It was a warm, cloudless, enticing day. She shut the front door, and
hastened round into Chief Street, and when near the theatre could
hear the notes of the organ, a rehearsal for a coming concert being
in progress. She entered under the archway of Oldgate College, where
men were putting up awnings round the quadrangle for a ball in the
hall that evening. People who had come up from the country for the
day were picnicking on the grass, and Arabella walked along the
gravel paths and under the aged limes. But finding this place rather
dull she returned to the streets, and watched the carriages drawing
up for the concert, numerous dons and their wives, and undergraduates
with gay female companions, crowding up likewise. When the doors
were closed, and the concert began, she moved on.
The powerful notes of that concert rolled forth through the swinging
yellow blinds of the open windows, over the housetops, and into the
still air of the lanes. They reached so far as to the room in which
Jude lay; and it was about this time that his cough began again and
awakened him.
As soon as he could speak he murmured, his eyes still closed: "A
little water, please."
Nothing but the deserted room received his appeal, and he coughed
to exhaustion again--saying still more feebly: "Water--some
water--Sue--Arabella!"
The room remained still as before. Presently he gasped again:
"Throat--water--Sue--darling--drop of water--please--oh please!"
No water came, and the organ notes, faint as a bee's hum, rolled in
as before.
While he remained, his face changing, shouts and hurrahs came from
somewhere in the direction of the river.
"Ah--yes! The Remembrance games," he murmured. "And I here. And
Sue defiled!"
The hurrahs were repeated, drowning the faint organ notes. Jude's
face changed more: he whispered slowly, his parched lips scarcely
moving: _"Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it
was said, There is a man-child conceived."_ ("Hurrah!") _"Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither
let the light shine upon it. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no
joyful voice come therein."_ ("Hurrah!") _"Why died I not from the womb? Why did i not give up the ghost when
I came out of the belly? ... For now should I have lain still and
been quiet. I should have slept: then had I been at rest!"_ ("Hurrah!") _"There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the
oppressor... The small and the great are there; and the servant is
free from his master. Wherefore is light given to him that is in
misery, and life unto the bitter in soul?"_ Meanwhile Arabella, in her journey to discover what was going on,
took a short cut down a narrow street and through an obscure nook
into the quad of Cardinal. It was full of bustle, and brilliant
in the sunlight with flowers and other preparations for a ball
here also. A carpenter nodded to her, one who had formerly been a
fellow-workman of Jude's. A corridor was in course of erection from
the entrance to the hall staircase, of gay red and buff bunting.
Waggon-loads of boxes containing bright plants in full bloom were
being placed about, and the great staircase was covered with red
cloth. She nodded to one workman and another, and ascended to the
hall on the strength of their acquaintance, where they were putting
down a new floor and decorating for the dance.