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When they had stood a little while listening to the music of the military performers, Jude, Sue, and the child came up on the other side. Arabella did not care if they should recognize her; but they were too deeply absorbed in their own lives, as translated into emotion by the military band, to perceive her under her beaded veil.
The witch-light danced in the steady glance she turned upon him; she threw her head back and her slim throat showed white and smooth in the lamp's glow. "Suppose he did hold my hand and and kiss me, Jude Lauzoon, you'd like to do the same yourself, now wouldn't you?" She was ignorantly testing her weak, woman's weapon on the man's metal.
In his dreams the scene Billy Falstar had so luridly described was enacted again and again, until he felt as if he, Jude, had been the onlooker. The people whom he had taken for granted in the past now assumed new meaning and importance. Gaston had slipped in among them three years before, and after the first few months of observation he had aroused no interest.
"There never mind him, deary," said she, putting her cheek against Jude's. "Come up and wash your face, and just put yourself tidy, and off we'll go. Make it up with Father." They shook hands. Jude went upstairs with her, and soon came down looking tidy and calm. Arabella, too, had hastily arranged herself, and accompanied by Donn away they went. "Don't go," she said to the guests at parting.
Sue could hear the conversation: "Is Mr. Fawley at home? ... Biles and Willis the building contractors sent me to know if you'll undertake the relettering of the ten commandments in a little church they've been restoring lately in the country near here." Jude reflected, and said he could undertake it. "It is not a very artistic job," continued the messenger.
You a reprobate, and I in my condition... O dear!" ... And with her hand over her eyes she laughed again silently and intermittently, till she was quite weak. "That's better," said Jude gaily. "Now we are right again, aren't we, little girl!" "Oh but it is serious, all the same!" she sighed as she took up the brush and righted herself. "But do you see they don't think we are married?
The schoolmaster and Sue were unknown, though Jude was getting to be recognized as a citizen; and the couple were judged to be some relations of his from a distance, nobody supposing Sue to have been a recent pupil at the training school.
There was a stone-mason of a humble kind in Alfredston, and as soon as he had found a substitute for himself in his aunt's little business, he offered his services to this man for a trifling wage. Here Jude had the opportunity of learning at least the rudiments of freestone-working.
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!
Unable to be harsh with her, and not knowing what to do, Jude called the man who let the lodgings, and said this was an acquaintance of his in great distress for want of temporary shelter. "You may remember me as barmaid at the Lamb and Flag formerly?" spoke up Arabella. "My father has insulted me this afternoon, and I've left him, though without a penny!"
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