Having indulged in this wild hope he went upstairs, and looked out of
the window, and pictured her through the evening journey to London,
whither she and Phillotson had gone for their holiday; their rattling
along through the damp night to their hotel, under the same sky of
ribbed cloud as that he beheld, through which the moon showed its
position rather than its shape, and one or two of the larger stars
made themselves visible as faint nebulae only. It was a new
beginning of Sue's history. He projected his mind into the future,
and saw her with children more or less in her own likeness around
her. But the consolation of regarding them as a continuation of
her identity was denied to him, as to all such dreamers, by the
wilfulness of Nature in not allowing issue from one parent alone.
Every desired renewal of an existence is debased by being half alloy.
"If at the estrangement or death of my lost love, I could go and see
her child--hers solely--there would be comfort in it!" said Jude.
And then he again uneasily saw, as he had latterly seen with more and
more frequency, the scorn of Nature for man's finer emotions, and her
lack of interest in his aspirations.
The oppressive strength of his affection for Sue showed itself on
the morrow and following days yet more clearly. He could no longer
endure the light of the Melchester lamps; the sunshine was as drab
paint, and the blue sky as zinc. Then he received news that his old
aunt was dangerously ill at Marygreen, which intelligence almost
coincided with a letter from his former employer at Christminster,
who offered him permanent work of a good class if he would come back.
The letters were almost a relief to him. He started to visit Aunt
Drusilla, and resolved to go onward to Christminster to see what
worth there might be in the builder's offer.
Jude found his aunt even worse than the communication from the Widow
Edlin had led him to expect. There was every possibility of her
lingering on for weeks or months, though little likelihood. He wrote
to Sue informing her of the state of her aunt, and suggesting that
she might like to see her aged relative alive. He would meet her at
Alfredston Road, the following evening, Monday, on his way back from
Christminster, if she could come by the up-train which crossed his
down-train at that station. Next morning, according, he went on to
Christminster, intending to return to Alfredston soon enough to keep
the suggested appointment with Sue.
The city of learning wore an estranged look, and he had lost all
feeling for its associations. Yet as the sun made vivid lights
and shades of the mullioned architecture of the facades, and drew
patterns of the crinkled battlements on the young turf of the
quadrangles, Jude thought he had never seen the place look more
beautiful. He came to the street in which he had first beheld Sue.
The chair she had occupied when, leaning over her ecclesiastical
scrolls, a hog-hair brush in her hand, her girlish figure had
arrested the gaze of his inquiring eyes, stood precisely in its
former spot, empty. It was as if she were dead, and nobody had been
found capable of succeeding her in that artistic pursuit. Hers was
now the city phantom, while those of the intellectual and devotional
worthies who had once moved him to emotion were no longer able to
assert their presence there.