Having indulged in this wild hope he went upstairs, and looked out of

the window, and pictured her through the evening journey to London,

whither she and Phillotson had gone for their holiday; their rattling

along through the damp night to their hotel, under the same sky of

ribbed cloud as that he beheld, through which the moon showed its

position rather than its shape, and one or two of the larger stars

made themselves visible as faint nebulae only. It was a new

beginning of Sue's history. He projected his mind into the future,

and saw her with children more or less in her own likeness around

her. But the consolation of regarding them as a continuation of

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her identity was denied to him, as to all such dreamers, by the

wilfulness of Nature in not allowing issue from one parent alone.

Every desired renewal of an existence is debased by being half alloy.

"If at the estrangement or death of my lost love, I could go and see

her child--hers solely--there would be comfort in it!" said Jude.

And then he again uneasily saw, as he had latterly seen with more and

more frequency, the scorn of Nature for man's finer emotions, and her

lack of interest in his aspirations.

The oppressive strength of his affection for Sue showed itself on

the morrow and following days yet more clearly. He could no longer

endure the light of the Melchester lamps; the sunshine was as drab

paint, and the blue sky as zinc. Then he received news that his old

aunt was dangerously ill at Marygreen, which intelligence almost

coincided with a letter from his former employer at Christminster,

who offered him permanent work of a good class if he would come back.

The letters were almost a relief to him. He started to visit Aunt

Drusilla, and resolved to go onward to Christminster to see what

worth there might be in the builder's offer.

Jude found his aunt even worse than the communication from the Widow

Edlin had led him to expect. There was every possibility of her

lingering on for weeks or months, though little likelihood. He wrote

to Sue informing her of the state of her aunt, and suggesting that

she might like to see her aged relative alive. He would meet her at

Alfredston Road, the following evening, Monday, on his way back from

Christminster, if she could come by the up-train which crossed his

down-train at that station. Next morning, according, he went on to

Christminster, intending to return to Alfredston soon enough to keep

the suggested appointment with Sue.

The city of learning wore an estranged look, and he had lost all

feeling for its associations. Yet as the sun made vivid lights

and shades of the mullioned architecture of the facades, and drew

patterns of the crinkled battlements on the young turf of the

quadrangles, Jude thought he had never seen the place look more

beautiful. He came to the street in which he had first beheld Sue.

The chair she had occupied when, leaning over her ecclesiastical

scrolls, a hog-hair brush in her hand, her girlish figure had

arrested the gaze of his inquiring eyes, stood precisely in its

former spot, empty. It was as if she were dead, and nobody had been

found capable of succeeding her in that artistic pursuit. Hers was

now the city phantom, while those of the intellectual and devotional

worthies who had once moved him to emotion were no longer able to

assert their presence there.




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