Jude the Obsure - Page 64/318

A L L E L U J A

"A sweet, saintly, Christian business, hers!" thought he.

Her presence here was now fairly enough explained, her skill in

work of this sort having no doubt been acquired from her father's

occupation as an ecclesiastical worker in metal. The lettering on

which she was engaged was clearly intended to be fixed up in some

chancel to assist devotion.

He came out. It would have been easy to speak to her there and then,

but it seemed scarcely honourable towards his aunt to disregard her

request so incontinently. She had used him roughly, but she had

brought him up: and the fact of her being powerless to control him

lent a pathetic force to a wish that would have been inoperative as

an argument.

So Jude gave no sign. He would not call upon Sue just yet. He had

other reasons against doing so when he had walked away. She seemed

so dainty beside himself in his rough working-jacket and dusty

trousers that he felt he was as yet unready to encounter her, as he

had felt about Mr. Phillotson. And how possible it was that she had

inherited the antipathies of her family, and would scorn him, as

far as a Christian could, particularly when he had told her that

unpleasant part of his history which had resulted in his becoming

enchained to one of her own sex whom she would certainly not admire.

Thus he kept watch over her, and liked to feel she was there.

The consciousness of her living presence stimulated him. But she

remained more or less an ideal character, about whose form he began

to weave curious and fantastic day-dreams.

Between two and three weeks afterwards Jude was engaged with some

more men, outside Crozier College in Old-time Street, in getting a

block of worked freestone from a waggon across the pavement, before

hoisting it to the parapet which they were repairing. Standing in

position the head man said, "Spaik when he heave! He-ho!" And they

heaved.

All of a sudden, as he lifted, his cousin stood close to his elbow,

pausing a moment on the bend of her foot till the obstructing object

should have been removed. She looked right into his face with

liquid, untranslatable eyes, that combined, or seemed to him to

combine, keenness with tenderness, and mystery with both, their

expression, as well as that of her lips, taking its life from some

words just spoken to a companion, and being carried on into his face

quite unconsciously. She no more observed his presence than that of

the dust-motes which his manipulations raised into the sunbeams.