第28章 At Christminster(5)

'For wisdom is a defence,and money is a defence;but the excellency of knowledge is,that wisdom giveth life to them that have it.'His desire absorbed him,and left no part of him to weigh its practicability.

At this time he received a nervously anxious letter from his poor old aunt,on the subject which had previously distressed her -a fear that Jude would not be strong-minded enough to keep away from his cousin Sue Bridehead and her relations.Sue's father,his aunt believed,had gone back to London,but the girl remained at Christminster.To make her still more objectionable she was an artist or designer of some sort in what was called an ecclesiastical warehouse,which was a perfect seed-bed of idolatry,and she was no doubt abandoned to mummeries on that account -if not quite a Papist.(Miss Drusilla Fawley was of her date,Evangelical.)As Jude was rather on an intellectual track than a theological,this news of Sue's probable opinions did not much influence him one way or the other,but the clue to her whereabouts was decidedly interesting.

With an altogether singular pleasure he walked at his earliest spare minutes past the shops answering to his great-aunt's deion;and beheld in one of them a young girl sitting behind a desk,who was suspiciously like the original of the portrait.He ventured to enter on a trivial errand,and having made his purchase lingered on the scene.The shop seemed to be kept entirely by women.It contained Anglican books,stationery,texts,and fancy goods:little plaster angels on brackets,Gothic-framed pictures of saints,ebony crosses that were almost crucifixes,prayer-books that were almost missals.He felt very shy of looking at the girl in the desk;she was so pretty that he could not believe it possible that she should belong to him.Then she spoke to one of the two older women behind the counter;and he recognized in the accents certain qualities of his own voice;softened and sweetened,but his own.What was she doing?He stole a glance round.Before her lay a piece of zinc,cut to the shape of a scroll three or four feet long,and coated with a dead-surface paint on one side.

Hereon she was designing or illuminating,in characters of Church text,the single word A L L E L U J H 'A sweet,saintly,Christian business,hers!'thought he.

Her presence here was now fairly enough explained,her skill in work of this sort having no doubt been acquired from her father's occupation as an ecclesiastical worker in metal.The lettering on which she was engaged was clearly intended to be fixed up in some chancel to assist devotion.

He came out.It would have been easy to speak to her there and then,but it seemed scarcely honourable towards his aunt to disregard her request so incontinently.She had used him roughly,but she had brought him up:and the fact of her being powerless to control him lent a pathetic force to a wish that would have been inoperative as an argument.

So Jude gave no sign.He would not call upon Sue just yet.He had other reasons against doing so when he had walked away.She seemed so dainty beside himself in his rough working-jacket and dusty trousers that he felt he was as yet unready to encounter her,as he had felt about Mr.Phillotson.And how possible it was that she had inherited the antipathies of her family,and would scorn him,as far as a Christian could,particularly when he had told her that unpleasant part of his history which had resulted in his becoming enchained to one of her own sex whom she would certainly not admire.

Thus he kept watch over her,and liked to feel she was there.

The consciousness of her living presence stimulated him.But she remained more or less an ideal character,about whose form he began to weave curious and fantastic day-dreams.

Between two and three weeks afterwards Jude was engaged with some more men,outside Crozier College in Old-time Street,in getting a block of worked freestone from a waggon across the pavement,before hoisting it to the parapet which they were repairing.Standing in position the head man said,'Spaik when he heave!He-ho!'And they heaved.

All of a sudden,as he lifted,his cousin stood close to his elbow,pausing a moment on the bend of her foot till the obstructing object should have been removed.She looked right into his face with liquid,untranslatable eyes,that combined,or seemed to him to combine,keenness with tenderness,and mystery with both,their expression,as well as that of her lips,taking its life from some words just spoken to a companion,and being carried on into his face quite unconsciously.She no more observed his presence than that of the dust-motes which his manipulations raised into the sunbeams.

His closeness to her was so suggestive that he trembled,and turned his face away with a shy instinct to prevent her recognizing him,though as she had never once seen him she could not possibly do so;and might very well never have heard even his name.He could perceive that though she was a country-girl at bottom,a latter girlhood of some years in London,and a womanhood here,had taken all rawness out of her.

When she was gone he continued his work,reflecting on her.He had been so caught by her influence that he had taken no count of her general mould and build.He remembered now that she was not a large figure,that she was light and slight,of the type dubbed elegant.That was about all he had seen.There was nothing statuesque in her;all was nervous motion.

She was mobile,living,yet a painter might not have called her handsome or beautiful.But the much that she was surprised him.She was quite a long way removed from the rusticity that was his.How could one of his cross-grained,unfortunate,almost accursed stock,have contrived to reach this pitch of niceness?London had done it,he supposed.