Jude the Obsure

"I'll bring it to you here in the passage," she said. "There's

nobody but me about the house to-day."

She brought him a bottle and a glass, and he drank.

Arabella began shaking with suppressed laughter. "What is this, my

dear?" he asked, smacking his lips.

"Oh--a drop of wine--and something in it." Laughing again she said:

"I poured your own love-philtre into it, that you sold me at the

agricultural show, don't you re-member?"

"I do, I do! Clever woman! But you must be prepared for the

consequences." Putting his arm round her shoulders he kissed her

there and then.

"Don't don't," she whispered, laughing good-humouredly. "My man will

hear."

She let him out of the house, and as she went back she said to

herself: "Well! Weak women must provide for a rainy day. And if my

poor fellow upstairs do go off--as I suppose he will soon--it's well

to keep chances open. And I can't pick and choose now as I could

when I was younger. And one must take the old if one can't get the

young."

XI

The last pages to which the chronicler of these lives would ask the

reader's attention are concerned with the scene in and out of Jude's

bedroom when leafy summer came round again.

His face was now so thin that his old friends would hardly have known

him. It was afternoon, and Arabella was at the looking-glass curling

her hair, which operation she performed by heating an umbrella-stay

in the flame of a candle she had lighted, and using it upon the

flowing lock. When she had finished this, practised a dimple, and

put on her things, she cast her eyes round upon Jude. He seemed to

be sleeping, though his position was an elevated one, his malady

preventing him lying down.

Arabella, hatted, gloved, and ready, sat down and waited, as if

expecting some one to come and take her place as nurse.

Certain sounds from without revealed that the town was in festivity,

though little of the festival, whatever it might have been, could be

seen here. Bells began to ring, and the notes came into the room

through the open window, and travelled round Jude's head in a hum.

They made her restless, and at last she said to herself: "Why ever

doesn't Father come!"

She looked again at Jude, critically gauged his ebbing life, as she

had done so many times during the late months, and glancing at his

watch, which was hung up by way of timepiece, rose impatiently.

Still he slept, and coming to a resolution she slipped from the room,

closed the door noiselessly, and descended the stairs. The house

was empty. The attraction which moved Arabella to go abroad had

evidently drawn away the other inmates long before.