Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/303

 mind me of Laon and Cynthia. Also of Paul and Virginia a little. The more I reflect, the more entirely I am on their side!"

"But if people did as you want to do, there'd be a general domestic disintegration. The family would no longer be the social unit."

"Yes, I am all abroad, I suppose," said Phillotson, sadly. "I was never a very bright reasoner, you remember.... And yet, I don't see why the woman and the children should not be the unit without the man."

"By the Lord Harry!--Matriarchy! .. Does she say all this too?"

"Oh no. She little thinks I have out-Sued Sue in this—all in the last twelve hours!"

"It will upset all received opinion hereabout. Good God! what will Shaston say?"

"I don't say that it won't. I don't know—I don't know!... As I say, I am only a feeler, not a reasoner."

"Now," said Gillingham, "let us take it quietly, and have something to drink over it." He went under the stairs and produced a bottle of cider-wine, of which they drank a rummer each. "I think you are rafted, and not yourself," he continued. "Do go back and make up your mind to put up with a few whims. But keep her. I hear on all sides that she's a charming young thing."

"Ah, yes! That's the bitterness of it! Well, I won't stay. I have a long walk before me."

Gillingham accompanied his friend a mile on his way, and at parting expressed his hope that this consultation, singular as its subject was, would be the renewal of their old comradeship. "Stick to her!" were his last words, flung into the darkness after Phillotson; from which his friend answered, "Aye, aye!"

But when Phillotson was alone under the clouds of night, and no sound was audible but that of the purling tributaries of the Stour, he said, "So, Gillingham, my friend, you had no stronger arguments against it than those!"