Chapter: It was an evening at the end of the month, and Jude had just returned
home from hearing a lecture on ancient history in the public hall not
far off.  When he entered, Sue, who had been keeping indoors during
his absence, laid out supper for him.  Contrary to custom she did not
speak.  Jude had taken up some illustrated paper, which he perused
till, raising his eyes, he saw that her face was troubled.

"Are you depressed, Sue?" he said.

She paused a moment.  "I have a message for you," she answered.

"Somebody has called?"

"Yes.  A woman."  Sue's voice quavered as she spoke, and she suddenly
sat down from her preparations, laid her hands in her lap, and looked
into the fire.  "I don't know whether I did right or not!" she
continued.  "I said you were not at home, and when she said she would
wait, I said I thought you might not be able to see her."

"Why did you say that, dear?  I suppose she wanted a headstone.  Was
she in mourning?"

"No. She wasn't in mourning, and she didn't want a headstone; and I
thought you couldn't see her."  Sue looked critically and imploringly
at him.

"But who was she?  Didn't she say?"

"No. She wouldn't give her name.  But I know who she was--I think I
do!  It was Arabella!"

"Heaven save us!  What should Arabella come for?  What made you think
it was she?"

"Oh, I can hardly tell.  But I know it was!  I feel perfectly certain
it was--by the light in her eyes as she looked at me.  She was a
fleshy, coarse woman."

"Well--I should not have called Arabella coarse exactly, except in
speech, though she may be getting so by this time under the duties of
the public house.  She was rather handsome when I knew her."

"Handsome!  But yes!--so she is!"

"I think I heard a quiver in your little mouth.  Well, waiving that,
as she is nothing to me, and virtuously married to another man, why
should she come troubling us?"

"Are you sure she's married?  Have you definite news of it?"

"No--not definite news.  But that was why she asked me to release
her.  She and the man both wanted to lead a proper life, as I
understood."

"Oh Jude--it was, it WAS Arabella!" cried Sue, covering her eyes
with her hand.  "And I am so miserable!  It seems such an ill omen,
whatever she may have come for.  You could not possibly see her,
could you?"

"I don't really think I could.  It would be so very painful to talk
to her now--for her as much as for me.  However, she's gone.  Did she
say she would come again?"

"No. But she went away very reluctantly."

Sue, whom the least thing upset, could not eat any supper, and when
Jude had finished his he prepared to go to bed.  He had no sooner
raked out the fire, fastened the doors, and got to the top of the
stairs than there came a knock.  Sue instantly emerged from her room,
which she had but just entered.

"There she is again!"  Sue whispered in appalled accents.

"How do you know?"

"She knocked like that last time."

They listened, and the knocking came again.  No servant was kept in
the house, and if the summons were to be responded to one of them
would have to do it in person.  "I'll open a window," said Jude.
"Whoever it is cannot be expected to be let in at this time."

He accordingly went into his bedroom and lifted the sash.  The lonely
street of early retiring workpeople was empty from end to end save of
one figure--that of a woman walking up and down by the lamp a few
yards off.

"Who's there?" he asked.

"Is that Mr. Fawley?" came up from the woman, in a voice which was
unmistakably Arabella's.

Jude replied that it was.

"Is it she?" asked Sue from the door, with lips apart.

"Yes, dear," said Jude.  "What do you want, Arabella?" he inquired.

"I beg your pardon, Jude, for disturbing you," said Arabella humbly.
"But I called earlier--I wanted particularly to see you to-night, if
I could.  I am in trouble, and have nobody to help me!"

"In trouble, are you?"

"Yes."

There was a silence.  An inconvenient sympathy seemed to be rising in
Jude's breast at the appeal.  "But aren't you married?" he said.

Arabella hesitated.  "No, Jude, I am not," she returned.  "He
wouldn't, after all.  And I am in great difficulty.  I hope to get
another situation as barmaid soon.  But it takes time, and I really
am in great distress because of a sudden responsibility that's been
sprung upon me from Australia; or I wouldn't trouble you--believe me
I wouldn't. I want to tell you about it."

Sue remained at gaze, in painful tension, hearing every word, but
speaking none.

"You are not really in want of money, Arabella?" he asked, in a
distinctly softened tone.

"I have enough to pay for the night's lodging I have obtained, but
barely enough to take me back again."

"Where are you living?"

"In London still."  She was about to give the address, but she
said, "I am afraid somebody may hear, so I don't like to call out
particulars of myself so loud.  If you could come down and walk
a little way with me towards the Prince Inn, where I am staying
to-night, I would explain all.  You may as well, for old time's
sake!"

"Poor thing!  I must do her the kindness of hearing what's the
matter, I suppose," said Jude in much perplexity.  "As she's going
back to-morrow it can't make much difference."

"But you can go and see her to-morrow, Jude!  Don't go now, Jude!"
came in plaintive accents from the doorway.  "Oh, it is only to
entrap you, I know it is, as she did before!  Don't go, dear!  She is
such a low-passioned woman--I can see it in her shape, and hear it in
her voice!

"But I shall go," said Jude.  "Don't attempt to detain me, Sue.  God
knows I love her little enough now, but I don't want to be cruel to
her."  He turned to the stairs.

"But she's not your wife!" cried Sue distractedly.  "And I--"

"And you are not either, dear, yet," said Jude.

"Oh, but are you going to her?  Don't!  Stay at home!  Please, please
stay at home, Jude, and not go to her, now she's not your wife any
more than I!"

"Well, she is, rather more than you, come to that," he said, taking
his hat determinedly.  "I've wanted you to be, and I've waited with
the patience of Job, and I don't see that I've got anything by my
self-denial.  I shall certainly give her something, and hear what it
is she is so anxious to tell me; no man could do less!"

There was that in his manner which she knew it would be futile to
oppose.  She said no more, but, turning to her room as meekly as a
martyr, heard him go downstairs, unbolt the door, and close it
behind him.  With a woman's disregard of her dignity when in the
presence of nobody but herself, she also trotted down, sobbing
articulately as she went.  She listened.  She knew exactly how far
it was to the inn that Arabella had named as her lodging.  It would
occupy about seven minutes to get there at an ordinary walking pace;
seven to come back again.  If he did not return in fourteen minutes
he would have lingered.  She looked at the clock.  It was twenty-five
minutes to eleven.  He MIGHT enter the inn with Arabella, as they
would reach it before closing time; she might get him to drink with
her; and Heaven only knew what disasters would befall him then.

In a still suspense she waited on.  It seemed as if the whole time
had nearly elapsed when the door was opened again, and Jude appeared.

Sue gave a little ecstatic cry.  "Oh, I knew I could trust you!--how
good you are!"--she began.

"I can't find her anywhere in this street, and I went out in my
slippers only.  She has walked on, thinking I've been so hard-hearted
as to refuse her requests entirely, poor woman.  I've come back for
my boots, as it is beginning to rain."

"Oh, but why should you take such trouble for a woman who has served
you so badly!" said Sue in a jealous burst of disappointment.

"But, Sue, she's a woman, and I once cared for her; and one can't be
a brute in such circumstances."

"She isn't your wife any longer!" exclaimed Sue, passionately
excited.  "You MUSTN'T go out to find her!  It isn't right!  You
CAN'T join her, now she's a stranger to you.  How can you forget such
a thing, my dear, dear one!"

"She seems much the same as ever--an erring, careless, unreflecting
fellow-creature," he said, continuing to pull on his boots.  "What
those legal fellows have been playing at in London makes no
difference in my real relations to her.  If she was my wife while
she was away in Australia with another husband, she's my wife now."

"But she wasn't!  That's just what I hold!  There's the absurdity!--
Well--you'll come straight back, after a few minutes, won't you,
dear?  She is too low, too coarse for you to talk to long, Jude, and
was always!"

"Perhaps I am coarse too, worse luck!  I have the germs of every
human infirmity in me, I verily believe--that was why I saw it was
so preposterous of me to think of being a curate.  I have cured
myself of drunkenness I think; but I never know in what new form a
suppressed vice will break out in me!  I do love you, Sue, though I
have danced attendance on you so long for such poor returns!  All
that's best and noblest in me loves you, and your freedom from
everything that's gross has elevated me, and enabled me to do what
I should never have dreamt myself capable of, or any man, a year
or two ago.  It is all very well to preach about self-control, and
the wickedness of coercing a woman.  But I should just like a few
virtuous people who have condemned me in the past, about Arabella
and other things, to have been in my tantalizing position with
you through these late weeks!--they'd believe, I think, that I
have exercised some little restraint in always giving in to your
wishes--living here in one house, and not a soul between us."

"Yes, you have been good to me, Jude; I know you have, my dear
protector."

"Well--Arabella has appealed to me for help.  I must go out and speak
to her, Sue, at least!"

"I can't say any more!--Oh, if you must, you must!" she said,
bursting out into sobs that seemed to tear her heart.  "I have
nobody but you, Jude, and you are deserting me!  I didn't know you
were like this--I can't bear it, I can't!  If she were yours it
would be different!"

"Or if you were."

"Very well then--if I must I must.  Since you will have it so, I
agree!  I will be.  Only I didn't mean to!  And I didn't want to
marry again, either! ...  But, yes--I agree, I agree!  I do love you.
I ought to have known that you would conquer in the long run, living
like this!"

She ran across and flung her arms round his neck.  "I am not a
cold-natured, sexless creature, am I, for keeping you at such a
distance?  I am sure you don't think so!  Wait and see!  I do belong
to you, don't I?  I give in!"

"And I'll arrange for our marriage to-morrow, or as soon as ever you
wish."

"Yes, Jude."

"Then I'll let her go," said he, embracing Sue softly.  "I do feel
that it would be unfair to you to see her, and perhaps unfair to her.
She is not like you, my darling, and never was: it is only bare
justice to say that.  Don't cry any more.  There; and there; and
there!"  He kissed her on one side, and on the other, and in the
middle, and rebolted the front door.



The next morning it was wet.

"Now, dear," said Jude gaily at breakfast; "as this is Saturday
I mean to call about the banns at once, so as to get the first
publishing done to-morrow, or we shall lose a week.  Banns will do?
We shall save a pound or two."

Sue absently agreed to banns.  But her mind for the moment was
running on something else.  A glow had passed away from her, and
depression sat upon her features.

"I feel I was wickedly selfish last night!" she murmured.  "It was
sheer unkindness in me--or worse--to treat Arabella as I did.  I
didn't care about her being in trouble, and what she wished to tell
you!  Perhaps it was really something she was justified in telling
you.  That's some more of my badness, I suppose!  Love has its own
dark morality when rivalry enters in--at least, mine has, if other
people's hasn't...  I wonder how she got on?  I hope she reached the
inn all right, poor woman."

"Oh yes: she got on all right," said Jude placidly.

"I hope she wasn't shut out, and that she hadn't to walk the streets
in the rain.  Do you mind my putting on my waterproof and going to
see if she got in?  I've been thinking of her all the morning."

"Well--is it necessary?  You haven't the least idea how Arabella is
able to shift for herself.  Still, darling, if you want to go and
inquire you can."

There was no limit to the strange and unnecessary penances which Sue
would meekly undertake when in a contrite mood; and this going to
see all sorts of extraordinary persons whose relation to her was
precisely of a kind that would have made other people shun them was
her instinct ever, so that the request did not surprise him.

"And when you come back," he added, "I'll be ready to go about the
banns.  You'll come with me?"

Sue agreed, and went off under cloak and umbrella letting Jude kiss
her freely, and returning his kisses in a way she had never done
before.  Times had decidedly changed.  "The little bird is caught at
last!" she said, a sadness showing in her smile.

"No--only nested," he assured her.

She walked along the muddy street till she reached the public house
mentioned by Arabella, which was not so very far off.  She was
informed that Arabella had not yet left, and in doubt how to announce
herself so that her predecessor in Jude's affections would recognize
her, she sent up word that a friend from Spring Street had called,
naming the place of Jude's residence.  She was asked to step
upstairs, and on being shown into a room found that it was Arabella's
bedroom, and that the latter had not yet risen.  She halted on the
turn of her toe till Arabella cried from the bed, "Come in and shut
the door," which Sue accordingly did.

Arabella lay facing the window, and did not at once turn her head:
and Sue was wicked enough, despite her penitence, to wish for a
moment that Jude could behold her forerunner now, with the daylight
full upon her.  She may have seemed handsome enough in profile under
the lamps, but a frowsiness was apparent this morning; and the sight
of her own fresh charms in the looking-glass made Sue's manner
bright, till she reflected what a meanly sexual emotion this was in
her, and hated herself for it.

"I've just looked in to see if you got back comfortably last night,
that's all," she said gently.  "I was afraid afterwards that you
might have met with any mishap?"

"Oh--how stupid this is!  I thought my visitor was--your friend--your
husband--Mrs. Fawley, as I suppose you call yourself?" said Arabella,
flinging her head back upon the pillows with a disappointed toss, and
ceasing to retain the dimple she had just taken the trouble to
produce.

"Indeed I don't," said Sue.

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

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

"He wasn't yesterday."

Sue coloured roseate, and said, "How do you know?"

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

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

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

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

"He's waiting to, any day," returned Sue, with frigid pride.

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

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

"Ah, yes--you are a oneyer too, like myself," said Arabella, eyeing
her visitor with humorous criticism.  "Bolted from your first, didn't
you, like me?"

"Good morning!--I must go," said Sue hastily.

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




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

"Oh Jude--I've been talking to her," she said at last.  "I wish I
hadn't!  And yet it is best to be reminded of things."

"I hope she was civil."

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

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

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

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

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

He looked round.

"Wait a minute, would you mind?"

He came back to her.

"Just let us think," she said timidly.  "I had such a horrid dream
one night! ...  And Arabella--"

"What did Arabella say to you?" he asked.

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

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

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


   Can you keep the bee from ranging,
   Or the ring-dove's neck from changing?
   No! Nor fetter'd love ...


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

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

"Look!" said she.

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

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

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


   THE THREE HORNS, LAMBETH.

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

   ARABELLA CARTLETT.


Sue's look was one of dismay.  "What will you do, dear?" she asked
faintly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh no!"

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

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

"In the course of a few weeks, I suppose."

"I wish--When shall we have courage to marry, Jude?"

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

"Before the boy comes?"

"Certainly."

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

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

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

Occasionally, at a stoppage, the guard would look into the compartment
and say to the boy, "All right, my man.  Your box is safe in the
van."  The boy would say, "Yes," without animation, would try to
smile, and fail.

He was Age masquerading as Juvenility, and doing it so badly that
his real self showed through crevices.  A ground-swell from ancient
years of night seemed now and then to lift the child in this his
morning-life, when his face took a back view over some great Atlantic
of Time, and appeared not to care about what it saw.

When the other travellers closed their eyes, which they did one by
one--even the kitten curling itself up in the basket, weary of its
too circumscribed play--the boy remained just as before.  He then
seemed to be doubly awake, like an enslaved and dwarfed divinity,
sitting passive and regarding his companions as if he saw their whole
rounded lives rather than their immediate figures.

This was Arabella's boy.  With her usual carelessness, she had
postponed writing to Jude about him till the eve of his landing,
when she could absolutely postpone no longer, though she had known
for weeks of his approaching arrival, and had, as she truly said,
visited Aldbrickham mainly to reveal the boy's existence and his near
home-coming to Jude.  This very day on which she had received her
former husband's answer at some time in the afternoon, the child
reached the London Docks, and the family in whose charge he had come,
having put him into a cab for Lambeth and directed the cabman to his
mother's house, bade him good-bye, and went their way.

On his arrival at the Three Horns, Arabella had looked him over with
an expression that was as good as saying, "You are very much what I
expected you to be," had given him a good meal, a little money, and,
late as it was getting, dispatched him to Jude by the next train,
wishing her husband Cartlett, who was out, not to see him.

The train reached Aldbrickham, and the boy was deposited on the
lonely platform beside his box.  The collector took his ticket, and,
with a meditative sense of the unfitness of things, asked him where
he was going by himself at that time of night.

"Going to Spring Street," said the little one impassively.

"Why, that's a long way from here; a'most out in the country; and the
folks will be gone to bed."

"I've got to go there."

"You must have a fly for your box."

"No. I must walk."

"Oh well: you'd better leave your box here and send for it.  There's
a 'bus goes half-way, but you'll have to walk the rest."

"I am not afraid."

"Why didn't your friends come to meet 'ee?"

"I suppose they didn't know I was coming."

"Who is your friends?"

"Mother didn't wish me to say."

"All I can do, then, is to take charge of this.  Now walk as fast as
you can."

Saying nothing further the boy came out into the street, looking
round to see that nobody followed or observed him.  When he
had walked some little distance he asked for the street of his
destination.  He was told to go straight on quite into the outskirts
of the place.

The child fell into a steady mechanical creep which had in it an
impersonal quality--the movement of the wave, or of the breeze, or
of the cloud.  He followed his directions literally, without an
inquiring gaze at anything.  It could have been seen that the boy's
ideas of life were different from those of the local boys.  Children
begin with detail, and learn up to the general; they begin with the
contiguous, and gradually comprehend the universal.  The boy seemed
to have begun with the generals of life, and never to have concerned
himself with the particulars.  To him the houses, the willows,
the obscure fields beyond, were apparently regarded not as brick
residences, pollards, meadows; but as human dwellings in the
abstract, vegetation, and the wide dark world.

He found the way to the little lane, and knocked at the door of
Jude's house.  Jude had just retired to bed, and Sue was about to
enter her chamber adjoining when she heard the knock and came down.

"Is this where Father lives?" asked the child.

"Who?"

"Mr. Fawley, that's his name."

Sue ran up to Jude's room and told him, and he hurried down as soon
as he could, though to her impatience he seemed long.

"What--is it he--so soon?" she asked as Jude came.

She scrutinized the child's features, and suddenly went away into the
little sitting-room adjoining.  Jude lifted the boy to a level with
himself, keenly regarded him with gloomy tenderness, and telling him
he would have been met if they had known of his coming so soon, set
him provisionally in a chair whilst he went to look for Sue, whose
supersensitiveness was disturbed, as he knew.  He found her in the
dark, bending over an arm-chair.  He enclosed her with his arm, and
putting his face by hers, whispered, "What's the matter?"

"What Arabella says is true--true!  I see you in him!"

"Well: that's one thing in my life as it should be, at any rate."

"But the other half of him is--SHE!  And that's what I can't bear!
But I ought to--I'll try to get used to it; yes, I ought!"

"Jealous little Sue!  I withdraw all remarks about your sexlessness.
Never mind!  Time may right things...  And Sue, darling; I have an
idea!  We'll educate and train him with a view to the university.
What I couldn't accomplish in my own person perhaps I can carry out
through him?  They are making it easier for poor students now, you
know."

"Oh you dreamer!" said she, and holding his hand returned to the
child with him.  The boy looked at her as she had looked at him.
"Is it you who's my REAL mother at last?" he inquired.

"Why?  Do I look like your father's wife?"

"Well, yes; 'cept he seems fond of you, and you of him.  Can I call
you Mother?"

Then a yearning look came over the child and he began to cry.  Sue
thereupon could not refrain from instantly doing likewise, being a
harp which the least wind of emotion from another's heart could make
to vibrate as readily as a radical stir in her own.

"You may call me Mother, if you wish to, my poor dear!" she said,
bending her cheek against his to hide her tears.

"What's this round your neck?" asked Jude with affected calmness.

"The key of my box that's at the station."

They bustled about and got him some supper, and made him up a
temporary bed, where he soon fell asleep.  Both went and looked at
him as he lay.

"He called you Mother two or three times before he dropped off,"
murmured Jude.  "Wasn't it odd that he should have wanted to!"

"Well--it was significant," said Sue.  "There's more for us to think
about in that one little hungry heart than in all the stars of the
sky...  I suppose, dear, we must pluck up courage, and get that
ceremony over?  It is no use struggling against the current, and I
feel myself getting intertwined with my kind.  Oh Jude, you'll love
me dearly, won't you, afterwards?  I do want to be kind to this
child, and to be a mother to him; and our adding the legal form to
our marriage might make it easier for me."

 When Arabella calls on Jude and Sue, he discovers she is not married; she tells him that she has something important to discuss with him. When Sue urges him not to go out with Arabella because she isn't his wife, Jude replies that neither is Sue. When he returns soon, not having found Arabella in the street, Sue again implores him not to go to her. Though Jude admits his weaknesses, he is bitter about denying himself for nothing. Faced with a choice, Sue gives in to Jude, saying she will marry him, will allow the intimacy he has so strongly desired; and Jude does not go out looking for Arabella. The next morning Jude talks of starting arrangements for their marriage, and Sue goes to see Arabella. She quickly sees that Sue possesses Jude in a way she didn't yesterday and says her visit probably helped it along. She receives a telegram from her Australian husband in which he agrees to marry her, a circumstance she has brought about by telling him Jude might take her back. Arabella tells Sue that she will write to Jude about the important matter she came to discuss. Though Jude and Sue start out to the parish clerk's, they decide to delay putting up the banns for their marriage, Sue saying Arabella's remarks about matrimony have reminded her of the oppressiveness of such an obligation. Arabella's letter arrives, announcing that she is married to Cartlett and that she wants Jude to look after their son, born soon after her arrival in Australia. Jude is willing to look after the child, whether or not it actually is his, and Sue agrees, suggesting maybe they should now marry. The boy arrives by himself from London, sent on by Arabella after he leaves the ship from Australia, and comes to Jude and Sue. Sue says she sees Jude in the boy and allows him to call her mother.

