An old man like him!"
"Oh, come, Sue; he's not so very old. And I know what I saw him doing—"
"Not kissing me—that I'm certain!"
"No.
But putting his arm round your waist."
"Ah—I remember.
But I didn't know he was going to."
"You are wriggling out if it, Sue, and it isn't quite kind!"
Her ever-sensitive lip began to quiver, and her eye to blink, at something this reproof was deciding her to say.
"I know you'll be angry if I tell you everything, and that's why I don't want to!"
"Very well, then, dear," he said soothingly.
"I have no real right to ask you, and I don't wish to know."
"I shall tell you!" said she, with the perverseness that was part of her.
"This is what I have done: I have promised—I have promised—that I will marry him when I come out of the training-school two years hence, and have got my certificate; his plan being that we shall then take a large double school in a great town—he the boys' and I the girls'—as married school-teachers often do, and make a good income between us."
"Oh, Sue! … But of course it is right—you couldn't have done better!"
He glanced at her and their eyes met, the reproach in his own belying his words.
Then he drew his hand quite away from hers, and turned his face in estrangement from her to the window.
Sue regarded him passively without moving.
"I knew you would be angry!" she said with an air of no emotion whatever.
"Very well—I am wrong, I suppose!
I ought not to have let you come to see me!
We had better not meet again; and we'll only correspond at long intervals, on purely business matters!"
This was just the one thing he would not be able to bear, as she probably knew, and it brought him round at once.
"Oh yes, we will," he said quickly.
"Your being engaged can make no difference to me whatever.
I have a perfect right to see you when I want to; and I shall!"
"Then don't let us talk of it any more.
It is quite spoiling our evening together.
What does it matter about what one is going to do two years hence!"
She was something of a riddle to him, and he let the subject drift away.
"Shall we go and sit in the cathedral?" he asked, when their meal was finished.
"Cathedral?
Yes. Though I think I'd rather sit in the railway station," she answered, a remnant of vexation still in her voice.
"That's the centre of the town life now.
The cathedral has had its day!"
"How modern you are!"
"So would you be if you had lived so much in the Middle Ages as I have done these last few years!
The cathedral was a very good place four or five centuries ago; but it is played out now… I am not modern, either.
I am more ancient than mediævalism, if you only knew."
Jude looked distressed.
"There—I won't say any more of that!" she cried.
"Only you don't know how bad I am, from your point of view, or you wouldn't think so much of me, or care whether I was engaged or not.
Now there's just time for us to walk round the Close, then I must go in, or I shall be locked out for the night."
He took her to the gate and they parted.
Jude had a conviction that his unhappy visit to her on that sad night had precipitated this marriage engagement, and it did anything but add to his happiness.
Her reproach had taken that shape, then, and not the shape of words.
However, next day he set about seeking employment, which it was not so easy to get as at Christminster, there being, as a rule, less stone-cutting in progress in this quiet city, and hands being mostly permanent.
But he edged himself in by degrees.
His first work was some carving at the cemetery on the hill; and ultimately he became engaged on the labour he most desired—the cathedral repairs, which were very extensive, the whole interior stonework having been overhauled, to be largely replaced by new.
It might be a labour of years to get it all done, and he had confidence enough in his own skill with the mallet and chisel to feel that it would be a matter of choice with himself how long he would stay.