"Still harping on Christminster--even in his cakes!" laughed
Arabella. "Just like Jude. A ruling passion. What a queer fellow
he is, and always will be!"
Sue sighed, and she looked her distress at hearing him criticized.
"Don't you think he is? Come now; you do, though you are so fond of
him!"
"Of course Christminster is a sort of fixed vision with him, which
I suppose he'll never be cured of believing in. He still thinks it
a great centre of high and fearless thought, instead of what it is,
a nest of commonplace schoolmasters whose characteristic is timid
obsequiousness to tradition."
Arabella was quizzing Sue with more regard of how she was speaking
than of what she was saying. "How odd to hear a woman selling
cakes talk like that!" she said. "Why don't you go back to
school-keeping?"
She shook her head. "They won't have me."
"Because of the divorce, I suppose?"
"That and other things. And there is no reason to wish it. We
gave up all ambition, and were never so happy in our lives till his
illness came."
"Where are you living?"
"I don't care to say."
"Here in Kennetbridge?"
Sue's manner showed Arabella that her random guess was right.
"Here comes the boy back again," continued Arabella. "My boy and
Jude's!"
Sue's eyes darted a spark. "You needn't throw that in my face!" she
cried.
"Very well--though I half-feel as if I should like to have him with
me! ... But Lord, I don't want to take him from 'ee--ever I should
sin to speak so profane--though I should think you must have enough
of your own! He's in very good hands, that I know; and I am not the
woman to find fault with what the Lord has ordained. I've reached a
more resigned frame of mind."
"Indeed! I wish I had been able to do so."
"You should try," replied the widow, from the serene heights of a
soul conscious not only of spiritual but of social superiority.
"I make no boast of my awakening, but I'm not what I was. After
Cartlett's death I was passing the chapel in the street next ours,
and went into it for shelter from a shower of rain. I felt a need
of some sort of support under my loss, and, as 'twas righter than
gin, I took to going there regular, and found it a great comfort.
But I've left London now, you know, and at present I am living at
Alfredston, with my friend Anny, to be near my own old country. I'm
not come here to the fair to-day. There's to be the foundation-stone
of a new chapel laid this afternoon by a popular London preacher, and
I drove over with Anny. Now I must go back to meet her."