"You are angry, Jude, and unkind to me, and don"t see how things are."
"Then come along home with me, dearest, and perhaps I shall. I am overburdened-and you, too, are unhinged just now." He put his arm round her and lifted her; but though she came, she preferred to walk without his support.
"I don"t dislike you, Jude," she said in a sweet and imploring voice. "I love you as much as ever! Only-I ought not to love you-any more. Oh I must not any more!"
"I can"t own it."
"But I have made up my mind that I am not your wife! I belong to him-I sacramentally joined myself to him for life. Nothing can alter it!"
"But surely we are man and wife, if ever two people were in this world? Nature"s own marriage it is, unquestionably!"
"But not Heaven"s. Another was made for me there, and ratified eternally in the church at Melchester."
"Sue, Sue-affliction has brought you to this unreasonable state! After converting me to your views on so many things, to find you suddenly turn to the right-about like this-for no reason whatever, confounding all you have formerly said through sentiment merely! You root out of me what little affection and reverence I had left in me for the Church as an old acquaintance... What I can"t understand in you is your extraordinary blindness now to your old logic. Is it peculiar to you, or is it common to woman? Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer? How you argued that marriage was only a clumsy contract-which it is-how you showed all the objections to it-all the absurdities! If two and two made four when we were happy together, surely they make four now? I can"t understand it, I repeat!"
"Ah, dear Jude; that"s because you are like a totally deaf man observing people listening to music. You say "What are they regarding? Nothing is there." But something is."
"That is a hard saying from you; and not a true parallel! You threw off old husks of prejudices, and taught me to do it; and now you go back upon yourself. I confess I am utterly stultified in my estimate of you."
"Dear friend, my only friend, don"t be hard with me! I can"t help being as I am, I am convinced I am right-that I see the light at last. But oh, how to profit by it!"
They walked along a few more steps till they were outside the building and she had returned the key. "Can this be the girl," said Jude when she came back, feeling a slight renewal of elasticity now that he was in the open street; "can this be the girl who brought the pagan deities into this most Christian city?-who mimicked Miss Fontover when she crushed them with her heel?-quoted Gibbon, and Sh.e.l.ley, and Mill? Where are dear Apollo, and dear Venus now!"
"Oh don"t, don"t be so cruel to me, Jude, and I so unhappy!" she sobbed. "I can"t bear it! I was in error-I cannot reason with you. I was wrong-proud in my own conceit! Arabella"s coming was the finish. Don"t satirize me: it cuts like a knife!"
He flung his arms round her and kissed her pa.s.sionately there in the silent street, before she could hinder him. They went on till they came to a little coffee-house. "Jude," she said with suppressed tears, "would you mind getting a lodging here?"
"I will-if, if you really wish? But do you? Let me go to our door and understand you."
He went and conducted her in. She said she wanted no supper, and went in the dark upstairs and struck a light. Turning she found that Jude had followed her, and was standing at the chamber door. She went to him, put her hand in his, and said "Good-night."
"But Sue! Don"t we live here?"
"You said you would do as I wished!"
"Yes. Very well! ... Perhaps it was wrong of me to argue distastefully as I have done! Perhaps as we couldn"t conscientiously marry at first in the old-fashioned way, we ought to have parted. Perhaps the world is not illuminated enough for such experiments as ours! Who were we, to think we could act as pioneers!"
"I am so glad you see that much, at any rate. I never deliberately meant to do as I did. I slipped into my false position through jealousy and agitation!"
"But surely through love-you loved me?"
"Yes. But I wanted to let it stop there, and go on always as mere lovers; until-"
"But people in love couldn"t live for ever like that!"
"Women could: men can"t, because they-won"t. An average woman is in this superior to an average man-that she never instigates, only responds. We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more."
"I was the unhappy cause of the change, as I have said before! ... Well, as you will! ... But human nature can"t help being itself."
"Oh yes-that"s just what it has to learn-self-mastery."
"I repeat-if either were to blame it was not you but I."
"No-it was I. Your wickedness was only the natural man"s desire to possess the woman. Mine was not the reciprocal wish till envy stimulated me to oust Arabella. I had thought I ought in charity to let you approach me-that it was d.a.m.nably selfish to torture you as I did my other friend. But I shouldn"t have given way if you hadn"t broken me down by making me fear you would go back to her... But don"t let us say any more about it! Jude, will you leave me to myself now?"
"Yes... But Sue-my wife, as you are!" he burst out; "my old reproach to you was, after all, a true one. You have never loved me as I love you-never-never! Yours is not a pa.s.sionate heart-your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite-not a woman!"
"At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you; but that inborn craving which undermines some women"s morals almost more than unbridled pa.s.sion-the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man-was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then-I don"t know how it was-I couldn"t bear to let you go-possibly to Arabella again-and so I got to love you, Jude. But you see, however fondly it ended, it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you."
"And now you add to your cruelty by leaving me!"
"Ah-yes! The further I flounder, the more harm I do!"
"O Sue!" said he with a sudden sense of his own danger. "Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons! You have been my social salvation. Stay with me for humanity"s sake! You know what a weak fellow I am. My two arch-enemies you know-my weakness for womankind and my impulse to strong liquor. Don"t abandon me to them, Sue, to save your own soul only! They have been kept entirely at a distance since you became my guardian-angel! Since I have had you I have been able to go into any temptations of the sort, without risk. Isn"t my safety worth a little sacrifice of dogmatic principle? I am in terror lest, if you leave me, it will be with me another case of the pig that was washed turning back to his wallowing in the mire!"
Sue burst out weeping. "Oh, but you must not, Jude! You won"t! I"ll pray for you night and day!"
"Well-never mind; don"t grieve," said Jude generously. "I did suffer, G.o.d knows, about you at that time; and now I suffer again. But perhaps not so much as you. The woman mostly gets the worst of it in the long run!"
"She does."
"Unless she is absolutely worthless and contemptible. And this one is not that, anyhow!"
Sue drew a nervous breath or two. "She is-I fear! ... Now Jude-good-night,-please!"
"I mustn"t stay?-Not just once more? As it has been so many times-O Sue, my wife, why not!"
"No-no-not wife! ... I am in your hands, Jude-don"t tempt me back now I have advanced so far!"
"Very well. I do your bidding. I owe that to you, darling, in penance for how I overruled it at the first time. My G.o.d, how selfish I was! Perhaps-perhaps I spoilt one of the highest and purest loves that ever existed between man and woman! ... Then let the veil of our temple be rent in two from this hour!"
He went to the bed, removed one of the pair of pillows thereon, and flung it to the floor.
Sue looked at him, and bending over the bed-rail wept silently. "You don"t see that it is a matter of conscience with me, and not of dislike to you!" she brokenly murmured. "Dislike to you! But I can"t say any more-it breaks my heart-it will be undoing all I have begun! Jude-good-night!"
"Good-night," he said, and turned to go.
"Oh but you shall kiss me!" said she, starting up. "I can"t-bear-!"
He clasped her, and kissed her weeping face as he had scarcely ever done before, and they remained in silence till she said, "Good-bye, good-bye!" And then gently pressing him away she got free, trying to mitigate the sadness by saying: "We"ll be dear friends just the same, Jude, won"t we? And we"ll see each other sometimes-yes!-and forget all this, and try to be as we were long ago?"
Jude did not permit himself to speak, but turned and descended the stairs.
IV