Saying nothing further the boy came out into the street, looking round to see that n.o.body 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 s.e.xlessness. 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."
IV
Their next and second attempt thereat was more deliberately made, though it was begun on the morning following the singular child"s arrival at their home.
Him they found to be in the habit of sitting silent, his quaint and weird face set, and his eyes resting on things they did not see in the substantial world.
"His face is like the tragic mask of Melpomene," said Sue. "What is your name, dear? Did you tell us?"
"Little Father Time is what they always called me. It is a nickname; because I look so aged, they say."
"And you talk so, too," said Sue tenderly. "It is strange, Jude, that these preternaturally old boys almost always come from new countries. But what were you christened?"
"I never was."
"Why was that?"
"Because, if I died in d.a.m.nation, "twould save the expense of a Christian funeral."
"Oh-your name is not Jude, then?" said his father with some disappointment.
The boy shook his head. "Never heerd on it."
"Of course not," said Sue quickly; "since she was hating you all the time!"
"We"ll have him christened," said Jude; and privately to Sue: "The day we are married." Yet the advent of the child disturbed him.
Their position lent them shyness, and having an impression that a marriage at a superintendent registrar"s office was more private than an ecclesiastical one, they decided to avoid a church this time. Both Sue and Jude together went to the office of the district to give notice: they had become such companions that they could hardly do anything of importance except in each other"s company.
Jude Fawley signed the form of notice, Sue looking over his shoulder and watching his hand as it traced the words. As she read the four-square undertaking, never before seen by her, into which her own and Jude"s names were inserted, and by which that very volatile essence, their love for each other, was supposed to be made permanent, her face seemed to grow painfully apprehensive. "Names and Surnames of the Parties"-(they were to be parties now, not lovers, she thought). "Condition"-(a horrid idea)-"Rank or Occupation"-"Age"-"Dwelling at"-"Length of Residence"-"Church or Building in which the Marriage is to be solemnized"-"District and County in which the Parties respectively dwell."
"It spoils the sentiment, doesn"t it!" she said on their way home. "It seems making a more sordid business of it even than signing the contract in a vestry. There is a little poetry in a church. But we"ll try to get through with it, dearest, now."
"We will. "For what man is he that hath betrothed a wife and hath not taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her." So said the Jewish law-giver."
"How you know the Scriptures, Jude! You really ought to have been a parson. I can only quote profane writers!"
During the interval before the issuing of the certificate Sue, in her housekeeping errands, sometimes walked past the office, and furtively glancing in saw affixed to the wall the notice of the purposed clinch to their union. She could not bear its aspect. Coming after her previous experience of matrimony, all the romance of their attachment seemed to be starved away by placing her present case in the same category. She was usually leading little Father Time by the hand, and fancied that people thought him hers, and regarded the intended ceremony as the patching up of an old error.
Meanwhile Jude decided to link his present with his past in some slight degree by inviting to the wedding the only person remaining on earth who was a.s.sociated with his early life at Marygreen-the aged widow Mrs. Edlin, who had been his great-aunt"s friend and nurse in her last illness. He hardly expected that she would come; but she did, bringing singular presents, in the form of apples, jam, bra.s.s snuffers, an ancient pewter dish, a warming-pan, and an enormous bag of goose feathers towards a bed. She was allotted the spare room in Jude"s house, whither she retired early, and where they could hear her through the ceiling below, honestly saying the Lord"s Prayer in a loud voice, as the Rubric directed.
As, however, she could not sleep, and discovered that Sue and Jude were still sitting up-it being in fact only ten o"clock-she dressed herself again and came down, and they all sat by the fire till a late hour-Father Time included; though, as he never spoke, they were hardly conscious of him.
"Well, I bain"t set against marrying as your great-aunt was," said the widow. "And I hope "twill be a jocund wedding for ye in all respects this time. n.o.body can hope it more, knowing what I do of your families, which is more, I suppose, than anybody else now living. For they have been unlucky that way, G.o.d knows."
Sue breathed uneasily.
"They was always good-hearted people, too-wouldn"t kill a fly if they knowed it," continued the wedding guest. "But things happened to thwart "em, and if everything wasn"t vitty they were upset. No doubt that"s how he that the tale is told of came to do what "a did-if he were one of your family."
"What was that?" said Jude.