They walked now no longer arm in arm but, as she had desired, clasped
together. After all, what did it matter since it was dark, said Jude
to himself. When they were half-way up the long hill they paused as
by arrangement, and he kissed her again. They reached the top, and
he kissed her once more.
"You can keep your arm there, if you would like to," she said gently.
He did so, thinking how trusting she was.
Thus they slowly went towards her home. He had left his cottage
at half-past three, intending to be sitting down again to the New
Testament by half-past five. It was nine o'clock when, with another
embrace, he stood to deliver her up at her father's door.
She asked him to come in, if only for a minute, as it would seem so
odd otherwise, and as if she had been out alone in the dark. He gave
way, and followed her in. Immediately that the door was opened he
found, in addition to her parents, several neighbours sitting round.
They all spoke in a congratulatory manner, and took him seriously as
Arabella's intended partner.
They did not belong to his set or circle, and he felt out of place
and embarrassed. He had not meant this: a mere afternoon of
pleasant walking with Arabella, that was all he had meant. He did
not stay longer than to speak to her stepmother, a simple, quiet
woman without features or character; and bidding them all good night
plunged with a sense of relief into the track over the down.
But that sense was only temporary: Arabella soon re-asserted her
sway in his soul. He walked as if he felt himself to be another man
from the Jude of yesterday. What were his books to him? what were
his intentions, hitherto adhered to so strictly, as to not wasting a
single minute of time day by day? "Wasting!" It depended on your
point of view to define that: he was just living for the first
time: not wasting life. It was better to love a woman than to be a
graduate, or a parson; ay, or a pope!
When he got back to the house his aunt had gone to bed, and a general
consciousness of his neglect seemed written on the face of all things
confronting him. He went upstairs without a light, and the dim
interior of his room accosted him with sad inquiry. There lay his
book open, just as he had left it, and the capital letters on the
title-page regarded him with fixed reproach in the grey starlight,
like the unclosed eyes of a dead man: