'How do you mean?'
'Why, of course—little things to make.'
'Oh.'
'When will it be? Can't you tell me exactly, instead of in such general terms as you have used?'
'Tell you?'
'Yes—the date.'
'There's nothing to tell. I made a mistake.'
'What?'
'It was a mistake.'
He sat bolt upright in bed and looked at her. 'How can that be?'
'Women fancy wrong things sometimes.'
'But—! Why, of course, so unprepared as I was, without a stick of furniture, and hardly a shilling, I shouldn't have hurried on our affair, and brought you to a half-furnished hut before I was ready, if it had not been for the news you gave me, which made it necessary to save you, ready or no… Good God!'
'Don't take on, dear. What's done can't be undone.'
'I have no more to say!'
He gave the answer simply, and lay down; and there was silence between them.
When Jude awoke the next morning he seemed to see the world with a different eye. As to the point in question he was compelled to accept her word; in the circumstances he could not have acted otherwise while ordinary notions prevailed. But how came they to prevail?
There seemed to him, vaguely and dimly, something wrong in a social ritual which made necessary a cancelling of well-formed schemes involving years of thought and labour, of foregoing a man's one opportunity of showing himself superior to the lower animals, and of contributing his units of work to the general progress of his generation, because of a momentary surprise by a new and transitory instinct which had nothing in it of the nature of vice, and could be only at the most called weakness. He was inclined to inquire what he had done, or she lost, for that matter, that he deserved to be caught in a gin which would cripple him, if not her also, for the rest of a lifetime? There was perhaps something fortunate in the fact that the immediate reason of his marriage had proved to be non-existent. But the marriage remained.
X
The time arrived for killing the pig which Jude and his wife had fattened in their sty during the autumn months, and the butchering was timed to take place as soon as it was light in the morning, so that Jude might get to Alfredston without losing more than a quarter of a day.
The night had seemed strangely silent. Jude looked out of the window long before dawn, and perceived that the ground was covered with snow—snow rather deep for the season, it seemed, a few flakes still falling.
'I'm afraid the pig-killer won't be able to come,' he said to Arabella.
'Oh, he'll come. You must get up and make the water hot, if you want Challow to scald him. Though I like singeing best.'
'I'll get up,' said Jude. 'I like the way of my own county.'
He went downstairs, lit the fire under the copper, and began feeding it with bean-stalks, all the time without a candle, the blaze flinging a cheerful shine into the room; though for him the sense of cheerfulness was lessened by thoughts on the reason of that blaze—to heat water to scald the bristles from the body of an animal that as yet lived, and whose voice could be continually heard from a corner of the garden. At half-past six, the time of appointment with the butcher, the water boiled, and Jude's wife came downstairs.
'Is Challow come?' she asked.
'No.'
They waited, and it grew lighter, with the dreary light of a snowy dawn. She went out, gazed along the road, and returning said, 'He's not coming. Drunk last night, I expect. The snow is not enough to hinder him, surely!'
'Then we must put it off. It is only the water boiled for nothing. The snow may be deep in the valley.'
'Can't be put off. There's no more victuals for the pig. He ate the last mixing o' barleymeal yesterday morning.'
'Yesterday morning? What has he lived on since?'
'Nothing.'
'What—he has been starving?'
'Yes. We always do it the last day or two, to save bother with the innerds. What ignorance, not to know that!'
'That accounts for his crying so. Poor creature!'
'Well—you must do the sticking—there's no help for it. I'll show you how. Or I'll do it myself—I think I could. Though as it is such a big pig I had rather Challow had done it. However, his basket o' knives and things have been already sent on here, and we can use 'em.'
'Of course you shan't do it,' said Jude. 'I'll do it, since it must be done.'
He went out to the sty, shovelled away the snow for the space of a couple of yards or more, and placed the stool in front, with the knives and ropes at hand. A robin peered down at the preparations from the nearest tree, and, not liking the sinister look of the scene, flew away, though hungry. By this time Arabella had joined her husband, and Jude, rope in hand, got into the sty, and noosed the affrighted animal, who, beginning with a squeak of surprise, rose to repeated cries of rage. Arabella opened the sty-door, and together they hoisted the victim on to the stool, legs upward, and while Jude held him Arabella bound him down, looping the cord over his legs to keep him from struggling.
The animal's note changed its quality. It was not now rage, but the cry of despair; long-drawn, slow and hopeless.
'Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than have had this to do!' said Jude. 'A creature I have fed with my own hands.'
'Don't be such a tender-hearted fool! There's the sticking-knife—the one with the point. Now whatever you do, don't stick un too deep.'
'I'll stick him effectually, so as to make short work of it. That's the chief thing.'
'You must not!' she cried. 'The meat must be well bled, and to do that he must die slow. We shall lose a shilling a score if the meat is red and bloody! Just touch the vein, that's all. I was brought up to it, and I know. Every good butcher keeps un bleeding long. He ought to be eight or ten minutes dying, at least.'
'He shall not be half a minute if I can help it, however the meat may look,' said Jude determinedly. Scraping the bristles from the pig's upturned throat, as he had seen the butchers do, he slit the fat; then plunged in the knife with all his might.
''Od damn it all!' she cried, 'that ever I should say it! You've over-stuck un! And I telling you all the time —'
'Do be quiet, Arabella, and have a little pity on the creature!'
'Hold up the pail to catch the blood, and don't talk!'
However unworkmanlike the deed, it had been mercifully done. The blood flowed out in a torrent instead of in the trickling stream she had desired. The dying animal's cry assumed its third and final tone, the shriek of agony; his glazing eyes riveting themselves on Arabella with the eloquently keen reproach of a creature recognizing at last the treachery of those who had seemed his only friends.
'Make un stop that!' said Arabella. 'Such a noise will bring somebody or other up here, and I don't want people to know we are doing it ourselves.' Picking up the knife from the ground whereon Jude had flung it, she slipped it into the gash, and slit the windpipe. The pig was instantly silent, his dying breath coming through the hole.
'That's better,' she said.
'It is a hateful business!' said he.
