So to the cottage he took her on the evening of the marriage, giving
up his old room at his aunt's--where so much of the hard labour at
Greek and Latin had been carried on.
A little chill overspread him at her first unrobing. A long tail of
hair, which Arabella wore twisted up in an enormous knob at the back
of her head, was deliberately unfastened, stroked out, and hung upon
the looking-glass which he had bought her.
"What--it wasn't your own?" he said, with a sudden distaste for her.
"Oh no--it never is nowadays with the better class."
"Nonsense! Perhaps not in towns. But in the country it is supposed
to be different. 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."