perplexing phrases: ultimately kissing the dead pasteboard with all the passionateness, and more than all the devotion, of a young man of eighteen.
The schoolmaster's was an unhealthy-looking, old-fashioned face, rendered more old-fashioned by his style of shaving. A certain gentlemanliness had been imparted to it by nature, suggesting an inherent wish to do rightly by all. His speech was a little slow, but his tones were sincere enough to make his hesitation no defect. His greying hair was curly, and radiated from a point in the middle of his crown. There were four lines across his forehead, and he only wore spectacles when reading at night. It was almost certainly a renunciation forced upon him by his academic purpose, rather than a distaste for women, which had hitherto kept him from closing with one of the sex in matrimony.
Such silent proceedings as those of this evening were repeated many and oft times when he was not under the eye of the boys, whose quick and penetrating regard would frequently become almost intolerable to the self- conscious master in his present anxious care for Sue, making him, in the grey hours of morning, dread to meet anew the gimlet glances, lest they should read what the dream within him was.
He had honourably acquiesced in Sue's announced wish that he was not often to visit her at the training school; but at length, his patience being sorely tried, he set out one Saturday afternoon to pay her an unexpected call. There the news of her departure—expulsion as it might almost have been considered—was flashed upon him without warning or mitigation as he stood at the door expecting in a few minutes to behold her face; and when he turned away he could hardly see the road before him.
Sue had, in fact, never written a line to her suitor on the subject, although it was fourteen days old. A short reflection told him that this proved nothing, a natural delicacy being as ample a reason for silence as any degree of blameworthiness.
They had informed him at the school where she was living, and having no immediate anxiety about her comfort his thoughts took the direction of a burning indignation against the training school committee. In his bewilderment Phillotson entered the adjacent cathedral, just now in a direly dismantled state by reason of the repairs. He sat down on a block of freestone, regardless of the dusty imprint it made on his breeches; and his listless eyes following the movements of the workmen he presently became aware that the reputed culprit, Sue's lover Jude, was one amongst them.
Jude had never spoken to his former hero since the meeting by the model of Jerusalem. Having inadvertently witnessed Phillotson's tentative courtship of Sue in the lane there had grown up in the younger man's mind a curious dislike to think of the elder, to meet him, to communicate in any way with him; and since Phillotson's success in obtaining at least her promise had become known to Jude, he had frankly recognized that he did not wish to see or hear of his senior any more, learn anything of his pursuits, or even imagine again what excellencies might appertain to his character. On this very day of the schoolmaster's visit Jude was expecting Sue, as she had promised; and when therefore he saw the schoolmaster in the nave of the building, saw, moreover, that he was coming to speak to him, he felt no little embarrassment; which Phillotson's own embarrassment prevented his observing.
Jude joined him, and they both withdrew from the other workmen to the spot where Phillotson had been sitting. Jude offered him a piece of sackcloth for a cushion, and told him it was dangerous to sit on the bare block.
'Yes; yes,' said Phillotson abstractedly, as he reseated himself, his eyes resting on the ground as if he were trying to remember where he was. 'I won't keep you long. It was merely that I have heard that you have seen my little friend Sue recently. It occurred to me to speak to you on that account. I merely want to ask—about her.'
'I think I know what!' Jude hurriedly said. 'About her escaping from the training school, and her coming to me?'
'Yes.'
'Well'—Jude for a moment felt an unprincipled and fiendish wish to annihilate his rival at all cost. By the exercise of that treachery which love for the same woman renders possible to men the most honourable in every other relation of life, he could send off Phillotson in agony and defeat by saying that the scandal was true, and that Sue had irretrievably committed herself with him. But his action did not respond for a moment to his animal instinct; and what he said was, 'I am glad of your kindness in coming to talk plainly to me about it. You know what they say?—that I ought to marry her.'
'What!'
'And I wish with all my soul I could!'
Phillotson trembled, and his naturally pale face acquired a corpselike sharpness in its lines. 'I had no idea that it was of this nature! God forbid!'
'No, no!' said Jude aghast. 'I thought you understood? I mean that were I in a position to marry her, or someone, and settle down, instead of living in lodgings here and there, I should be glad!'
What he had really meant was simply that he loved her.
'But—since this painful matter has been opened up—what really happened?' asked Phillotson, with the firmness of a man who felt that a sharp smart now was better than a long agony of suspense hereafter. 'Cases arise, and this is one, when even ungenerous questions must be put to make false assumptions impossible, and to kill scandal.'
Jude explained readily; giving the whole series of adventures, including the night at the shepherd's, her wet arrival at his lodging, her indisposition from her immersion, their vigil of discussion, and his seeing her off next morning.
'Well now,' said Phillotson at the conclusion, 'I take it as your final word, and I know I can believe you, that the suspicion which led to her rustication is an absolutely baseless one?'
'It is,' said Jude solemnly. 'Absolutely. So help me God!'
The schoolmaster rose. Each of the twain felt that the interview could not comfortably merge in a friendly discussion of their recent experiences, after the manner of friends; and when Jude had taken him round, and shown him some features of the renovation which the old cathedral was undergoing, Phillotson bade the young man good- day and went away.
This visit took place about eleven o'clock in the morning; but no Sue appeared. When Jude went to his dinner at one he saw his beloved ahead of him in the street leading up from the North Gate, walking as if no way looking for him. Speedily overtaking her he remarked that he had asked her to come to him at the cathedral, and she had promised.
'I have been to get my things from the college,' she said—an observation which he was expected to take as an answer, though it was not one. Finding her to be in this evasive mood he felt inclined to give her the information so long withheld.
'You have not seen Mr. Phillotson to-day?' he ventured to inquire.
'I have not. But I am not going to be cross-examined about him; and if you ask anything more I won't answer!'
'It is very odd that—' He stopped, regarding her.
'What?'
'That you are often not so nice in your real presence as you are in your letters!'
'Does it really seem so to you?' said she, smiling with quick curiosity. 'Well, that's strange; but I feel just the same about you, Jude. When you are gone away I seem such a coldhearted—'
As she knew his sentiment towards her Jude saw that they were getting upon dangerous ground. It was now, he thought, that he must speak as an honest man.
But he did not speak, and she continued: 'It was that which made me write and say—I didn't mind your loving me—if you wanted to, much!'
The exultation he might have felt at what that implied, or seemed to imply, was nullified by his intention, and he rested rigid till he began: 'I have never told you—'
'Yes you have,' murmured she.
'I mean, I have never told you my history—all of it.'
'But I guess it. I know nearly.'
Jude looked up. Could she possibly know of that morning performance of his with Arabella; which in a few months had ceased to be a marriage more completely than by death? He saw that she did not.
'I can't quite tell you here in the street,' he went on with a gloomy tongue. 'And you had better not come to
