They could hear from this chamber the people moving about above, and
she implored to be allowed to go back, and was only kept from doing
so by the assurance that, if there were any hope, her presence might
do harm, and the reminder that it was necessary to take care of
herself lest she should endanger a coming life. Her inquiries were
incessant, and at last Jude came down and told her there was no hope.
As soon as she could speak she informed him what she had said to the
boy, and how she thought herself the cause of this.
"No," said Jude. "It was in his nature to do it. The doctor says
there are such boys springing up amongst us--boys of a sort unknown
in the last generation--the outcome of new views of life. They seem
to see all its terrors before they are old enough to have staying
power to resist them. He says it is the beginning of the coming
universal wish not to live. He's an advanced man, the doctor: but
he can give no consolation to--"
Jude had kept back his own grief on account of her; but he now
broke down; and this stimulated Sue to efforts of sympathy which in
some degree distracted her from her poignant self-reproach. When
everybody was gone, she was allowed to see the children.
The boy's face expressed the whole tale of their situation. On
that little shape had converged all the inauspiciousness and shadow
which had darkened the first union of Jude, and all the accidents,
mistakes, fears, errors of the last. He was their nodal point, their
focus, their expression in a single term. For the rashness of those
parents he had groaned, for their ill assortment he had quaked, and
for the misfortunes of these he had died.
When the house was silent, and they could do nothing but await the
coroner's inquest, a subdued, large, low voice spread into the air of
the room from behind the heavy walls at the back.
"What is it?" said Sue, her spasmodic breathing suspended.
"The organ of the college chapel. The organist practising I suppose.
It's the anthem from the seventy-third Psalm; 'Truly God is loving
unto Israel.'"
She sobbed again. "Oh, oh my babies! They had done no harm! Why
should they have been taken away, and not I!"
There was another stillness--broken at last by two persons in
conversation somewhere without.
"They are talking about us, no doubt!" moaned Sue. "'We are made a
spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men!'"