"How could you?"
"I wanted to go to Alfredston to get a few things I left there. And
I could see Anny, who'll be sure to have heard all about it, as she
has friends at Marygreen."
Jude could not bear to acquiesce in this proposal; but his suspense
pitted itself against his discretion, and won in the struggle. "You
can ask about it if you like," he said. "I've not heard a sound from
there. It must have been very private, if--they have married."
"I am afraid I haven't enough cash to take me there and back, or I
should have gone before. I must wait till I have earned some."
"Oh--I can pay the journey for you," he said impatiently. And thus
his suspense as to Sue's welfare, and the possible marriage, moved
him to dispatch for intelligence the last emissary he would have
thought of choosing deliberately.
Arabella went, Jude requesting her to be home not later than by
the seven o'clock train. When she had gone he said: "Why should I
have charged her to be back by a particular time! She's nothing to
me--nor the other neither!"
But having finished work he could not help going to the station to
meet Arabella, dragged thither by feverish haste to get the news
she might bring, and know the worst. Arabella had made dimples
most successfully all the way home, and when she stepped out of the
railway carriage she smiled. He merely said "Well?" with the very
reverse of a smile.
"They are married."
"Yes--of course they are!" he returned. She observed, however, the
hard strain upon his lip as he spoke.
"Anny says she has heard from Belinda, her relation out at Marygreen,
that it was very sad, and curious!"
"How do you mean sad? She wanted to marry him again, didn't she?
And he her!"
"Yes--that was it. She wanted to in one sense, but not in the
other. Mrs. Edlin was much upset by it all, and spoke out her mind
at Phillotson. But Sue was that excited about it that she burnt her
best embroidery that she'd worn with you, to blot you out entirely.
Well--if a woman feels like it, she ought to do it. I commend her
for it, though others don't." Arabella sighed. "She felt he was her
only husband, and that she belonged to nobody else in the sight of
God A'mighty while he lived. Perhaps another woman feels the same
about herself, too!" Arabella sighed again.