第95章 At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere(11)

They walked on vaguely,till she paused,and her little voice began anew:'It seems so weak,too,to vacillate like this!And yet how much better than to act rashly a second time....How terrible that scene was to me!The expression in that flabby woman's face,leading her on to give herself to that gaol-bird,not for a few hours,as she would,but for a lifetime,as she must.And the other poor soul -to escape a nominal shame which was owing to the weakness of her character,degrading herself to the real shame of bondage to a tyrant who scorned her -a man whom to avoid for ever was her only chance of salvation....This is our parish church,isn't it?This is where it would have to be,if we did it in the usual way?A service or something seems to be going on.'

Jude went up and looked in at the door.'Why -it is a wedding here too,'he said.'Everybody seems to be on our tack to-day.'

Sue said she supposed it was because Lent was just over,when there was always a crowd of marriages.'Let us listen,'she said,'and find how it feels to us when performed in a church.'

They stepped in,and entered a back seat,and watched the proceedings at the altar.The contracting couple appeared to belong to the well-to-do middle class,and the wedding altogether was of ordinary prettiness and interest.They could see the flowers tremble in the bride's hand,even at that distance,and could hear her mechanical murmur of words whose meaning her brain seemed to gather not at all under the pressure of her self-consciousness.

Sue and Jude listened,and severally saw themselves in time past going through the same form of self-committal.

'It is not the same to her,poor thing,as it would be to me doing it over again with my present knowledge,'Sue whispered.'You see,they are fresh to it,and take the proceedings as a matter of course.But having been awakened to its awful solemnity as we have,or at least as I have,by experience,and to my own too squeamish feelings perhaps sometimes,it really does seem immoral in me to go and undertake the same thing again with open eyes.Coming in here and seeing this has frightened me from a church wedding as much as the other did from a registry one....We are a weak,tremulous pair,Jude,and what others may feel confident in I feel doubts of -my being proof against the sordid conditions of a business contract again!'

Then they tried to laugh,and went on debating in whispers the object-lesson before them.And Jude said he also thought they were both too thin-skinned -that they ought never to have been born -much less have come together for the most preposterous of all joint ventures for them -matrimony.

His betrothed shuddered;and asked him earnestly if he indeed felt that they ought not to go in cold blood and sign that life-undertaking again?'It is awful if you think we have found ourselves not strong enough for it,and knowing this,are proposing to perjure ourselves,'she said.

'I fancy I do think it -since you ask me,'said Jude.'Remember I'll do it if you wish,own darling.'While she hesitated he went on to confess that,though he thought they ought to be able to do it,he felt checked by the dread of incompetency just as she did -from their peculiarities,perhaps,because they were unlike other people.'We are horribly sensitive;that's really what's the matter with us,Sue!'he declared.

'I fancy more are like us than we think!'

'Well,I don't know.The intention of the contract is good,and right for many,no doubt;but in our case it may defeat its own ends because we are the queer sort of people we are -folk in whom domestic ties of a forced kind snuff out cordiality and spontaneousness.'

Sue still held that there was not much queer or exceptional in them:that all were so.'Everybody is getting to feel as we do.We are a little beforehand,that's all.In fifty,a hundred,years the descendants of these two will act and feel worse than we.They will see weltering humanity still more vividly than we do now,as Shapes like our own selves hideously multiplied,and will be afraid to reproduce them.'

'What a terrible line of poetry!...though I have felt it myself about my fellow-creatures,at morbid times.'

Thus they murmured on,till Sue said more brightly:

'Well -the general question is not our business,and why should we plague ourselves about it?However different our reasons are we come to the same conclusion;that for us particular two,an irrevocable oath is risky.Then,Jude,let us go home without killing our dream!Yes?How good you are,my friend:you give way to all my whims!'

'They accord very much with my own.'

He gave her a little kiss behind a pillar while the attention of everybody present was taken up in observing the bridal procession entering the vestry;and then they came outside the building.By the door they waited till two or three carriages,which had gone away for a while,returned,and the new husband and wife came into the open daylight.Sue sighed.

'The flowers in the bride's hand are sadly like the garland which decked the heifers of sacrifice in old times!'

'Still,Sue,it is no worse for the woman than for the man.That's what some women fail to see,and instead of protesting against the conditions they protest against the man,the other victim;just as a woman in a crowd will abuse the man who crushes against her,when he is only the helpless transmitter of the pressure put upon him.'

'Yes -some are like that,instead of uniting with the man against the common enemy,coercion.'The bride and bridegroom had by this time driven off,and the two moved away with the rest of the idlers.'No -don't let's do it,'she continued.'At least just now.'

They reached home,and passing the window arm in arm saw the widow looking out at them.'Well,'cried their guest when they entered,'I said to myself when I zeed ye coming so loving up to the door,'They made up their minds at last,then!''

They briefly hinted that they had not.