As they went their names were called by knowing informants,and when they reached the old round theatre of Wren a cheer rose high.
'Let's go that way!'cried Jude,and though it now rained steadily he seemed not to know it,and took them round to the theatre.Here they stood upon the straw that was laid to drown the discordant noise of wheels,where the quaint and frost-eaten stone busts encircling the building looked with pallid grimness on the proceedings,and in particular at the bedraggled Jude,Sue,and their children,as at ludicrous persons who had no business there.
'I wish I could get in!'he said to her fervidly.'Listen -Imay catch a few words of the Latin speech by staying here;the windows are open.'
However,beyond the peals of the organ,and the shouts and hurrahs between each piece of oratory,Jude's standing in the wet did not bring much Latin to his intelligence more than,now and then,a sonorous word in um or ibus .
'Well -I'm an outsider to the end of my days!'he sighed after a while.'Now I'll go,my patient Sue.How good of you to wait in the rain all this time -to gratify my infatuation!I'll never care any more about the infernal cursed place,upon my soul I won't!But what made you tremble so when we were at the barrier?And how pale you are,Sue!'
'I saw Richard amongst the people on the other side.'
'Ah -did you!'
'He is evidently come up to Jerusalem to see the festival like the rest of us:and on that account is probably living not so very far away.He had the same hankering for the university that you had,in a milder form.I don't think he saw me,though he must have heard you speaking to the crowd.But he seemed not to notice.'
'Well -suppose he did.Your mind is free from worries about him now,my Sue?'
'Yes,I suppose so.But I am weak.Although I know it is all right with our plans,I felt a curious dread of him;an awe,or terror,of conventions I don't believe in.It comes over me at times like a sort of creeping paralysis,and makes me so sad!'
'You are getting tired,Sue.Oh -I forgot,darling!Yes,we'll go on at once.'
They started in quest of the lodging,and at last found something that seemed to promise well,in Mildew Lane -a spot which to Jude was irresistible -though to Sue it was not so fascinating -a narrow lane close to the back of a college,but having no communication with it.The little houses were darkened to gloom by the high collegiate buildings,within which life was so far removed from that of the people in the lane as if it had been on opposite sides of the globe;yet only a thickness of wall divided them.Two or three of the houses had notices of rooms to let,and the newcomers knocked at the door of one,which a woman opened.
'Ah -listen!'said Jude suddenly,instead of addressing her.
'What?'
'Why the bells -what church can that be?The tones are familiar.'
Another peal of bells had begun to sound out at some distance off.
'I don't know!'said the landlady tartly.'Did you knock to ask that?'
'No;for lodgings,'said Jude,coming to himself.
The householder scrutinized Sue's figure a moment.'We haven't any to let,'said she,shutting the door.
Jude looked discomfited,and the boy distressed.'Now,Jude,'
said Sue,'let me try.You don't know the way.'
They found a second place hard by;but here the occupier,observing not only Sue,but the boy and the small children,said civilly,'I am sorry to say we don't let where there are children';and also closed the door.
The small child squared its mouth and cried silently,with an instinct that trouble loomed.The boy sighed.'I don't like Christminster!'
he said.'Are the great old houses gaols?'
'No;colleges,'said Jude;'which perhaps you'll study in some day.'
'I'd rather not!'the boy rejoined.
'Now we'll try again,'said Sue.'I'll pull my cloak more round me....Leaving Kennetbridge for this place is like coming from Caiaphas to Pilate!...How do I look now,dear?'
'Nobody would notice it now,'said Jude.
There was one other house,and they tried a third time.The woman here was more amiable;but she had little room to spare,and could only agree to take in Sue and the children if her husband could go elsewhere.
This arrangement they perforce adopted,in the stress from delaying their search till so late.They came to terms with her,though her price was rather high for their pockets.But they could not afford to be critical till Jude had time to get a more permanent abode;and in this house Sue took possession of a back room on the second floor with an inner closet-room for the children.Jude stayed and had a cup of tea;and was pleased to find that the window commanded the back of another of the colleges.Kissing all four he went to get a few necessaries and look for lodgings for himself.
When he was gone the landlady came up to talk a little with Sue,and gather something of the circumstances of the family she had taken in.
Sue had not the art of prevarication,and,after admitting several facts as to their late difficulties and wanderings,she was startled by the landlady saying suddenly:
'Are you really a married woman?'
Sue hesitated;and then impulsively told the woman that her husband and herself had each been unhappy in their first marriages,after which,terrified at the thought of a second irrevocable union,and lest the conditions of the contract should kill their love,yet wishing to be together,they had literally not found the courage to repeat it,though they had attempted it two or three times.Therefore,though in her own sense of the words she was a married woman,in the landlady's sense she was not.
The housewife looked embarrassed,and went down-stairs.Sue sat by the window in a reverie,watching the rain.Her quiet was broken by the noise of someone entering the house,and then the voices of a man and woman in conversation in the passage below.The land-lady's husband had arrived,and she was explaining to him the incoming of the lodgers during his absence.
His voice rose in sudden anger.'Now who wants such a woman here?
