Arabella had been met in the same way, unfortunately, and it might not seem respectable to a dear girl like Sue.
However, it could not be helped now, and he moved towards the point a few minutes before the hour, under the glimmer of the newly lighted lamps.
The broad street was silent, and almost deserted, although it was not late.
He saw a figure on the other side, which turned out to be hers, and they both converged towards the crossmark at the same moment.
Before either had reached it she called out to him:
"I am not going to meet you just there, for the first time in my life!
Come further on."
The voice, though positive and silvery, had been tremulous.
They walked on in parallel lines, and, waiting her pleasure, Jude watched till she showed signs of closing in, when he did likewise, the place being where the carriers' carts stood in the daytime, though there was none on the spot then.
"I am sorry that I asked you to meet me, and didn't call," began Jude with the bashfulness of a lover.
"But I thought it would save time if we were going to walk."
"Oh—I don't mind that," she said with the freedom of a friend.
"I have really no place to ask anybody in to.
What I meant was that the place you chose was so horrid—I suppose I ought not to say horrid—I mean gloomy and inauspicious in its associations… But isn't it funny to begin like this, when I don't know you yet?"
She looked him up and down curiously, though Jude did not look much at her.
"You seem to know me more than I know you," she added.
"Yes—I have seen you now and then."
"And you knew who I was, and didn't speak?
And now I am going away!"
"Yes. That's unfortunate.
I have hardly any other friend.
I have, indeed, one very old friend here somewhere, but I don't quite like to call on him just yet.
I wonder if you know anything of him—Mr. Phillotson?
A parson somewhere about the county I think he is."
"No—I only know of one Mr. Phillotson. He lives a little way out in the country, at Lumsdon.
He's a village schoolmaster."
"Ah!
I wonder if he's the same.
Surely it is impossible!
Only a schoolmaster still!
Do you know his Christian name—is it Richard?"
"Yes—it is; I've directed books to him, though I've never seen him."
"Then he couldn't do it!"
Jude's countenance fell, for how could he succeed in an enterprise wherein the great Phillotson had failed?
He would have had a day of despair if the news had not arrived during his sweet Sue's presence, but even at this moment he had visions of how Phillotson's failure in the grand university scheme would depress him when she had gone.
"As we are going to take a walk, suppose we go and call upon him?" said Jude suddenly.
"It is not late."
She agreed, and they went along up a hill, and through some prettily wooded country.
Presently the embattled tower and square turret of the church rose into the sky, and then the school-house.
They inquired of a person in the street if Mr. Phillotson was likely to be at home, and were informed that he was always at home.
A knock brought him to the school-house door, with a candle in his hand and a look of inquiry on his face, which had grown thin and careworn since Jude last set eyes on him.
That after all these years the meeting with Mr. Phillotson should be of this homely complexion destroyed at one stroke the halo which had surrounded the school-master's figure in Jude's imagination ever since their parting.
It created in him at the same time a sympathy with Phillotson as an obviously much chastened and disappointed man.
Jude told him his name, and said he had come to see him as an old friend who had been kind to him in his youthful days.
"I don't remember you in the least," said the school-master thoughtfully.
"You were one of my pupils, you say?
Yes, no doubt; but they number so many thousands by this time of my life, and have naturally changed so much, that I remember very few except the quite recent ones."
"It was out at Marygreen," said Jude, wishing he had not come.
"Yes. I was there a short time.
And is this an old pupil, too?"