“Well—suppose he did. Your mind is free from worries about him now, my Sue?”
“Yes, I suppose so. But I am weak. Although I know it is all right with our plans, I felt a curious dread of him; an awe, or terror, of conventions I don’t believe in. It comes over me at times like a sort of creeping paralysis, and makes me so sad!”
“You are getting tired, Sue. O—I forgot, darling! Yes, we’ll go on at once.”
They started in quest of the lodging, and at last found something that seemed to promise well, in Mildew Lane—a spot which to Jude was irresistible—though to Sue it was not so fascinating—a narrow lane close to the back of a college, but having no communication with it. The little houses were darkened to gloom by the high collegiate buildings, within which life was so far removed from that of the people in the lane as if it had been on opposite sides of the globe; yet only a thickness of wall divided them. Two or three of the houses had notices of rooms to let, and the newcomers knocked at the door of one, which a woman opened.
“Ah—listen!” said Jude suddenly, instead of addressing her.
“What?”
“Why the bells—what church can that be? The tones are familiar.”
Another peal of bells had begun to sound out at some distance off.
“I don’t know!” said the landlady tartly. “Did you knock to ask that?”
“No; for lodgings,” said Jude, coming to himself.
The householder scrutinized Sue’s figure a moment. “We haven’t any to let,” said she, shutting the door.
Jude looked discomfited, and the boy distressed. “Now, Jude,” said Sue, “let me try. You don’t know the way.”
They found a second place hard by; but here the occupier, observing not only Sue, but the boy and the small children, said civilly, “I am sorry to say we don’t let where there are children;” and also closed the door.
The small child squared its mouth and cried silently, with an instinct that trouble loomed. The boy sighed. “I don’t like Christminster!” he said. “Are the great old houses gaols?”
“No; colleges,” said Jude; “which perhaps you’ll study in some day.”
“I’d rather not!” the boy rejoined.
“Now we’ll try again,” said Sue. “I’ll pull my cloak more round me. … Leaving Kennetbridge for this place is like coming from Caiaphas to Pilate! … How do I look now, dear?”
“Nobody would notice it now,” said Jude.
There was one other house, and they tried a third time. The woman here was more amiable; but she had little room to spare, and could only agree to take in Sue and the children if her husband could go elsewhere. This arrangement they perforce adopted, in the stress from delaying their search till so late. They came to terms with her, though her price was rather high for their pockets. But they could not afford to be critical till Jude had time to get a more permanent abode; and in this house Sue took possession of a back room on the second floor with an inner closet-room for the children. Jude stayed and had a cup of tea; and was pleased to find that the window commanded the back of another of the colleges. Kissing all four he went to get a few necessaries and look for lodgings for himself.
When he was gone the landlady came up to talk a little with Sue, and gather something of the circumstances of the family she had taken in. Sue had not the art of prevarication, and, after admitting several facts as to their late difficulties and wanderings, she was startled by the landlady saying suddenly:
“Are you really a married woman?”
Sue hesitated; and then impulsively told the woman that her husband and herself had each been unhappy in their first marriages, after which, terrified at the thought of a second irrevocable union, and lest the conditions of the contract should kill their love, yet wishing to be together, they had literally not found the courage to repeat it, though they had attempted it two or three times. Therefore, though in her own sense of the words she was a married woman, in the landlady’s sense she was not.
The housewife looked embarrassed, and went downstairs. Sue sat by the window in a reverie, watching the rain. Her quiet was broken by the noise of someone entering the house, and then the voices of a man and woman in conversation in the passage below. The landlady’s husband had arrived, and she was explaining to him the incoming of the lodgers during his absence.
His voice rose in sudden anger. “Now who wants such a woman here? and perhaps a confinement! … Besides, didn’t I say I wouldn’t have children? The hall and stairs fresh painted, to be kicked about by them! You must have known all was not straight with ’em—coming like that. Taking in a family when I said a single man.”
The wife expostulated, but, as it seemed, the husband insisted on his point; for presently a tap came to Sue’s door, and the woman appeared.
“I am sorry to tell you, ma’am,” she said, “that I can’t let you have the room for the week after all. My husband objects; and therefore I must ask you to go. I don’t mind your staying over tonight, as it is getting late in the afternoon; but I shall be glad if you can leave early in the morning.”
Though she knew that she was entitled to the lodging for a week, Sue did not wish to create a disturbance between the wife and husband, and she said she would leave as requested. When the landlady had gone Sue looked out of the window again. Finding that the rain had ceased she proposed to the boy that, after putting the little ones to bed, they should go out and search about for another place, and bespeak it for the morrow, so as not to be so hard driven then as they had been that day.
Therefore, instead of unpacking
