第30章 At Christminster(7)

Some little time before the date of this service in the cathedral the pretty,liquid-eyed,light-footed young woman Sue Bridehead had an afternoon's holiday,and leaving the ecclesiastical establishment in which she not only assisted but lodged,took a walk into the country with a book in her hand.It was one of those cloudless days which sometimes occur in Wessex and elsewhere between days of cold and wet,as if intercalated by caprice of the weather-god.She went along for a mile or two until she came to much higher ground than that of the city she had left behind her.

The road passed between green fields,and coming to a stile Sue paused there,to finish the page she was reading,and then looked back at the towers and domes and pinnacles new and old.

On the other side of the stile,in the footpath,she beheld a foreigner with black hair and a sallow face,sitting on the grass beside a large square board whereon were fixed,as closely as they could stand,a number of plaster statuettes,some of them bronzed,which he was re-arranging before proceeding with them on his way.They were in the main reduced copies of ancient marbles,and comprised divinities of a very different character from those the girl was accustomed to see portrayed,among them being a Venus of standard pattern,a Diana,and,of the other sex,Apollo,Bacchus,and Mars.Though the figures were many yards away from her the south-west sun brought them out so brilliantly against the green herbage that she could discern their contours with luminous distinctness;and being almost in a line between herself and the church towers of the city they awoke in her an oddly foreign and contrasting set of ideas by comparison.The man rose,and,seeing her,politely took off his cap,and cried 'I-i-i-mages!' in an accent that agreed with his appearance.In a moment he dexterously lifted upon his knee the great board with its assembled notabilities divine and human,and raised it to the top of his head,bringing them on to her and resting the board on the stile.First he offered her his smaller wares -the busts of kings and queens,then a minstrel,then a winged Cupid.

She shook her head.

'How much are these two?'she said,touching with her finger the Venus and the Apollo -the largest figures on the tray.

He said she should have them for ten shillings.

'I cannot afford that,'said Sue.She offered considerably less,and to her surprise the image-man drew them from their wire stay and handed them over the stile.She clasped them as treasures.

When they were paid for,and the man had gone,she began to be concerned as to what she should do with them.They seemed so very large now that they were in her possession,and so very naked.Being of a nervous temperament she trembled at her enterprise.When she handled them the white pipeclay came off on her gloves and jacket.After carrying them along a little way openly an idea came to her,and,pulling some huge burdock leaves,parsley,and other rank growths from the hedge,she wrapped up her burden as well as she could in these,so that what she carried appeared to be an enormous armful of green stuff gathered by a zealous lover of nature.

'Well,anything is better than those everlasting church fallals!'she said.But she was still in a trembling state,and seemed almost to wish she had not bought the figures.

Occasionally peeping inside the leaves to see that Venus's arm was not broken,she entered with her heathen load into the most Christian city in the country by an obscure street running parallel to the main one,and round a corner to the side door of the establishment to which she was attached.Her purchases were taken straight up to her own chamber,and she at once attempted to lock them in a box that was her very own property;but finding them too cumbersome she wrapped them in large sheets of brown paper,and stood them on the floor in a corner.

The mistress of the house,Miss Fontover,was an elderly lady in spectacles,dressed almost like an abbess;a dab at Ritual,as become one of her business,and a worshipper at the ceremonial church of St.Silas,in the suburb of Beersheba before-mentioned,which Jude also had begun to attend.She was the daughter of a clergyman in reduced circumstances,and at his death,which had occurred several years before this date,she boldly avoided penury by taking over a little shop of church requisites and developing it to its present creditable proportions.She wore a cross and beads round her neck as her only ornament,and knew the Christian Year by heart.

She now came to call Sue to tea,and,finding that the girl did not respond for a moment,entered the room just as the other was hastily putting a string round each parcel.

'Something you have been buying,Miss Bridehead?'she asked,regarding the enwrapped objects.

'Yes -just something to ornament my room,'said Sue.

'Well,I should have thought I had put enough here already,'said Miss Fontover,looking round at the Gothic-framed prints of saints,the Church-text scrolls,and other articles which,having become too stale to sell,had been used to furnish this obscure chamber.'What is it?How bulky!'She tore a little hole,about as big as a wafer,in the brown paper,and tried to peep in.'Why,statuary?Two figures?Where did you get them?'

'Oh -I bought them of a travelling man who sells casts'

'Two saints?'

'Yes.'

'What ones?'

'St.Peter and St.-St.Mary Magdalen.'

'Well -now come down to tea,and go and finish that organ-text,if there's light enough afterwards.'