Besides, you've enough of your own, surely?"
"Yes, enough as country notions go.
But in town the men expect more, and when I was barmaid at Aldbrickham—"
"Barmaid at Aldbrickham?"
"Well, not exactly barmaid—I used to draw the drink at a public-house there—just for a little time; that was all.
Some people put me up to getting this, and I bought it just for a fancy.
The more you have the better in Aldbrickham, which is a finer town than all your Christminsters.
Every lady of position wears false hair—the barber's assistant told me so."
Jude thought with a feeling of sickness that though this might be true to some extent, for all that he knew, many unsophisticated girls would and did go to towns and remain there for years without losing their simplicity of life and embellishments.
Others, alas, had an instinct towards artificiality in their very blood, and became adepts in counterfeiting at the first glimpse of it.
However, perhaps there was no great sin in a woman adding to her hair, and he resolved to think no more of it.
A new-made wife can usually manage to excite interest for a few weeks, even though the prospects of the household ways and means are cloudy.
There is a certain piquancy about her situation, and her manner to her acquaintance at the sense of it, which carries off the gloom of facts, and renders even the humblest bride independent awhile of the real.
Mrs. Jude Fawley was walking in the streets of Alfredston one market-day with this quality in her carriage when she met Anny her former friend, whom she had not seen since the wedding.
As usual they laughed before talking; the world seemed funny to them without saying it.
"So it turned out a good plan, you see!" remarked the girl to the wife.
"I knew it would with such as him.
He's a dear good fellow, and you ought to be proud of un."
"I am," said Mrs. Fawley quietly.
"And when do you expect?"
"Ssh!
Not at all."
"What!"
"I was mistaken."
"Oh, Arabella, Arabella; you be a deep one!
Mistaken! well, that's clever—it's a real stroke of genius!
It is a thing I never thought o', wi' all my experience!
I never thought beyond bringing about the real thing—not that one could sham it!"
"Don't you be too quick to cry sham!
'Twasn't sham.
I didn't know."
"My word—won't he be in a taking!
He'll give it to 'ee o' Saturday nights!
Whatever it was, he'll say it was a trick—a double one, by the Lord!"
"I'll own to the first, but not to the second… Pooh—he won't care!
He'll be glad I was wrong in what I said.
He'll shake down, bless 'ee—men always do.
What can 'em do otherwise?
Married is married."
Nevertheless it was with a little uneasiness that Arabella approached the time when in the natural course of things she would have to reveal that the alarm she had raised had been without foundation.
The occasion was one evening at bedtime, and they were in their chamber in the lonely cottage by the wayside to which Jude walked home from his work every day.
He had worked hard the whole twelve hours, and had retired to rest before his wife.
When she came into the room he was between sleeping and waking, and was barely conscious of her undressing before the little looking-glass as he lay.
One action of hers, however, brought him to full cognition.
Her face being reflected towards him as she sat, he could perceive that she was amusing herself by artificially producing in each cheek the dimple before alluded to, a curious accomplishment of which she was mistress, effecting it by a momentary suction.
It seemed to him for the first time that the dimples were far oftener absent from her face during his intercourse with her nowadays than they had been in the earlier weeks of their acquaintance.
"Don't do that, Arabella!" he said suddenly.
"There is no harm in it, but—I don't like to see you."
She turned and laughed.
"Lord, I didn't know you were awake!" she said.