Chapter: From that week Jude Fawley and Sue walked no more in the town of
Aldbrickham.

Whither they had gone nobody knew, chiefly because nobody cared
to know.  Any one sufficiently curious to trace the steps of such
an obscure pair might have discovered without great trouble that
they had taken advantage of his adaptive craftsmanship to enter
on a shifting, almost nomadic, life, which was not without its
pleasantness for a time.

Wherever Jude heard of free-stone work to be done, thither he went,
choosing by preference places remote from his old haunts and Sue's.
He laboured at a job, long or briefly, till it was finished; and
then moved on.

Two whole years and a half passed thus.  Sometimes he might have
been found shaping the mullions of a country mansion, sometimes
setting the parapet of a town-hall, sometimes ashlaring an hotel at
Sandbourne, sometimes a museum at Casterbridge, sometimes as far down
as Exonbury, sometimes at Stoke-Barehills.  Later still he was at
Kennetbridge, a thriving town not more than a dozen miles south of
Marygreen, this being his nearest approach to the village where he
was known; for he had a sensitive dread of being questioned as to his
life and fortunes by those who had been acquainted with him during
his ardent young manhood of study and promise, and his brief and
unhappy married life at that time.

At some of these places he would be detained for months, at others
only a few weeks.  His curious and sudden antipathy to ecclesiastical
work, both episcopal and noncomformist, which had risen in him when
suffering under a smarting sense of misconception, remained with him
in cold blood, less from any fear of renewed censure than from an
ultra-conscientiousness which would not allow him to seek a living
out of those who would disapprove of his ways; also, too, from a
sense of inconsistency between his former dogmas and his present
practice, hardly a shred of the beliefs with which he had first
gone up to Christminster now remaining with him.  He was mentally
approaching the position which Sue had occupied when he first met
her.

On a Saturday evening in May, nearly three years after Arabella's
recognition of Sue and himself at the agricultural show, some of
those who there encountered each other met again.

It was the spring fair at Kennetbridge, and, though this ancient
trade-meeting had much dwindled from its dimensions of former times,
the long straight street of the borough presented a lively scene
about midday.  At this hour a light trap, among other vehicles,
was driven into the town by the north road, and up to the door of
a temperance inn.  There alighted two women, one the driver, an
ordinary country person, the other a finely built figure in the deep
mourning of a widow.  Her sombre suit, of pronounced cut, caused
her to appear a little out of place in the medley and bustle of a
provincial fair.

"I will just find out where it is, Anny," said the widow-lady to her
companion, when the horse and cart had been taken by a man who came
forward: "and then I'll come back, and meet you here; and we'll go
in and have something to eat and drink.  I begin to feel quite a
sinking."

"With all my heart," said the other.  "Though I would sooner have
put up at the Chequers or The Jack.  You can't get much at these
temperance houses."

"Now, don't you give way to gluttonous desires, my child," said the
woman in weeds reprovingly.  "This is the proper place.  Very well:
we'll meet in half an hour, unless you come with me to find out where
the site of the new chapel is?"

"I don't care to.  You can tell me."

The companions then went their several ways, the one in crape walking
firmly along with a mien of disconnection from her miscellaneous
surroundings.  Making inquiries she came to a hoarding, within which
were excavations denoting the foundations of a building; and on
the boards without one or two large posters announcing that the
foundation-stone of the chapel about to be erected would be laid that
afternoon at three o'clock by a London preacher of great popularity
among his body.

Having ascertained thus much the immensely weeded widow retraced her
steps, and gave herself leisure to observe the movements of the fair.
By and by her attention was arrested by a little stall of cakes and
ginger-breads, standing between the more pretentious erections of
trestles and canvas.  It was covered with an immaculate cloth, and
tended by a young woman apparently unused to the business, she being
accompanied by a boy with an octogenarian face, who assisted her.

"Upon my--senses!" murmured the widow to herself.  "His wife Sue--if
she is so!"  She drew nearer to the stall.  "How do you do, Mrs.
Fawley?" she said blandly.

Sue changed colour and recognized Arabella through the crape veil.

"How are you, Mrs. Cartlett?" she said stiffly.  And then perceiving
Arabella's garb her voice grew sympathetic in spite of herself.
"What?--you have lost--"

"My poor husband.  Yes.  He died suddenly, six weeks ago, leaving me
none too well off, though he was a kind husband to me.  But whatever
profit there is in public-house keeping goes to them that brew the
liquors, and not to them that retail 'em...  And you, my little old
man!  You don't know me, I expect?"

"Yes, I do.  You be the woman I thought wer my mother for a bit, till
I found you wasn't," replied Father Time, who had learned to use the
Wessex tongue quite naturally by now.

"All right.  Never mind.  I am a friend."

"Juey," said Sue suddenly, "go down to the station platform with this
tray--there's another train coming in, I think."

When he was gone Arabella continued: "He'll never be a beauty, will
he, poor chap!  Does he know I am his mother really?"

"No. He thinks there is some mystery about his parentage--that's all.
Jude is going to tell him when he is a little older."

"But how do you come to be doing this?  I am surprised."

"It is only a temporary occupation--a fancy of ours while we are in a
difficulty."

"Then you are living with him still?"

"Yes."

"Married?"

"Of course."

"Any children?"

"Two."

"And another coming soon, I see."

Sue writhed under the hard and direct questioning, and her tender
little mouth began to quiver.

"Lord--I mean goodness gracious--what is there to cry about?  Some
folks would be proud enough!"

"It is not that I am ashamed--not as you think!  But it seems
such a terribly tragic thing to bring beings into the world--so
presumptuous--that I question my right to do it sometimes!"

"Take it easy, my dear...  But you don't tell me why you do such a
thing as this?  Jude used to be a proud sort of chap--above any
business almost, leave alone keeping a standing."

"Perhaps my husband has altered a little since then.  I am sure he
is not proud now!"  And Sue's lips quivered again.  "I am doing this
because he caught a chill early in the year while putting up some
stonework of a music-hall, at Quartershot, which he had to do in the
rain, the work having to be executed by a fixed day.  He is better
than he was; but it has been a long, weary time!  We have had an old
widow friend with us to help us through it; but she's leaving soon."

"Well, I am respectable too, thank God, and of a serious way of
thinking since my loss.  Why did you choose to sell gingerbreads?"

"That's a pure accident.  He was brought up to the baking business,
and it occurred to him to try his hand at these, which he can make
without coming out of doors.  We call them Christminster cakes.
They are a great success."

"I never saw any like 'em.  Why, they are windows and towers, and
pinnacles!  And upon my word they are very nice."  She had helped
herself, and was unceremoniously munching one of the cakes.

"Yes.  They are reminiscences of the Christminster Colleges.
Traceried windows, and cloisters, you see.  It was a whim of his
to do them in pastry."

"Still harping on Christminster--even in his cakes!" laughed
Arabella.  "Just like Jude.  A ruling passion.  What a queer fellow
he is, and always will be!"

Sue sighed, and she looked her distress at hearing him criticized.

"Don't you think he is?  Come now; you do, though you are so fond of
him!"

"Of course Christminster is a sort of fixed vision with him, which
I suppose he'll never be cured of believing in.  He still thinks it
a great centre of high and fearless thought, instead of what it is,
a nest of commonplace schoolmasters whose characteristic is timid
obsequiousness to tradition."

Arabella was quizzing Sue with more regard of how she was speaking
than of what she was saying.  "How odd to hear a woman selling
cakes talk like that!" she said.  "Why don't you go back to
school-keeping?"

She shook her head.  "They won't have me."

"Because of the divorce, I suppose?"

"That and other things.  And there is no reason to wish it.  We
gave up all ambition, and were never so happy in our lives till his
illness came."

"Where are you living?"

"I don't care to say."

"Here in Kennetbridge?"

Sue's manner showed Arabella that her random guess was right.

"Here comes the boy back again," continued Arabella.  "My boy and
Jude's!"

Sue's eyes darted a spark.  "You needn't throw that in my face!" she
cried.

"Very well--though I half-feel as if I should like to have him with
me! ...  But Lord, I don't want to take him from 'ee--ever I should
sin to speak so profane--though I should think you must have enough
of your own!  He's in very good hands, that I know; and I am not the
woman to find fault with what the Lord has ordained.  I've reached a
more resigned frame of mind."

"Indeed!  I wish I had been able to do so."

"You should try," replied the widow, from the serene heights of a
soul conscious not only of spiritual but of social superiority.
"I make no boast of my awakening, but I'm not what I was.  After
Cartlett's death I was passing the chapel in the street next ours,
and went into it for shelter from a shower of rain.  I felt a need
of some sort of support under my loss, and, as 'twas righter than
gin, I took to going there regular, and found it a great comfort.
But I've left London now, you know, and at present I am living at
Alfredston, with my friend Anny, to be near my own old country.  I'm
not come here to the fair to-day. There's to be the foundation-stone
of a new chapel laid this afternoon by a popular London preacher, and
I drove over with Anny.  Now I must go back to meet her."

Then Arabella wished Sue good-bye, and went on.




In the afternoon Sue and the other people bustling about Kennetbridge
fair could hear singing inside the placarded hoarding farther down
the street.  Those who peeped through the opening saw a crowd of
persons in broadcloth, with hymn-books in their hands, standing round
the excavations for the new chapel-walls. Arabella Cartlett and her
weeds stood among them.  She had a clear, powerful voice, which could
be distinctly heard with the rest, rising and falling to the tune,
her inflated bosom being also seen doing likewise.

It was two hours later on the same day that Anny and Mrs. Cartlett,
having had tea at the Temperance Hotel, started on their return
journey across the high and open country which stretches between
Kennetbridge and Alfredston.  Arabella was in a thoughtful mood; but
her thoughts were not of the new chapel, as Anny at first surmised.

"No--it is something else," at last said Arabella sullenly.  "I
came here to-day never thinking of anybody but poor Cartlett, or of
anything but spreading the Gospel by means of this new tabernacle
they've begun this afternoon.  But something has happened to turn my
mind another way quite.  Anny, I've heard of un again, and I've seen
HER!"

"Who?"

"I've heard of Jude, and I've seen his wife.  And ever since, do what
I will, and though I sung the hymns wi' all my strength, I have not
been able to help thinking about 'n; which I've no right to do as a
chapel member."

"Can't ye fix your mind upon what was said by the London preacher
to-day, and try to get rid of your wandering fancies that way?"

"I do.  But my wicked heart will ramble off in spite of myself!"

"Well--I know what it is to have a wanton mind o' my own, too!  If
you on'y knew what I do dream sometimes o' nights quite against my
wishes, you'd say I had my struggles!"  (Anny, too, had grown rather
serious of late, her lover having jilted her.)

"What shall I do about it?" urged Arabella morbidly.

"You could take a lock of your late-lost husband's hair, and have it
made into a mourning brooch, and look at it every hour of the day."

"I haven't a morsel!--and if I had 'twould be no good...  After all
that's said about the comforts of this religion, I wish I had Jude
back again!"

"You must fight valiant against the feeling, since he's another's.
And I've heard that another good thing for it, when it afflicts
volupshious widows, is to go to your husband's grave in the dusk of
evening, and stand a long while a-bowed down."

"Pooh!  I know as well as you what I should do; only I don't do it!"

They drove in silence along the straight road till they were within
the horizon of Marygreen, which lay not far to the left of their
route.  They came to the junction of the highway and the cross-lane
leading to that village, whose church-tower could be seen athwart the
hollow.  When they got yet farther on, and were passing the lonely
house in which Arabella and Jude had lived during the first months of
their marriage, and where the pig-killing had taken place, she could
control herself no longer.

"He's more mine than hers!" she burst out.  "What right has she to
him, I should like to know!  I'd take him from her if I could!"

"Fie, Abby!  And your husband only six weeks gone!  Pray against it!"

"Be damned if I do!  Feelings are feelings!  I won't be a creeping
hypocrite any longer--so there!"

Arabella had hastily drawn from her pocket a bundle of tracts which
she had brought with her to distribute at the fair, and of which she
had given away several.  As she spoke she flung the whole remainder
of the packet into the hedge.  "I've tried that sort o' physic and
have failed wi' it.  I must be as I was born!"

"Hush!  You be excited, dear!  Now you come along home quiet, and
have a cup of tea, and don't let us talk about un no more.  We won't
come out this road again, as it leads to where he is, because it
inflames 'ee so.  You'll be all right again soon."

Arabella did calm herself down by degrees; and they crossed the
ridge-way.  When they began to descend the long, straight hill, they
saw plodding along in front of them an elderly man of spare stature
and thoughtful gait.  In his hand he carried a basket; and there was
a touch of slovenliness in his attire, together with that indefinable
something in his whole appearance which suggested one who was his
own housekeeper, purveyor, confidant, and friend, through possessing
nobody else at all in the world to act in those capacities for him.
The remainder of the journey was down-hill, and guessing him to be
going to Alfredston they offered him a lift, which he accepted.

Arabella looked at him, and looked again, till at length she spoke.
"If I don't mistake I am talking to Mr. Phillotson?"

The wayfarer faced round and regarded her in turn.  "Yes; my name is
Phillotson," he said.  "But I don't recognize you, ma'am."

"I remember you well enough when you used to be schoolmaster out at
Marygreen, and I one of your scholars.  I used to walk up there from
Cresscombe every day, because we had only a mistress down at our
place, and you taught better.  But you wouldn't remember me as I
should you?--Arabella Donn."

He shook his head.  "No," he said politely, "I don't recall the name.
And I should hardly recognize in your present portly self the slim
school child no doubt you were then."

"Well, I always had plenty of flesh on my bones.  However, I am
staying down here with some friends at present.  You know, I suppose,
who I married?"

"No."

"Jude Fawley--also a scholar of yours--at least a night scholar--for
some little time, I think?  And known to you afterwards, if I am not
mistaken."

"Dear me, dear me," said Phillotson, starting out of his stiffness.
"YOU Fawley's wife?  To be sure--he had a wife!  And he--I
understood--"

"Divorced her--as you did yours--perhaps for better reasons."

"Indeed?"

"Well--he med have been right in doing it--right for both; for I soon
married again, and all went pretty straight till my husband died
lately.  But you--you were decidedly wrong!"

"No," said Phillotson, with sudden testiness.  "I would rather not
talk of this, but--I am convinced I did only what was right, and
just, and moral.  I have suffered for my act and opinions, but I hold
to them; though her loss was a loss to me in more ways than one!"

"You lost your school and good income through her, did you not?"

"I don't care to talk of it.  I have recently come back here--to
Marygreen. I mean."

"You are keeping the school there again, just as formerly?"

The pressure of a sadness that would out unsealed him.  "I am there,"
he replied.  "Just as formerly, no.  Merely on sufferance.  It was
a last resource--a small thing to return to after my move upwards,
and my long indulged hopes--a returning to zero, with all its
humiliations.  But it is a refuge.  I like the seclusion of the
place, and the vicar having known me before my so-called eccentric
conduct towards my wife had ruined my reputation as a schoolmaster,
he accepted my services when all other schools were closed against
me.  However, although I take fifty pounds a year here after taking
above two hundred elsewhere, I prefer it to running the risk of
having my old domestic experiences raked up against me, as I should
do if I tried to make a move."

"Right you are.  A contented mind is a continual feast.  She has done
no better."

"She is not doing well, you mean?"

"I met her by accident at Kennetbridge this very day, and she is
anything but thriving.  Her husband is ill, and she anxious.  You
made a fool of a mistake about her, I tell 'ee again, and the harm
you did yourself by dirting your own nest serves you right, excusing
the liberty."

"How?"

"She was innocent."

"But nonsense!  They did not even defend the case!"

"That was because they didn't care to.  She was quite innocent of
what obtained you your freedom, at the time you obtained it.  I saw
her just afterwards, and proved it to myself completely by talking to
her."

Phillotson grasped the edge of the spring-cart, and appeared to be
much stressed and worried by the information.  "Still--she wanted to
go," he said.

"Yes.  But you shouldn't have let her.  That's the only way with
these fanciful women that chaw high--innocent or guilty.  She'd have
come round in time.  We all do!  Custom does it!  It's all the same
in the end!  However, I think she's fond of her man still--whatever
he med be of her.  You were too quick about her.  _I_ shouldn't
have let her go!  I should have kept her chained on--her spirit for
kicking would have been broke soon enough!  There's nothing like
bondage and a stone-deaf taskmaster for taming us women.  Besides,
you've got the laws on your side.  Moses knew.  Don't you call to
mind what he says?"

"Not for the moment, ma'am, I regret to say."

"Call yourself a schoolmaster!  I used to think o't when they read
it in church, and I was carrying on a bit.  'Then shall the man be
guiltless; but the woman shall bear her iniquity.'  Damn rough on us
women; but we must grin and put up wi' it!  Haw haw!  Well; she's got
her deserts now."

"Yes," said Phillotson, with biting sadness.  "Cruelty is the law
pervading all nature and society; and we can't get out of it if we
would!"

"Well--don't you forget to try it next time, old man."

"I cannot answer you, madam.  I have never known much of womankind."

They had now reached the low levels bordering Alfredston, and passing
through the outskirts approached a mill, to which Phillotson said his
errand led him; whereupon they drew up, and he alighted, bidding them
good-night in a preoccupied mood.

In the meantime Sue, though remarkably successful in her cake-selling
experiment at Kennetbridge fair, had lost the temporary brightness
which had begun to sit upon her sadness on account of that success.
When all her "Christminster" cakes had been disposed of she took
upon her arm the empty basket, and the cloth which had covered the
standing she had hired, and giving the other things to the boy left
the street with him.  They followed a lane to a distance of half a
mile, till they met an old woman carrying a child in short clothes,
and leading a toddler in the other hand.

Sue kissed the children, and said, "How is he now?"

"Still better!" returned Mrs. Edlin cheerfully.  "Before you are
upstairs again your husband will be well enough--don't 'ee trouble."

They turned, and came to some old, dun-tiled cottages with gardens
and fruit-trees.  Into one of these they entered by lifting the latch
without knocking, and were at once in the general living-room.  Here
they greeted Jude, who was sitting in an arm-chair, the increased
delicacy of his normally delicate features, and the childishly
expectant look in his eyes, being alone sufficient to show that he
had been passing through a severe illness.

"What--you have sold them all?" he said, a gleam of interest lighting
up his face.

"Yes.  Arcades, gables, east windows and all."  She told him the
pecuniary results, and then hesitated.  At last, when they were left
alone, she informed him of the unexpected meeting with Arabella, and
the latter's widowhood.

Jude was discomposed.  "What--is she living here?" he said.

"No; at Alfredston," said Sue.

Jude's countenance remained clouded.  "I thought I had better tell
you?" she continued, kissing him anxiously.

"Yes...  Dear me!  Arabella not in the depths of London, but down
here!  It is only a little over a dozen miles across the country to
Alfredston.  What is she doing there?"

She told him all she knew.  "She has taken to chapel-going," Sue
added; "and talks accordingly."

"Well," said Jude, "perhaps it is for the best that we have almost
decided to move on.  I feel much better to-day, and shall be well
enough to leave in a week or two.  Then Mrs. Edlin can go home
again--dear faithful old soul--the only friend we have in the world!"

"Where do you think to go to?"  Sue asked, a troublousness in her
tones.

Then Jude confessed what was in his mind.  He said it would surprise
her, perhaps, after his having resolutely avoided all the old places
for so long.  But one thing and another had made him think a great
deal of Christminster lately, and, if she didn't mind, he would like
to go back there.  Why should they care if they were known?  It was
oversensitive of them to mind so much.  They could go on selling
cakes there, for that matter, if he couldn't work.  He had no sense
of shame at mere poverty; and perhaps he would be as strong as ever
soon, and able to set up stone-cutting for himself there.

"Why should you care so much for Christminster?" she said pensively.
"Christminster cares nothing for you, poor dear!"

"Well, I do, I can't help it.  I love the place--although I know
how it hates all men like me--the so-called self-taught--how it
scorns our laboured acquisitions, when it should be the first
to respect them; how it sneers at our false quantities and
mispronunciations, when it should say, I see you want help, my poor
friend! ...  Nevertheless, it is the centre of the universe to me,
because of my early dream: and nothing can alter it.  Perhaps it will
soon wake up, and be generous.  I pray so! ...  I should like to go
back to live there--perhaps to die there!  In two or three weeks I
might, I think.  It will then be June, and I should like to be there
by a particular day."

His hope that he was recovering proved so far well grounded that
in three weeks they had arrived in the city of many memories; were
actually treading its pavements, receiving the reflection of the
sunshine from its wasting walls.





Part Sixth


AT CHRISTMINSTER AGAIN



   "...  And she humbled her body greatly, and all the places
    of her joy she filled with her torn hair."--ESTHER (Apoc.).


      "There are two who decline, a woman and I,
      And enjoy our death in the darkness here."
                               --R. BROWNING.

 Two and a half years pass, and Jude and Sue are living at Kennetbridge, not far from Marygreen, Jude having worked in many places over the years and still unchanged in his refusal to work on churches. During the time of the spring fair, Arabella comes with her friend Anny for the dedication of a new chapel and encounters Sue, who is selling cakes and gingerbreads at a stall. Arabella tells Sue her husband is dead and questions her about her life. She says that she is married, that she has two children , that Jude has lost his pride, is ill, and bakes cakes because he can do the work indoors. The fact that the cakes are in shapes reminiscent of buildings at Christminster causes both women to agree that Jude still thinks of the city as his ideal. Arabella tells Sue that since her husband's death she has found religion, and she has come from Alfredston, where she lives with her friend, for the dedication. On her way home from Kennetbridge Arabella tells her friend Anny that she wishes she had Jude back, that he is more hers than Sue's, and that she won't be a hypocrite any longer about religion. Along the way, they meet Phillotson, now teaching at Marygreen again, and Arabella identifies herself, this being the first time they have met since Arabella was his pupil. Telling him where Sue now is, Arabella criticizes Phillotson for letting her go, pointing out that Sue was never intimate with Jude before the divorce. She lectures him on how he should treat a wife. In Kennetbridge, when Sue returns to their lodgings, she tells Jude she has sold all the cakes and has seen Arabella. Jude takes Arabella's living near as a good enough reason for moving on and to Sue's surprise says he wants to return to Christminster, which he loves even though he knows it despises men like him. Accordingly, in a few weeks they go.

