第12章 At Marygreen(12)

She whom he addressed was a fine dark-eyed girl,not exactly handsome,but capable of passing as such at a little distance,despite some coarseness of skin and fibre.She had a round and prominent bosom,full lips,perfect teeth,and the rich complexion of a Cochin hen's egg.She was a complete and substantial female animal -no more,no less;and Jude was almost certain that to her was attributable the enterprise of attracting his attention from dreams of the humaner letters to what was simmering in the minds around him.

'That you'll never be told,'said she deedily.

'Whoever did it was wasteful of other people's property.'

'Oh,that's nothing.'

'But you want to speak to me,I suppose?'

'Oh yes;if you like to.'

'Shall I clamber across,or will you come to the plank above here?'

Perhaps she foresaw an opportunity;for somehow or other the eyes of the brown girl rested in his own when he had said the words,and there was a momentary flash of intelligence,a dumb announcement of affinity in posse between herself and him,which,so far as Jude Fawley was concerned,had no sort of premeditation in it.She saw that he had singled her out from the three,as a woman is singled out in such cases,for no reasoned purpose of further acquaintance,but in commonplace obedience to conjunctive orders from headquarters,unconsciously received by unfortunate men when the last intention of their lives is to be occupied with the feminine.

Springing to her feet,she said:'Bring back what is lying there.'

Jude was now aware that no message on any matter connected with her father's business had prompted her signal to him.He set down his basket of tools,picked up the scrap of offal,beat a pathway for himself with his stick,and got over the hedge.They walked in parallel lines,one on each bank of the stream,towards the small plank bridge.As the girl drew nearer to it,she gave without Jude perceiving it,an adroit little suck to the interior of each of her cheeks in succession,by which curious and original manoeuvre she brought as by magic upon its smooth and rotund surface a perfect dimple,which she was able to retain there as long as she continued to smile.This production of dimples at will was a not unknown operation,which many attempted,but only a few succeeded in accomplishing.

They met in the middle of the plank,and Jude,tossing back her missile,seemed to expect her to explain why she had audaciously stopped him by this novel artillery instead of by hailing him.

But she,slyly looking in another direction,swayed herself backwards and forwards on her hand as it clutched the rail of the bridge;till,moved by amatory curiosity,she turned her eyes critically upon him.

'You don't think I would shy things at you?'

'Oh no.'

'We are doing this for my father,who naturally doesn't want anything thrown away.He makes that into dubbin.'She nodded towards the fragment on the grass.

'What made either of the others throw it,I wonder?'Jude asked,politely accepting her assertion,though he had very large doubts as to its truth.

'Impudence.Don't tell folk it was I,mind!'

'How can I?I don't know your name.'

'Ah,no.Shall I tell it to you?'

'Do!'

'Arabella Donn.I'm living here.'

'I must have known it if I had often come this way.But I mostly go straight along the high-road.'

'My father is a pig-breeder,and these girls are helping me wash the innerds for black-puddings and such like.'

They talked a little more and a little more,as they stood regarding each other and leaning against the hand-rail of the bridge.The unvoiced call of woman to man,which was uttered very distinctly by Arabella's personality,held Jude to the spot against his intention -almost against his will,and in a way new to his experience.It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that till this moment Jude had never looked at a woman to consider her as such,but had vaguely regarded the sex as beings outside his life and purposes.He gazed from her eyes to her mouth,thence to her bosom,and to her full round naked arms,wet,mottled with the chill of the water,and firm as marble.

'What a nice-looking girl you are!'he murmured,though the words had not been necessary to express his sense of her magnetism.

'Ah,you should see me Sundays!'she said piquantly.

'I don't suppose I could?'he answered 'That's for you to think on.There's nobody after me just now,though there med be in a week or two.'She had spoken this without a smile,and the dimples disappeared.

Jude felt himself drifting strangely,but could not help it.'Will you let me?'

'I don't mind.'

By this time she had managed to get back one dimple by turning her face aside for a moment and repeating the odd little sucking operation before mentioned,Jude being still unconscious of more than a general impression of her appearance.'Next Sunday?'he hazarded.'To-morrow,that is?'

'Yes.'

'Shall I call?'

'Yes.'

She brightened with a little glow of triumph,swept him almost tenderly with her eyes in turning,and retracing her steps down the brook side grass rejoined her companions.

Jude Fawley shouldered his tool-basket and resumed his lonely way,filled with an ardour at which he mentally stood at gaze.He had just inhaled a single breath from a new atmosphere,which had evidently been hanging round him everywhere he went,for he knew not how long,but had somehow been divided from his actual breathing as by a sheet of glass.

The intentions as to reading,working,and learning,which he had so precisely formulated only a few minutes earlier,were suffering a curious collapse into a corner,he knew not how.