In the lonely room of his aunt's house,Jude sat watching the cottage of the Widow Edlin as it disappeared behind the night shade.He knew that Sue was sitting within its walls equally lonely and disheartened;and again questioned his devotional motto that all was for the best.
He retired to rest early,but his sleep was fitful from the sense that Sue was so near at hand.At some time near two o'clock,when he was beginning to sleep more soundly,he was aroused by a shrill squeak that had been familiar enough to him when he lived regularly at Marygreen.It was the cry of a rabbit caught in a gin.As was the little creature's habit,it did not soon repeat its cry;and probably would not do so more than once or twice;but would remain bearing its torture till the morrow when the trapper would come and knock it on the head.
He who in his childhood had saved the lives of the earthworms now began to picture the agonies of the rabbit from its lacerated leg.
If it were a 'bad catch'by the hind-leg,the animal would tug during the ensuing six hours till the iron teeth of the trap had stripped the leg-bone of its flesh,when,should a weak-springed instrument enable it to escape,it would die in the fields from the mortification of the limb.If it were a 'good catch,'namely,by the fore-leg,the bone would be broken and the limb nearly torn in two in attempts at an impossible escape.
Almost half an hour passed,and the rabbit repeated its cry.Jude could rest no longer till he had put it out of its pain,so dressing himself quickly he descended,and by the light of the moon went across the green in the direction of the sound.He reached the hedge bordering the widow's garden,when he stood still.The faint click of the trap as dragged about by the writhing animal guided him now,and reaching the spot he struck the rabbit on the back of the neck with the side of his palm,and it stretched itself out dead.
He was turning away when he saw a woman looking out of the open casement at a window on the ground floor of the adjacent cottage.'Jude!'
said a voice timidly -Sue's voice.'It is you -is it not?'
'Yes,dear!'
'I haven't been able to sleep at all,and then I heard the rabbit,and couldn't help thinking of what it suffered,till I felt I must come down and kill it!But I am so glad you got there first....They ought not to be allowed to set these steel traps,ought they!'
Jude had reached the window,which was quite a low one,so that she was visible down to her waist.She let go the casement-stay and put her hand upon his,her moonlit face regarding him wistfully.
'Did it keep you awake?'he said.
'No -I was awake.'
'How was that?'
'Oh,you know -now!I know you,with your religious doctrines,think that a married woman in trouble of a kind like mine commits a mortal sin in making a man the confidant of it,as I did you.I wish I hadn't,now!'
'Don't wish it,dear,'he said.'That may have been my view;but my doctrines and I begin to part company.'
'I knew it -I knew it!And that's why I vowed I wouldn't disturb your belief.But -I am so glad to see you!-and,oh,I didn't mean to see you again,now the last tie between us,Aunt Drusilla,is dead!'
Jude seized her hand and kissed it.'There is a stronger one left!'
he said.'I'll never care about my doctrines or my religion any more!Let them go!Let me help you,even if I do love you,and even if you ...'
'Don't say it!-I know what you mean;but I can't admit so much as that.There!Guess what you like,but don't press me to answer questions!'
'I wish you were happy,whatever I may be!'
'I can't be!So few could enter into my feeling -they would say 'twas my fanciful fastidiousness,or something of that sort,and condemn me....It is none of the natural tragedies of love that's love's usual tragedy in civilized life,but a tragedy artificially manufactured for people who in a natural state would find relief in parting!...It would have been wrong,perhaps,for me to tell my distress to you,if I had been able to tell it to anybody else.But I have nobody.And I must tell somebody!Jude,before I married him I had never thought out fully what marriage meant,even though I knew.It was idiotic of me -there is no excuse.I was old enough,and I thought I was very experienced.So I rushed on,when I had got into that training school scrape,with all the cock-sureness of the fool that I was!...I am certain one ought to be allowed to undo what one had done so ignorantly!I daresay it happens to lots of women,only they submit,and I kick....When people of a later age look back upon the barbarous customs and superstitions of the times that we have the unhappiness to live in,what will they say!'
'You are very bitter,darling Sue!How I wish -I wish --'
'You must go in now!'
In a moment of impulse she bent over the sill,and laid her face upon his hair,weeping,and then imprinting a scarcely perceptible little kiss upon the top of his head,withdrawing quickly,so that he could not put his arms round her,as otherwise he unquestionably would have done.
She shut the casement,and he returned to his cottage.
Sue's distressful confession recurred to Jude's mind all the night as being a sorrow indeed.
The morning after,when it was time for her to go,the neighbours saw her companion and herself disappearing on foot down the hill path which led into the lonely road to Alfredston.An hour passed before he returned along the same route,and in his face there was a look of exaltation not unmixed with recklessness.An incident had occurred.
They had stood parting in the silent highway,and their tense and passionate moods had led to bewildered inquiries of each other on how far their intimacy ought to go;till they had almost quarrelled,and she said tearfully that it was hardly proper of him as a parson in embryo to think of such a thing as kissing her even in farewell as he now wished to do.
