II
Sue sat looking at the bare floor of the room, the house being littlemore than an old intramural cottage, and then she regarded the sceneoutside the uncurtained window. At some distance opposite, the outerwalls of Sarcophagus College--silent, black, and windowless--threwtheir four centuries of gloom, bigotry, and decay into the littleroom she occupied, shutting out the moonlight by night and the sun byday. The outlines of Rubric College also were discernible beyond theother, and the tower of a third farther off still. She thought ofthe strange operation of a simple-minded man's ruling passion, thatit should have led Jude, who loved her and the children so tenderly,to place them here in this depressing purlieu, because he was stillhaunted by his dream. Even now he did not distinctly hear thefreezing negative that those scholared walls had echoed to hisdesire.
The failure to find another lodging, and the lack of room in thishouse for his father, had made a deep impression on the boy--abrooding undemonstrative horror seemed to have seized him. Thesilence was broken by his saying: "Mother, WHAT shall we doto-morrow!"
"I don't know!" said Sue despondently. "I am afraid this willtrouble your father."
"I wish Father was quite well, and there had been room for him!Then it wouldn't matter so much! Poor Father!"
"It wouldn't!"
"Can I do anything?"
"No! All is trouble, adversity, and suffering!"
"Father went away to give us children room, didn't he?"
"Partly."
"It would be better to be out o' the world than in it, wouldn't it?"
"It would almost, dear."
"'Tis because of us children, too, isn't it, that you can't get agood lodging?"
"Well--people do object to children sometimes."
"Then if children make so much trouble, why do people have 'em?"
"Oh--because it is a law of nature."
"But we don't ask to be born?"
"No indeed."
"And what makes it worse with me is that you are not my real mother,and you needn't have had me unless you liked. I oughtn't to havecome to 'ee--that's the real truth! I troubled 'em in Australia,and I trouble folk here. I wish I hadn't been born!"
"You couldn't help it, my dear."
"I think that whenever children be born that are not wanted theyshould be killed directly, before their souls come to 'em, and notallowed to grow big and walk about!"
Sue did not reply. She was doubtfully pondering how to treat thistoo reflective child.
She at last concluded that, so far as circumstances permitted, shewould be honest and candid with one who entered into her difficultieslike an aged friend.
"There is going to be another in our family soon," she hesitatinglyremarked.
"How?"
"There is going to be another baby."
"What!" The boy jumped up wildly. "Oh God, Mother, you've nevera-sent for another; and such trouble with what you've got!"
"Yes, I have, I am sorry to say!" murmured Sue, her eyes glisteningwith suspended tears.
The boy burst out weeping. "Oh you don't care, you don't care!" hecried in bitter reproach. "How EVER could you, Mother, be so wickedand cruel as this, when you needn't have done it till we was betteroff, and Father well! To bring us all into MORE trouble! No roomfor us, and Father a-forced to go away, and we turned out to-morrow;and yet you be going to have another of us soon! ... 'Tis done o'purpose!--'tis--'tis!" He walked up and down sobbing.
"Y-you must forgive me, little Jude!" she pleaded, her bosom heavingnow as much as the boy's. "I can't explain--I will when you areolder. It does seem--as if I had done it on purpose, now we are inthese difficulties! I can't explain, dear! But it--is not quite onpurpose--I can't help it!"
"Yes it is--it must be! For nobody would interfere with us, likethat, unless you agreed! I won't forgive you, ever, ever! I'llnever believe you care for me, or Father, or any of us any more!"
He got up, and went away into the closet adjoining her room, in whicha bed had been spread on the floor. There she heard him say: "If wechildren was gone there'd be no trouble at all!"
"Don't think that, dear," she cried, rather peremptorily. "But go tosleep!"
The following morning she awoke at a little past six, and decidedto get up and run across before breakfast to the inn which Jude hadinformed her to be his quarters, to tell him what had happened beforehe went out. She arose softly, to avoid disturbing the children,who, as she knew, must be fatigued by their exertions of yesterday.
She found Jude at breakfast in the obscure tavern he had chosen as acounterpoise to the expense of her lodging: and she explained to himher homelessness. He had been so anxious about her all night, hesaid. Somehow, now it was morning, the request to leave the lodgingsdid not seem such a depressing incident as it had seemed the nightbefore, nor did even her failure to find another place affect her sodeeply as at first. Jude agreed with her that it would not be worthwhile to insist upon her right to stay a week, but to take immediatesteps for removal.
"You must all come to this inn for a day or two," he said. "It isa rough place, and it will not be so nice for the children, but weshall have more time to look round. There are plenty of lodgings inthe suburbs--in my old quarter of Beersheba. Have breakfast with menow you are here, my bird. You are sure you are well? There willbe plenty of time to get back and prepare the children's meal beforethey wake. In fact, I'll go with you."
She joined Jude in a hasty meal, and in a quarter of an hour theystarted together, resolving to clear out from Sue's too respectablelodging immediately. On reaching the place and going upstairs shefound that all was quiet in the children's room, and called to thelandlady in timorous tones to please bring up the tea-kettle andsomething for their breakfast. This was perfunctorily done, andproducing a couple of eggs which she had brought with her she putthem into the boiling kettle, and summoned Jude to watch them for theyoungsters, while she went to call them, it being now about half-pasteight o'clock.
Jude stood bending over the kettle, with his watch in his hand,timing the eggs, so that his back was turned to the little innerchamber where the children lay. A shriek from Sue suddenly causedhim to start round. He saw that the door of the room, or rathercloset--which had seemed to go heavily upon its hinges as she pushedit back--was open, and that Sue had sunk to the floor just within it.Hastening forward to pick her up he turned his eyes to the littlebed spread on the boards; no children were there. He looked inbewilderment round the room. At the back of the door were fixedtwo hooks for hanging garments, and from these the forms of the twoyoungest children were suspended, by a piece of box-cord round eachof their necks, while from a nail a few yards off the body of littleJude was hanging in a similar manner. An overturned chair was nearthe elder boy, and his glazed eyes were slanted into the room; butthose of the girl and the baby boy were closed.
Half-paralyzed by the strange and consummate horror of the scene, helet Sue lie, cut the cords with his pocket-knife and threw the threechildren on the bed; but the feel of their bodies in the momentaryhandling seemed to say that they were dead. He caught up Sue, whowas in fainting fits, and put her on the bed in the other room, afterwhich he breathlessly summoned the landlady and ran out for a doctor.
When he got back Sue had come to herself, and the two helplesswomen, bending over the children in wild efforts to restore them,and the triplet of little corpses, formed a sight which overthrewhis self-command. The nearest surgeon came in, but, as Jude hadinferred, his presence was superfluous. The children were pastsaving, for though their bodies were still barely cold it wasconjectured that they had been hanging more than an hour. Theprobability held by the parents later on, when they were able toreason on the case, was that the elder boy, on waking, looked intothe outer room for Sue, and, finding her absent, was thrown into afit of aggravated despondency that the events and information of theevening before had induced in his morbid temperament. Moreover apiece of paper was found upon the floor, on which was w
ritten, inthe boy's hand, with the bit of lead pencil that he carried:
_Done because we are too menny._
At sight of this Sue's nerves utterly gave way, an awful convictionthat her discourse with the boy had been the main cause of thetragedy, throwing her into a convulsive agony which knew noabatement. They carried her away against her wish to a room on thelower floor; and there she lay, her slight figure shaken with hergasps, and her eyes staring at the ceiling, the woman of the housevainly trying to soothe her.
They could hear from this chamber the people moving about above, andshe implored to be allowed to go back, and was only kept from doingso by the assurance that, if there were any hope, her presence mightdo harm, and the reminder that it was necessary to take care ofherself lest she should endanger a coming life. Her inquiries wereincessant, and at last Jude came down and told her there was no hope.As soon as she could speak she informed him what she had said to theboy, and how she thought herself the cause of this.
"No," said Jude. "It was in his nature to do it. The Doctor saysthere are such boys springing up amongst us--boys of a sort unknownin the last generation--the outcome of new views of life. They seemto see all its terrors before they are old enough to have stayingpower to resist them. He says it is the beginning of the cominguniversal wish not to live. He's an advanced man, the Doctor: buthe can give no consolation to--"
Jude had kept back his own grief on account of her; but he nowbroke down; and this stimulated Sue to efforts of sympathy which insome degree distracted her from her poignant self-reproach. Wheneverybody was gone, she was allowed to see the children.
The boy's face expressed the whole tale of their situation. Onthat little shape had converged all the inauspiciousness and shadowwhich had darkened the first union of Jude, and all the accidents,mistakes, fears, errors of the last. He was their nodal point, theirfocus, their expression in a single term. For the rashness of thoseparents he had groaned, for their ill assortment he had quaked, andfor the misfortunes of these he had died.
When the house was silent, and they could do nothing but await thecoroner's inquest, a subdued, large, low voice spread into the air ofthe room from behind the heavy walls at the back.
"What is it?" said Sue, her spasmodic breathing suspended.
"The organ of the college chapel. The organist practising I suppose.It's the anthem from the seventy-third Psalm; 'Truly God is lovingunto Israel.'"
She sobbed again. "Oh, oh my babies! They had done no harm! Whyshould they have been taken away, and not I!"
There was another stillness--broken at last by two persons inconversation somewhere without.
"They are talking about us, no doubt!" moaned Sue. "'We are made aspectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men!'"
Jude listened--"No--they are not talking of us," he said. "Theyare two clergymen of different views, arguing about the eastwardposition. Good God--the eastward position, and all creationgroaning!"
Then another silence, till she was seized with another uncontrollablefit of grief. "There is something external to us which says, 'Youshan't!' First it said, 'You shan't learn!' Then it said, 'Youshan't labour!' Now it says, 'You shan't love!'"
He tried to soothe her by saying, "That's bitter of you, darling."
"But it's true!"
Thus they waited, and she went back again to her room. The baby'sfrock, shoes, and socks, which had been lying on a chair at the timeof his death, she would not now have removed, though Jude would fainhave got them out of her sight. But whenever he touched them sheimplored him to let them lie, and burst out almost savagely at thewoman of the house when she also attempted to put them away.
Jude dreaded her dull apathetic silences almost more than herparoxysms. "Why don't you speak to me, Jude?" she cried out, afterone of these. "Don't turn away from me! I can't BEAR the lonelinessof being out of your looks!"
"There, dear; here I am," he said, putting his face close to hers.
"Yes... Oh, my comrade, our perfect union--our two-in-oneness--isnow stained with blood!"
"Shadowed by death--that's all."
"Ah; but it was I who incited him really, though I didn't know I wasdoing it! I talked to the child as one should only talk to people ofmature age. I said the world was against us, that it was better tobe out of life than in it at this price; and he took it literally.And I told him I was going to have another child. It upset him. Ohhow bitterly he upbraided me!"
"Why did you do it, Sue?"
"I can't tell. It was that I wanted to be truthful. I couldn'tbear deceiving him as to the facts of life. And yet I wasn'ttruthful, for with a false delicacy I told him too obscurely.--Whywas I half-wiser than my fellow-women? And not entirely wiser! Whydidn't I tell him pleasant untruths, instead of half-realities? Itwas my want of self-control, so that I could neither conceal thingsnor reveal them!"
"Your plan might have been a good one for the majority of cases; onlyin our peculiar case it chanced to work badly perhaps. He must haveknown sooner or later."
"And I was just making my baby darling a new frock; and now I shallnever see him in it, and never talk to him any more! ... My eyes areso swollen that I can scarcely see; and yet little more than a yearago I called myself happy! We went about loving each other toomuch--indulging ourselves to utter selfishness with each other! Wesaid--do you remember?--that we would make a virtue of joy. I saidit was Nature's intention, Nature's law and _raison d'etre_ that weshould be joyful in what instincts she afforded us--instincts whichcivilization had taken upon itself to thwart. What dreadful things Isaid! And now Fate has given us this stab in the back for being suchfools as to take Nature at her word!"
She sank into a quiet contemplation, till she said, "It is best,perhaps, that they should be gone.--Yes--I see it is! Better thatthey should be plucked fresh than stay to wither away miserably!"
"Yes," replied Jude. "Some say that the elders should rejoice whentheir children die in infancy."
"But they don't know! ... Oh my babies, my babies, could you bealive now! You may say the boy wished to be out of life, or hewouldn't have done it. It was not unreasonable for him to die: itwas part of his incurably sad nature, poor little fellow! But thenthe others--my OWN children and yours!"
Again Sue looked at the hanging little frock and at the socks andshoes; and her figure quivered like a string. "I am a pitiablecreature," she said, "good neither for earth nor heaven any more!I am driven out of my mind by things! What ought to be done?"She stared at Jude, and tightly held his hand.
"Nothing can be done," he replied. "Things are as they are, and willbe brought to their destined issue."
She paused. "Yes! Who said that?" she asked heavily.
"It comes in the chorus of the _Agamemnon_. It has been in my mindcontinually since this happened."
"My poor Jude--how you've missed everything!--you more than I, forI did get you! To think you should know that by your unassistedreading, and yet be in poverty and despair!"
After such momentary diversions her grief would return in a wave.
The jury duly came and viewed the bodies, the inquest was held; andnext arrived the melancholy morning of the funeral. Accounts inthe newspapers had brought to the spot curious idlers, who stoodapparently counting the window-panes and the stones of the walls.Doubt of the real relations of the couple added zest to theircuriosity. Sue had declared that she would follow the two littleones to the grave, but at the last moment she gave way, and thecoffins were quietly carried out of the house while she was lyingdown. Jude got into the vehicle, and it drove away, much to therelief of the landlord, who now had only Sue and her luggageremaining on his hands, which he hoped to be also clear of later onin the day, and so to have freed his house from the exasperatingnotoriety it had acquired during the week through his wife's unluckyadmission of these strangers. In the afternoon he privatelyconsulted with the owner of the house, and they agreed that if anyobjection to it arose from the tragedy which ha
d occurred there theywould try to get its number changed.
When Jude had seen the two little boxes--one containing little Jude,and the other the two smallest--deposited in the earth he hastenedback to Sue, who was still in her room, and he therefore did notdisturb her just then. Feeling anxious, however, he went againabout four o'clock. The woman thought she was still lying down, butreturned to him to say that she was not in her bedroom after all.Her hat and jacket, too, were missing: she had gone out. Judehurried off to the public house where he was sleeping. She had notbeen there. Then bethinking himself of possibilities he went alongthe road to the cemetery, which he entered, and crossed to where theinterments had recently taken place. The idlers who had followed tothe spot by reason of the tragedy were all gone now. A man with ashovel in his hands was attempting to earth in the common grave ofthe three children, but his arm was held back by an expostulatingwoman who stood in the half-filled hole. It was Sue, whose colouredclothing, which she had never thought of changing for the mourning hehad bought, suggested to the eye a deeper grief than the conventionalgarb of bereavement could express.
"He's filling them in, and he shan't till I've seen my little onesagain!" she cried wildly when she saw Jude. "I want to see them oncemore. Oh Jude--please Jude--I want to see them! I didn't know youwould let them be taken away while I was asleep! You said perhaps Ishould see them once more before they were screwed down; and then youdidn't, but took them away! Oh Jude, you are cruel to me too!"
"She's been wanting me to dig out the grave again, and let her getto the coffins," said the man with the spade. "She ought to be tookhome, by the look o' her. She is hardly responsible, poor thing,seemingly. Can't dig 'em up again now, ma'am. Do ye go home withyour husband, and take it quiet, and thank God that there'll beanother soon to swage yer grief."
But Sue kept asking piteously: "Can't I see them once more--justonce! Can't I? Only just one little minute, Jude? It would nottake long! And I should be so glad, Jude! I will be so good, andnot disobey you ever any more, Jude, if you will let me? I would gohome quietly afterwards, and not want to see them any more! Can't I?Why can't I?"
Thus she went on. Jude was thrown into such acute sorrow that healmost felt he would try to get the man to accede. But it coulddo no good, and might make her still worse; and he saw that itwas imperative to get her home at once. So he coaxed her, andwhispered tenderly, and put his arm round her to support her; tillshe helplessly gave in, and was induced to leave the cemetery.
He wished to obtain a fly to take her back in, but economy being soimperative she deprecated his doing so, and they walked along slowly,Jude in black crape, she in brown and red clothing. They were tohave gone to a new lodging that afternoon, but Jude saw that it wasnot practicable, and in course of time they entered the now hatedhouse. Sue was at once got to bed, and the Doctor sent for.
Jude waited all the evening downstairs. At a very late hour theintelligence was brought to him that a child had been prematurelyborn, and that it, like the others, was a corpse.