She asked him to come in, if only for a minute, as it would seem so odd otherwise, and as if she had been out alone in the dark. He gave way, and followed her in. Immediately that the door was opened he found, in addition to her parents, several neighbours sitting round. They all spoke in a congratulatory manner, and took him seriously as Arabella’s intended partner.
They did not belong to his set or circle, and he felt out of place and embarrassed. He had not meant this: a mere afternoon of pleasant walking with Arabella, that was all he had meant. He did not stay longer than to speak to her stepmother, a simple, quiet woman without features or character; and bidding them all good night plunged with a sense of relief into the track over the down.
But that sense was only temporary: Arabella soon re-asserted her sway in his soul. He walked as if he felt himself to be another man from the Jude of yesterday. What were his books to him? what were his intentions, hitherto adhered to so strictly, as to not wasting a single minute of time day by day? “Wasting!” It depended on your point of view to define that: he was just living for the first time: not wasting life. It was better to love a woman than to be a graduate, or a parson; ay, or a pope!
When he got back to the house his aunt had gone to bed, and a general consciousness of his neglect seemed written on the face of all things confronting him. He went upstairs without a light, and the dim interior of his room accosted him with sad inquiry. There lay his book open, just as he had left it, and the capital letters on the title-page regarded him with fixed reproach in the grey starlight, like the unclosed eyes of a dead man:
[Three Greek words.]
Jude had to leave early next morning for his usual week of absence at lodgings; and it was with a sense of futility that he threw into his basket upon his tools and other necessaries the unread book he had brought with him.
He kept his impassioned doings a secret almost from himself. Arabella, on the contrary, made them public among all her friends and acquaintance.
Retracing by the light of dawn the road he had followed a few hours earlier under cover of darkness, with his sweetheart by his side, he reached the bottom of the hill, where he walked slowly, and stood still. He was on the spot where he had given her the first kiss. As the sun had only just risen it was possible that nobody had passed there since. Jude looked on the ground and sighed. He looked closely, and could just discern in the damp dust the imprints of their feet as they had stood locked in each other’s arms. She was not there now, and “the embroidery of imagination upon the stuff of nature” so depicted her past presence that a void was in his heart which nothing could fill. A pollard willow stood close to the place, and that willow was different from all other willows in the world. Utter annihilation of the six days which must elapse before he could see her again as he had promised would have been his intensest wish if he had had only the week to live.
An hour and a half later Arabella came along the same way with her two companions of the Saturday. She passed unheedingly the scene of the kiss, and the willow that marked it, though chattering freely on the subject to the other two.
“And what did he tell ‘ee next?”
“Then he said —” And she related almost word for word some of his tenderest speeches. If Jude had been behind the fence he would have felt not a little surprised at learning how very few of his sayings and doings on the previous evening were private.
“You’ve got him to care for ‘ee a bit, ‘nation if you han’t!” murmured Anny judicially. “It’s well to be you!”
In a few moments Arabella replied in a curiously low, hungry tone of latent sensuousness: “I’ve got him to care for me: yes! But I want him to more than care for me; I want him to have me — to marry me! I must have him. I can’t do without him. He’s the sort of man I long for. I shall go mad if I can’t give myself to him altogether! I felt I should when I first saw him!”
“As he is a romancing, straightfor’ard, honest chap, he’s to be had, and as a husband, if you set about catching him in the right way.”
Arabella remained thinking awhile. “What med be the right way?” she asked.
“Oh you don’t know — you don’t!” said Sarah, the third girl.
“On my word I don’t! — No further, that is, than by plain courting, and taking care he don’t go too far!”
The third girl looked at the second. “She DON’T know!”
“’Tis clear she don’t!” said Anny.
“And having lived in a town, too, as one may say! Well, we can teach ‘ee som’at then, as well as you us.”
“Yes. And how do you mean — a sure way to gain a man? Take me for an innocent, and have done wi’ it!”
“As a husband.”
“As a husband.”
“A countryman that’s honourable and serious-minded such as he; God forbid that I should say a sojer, or sailor, or commercial gent from the towns, or any of them that be slippery with poor women! I’d do no friend that harm!”
“Well, such as he, of course!”
Arabella’s companions looked at each other, and turning up their eyes in drollery began smirking. Then one went up close to Arabella, and, although nobody was near, imparted some information in a low tone, the other observing curiously the effect upon Arabella.
“Ah!” said the last-named slowly. “I own I didn’t think of that way! . . . But suppose he ISN’T honourable? A woman had better not have tried it!”
“Nothing venture nothing have! Besides, you make sure that he’s honourable before you begin. You’d be safe enough with yours. I wish I had the chance! Lots of girls do it; or do you think they’d get married at all?”
Arabella pursued her way in silent thought. “I’ll try it!” she whispered; but not to them.
CHAPTER 8
ONE week’s end Jude was as usual walking out to his aunt’s at Marygreen from his lodging in Alfredston, a walk which now had large attractions for him quite other than his desire to see his aged and morose relative. He diverged to the right before ascending the hill with the single purpose of gaining, on his way, a glimpse of Arabella that should not come into the reckoning of regular appointments. Before quite reaching the homestead his alert eye perceived the top of her head moving quickly hither and thither over the garden hedge. Entering the gate he found that three young unfattened pigs had escaped from their sty by leaping clean over the top, and that she was endeavouring unassisted to drive them in through the door which she had set open. The lines of her countenance changed from the rigidity of business to the softness of love when she saw Jude, and she bent her eyes languishingly upon him. The animals took a vantage of the pause by doubling and bolting out of the way.
“They were only put in this morning!” she cried, stimulated to pursue in spite of her lover’s presence. “They were drove from Spaddleholt Farm only yesterday, where Father bought ’em at a stiff price enough. They are wanting to get home again, the stupid toads! Will you shut the garden gate, dear, and help me to get ’em in. There are no men folk at home, only Mother, and they’ll be lost if we don’t mind.”
He set himself to assist, and dodged this way and that over the potato rows and the cabbages. Every now and then they ran together, when he caught her for a moment an kissed her. The first pig was got back promptly; the second with some difficulty; the third a long-legged creature, was more obstinate and agile. He plunged through a hole in the garden hedge, and into the lane.
“He’ll be lost if I don’t follow ‘n!” said she. “Come along with me!”
She rushed in full pursuit out of the