第60章 At Melchester(19)

'Nor so much as a rather reverend dissenting gentleman?'

'I am as I was.'

'True -you look so.'She idly allowed her fingers to rest on the pull of the beer-engine as she inspected him critically.He observed that her hands were smaller and whiter than when he had lived with her,and that on the hand which pulled the engine she wore an ornamental ring set with what seemed to be real sapphires -which they were,indeed,and were much admired as such by the young men who frequented the bar.

'So you pass as having a living husband,'he continued.

'Yes.I thought it might be awkward if I called myself a widow,as I should have liked.'

'True.I am known here a little.'

'I didn't mean on that account -for as I said I didn't expect you.It was for other reasons.'

'What were they?'

'I don't care to go into them,'she replied evasively.'I make a very good living,and I don't know that I want your company.'

Here a chappie with no chin,and a moustache like a lady's eyebrow,came and asked for a curiously compounded drink,and Arabella was obliged to go and attend to him.'We can't talk here,'she said,stepping back a moment.'Can't you wait till nine?Say yes,and don't be a fool.I can get off duty two hours sooner than usual,if I ask.I am not living in the house at present.'

He reflected and said gloomily,'I'll come back.I suppose we'd better arrange something.'

'Oh,bother arranging!I'm not going to arrange anything!'

'But I must know a thing or two;and,as you say,we can't talk here.Very well;I'll call for you.'

Depositing his unemptied glass he went out and walked up and down the street.Here was a rude flounce into the pellucid sentimentality of his sad attachment to Sue.Though Arabella's word was absolutely untrustworthy,he thought there might be some truth in her implication that she had not wished to disturb him,and had really supposed him dead.However,there was only one thing now to be done,and that was to play a straightforward part,the law being the law,and the woman between whom and himself there was no more unity than between east and west being in the eye of the Church one person with him.

Having to meet Arabella here,it was impossible to meet Sue at Alfredston as he had promised.At every thought of this a pang had gone through him;but the conjuncture could not be helped.Arabella was perhaps an intended intervention to punish him for his unauthorized love.Passing the evening,therefore,in a desultory waiting about the town wherein he avoided the precincts of every cloister and hall,because he could not bear to behold them,he repaired to the tavern bar while the hundred and one strokes were resounding from the Great Bell of Cardinal College,a coincidence which seemed to him gratuitous irony.The inn was now brilliantly lighted up,and the scene was altogether more brisk and gay.The faces of the barmaidens had risen in colour,each having a pink flush on her cheek;their manners were still more vivacious than before -more abandoned,more excited,more sensuous,and they expressed their sentiments and desires less euphemistically,laughing in a lackadaisical tone,without reserve.

The bar had been crowded with men of all sorts during the previous hour,and he had heard from without the hubbub of their voices;but the customers were fewer at last.He nodded to Arabella,and told her that she would find him outside the door when she came away.

'But you must have something with me first,'she said with great good humour.'Just an early night-cap:I always do.Then you can go out and wait a minute,as it is best we should not be seen going together.'

She drew a couple of liqueur glasses of brandy;and though she had evidently,from her countenance,already taken in enough alcohol either by drinking or,more probably,from the atmosphere she had breathed for so many hours,she finished hers quickly.He also drank his,and went outside the house.

In a few minutes she came,in a thick jacket and a hat with a black feather.'l live quite near,'she said,taking his arm,'and can let myself in by a latch-key at any time.What arrangement do you want to come to?'

'Oh -none in particular,'he answered,thoroughly sick and tired,his thoughts again reverting to Alfredston,and the train he did not go by;the probable disappointment of Sue that he was not there when she arrived,and the missed pleasure of her company on the long and lonely climb by starlight up the hills to Marygreen.'l ought to have gone back really!

My aunt is on her deathbed,I fear.'

'I'll go over with you to-morrow morning.I think I could get a day off.'

There was something particularly uncongenial in the idea of Arabella,who had no more sympathy than a tigress with his relations or him,coming to the bedside of his dying aunt,and meeting Sue.Yet he said,'Of course,if you'd like to,you can.'

'Well,that we'll consider....Now,until we have come to some agreement it is awkward our being together here -where you are known,and I am getting known,though without any suspicion that I have anything to do with you.As we are going towards the station,suppose we take the nine-forty train to Aldbrickham?We shall be there in little more than half an hour,and nobody will know us for one night,and we shall be quite free to act as we choose till we have made up our minds whether we'll make anything public or not.'

'As you like.'

'Then wait till I get two or three things.This is my lodging.

Sometimes when late I sleep at the hotel where I am engaged,so nobody will think anything of my staying out.'

She speedily returned,and they went on to the railway,and made the half-hour's journey to Aldbrickham,where they entered a third-rate inn near the station in time for a late supper.

On the morrow between nine and half-past they were journeying back to Christminster,the only two occupants of a compartment in a third-class railway-carriage.