His voice rose in sudden anger. "Now who wants such a woman here?
and perhaps a confinement! ... Besides, didn't I say I wouldn't have
children? The hall and stairs fresh painted, to be kicked about by
them! You must have known all was not straight with 'em--coming like
that. Taking in a family when I said a single man."
The wife expostulated, but, as it seemed, the husband insisted on
his point; for presently a tap came to Sue's door, and the woman
appeared.
"I am sorry to tell you, ma'am," she said, "that I can't let you have
the room for the week after all. My husband objects; and therefore
I must ask you to go. I don't mind your staying over to-night, as
it is getting late in the afternoon; but I shall be glad if you can
leave early in the morning."
Though she knew that she was entitled to the lodging for a week, Sue
did not wish to create a disturbance between the wife and husband,
and she said she would leave as requested. When the landlady had
gone Sue looked out of the window again. Finding that the rain had
ceased she proposed to the boy that, after putting the little ones
to bed, they should go out and search about for another place, and
bespeak it for the morrow, so as not to be so hard-driven then as
they had been that day.
Therefore, instead of unpacking her boxes, which had just been sent
on from the station by Jude, they sallied out into the damp though
not unpleasant streets, Sue resolving not to disturb her husband
with the news of her notice to quit while he was perhaps worried
in obtaining a lodging for himself. In the company of the boy she
wandered into this street and into that; but though she tried a dozen
different houses she fared far worse alone than she had fared in
Jude's company, and could get nobody to promise her a room for the
following day. Every householder looked askance at such a woman and
child inquiring for accommodation in the gloom.
"I ought not to be born, ought I?" said the boy with misgiving.
Thoroughly tired at last Sue returned to the place where she was
not welcome, but where at least she had temporary shelter. In her
absence Jude had left his address; but knowing how weak he still was
she adhered to her determination not to disturb him till the next
day.
II
Sue sat looking at the bare floor of the room, the house being little
more than an old intramural cottage, and then she regarded the scene
outside the uncurtained window. At some distance opposite, the outer
walls of Sarcophagus College--silent, black, and windowless--threw
their four centuries of gloom, bigotry, and decay into the little
room she occupied, shutting out the moonlight by night and the sun by
day. The outlines of Rubric College also were discernible beyond the
other, and the tower of a third farther off still. She thought of
the strange operation of a simple-minded man's ruling passion, that
it should have led Jude, who loved her and the children so tenderly,
to place them here in this depressing purlieu, because he was still
haunted by his dream. Even now he did not distinctly hear the
freezing negative that those scholared walls had echoed to his
desire.