There was no answer,and the carpenter who kept the lodgings said she had not come in.Jude was puzzled,and became quite alarmed at her absence,for the hour was growing late.The carpenter called his wife,who conjectured that Sue might have gone to St.Silas'church,as she often went there.
'Surely not at this time o'night?'said Jude.'It is shut.'
'She knows somebody who keeps the key,and she has it whenever she wants it.'
'How long has she been going on with this?'
'Oh,some few weeks,I think.'
Jude went vaguely in the direction of the church,which he had never once approached since he lived out that way years before,when his young opinions were more mystical than they were now.The spot was deserted,but the door was certainly unfastened;he lifted the latch without noise,and pushing to the door behind him,stood absolutely still inside.The prevalent silence seemed to contain a faint sound,explicable as a breathing,or a sobbing,which came from the other end of the building.The floor-cloth deadened his footsteps as he moved in that direction through the obscurity,which was broken only by the faintest reflected night-light from without.
High overhead,above the chancel steps,Jude could discern a huge,solidly constructed Latin cross -as large,probably,as the original it was designed to commemorate.It seemed to be suspended in the air by invisible wires;it was set with large jewels,which faintly glimmered in some weak ray caught from outside,as the cross swayed to and fro in a silent and scarcely perceptible motion.Underneath,upon the floor,lay what appeared to be a heap of black clothes,and from this was repeated the sobbing that he had heard before.It was his Sue's form,prostrate on the paving.
'Sue!'he whispered.
Something white disclosed itself;she had turned up her face.
'What -do you want with me here,Jude?'she said almost sharply.
'You shouldn't come!I wanted to be alone!Why did you intrude here?'
'How can you ask!'he retorted in quick reproach,for his full heart was wounded to its centre at this attitude of hers towards him.'Why do I come?Who has a right to come,I should like to know,if I have not!
I,who love you better than my own self -better -far better -than you have loved me!What made you leave me to come here alone?'
'Don't criticize me,Jude -I can't bear it!-I have often told you so.You must take me as I am.I am a wretch -broken by my distractions!
I couldn't bear it when Arabella came -I felt so utterly miserable I had to come away.She seems to be your wife still,and Richard to be my husband!'
'But they are nothing to us!'
'Yes,dear friend,they are.I see marriage differently now.My babies have been taken from me to show me this!Arabella's child killing mine was a judgement -the right slaying the wrong.What,what shall I do!I am such a vile creature -too worthless to mix with ordinary human beings!'
'This is terrible!'said Jude,verging on tears.'It is monstrous and unnatural for you to be so remorseful when you have done no wrong!'
'Ah -you don't know my badness!'
He returned vehemently:'I do!Every atom and dreg of it!You make me hate Christianity,or mysticism,or Sacerdotalism,or whatever it may be called,if it's that which has caused this deterioration in you.
That a woman-poet,a woman-seer,a woman whose soul shone like a diamond -whom all the wise of the world would have been proud of,if they could have known you -should degrade herself like this!I am glad I had nothing to do with Divinity -damn glad -if it's going to ruin you in this way!'
'You are angry,Jude,and unkind to me,and don't see how things are.'
'Then come along home with me,dearest,and perhaps I shall.Iam overburdened -and you,too,are unhinged just now.'He put his arm round her and lifted her;but though she came,she preferred to walk without his support.
'I don't dislike you,Jude,'she said in a sweet and imploring voice.'I love you as much as ever!Only -I ought not to love you -any more.Oh I must not any more!'
'I can't own it.'
'But I have made up my mind that I am not your wife!I belong to him -I sacramentally joined myself to him for life.Nothing can alter it!'
'But surely we are man and wife,if ever two people were in this world?Nature's own marriage it is,unquestionably!'
'But not Heaven's.Another was made for me there,and ratified eternally in the church at Melchester.'
'Sue,Sue -affliction has brought you to this unreasonable state!
After converting me to your views on so many things,to find you suddenly turn to the right-about like this -for no reason whatever,confounding all you have formerly said through sentiment merely!You root out of me what little affection and reverence I had left in me for the Church as an old acquaintance....What I can't understand in you is your extraordinary blindness now to your old logic.Is it peculiar to you,or is it common to woman?Is a woman a thinking unit at all,or a fraction always wanting its integer?How you argued that marriage was only a clumsy contract -which it is -how you showed all the objections to it -all the absurdities!
If two and two made four when we were happy together,surely they make four now?I can't understand it,I repeat!'
'Ah,dear Jude;that's because you are like a totally deaf man observing people listening to music.You say 'What are they regarding?
Nothing is there.'But something is.'
'That is a hard saying from you;and not a true parallel!You threw off old husks of prejudices,and taught me to do it;and now you go back upon yourself.I confess I am utterly stultified in my estimate of you.'
'Dear friend,my only friend,don't be hard with me!I can't help being as I am,I am convinced I am right -that I see the light at last.
But oh,how to profit by it!'
