Jude the Obsure - Page 28/318

It was Sunday afternoon, four-and-twenty hours after his meeting with

Arabella Donn. During the whole bygone week he had been resolving to

set this afternoon apart for a special purpose,--the re-reading of

his Greek Testament--his new one, with better type than his old copy,

following Griesbach's text as amended by numerous correctors, and

with variorum readings in the margin. He was proud of the book,

having obtained it by boldly writing to its London publisher, a thing

he had never done before.

He had anticipated much pleasure in this afternoon's reading, under

the quiet roof of his great-aunt's house as formerly, where he now

slept only two nights a week. But a new thing, a great hitch, had

happened yesterday in the gliding and noiseless current of his life,

and he felt as a snake must feel who has sloughed off its winter

skin, and cannot understand the brightness and sensitiveness of its

new one.

He would not go out to meet her, after all. He sat down, opened the

book, and with his elbows firmly planted on the table, and his hands

to his temples, began at the beginning:

HE KAINE DIATHEKE

Had he promised to call for her? Surely he had! She would wait

indoors, poor girl, and waste all her afternoon on account of him.

There was a something in her, too, which was very winning, apart from

promises. He ought not to break faith with her. Even though he had

only Sundays and week-day evenings for reading he could afford one

afternoon, seeing that other young men afforded so many. After

to-day he would never probably see her again. Indeed, it would be

impossible, considering what his plans were.

In short, as if materially, a compelling arm of extraordinary

muscular power seized hold of him--something which had nothing in

common with the spirits and influences that had moved him hitherto.

This seemed to care little for his reason and his will, nothing for

his so-called elevated intentions, and moved him along, as a violent

schoolmaster a schoolboy he has seized by the collar, in a direction

which tended towards the embrace of a woman for whom he had no

respect, and whose life had nothing in common with his own except

locality.

HE KAINE DIATHEKE was no more heeded, and the predestinate Jude

sprang up and across the room. Foreseeing such an event he had

already arrayed himself in his best clothes. In three minutes he was

out of the house and descending by the path across the wide vacant

hollow of corn-ground which lay between the village and the isolated

house of Arabella in the dip beyond the upland.