Sue's look was one of dismay. "What will you do, dear?" she asked
faintly.
Jude did not reply, and Sue watched him anxiously, with heavy
breaths.
"It hits me hard!" said he in an under-voice. "It MAY be true!
I can't make it out. Certainly, if his birth was exactly when
she says, he's mine. I cannot think why she didn't tell me when
I met her at Christminster, and came on here that evening with
her! ... Ah--I do remember now that she said something about having
a thing on her mind that she would like me to know, if ever we lived
together again."
"The poor child seems to be wanted by nobody!" Sue replied, and her
eyes filled.
Jude had by this time come to himself. "What a view of life he
must have, mine or not mine!" he said. "I must say that, if I were
better off, I should not stop for a moment to think whose he might
be. I would take him and bring him up. The beggarly question of
parentage--what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come
to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood or not? All the
little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of
the time, and entitled to our general care. That excessive regard of
parents for their own children, and their dislike of other people's,
is, like class-feeling, patriotism, save-your-own-soul-ism, and other
virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom."
Sue jumped up and kissed Jude with passionate devotion. "Yes--so
it is, dearest! And we'll have him here! And if he isn't yours it
makes it all the better. I do hope he isn't--though perhaps I ought
not to feel quite that! If he isn't, I should like so much for us
to have him as an adopted child!"
"Well, you must assume about him what is most pleasing to you, my
curious little comrade!" he said. "I feel that, anyhow, I don't like
to leave the unfortunate little fellow to neglect. Just think of
his life in a Lambeth pothouse, and all its evil influences, with a
parent who doesn't want him, and has, indeed, hardly seen him, and
a stepfather who doesn't know him. 'Let the day perish wherein I
was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child
conceived!' That's what the boy--MY boy, perhaps, will find himself
saying before long!"
"Oh no!"
"As I was the petitioner, I am really entitled to his custody, I
suppose."