Part 30 (1/2)
”But you must have something with me first,” she said with great good humour. ”Just an early night-cap: I always do. Then you can go out and wait a minute, as it is best we should not be seen going together.” She drew a couple of liqueur gla.s.ses of brandy; and though she had evidently, from her countenance, already taken in enough alcohol either by drinking or, more probably, from the atmosphere she had breathed for so many hours, she finished hers quickly. He also drank his, and went outside the house.
In a few minutes she came, in a thick jacket and a hat with a black feather. ”I live quite near,” she said, taking his arm, ”and can let myself in by a latch-key at any time. What arrangement do you want to come to?”
”Oh-none in particular,” he answered, thoroughly sick and tired, his thoughts again reverting to Alfredston, and the train he did not go by; the probable disappointment of Sue that he was not there when she arrived, and the missed pleasure of her company on the long and lonely climb by starlight up the hills to Marygreen. ”I ought to have gone back really! My aunt is on her deathbed, I fear.”
”I'll go over with you to-morrow morning. I think I could get a day off.”
There was something particularly uncongenial in the idea of Arabella, who had no more sympathy than a tigress with his relations or him, coming to the bedside of his dying aunt, and meeting Sue. Yet he said, ”Of course, if you'd like to, you can.”
”Well, that we'll consider... Now, until we have come to some agreement it is awkward our being together here-where you are known, and I am getting known, though without any suspicion that I have anything to do with you. As we are going towards the station, suppose we take the nine-forty train to Aldbrickham? We shall be there in little more than half an hour, and n.o.body will know us for one night, and we shall be quite free to act as we choose till we have made up our minds whether we'll make anything public or not.”
”As you like.”
”Then wait till I get two or three things. This is my lodging. Sometimes when late I sleep at the hotel where I am engaged, so n.o.body will think anything of my staying out.”
She speedily returned, and they went on to the railway, and made the half-hour's journey to Aldbrickham, where they entered a third-rate inn near the station in time for a late supper.
IX
On the morrow between nine and half-past they were journeying back to Christminster, the only two occupants of a compartment in a third-cla.s.s railway-carriage. Having, like Jude, made rather a hasty toilet to catch the train, Arabella looked a little frowsy, and her face was very far from possessing the animation which had characterized it at the bar the night before. When they came out of the station she found that she still had half an hour to spare before she was due at the bar. They walked in silence a little way out of the town in the direction of Alfredston. Jude looked up the far highway.
”Ah ... poor feeble me!” he murmured at last.
”What?” said she.
”This is the very road by which I came into Christminster years ago full of plans!”
”Well, whatever the road is I think my time is nearly up, as I have to be in the bar by eleven o'clock. And as I said, I shan't ask for the day to go with you to see your aunt. So perhaps we had better part here. I'd sooner not walk up Chief Street with you, since we've come to no conclusion at all.”
”Very well. But you said when we were getting up this morning that you had something you wished to tell me before I left?”
”So I had-two things-one in particular. But you wouldn't promise to keep it a secret. I'll tell you now if you promise? As an honest woman I wish you to know it... It was what I began telling you in the night-about that gentleman who managed the Sydney hotel.” Arabella spoke somewhat hurriedly for her. ”You'll keep it close?”
”Yes-yes-I promise!” said Jude impatiently. ”Of course I don't want to reveal your secrets.”
”Whenever I met him out for a walk, he used to say that he was much taken with my looks, and he kept pressing me to marry him. I never thought of coming back to England again; and being out there in Australia, with no home of my own after leaving my father, I at last agreed, and did.”
”What-marry him?”
”Yes.”
”Regularly-legally-in church?”
”Yes. And lived with him till shortly before I left. It was stupid, I know; but I did! There, now I've told you. Don't round upon me! He talks of coming back to England, poor old chap. But if he does, he won't be likely to find me.”
Jude stood pale and fixed.
”Why the devil didn't you tell me last, night!” he said.