"You seem all in a brood, old man.
I'm sorry for you."
"I am all in a brood."
"It is about her, I know.
It's no business of mine, but I could find out all about the wedding—if it really did take place—if you wanted to know."
"How could you?"
"I wanted to go to Alfredston to get a few things I left there.
And I could see Anny, who'll be sure to have heard all about it, as she has friends at Marygreen."
Jude could not bear to acquiesce in this proposal; but his suspense pitted itself against his discretion, and won in the struggle.
"You can ask about it if you like," he said.
"I've not heard a sound from there.
It must have been very private, if—they have married."
"I am afraid I haven't enough cash to take me there and back, or I should have gone before.
I must wait till I have earned some."
"Oh—I can pay the journey for you," he said impatiently.
And thus his suspense as to Sue's welfare, and the possible marriage, moved him to dispatch for intelligence the last emissary he would have thought of choosing deliberately.
Arabella went, Jude requesting her to be home not later than by the seven o'clock train.
When she had gone he said: "Why should I have charged her to be back by a particular time! She's nothing to me—nor the other neither!"
But having finished work he could not help going to the station to meet Arabella, dragged thither by feverish haste to get the news she might bring, and know the worst.
Arabella had made dimples most successfully all the way home, and when she stepped out of the railway carriage she smiled.
He merely said "Well?" with the very reverse of a smile.
"They are married."
"Yes—of course they are!" he returned.
She observed, however, the hard strain upon his lip as he spoke.
"Anny says she has heard from Belinda, her relation out at Marygreen, that it was very sad, and curious!"
"How do you mean sad?
She wanted to marry him again, didn't she?
And he her!"
"Yes—that was it.
She wanted to in one sense, but not in the other.
Mrs. Edlin was much upset by it all, and spoke out her mind at Phillotson.
But Sue was that excited about it that she burnt her best embroidery that she'd worn with you, to blot you out entirely.
Well—if a woman feels like it, she ought to do it.
I commend her for it, though others don't."
Arabella sighed.
"She felt he was her only husband, and that she belonged to nobody else in the sight of God A'mighty while he lived.
Perhaps another woman feels the same about herself, too!"
Arabella sighed again.
"I don't want any cant!" exclaimed Jude.
"It isn't cant," said Arabella.
"I feel exactly the same as she!"
He closed that issue by remarking abruptly: "Well—now I know all I wanted to know.
Many thanks for your information.
I am not going back to my lodgings just yet."
And he left her straightway.
In his misery and depression Jude walked to well-nigh every spot in the city that he had visited with Sue; thence he did not know whither, and then thought of going home to his usual evening meal.
But having all the vices of his virtues, and some to spare, he turned into a public house, for the first time during many months. Among the possible consequences of her marriage Sue had not dwelt on this.
Arabella, meanwhile, had gone back.
The evening passed, and Jude did not return.
At half-past nine Arabella herself went out, first proceeding to an outlying district near the river where her father lived, and had opened a small and precarious pork-shop lately.