Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/433

 When the house was silent, and they could do nothing but await the coroner's inquest, a subdued, large, low voice spread into the air of the 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 loving unto Israel.

She sobbed again. "Oh, my babies! They had done no harm! Why should they have been taken away, and not I!"

There was another stillness—broken at last by two persons in conversation somewhere without.

"They are talking about us, no doubt!" moaned Sue. We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men!

Jude listened. "No; they are not talking of us," he said. "They are two clergymen of different views, arguing about the eastward position."

Then another silence, till she was seized with another uncontrollable fit of grief. "There is something external to us which says, 'You sha'n't!' First it said, 'You sha'n't learn!' Then it said, 'You sha'n't labor!' Now it says, 'You sha'n'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's frock, shoes, and socks, which had been lying on a chair at the time of his death, she would not now have removed, though Jude would fain have got them out of her sight. But whenever he touched them she implored him to let them lie, and burst out almost savagely at the woman of the house when she also attempted to put them away.

Jude dreaded her dull, apathetic silences almost more