Part 26 (2/2)
”I have not. But I am not going to be cross-examined about him; and if you ask anything more I won't answer!”
”It is very odd that-” He stopped, regarding her.
”What?”
”That you are often not so nice in your real presence as you are in your letters!”
”Does it really seem so to you?” said she, smiling with quick curiosity. ”Well, that's strange; but I feel just the same about you, Jude. When you are gone away I seem such a coldhearted-”
As she knew his sentiment towards her Jude saw that they were getting upon dangerous ground. It was now, he thought, that he must speak as an honest man.
But he did not speak, and she continued: ”It was that which made me write and say-I didn't mind your loving me-if you wanted to, much!”
The exultation he might have felt at what that implied, or seemed to imply, was nullified by his intention, and he rested rigid till he began: ”I have never told you-”
”Yes you have,” murmured she.
”I mean, I have never told you my history-all of it.”
”But I guess it. I know nearly.”
Jude looked up. Could she possibly know of that morning performance of his with Arabella; which in a few months had ceased to be a marriage more completely than by death? He saw that she did not.
”I can't quite tell you here in the street,” he went on with a gloomy tongue. ”And you had better not come to my lodgings. Let us go in here.”
The building by which they stood was the market-house; it was the only place available; and they entered, the market being over, and the stalls and areas empty. He would have preferred a more congenial spot, but, as usually happens, in place of a romantic field or solemn aisle for his tale, it was told while they walked up and down over a floor littered with rotten cabbage-leaves, and amid all the usual squalors of decayed vegetable matter and unsaleable refuse. He began and finished his brief narrative, which merely led up to the information that he had married a wife some years earlier, and that his wife was living still. Almost before her countenance had time to change she hurried out the words,
”Why didn't you tell me before!”
”I couldn't. It seemed so cruel to tell it.”
”To yourself, Jude. So it was better to be cruel to me!”
”No, dear darling!” cried Jude pa.s.sionately. He tried to take her hand, but she withdrew it. Their old relations of confidence seemed suddenly to have ended, and the antagonisms of s.e.x to s.e.x were left without any counter-poising predilections. She was his comrade, friend, unconscious sweetheart no longer; and her eyes regarded him in estranged silence.
”I was ashamed of the episode in my life which brought about the marriage,” he continued. ”I can't explain it precisely now. I could have done it if you had taken it differently!”
”But how can I?” she burst out. ”Here I have been saying, or writing, that-that you might love me, or something of the sort!-just out of charity-and all the time-oh, it is perfectly d.a.m.nable how things are!” she said, stamping her foot in a nervous quiver.
”You take me wrong, Sue! I never thought you cared for me at all, till quite lately; so I felt it did not matter! Do you care for me, Sue?-you know how I mean?-I don't like 'out of charity' at all!”
It was a question which in the circ.u.mstances Sue did not choose to answer.
”I suppose she-your wife-is-a very pretty woman, even if she's wicked?” she asked quickly.
”She's pretty enough, as far as that goes.”
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