However, they remained stolid and motionless, and the mistress left
the room to inquire from her superiors what was to be done.
Presently, towards dusk, the pupils, as they sat, heard exclamations
from the first-year's girls in an adjoining classroom, and one rushed
in to say that Sue Bridehead had got out of the back window of the
room in which she had been confined, escaped in the dark across the
lawn, and disappeared. How she had managed to get out of the garden
nobody could tell, as it was bounded by the river at the bottom, and
the side door was locked.
They went and looked at the empty room, the casement between the
middle mullions of which stood open. The lawn was again searched
with a lantern, every bush and shrub being examined, but she was
nowhere hidden. Then the porter of the front gate was interrogated,
and on reflection he said that he remembered hearing a sort of
splashing in the stream at the back, but he had taken no notice,
thinking some ducks had come down the river from above.
"She must have walked through the river!" said a mistress.
"Or drownded herself," said the porter.
The mind of the matron was horrified--not so much at the possible
death of Sue as at the possible half-column detailing that event in
all the newspapers, which, added to the scandal of the year before,
would give the college an unenviable notoriety for many months to
come.
More lanterns were procured, and the river examined; and then, at
last, on the opposite shore, which was open to the fields, some
little boot-tracks were discerned in the mud, which left no doubt
that the too excitable girl had waded through a depth of water
reaching nearly to her shoulders--for this was the chief river of the
county, and was mentioned in all the geography books with respect.
As Sue had not brought disgrace upon the school by drowning herself,
the matron began to speak superciliously of her, and to express
gladness that she was gone.
On the self-same evening Jude sat in his lodgings by the Close Gate.
Often at this hour after dusk he would enter the silent Close, and
stand opposite the house that contained Sue, and watch the shadows of
the girls' heads passing to and fro upon the blinds, and wish he had
nothing else to do but to sit reading and learning all day what many
of the thoughtless inmates despised. But to-night, having finished
tea and brushed himself up, he was deep in the perusal of the
Twenty-ninth Volume of Pusey's Library of the Fathers, a set of books
which he had purchased of a second-hand dealer at a price that seemed
to him to be one of miraculous cheapness for that invaluable work. He
fancied he heard something rattle lightly against his window; then he
heard it again. Certainly somebody had thrown gravel. He rose and
gently lifted the sash.