Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/486

 "I wonder what they are thinking at the lodgings."

"I'll go round and explain. Perhaps you had better let me pay up, or they'll think we've run away."

"Yes. You'll find enough money in my pocket there."

Quite indifferent, and shutting his eyes because he could not bear the daylight in his throbbing eyeballs, Jude seemed to doze again. Arabella took his purse, softly left the room, and, putting on her out-door things, went off to the lodgings she and he had quitted the evening before.

Scarcely half an hour had elapsed ere she reappeared round the corner, walking beside a lad wheeling a truck on which were piled all Jude's household possessions, and also the few of Arabella's things which she had taken to the lodging for her short sojourn there. Jude was in such physical pain from his unfortunate break-down of the previous night, and in such mental pain from the loss of Sue and from having yielded in his half-somnolent state to Arabella, that when he saw his few chattels unpacked and standing before his eyes in this strange bedroom, intermixed with woman's apparel, he scarcely considered how they had come there, or what their coming signalized.

"Now," said Arabella to her father, down-stairs, "we must keep plenty of good liquor going in the house these next few days. I know his nature, and if he once gets into that fearfully low state that he does get into sometimes, he'll never do the honorable thing by me in this world, and I shall be left in the lurch. He must be kept cheerful. He has a little money in the savings-bank, and he has given me his purse to pay for anything necessary. Well, that will be the license; for I must have that ready at hand, to catch him the moment he's in the humor. You must pay for the liquor. A few friends and a quiet, convivial party would be the thing if we could get up. It would advertise the shop, and help me too."

"That can be got up easy enough by anybody who'll