Meanwhile Sue, after parting from him earlier in the day, had gone
along to the station, with tears in her eyes for having run back and
let him kiss her. Jude ought not to have pretended that he was not a
lover, and made her give way to an impulse to act unconventionally,
if not wrongly. She was inclined to call it the latter; for Sue's
logic was extraordinarily compounded, and seemed to maintain that
before a thing was done it might be right to do, but that being done
it became wrong; or, in other words, that things which were right in
theory were wrong in practice.
"I have been too weak, I think!" she jerked out as she pranced on,
shaking down tear-drops now and then. "It was burning, like a
lover's--oh, it was! And I won't write to him any more, or at least
for a long time, to impress him with my dignity! And I hope it will
hurt him very much--expecting a letter to-morrow morning, and the
next, and the next, and no letter coming. He'll suffer then with
suspense--won't he, that's all!--and I am very glad of it!"--Tears
of pity for Jude's approaching sufferings at her hands mingled with
those which had surged up in pity for herself.
Then the slim little wife of a husband whose person was disagreeable
to her, the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by
temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial
relation with Phillotson, possibly with scarce any man, walked
fitfully along, and panted, and brought weariness into her eyes by
gazing and worrying hopelessly.
Phillotson met her at the arrival station, and, seeing that she was
troubled, thought it must be owing to the depressing effect of her
aunt's death and funeral. He began telling her of his day's doings,
and how his friend Gillingham, a neighbouring schoolmaster whom he
had not seen for years, had called upon him. While ascending to the
town, seated on the top of the omnibus beside him, she said suddenly
and with an air of self-chastisement, regarding the white road and
its bordering bushes of hazel: "Richard--I let Mr. Fawley hold my hand a long while. I don't know
whether you think it wrong?"
He, waking apparently from thoughts of far different mould, said
vaguely, "Oh, did you? What did you do that for?"
"I don't know. He wanted to, and I let him."
"I hope it pleased him. I should think it was hardly a novelty."
They lapsed into silence. Had this been a case in the court of an
omniscient judge, he might have entered on his notes the curious fact
that Sue had placed the minor for the major indiscretion, and had not
said a word about the kiss.