling dark.


More than once he looked back in the increasing obscurity of evening.
Against the sky was Shaston, dimly visible


   On the grey-topp'd height
   Of Paladore, as pale day wore
   Away... [William Barnes.]


The new-lit lights from its windows burnt with a steady shine as if
watching him, one of which windows was his own.  Above it he could
just discern the pinnacled tower of Trinity Church.  The air down
here, tempered by the thick damp bed of tenacious clay, was not as it
had been above, but soft and relaxing, so that when he had walked a
mile or two he was obliged to wipe his face with his handkerchief.

Leaving Duncliffe Hill on the left he proceeded without hesitation
through the shade, as a man goes on, night or day, in a district over
which he has played as a boy.  He had walked altogether about four
and a half miles


   Where Stour receives her strength,
   From six cleere fountains fed, [Drayton.]


when he crossed a tributary of the Stour, and reached Leddenton--a
little town of three or four thousand inhabitants--where he went
on to the boys' school, and knocked at the door of the master's
residence.

A boy pupil-teacher opened it, and to Phillotson's inquiry if Mr.
Gillingham was at home, replied that he was, going at once off to his
own house, and leaving Phillotson to find his way in as he could.  He
discovered his friend putting away some books from which he had been
giving evening lessons.  The light of the paraffin lamp fell on
Phillotson's face--pale and wretched by contrast with his friend's,
who had a cool, practical look.  They had been schoolmates in
boyhood, and fellow-students at Wintoncester Training College, many
years before this time.

"Glad to see you, Dick!  But you don't look well!  Nothing the
matter?"

Phillotson advanced without replying, and Gillingham closed the
cupboard and pulled up beside his visitor.

"Why you haven't been here--let me see--since you were married?
I called, you know, but you were out; and upon my word it is such a
climb after dark that I have been waiting till the days are longer
before lumpering up again.  I am glad you didn't wait, however."

Though well-trained and even proficient masters, they occasionally
used a dialect-word of their boyhood to each other in private.

"I've come, George, to explain to you my reasons for taking a step
that I am about to take, so that you, at least, will understand my
motives if other people question them anywhen--as they may, indeed
certainly will...  But anything is better than the present condition
of things.  God forbid that you should ever have such an experience
as mine!"

"Sit down.  You don't mean--anything wrong between you and Mrs.
Phillotson?"

"I do...  My wretched state is that I've a wife I love who not
only does not love me, but--but--  Well, I won't say.  I know her
feeling!  I should prefer hatred from her!"

"Ssh!"

"And the sad part of it is that she is not so much to blame as I. She
was a pupil-teacher under me, as you know, and I took advantage of
her inexperience, and toled her out for walks, and got her to agree
to a long engagement before she well knew her own mind.  Afterwards
she saw somebody else, but she blindly fulfilled her engagement."

"Loving the other?"

"Yes; with a curious tender solicitude seemingly; though her exact
feeling for him is a riddle to me--and to him too, I think--possibly
to herself.  She is one of the oddest creatures I ever met.  However,
I have been struck with these two facts; the extraordinary sympathy,
or similarity, between the pair.  He is her cousin, which perhaps
accounts for some of it.  They seem to be one person split in two!
And with her unconquerable aversion to myself as a husband, even
though she may like me as a friend, 'tis too much to bear longer.
She has conscientiously struggled against it, but to no purpose.
I cannot bear it--I cannot!  I can't answer her arguments--she has
read ten times as much as I.  Her intellect sparkles like diamonds,
while mine smoulders like brown paper...  She's one too many for me!"

"She'll get over it, good-now?"

"Never!  It is--but I won't go into it--there are reasons why she
never will.  At last she calmly and firmly asked if she might leave
me and go to him.  The climax came last night, when, owing to my
entering her room by accident, she jumped out of window--so strong
was her dread of me!  She pretended it was a dream, but that was
to soothe me.  Now when a woman jumps out of window without caring
whether she breaks her neck or no, she's not to be mistaken; and this
being the case I have come to a conclusion: that it is wrong to so
torture a fellow-creature any longer; and I won't be the inhuman
wretch to do it, cost what it may!"

"What--you'll let her go?  And with her lover?"

"Whom with is her matter.  I shall let her go; with him certainly,
if she wishes.  I know I may be wrong--I know I can't logically,
or religiously, defend my concession to such a wish of hers, or
harmonize it with the doctrines I was brought up in.  Only I know one
thing: something within me tells me I am doing wrong in refusing
her.  I, like other men, profess to hold that if a husband gets such
a so-called preposterous request from his wife, the only course that
can possibly be regarded as right and proper and honourable in him is
to refuse it, and put her virtuously under lock and key, and murder
her lover perhaps.  But is that essentially right, and proper, and
honourable, or is it contemptibly mean and selfish?  I don't profess
to decide.  I simply am going to act by instinct, and let principles
take care of themselves.  If a person who has blindly walked into a
quagmire cries for help, I am inclined to give it, if possible."

"But--you see, there's the question of neighbours and society--what
will happen if everybody--"

"Oh, I am not going to be a philosopher any longer!  I only see
what's under my eyes."

"Well--I don't agree with your instinct, Dick!" said Gillingham
gravely.  "I am quite amazed, to tell the truth, that such a sedate,
plodding fellow as you should have entertained such a craze for a
moment.  You said when I called that she was puzzling and peculiar:
I think you are!"

"Have you ever stood before a woman whom you know to be intrinsically
a good woman, while she has pleaded for release--been the man she has
knelt to and implored indulgence of?"

"I am thankful to say I haven't."

"Then I don't think you are in a position to give an opinion.  I
have been that man, and it makes all the difference in the world, if
one has any manliness or chivalry in him.  I had not the remotest
idea--living apart from women as I have done for so many years--that
merely taking a woman to church and putting a ring upon her finger
could by any possibility involve one in such a daily, continuous
tragedy as that now shared by her and me!"

"Well, I could admit some excuse for letting her leave you, provided
she kept to herself.  But to go attended by a cavalier--that makes a
difference."

"Not a bit.  Suppose, as I believe, she would rather endure her
present misery than be made to promise to keep apart from him?
All that is a question for herself.  It is not the same thing at
all as the treachery of living on with a husband and playing him
false...  However, she has not distinctly implied living with him
as wife, though I think she means to...  And, to the best of my
understanding, it is not an ignoble, merely animal, feeling between
the two: that is the worst of it; because it makes me think their
affection will be enduring.  I did not mean to confess to you that in
the first jealous weeks of my marriage, before I had come to my right
mind, I hid myself in the school one evening when they were together
there, and I heard what they said.  I am ashamed of it now, though
I suppose I was only exercising a legal right.  I found from their
manner that an extraordinary affinity, or sympathy, entered into
their attachment, which somehow took away all flavour of grossness.
Their supreme desire is to be together--to share each other's
emotions, and fancies, and dreams."

"Platonic!"

"Well no.  Shelleyan would be nearer to it.  They remind me of--what
are their names--Laon and Cythna.  Also of Paul and Virginia a
little.  The more I reflect, the more ENTIRELY I am on their side!"

"But if people did as you want to do, there'd be a general domestic
disintegration.  The family would no longer be the social unit."

"Yes--I am all abroad, I suppose!" said Phillotson sadly.  "I was
never a very bright reasoner, you remember....  And yet, I don't see
why the woman and the children should not be the unit without the
man."

"By the Lord Harry!--Matriarchy! ...  Does SHE say all this too?"

"Oh no.  She little thinks I have out-Sued Sue in this--all in the
last twelve hours!"

"It will upset all received opinion hereabout.  Good God--what will
Shaston say!"

"I don't say that it won't.  I don't know--I don't know! ...  As I
say, I am only a feeler, not a reasoner."

"Now," said Gillingham, "let us take it quietly, and have something
to drink over it."  He went under the stairs, and produced a bottle
of cider-wine, of which they drank a rummer each.  "I think you are
rafted, and not yourself," he continued.  "Do go back and make up
your mind to put up with a few whims.  But keep her.  I hear on all
sides that she's a charming young thing."

"Ah yes!  That's the bitterness of it!  Well, I won't stay.  I have a
long walk before me."

Gillingham accompanied his friend a mile on his way, and at parting
expressed his hope that this consultation, singular as its subject
was, would be the renewal of their old comradeship.  "Stick to her!"
were his last words, flung into the darkness after Phillotson; from
which his friend answered "Aye, aye!"

But when Phillotson was alone under the clouds of night, and no
sound was audible but that of the purling tributaries of the Stour,
he said, "So Gillingham, my friend, you had no stronger arguments
against it than those!"

"I think she ought to be smacked, and brought to her senses--that's
what I think!" murmured Gillingham, as he walked back alone.

The next morning came, and at breakfast Phillotson told Sue:

"You may go--with whom you will.  I absolutely and unconditionally
agree."

Having once come to this conclusion it seemed to Phillotson more
and more indubitably the true one.  His mild serenity at the sense
that he was doing his duty by a woman who was at his mercy almost
overpowered his grief at relinquishing her.

Some days passed, and the evening of their last meal together had
come--a cloudy evening with wind--which indeed was very seldom absent
in this elevated place.  How permanently it was imprinted upon his
vision; that look of her as she glided into the parlour to tea;
a slim flexible figure; a face, strained from its roundness, and
marked by the pallors of restless days and nights, suggesting tragic
possibilities quite at variance with her times of buoyancy; a trying
of this morsel and that, and an inability to eat either.  Her nervous
manner, begotten of a fear lest he should be injured by her course,
might have been interpreted by a stranger as displeasure that
Phillotson intruded his presence on her for the few brief minutes
that remained.

"You had better have a slice of ham or an egg, or something with your
tea?  You can't travel on a mouthful of bread and butter."

She took the slice he helped her to; and they discussed as they sat
trivial questions of housekeeping, such as where he would find the
key of this or that cupboard, what little bills were paid, and what
not.

"I am a bachelor by nature, as you know, Sue," he said, in a heroic
attempt to put her at her ease.  "So that being without a wife will
not really be irksome to me, as it might be to other men who have
had one a little while.  I have, too, this grand hobby in my head of
writing 'The Roman Antiquities of Wessex,' which will occupy all my
spare hours."

"If you will send me some of the manuscript to copy at any time,
as you used to, I will do it with so much pleasure!" she said with
amenable gentleness.  "I should much like to be some help to you
still--as a--f-f-friend."

Phillotson mused, and said: "No, I think we ought to be really
separate, if we are to be at all.  And for this reason, that I don't
wish to ask you any questions, and particularly wish you not to give
me information as to your movements, or even your address...  Now,
what money do you want?  You must have some, you know."

"Oh, of course, Richard, I couldn't think of having any of your money
to go away from you with!  I don't want any either.  I have enough of
my own to last me for a long while, and Jude will let me have--"

"I would rather not know anything about him, if you don't mind.
You are free, absolutely; and your course is your own."

"Very well.  But I'll just say that I have packed only a change or
two of my own personal clothing, and one or two little things besides
that are my very own.  I wish you would look into my trunk before it
is closed.  Besides that I have only a small parcel that will go into
Jude's portmanteau."

"Of course I shall do no such thing as examine your luggage!  I wish
you would take three-quarters of the household furniture.  I don't
want to be bothered with it.  I have a sort of affection for a little
of it that belonged to my poor mother and father.  But the rest you
are welcome to whenever you like to send for it."

"That I shall never do."

"You go by the six-thirty train, don't you?  It is now a quarter to
six."

"You...  You don't seem very sorry I am going, Richard!"

"Oh no--perhaps not."

"I like you much for how you have behaved.  It is a curious thing
that directly I have begun to regard you as not my husband, but as
my old teacher, I like you.  I won't be so affected as to say I love
you, because you know I don't, except as a friend.  But you do seem
that to me!"

Sue was for a few moments a little tearful at these reflections, and
then the station omnibus came round to take her up.  Phillotson saw
her things put on the top, handed her in, and was obliged to make an
appearance of kissing her as he wished her good-bye, which she quite
understood and imitated.  From the cheerful manner in which they
parted the omnibus-man had no other idea than that she was going for
a short visit.

When Phillotson got back into the house he went upstairs and opened
the window in the direction the omnibus had taken.  Soon the noise of
its wheels died away.  He came down then, his face compressed like
that of one bearing pain; he put on his hat and went out, following
by the same route for nearly a mile.  Suddenly turning round he came
home.

He had no sooner entered than the voice of his friend Gillingham
greeted him from the front room.

"I could make nobody hear; so finding your door open I walked in, and
made myself comfortable.  I said I would call, you remember."

"Yes.  I am much obliged to you, Gillingham, particularly for coming
to-night."

"How is Mrs.--"

"She is quite well.  She is gone--just gone.  That's her tea-cup,
that she drank out of only an hour ago.  And that's the plate
she--"  Phillotson's throat got choked up, and he could not go on.
He turned and pushed the tea-things aside.

"Have you had any tea, by the by?" he asked presently in a renewed
voice.

"No--yes--never mind," said Gillingham, preoccupied.  "Gone, you say
she is?"

"Yes...  I would have died for her; but I wouldn't be cruel to her
in the name of the law.  She is, as I understand, gone to join her
lover.  What they are going to do I cannot say.  Whatever it may be
she has my full consent to."

There was a stability, a ballast, in Phillotson's pronouncement which
restrained his friend's comment.  "Shall I--leave you?" he asked.

"No, no.  It is a mercy to me that you have come.  I have some
articles to arrange and clear away.  Would you help me?"

Gillingham assented; and having gone to the upper rooms the
schoolmaster opened drawers, and began taking out all Sue's things
that she had left behind, and laying them in a large box.  "She
wouldn't take all I wanted her to," he continued.  "But when I made
up my mind to her going to live in her own way I did make up my
mind."

"Some men would have stopped at an agreement to separate."

"I've gone into all that, and don't wish to argue it.  I was, and
am, the most old-fashioned man in the world on the question of
marriage--in fact I had never thought critically about its ethics
at all.  But certain facts stared me in the face, and I couldn't go
against them."

They went on with the packing silently.  When it was done Phillotson
closed the box and turned the key.

"There," he said.  "To adorn her in somebody's eyes; never again in
mine!"

 Phillotson has resumed his interest in Roman antiquities and late one night, lost in his thoughts, he absentmindedly enters Sue's bedroom. In terror Sue goes to the window and jumps out, injuring herself. Phillotson, horrified, rushes to help, but Sue is not seriously hurt. The incident convinces Phillotson that he should grant Sue her freedom. He cannot bear to watch her suffering. The next evening, he pays a visit to his old friend and schoolmate, Gillingham. He tells him of his plans. Gillingham tries to reason with him and warns him of the scandal such a separation will result in, but Phillotson is determined. He tells Sue of his decision. Sue is grateful for his kindness, and Phillotson even sees her onto the coach that will take her to the station. After Sue has left, Gillingham calls on him and helps him to pack up the things Sue has left behind.

