I've everything to gain by it—my own death not being the least part.
So don't think there's no meaning in what I say!"
"What do you want me to do?" gasped Arabella.
"Promise never to speak of her."
"Very well.
I do."
"I take your word," he said scornfully as he loosened her.
"But what it is worth I can't say."
"You couldn't kill the pig, but you could kill me!"
"Ah—there you have me!
No—I couldn't kill you—even in a passion.
Taunt away!"
He then began coughing very much, and she estimated his life with an appraiser's eye as he sank back ghastly pale.
"I'll send for her," Arabella murmured, "if you'll agree to my being in the room with you all the time she's here."
The softer side of his nature, the desire to see Sue, made him unable to resist the offer even now, provoked as he had been; and he replied breathlessly: "Yes, I agree.
Only send for her!"
In the evening he inquired if she had written.
"Yes," she said;
"I wrote a note telling her you were ill, and asking her to come to-morrow or the day after.
I haven't posted it yet."
The next day Jude wondered if she really did post it, but would not ask her; and foolish Hope, that lives on a drop and a crumb, made him restless with expectation.
He knew the times of the possible trains, and listened on each occasion for sounds of her.
She did not come; but Jude would not address Arabella again thereon.
He hoped and expected all the next day; but no Sue appeared; neither was there any note of reply.
Then Jude decided in the privacy of his mind that Arabella had never posted hers, although she had written it.
There was something in her manner which told it.
His physical weakness was such that he shed tears at the disappointment when she was not there to see.
His suspicions were, in fact, well founded.
Arabella, like some other nurses, thought that your duty towards your invalid was to pacify him by any means short of really acting upon his fancies.
He never said another word to her about his wish or his conjecture.
A silent, undiscerned resolve grew up in him, which gave him, if not strength, stability and calm.
One midday when, after an absence of two hours, she came into the room, she beheld the chair empty.
Down she flopped on the bed, and sitting, meditated.
"Now where the devil is my man gone to!" she said.
A driving rain from the north-east had been falling with more or less intermission all the morning, and looking from the window at the dripping spouts it seemed impossible to believe that any sick man would have ventured out to almost certain death.
Yet a conviction possessed Arabella that he had gone out, and it became a certainty when she had searched the house.
"If he's such a fool, let him be!" she said.
"I can do no more."
Jude was at that moment in a railway train that was drawing near to Alfredston, oddly swathed, pale as a monumental figure in alabaster, and much stared at by other passengers.
An hour later his thin form, in the long great-coat and blanket he had come with, but without an umbrella, could have been seen walking along the five-mile road to Marygreen.
On his face showed the determined purpose that alone sustained him, but to which has weakness afforded a sorry foundation.
By the up-hill walk he was quite blown, but he pressed on; and at half-past three o'clock stood by the familiar well at Marygreen.
The rain was keeping everybody indoors; Jude crossed the green to the church without observation, and found the building open.
Here he stood, looking forth at the school, whence he could hear the usual sing-song tones of the little voices that had not learnt Creation's groan.
He waited till a small boy came from the school—one evidently allowed out before hours for some reason or other.
Jude held up his hand, and the child came.
"Please call at the schoolhouse and ask Mrs. Phillotson if she will be kind enough to come to the church for a few minutes."
The child departed, and Jude heard him knock at the door of the dwelling.
He himself went further into the church.
Everything was new, except a few pieces of carving preserved from the wrecked old fabric, now fixed against the new walls.