She waited a few minutes observing them, and then proceeded to join
her spouse with no very amiable sentiments. She found him seated on
a stool by the bar, talking to one of the gaily dressed maids who had
served him with spirits.
"I should think you had enough of this business at home!" Arabella
remarked gloomily. "Surely you didn't come fifty miles from your own
bar to stick in another? Come, take me round the show, as other men
do their wives! Dammy, one would think you were a young bachelor,
with nobody to look after but yourself!"
"But we agreed to meet here; and what could I do but wait?"
"Well, now we have met, come along," she returned, ready to quarrel
with the sun for shining on her. And they left the tent together,
this pot-bellied man and florid woman, in the antipathetic,
recriminatory mood of the average husband and wife of Christendom.
In the meantime the more exceptional couple and the boy still
lingered in the pavilion of flowers--an enchanted palace to their
appreciative taste--Sue's usually pale cheeks reflecting the pink of
the tinted roses at which she gazed; for the gay sights, the air, the
music, and the excitement of a day's outing with Jude had quickened
her blood and made her eyes sparkle with vivacity. She adored roses,
and what Arabella had witnessed was Sue detaining Jude almost against
his will while she learnt the names of this variety and that, and put
her face within an inch of their blooms to smell them.
"I should like to push my face quite into them--the dears!" she had
said. "But I suppose it is against the rules to touch them--isn't
it, Jude?"
"Yes, you baby," said he: and then playfully gave her a little push,
so that her nose went among the petals.
"The policeman will be down on us, and I shall say it was my
husband's fault!"
Then she looked up at him, and smiled in a way that told so much to
Arabella.
"Happy?" he murmured.
She nodded.
"Why? Because you have come to the great Wessex Agricultural
Show--or because WE have come?"
"You are always trying to make me confess to all sorts of
absurdities. Because I am improving my mind, of course, by seeing
all these steam-ploughs, and threshing-machines, and chaff-cutters,
and cows, and pigs, and sheep."
Jude was quite content with a baffle from his ever evasive companion.
But when he had forgotten that he had put the question, and because
he no longer wished for an answer, she went on: "I feel that we have
returned to Greek joyousness, and have blinded ourselves to sickness
and sorrow, and have forgotten what twenty-five centuries have taught
the race since their time, as one of your Christminster luminaries
says... There is one immediate shadow, however--only one." And
she looked at the aged child, whom, though they had taken him to
everything likely to attract a young intelligence, they had utterly
failed to interest.