Jude the Obsure - Page 47/318

"You needn't be concerned about that," said Arabella, laughing.

Jude too laughed, but there was a strong flavour of bitterness in

his amusement.

Challow made up for his neglect of the killing by zeal in the

scalding and scraping. Jude felt dissatisfied with himself as a man

at what he had done, though aware of his lack of common sense, and

that the deed would have amounted to the same thing if carried out by

deputy. The white snow, stained with the blood of his fellow-mortal,

wore an illogical look to him as a lover of justice, not to say a

Christian; but he could not see how the matter was to be mended. No

doubt he was, as his wife had called him, a tender-hearted fool.

He did not like the road to Alfredston now. It stared him cynically

in the face. The wayside objects reminded him so much of his

courtship of his wife that, to keep them out of his eyes, he

read whenever he could as he walked to and from his work. Yet

he sometimes felt that by caring for books he was not escaping

common-place nor gaining rare ideas, every working-man being of that

taste now. When passing near the spot by the stream on which he had

first made her acquaintance he one day heard voices just as he had

done at that earlier time. One of the girls who had been Arabella's

companions was talking to a friend in a shed, himself being the

subject of discourse, possibly because they had seen him in the

distance. They were quite unaware that the shed-walls were so thin

that he could hear their words as he passed.

"Howsomever, 'twas I put her up to it! 'Nothing venture nothing

have,' I said. If I hadn't she'd no more have been his mis'ess than

I."

"'Tis my belief she knew there was nothing the matter when she told

him she was..."

What had Arabella been put up to by this woman, so that he should

make her his "mis'ess," otherwise wife? The suggestion was horridly

unpleasant, and it rankled in his mind so much that instead of

entering his own cottage when he reached it he flung his basket

inside the garden-gate and passed on, determined to go and see his

old aunt and get some supper there.

This made his arrival home rather late. Arabella however, was busy

melting down lard from fat of the deceased pig, for she had been out

on a jaunt all day, and so delayed her work. Dreading lest what he

had heard should lead him to say something regrettable to her he

spoke little. But Arabella was very talkative, and said among other

things that she wanted some money. Seeing the book sticking out of

his pocket she added that he ought to earn more.