Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/515

 "Ah! I'll go up and see him. Mrs. Fawley at home?"

"She's not in at present, but she'll be here soon."

Vilbert went; but though Jude had hitherto taken the medicines of that skilful practitioner with the greatest indifference, whenever poured down his throat by Arabella, he was now so brought to bay by events that he vented his opinion of Vilbert in the physician's face, and so forcibly, and with such striking epithets, that Vilbert soon scurried down-stairs again. At the door he met Arabella, Mrs. Edlin having left. Arabella inquired how he thought her husband was now, and seeing that the doctor looked ruffled, asked him to take something. He assented.

"I'll bring it to you here in the passage," she said. "There's nobody but me about the house to-day."

She brought him a bottle and a glass, and he drank. Arabella began shaking with suppressed laughter. "What is this, my dear?" he asked, smacking his lips.

"Oh, a drop of wine—and something in it." Laughing again, she said: "I poured your own love-philter into it, that you sold me at the Agricultural Show, don't you remember?"

"I do, I do! Clever woman! But you must be prepared for the consequences." Putting his arm round her shoulders, he kissed her there and then.

"Don't, don't," she whispered, laughing good-humoredly. "My man will hear."

She let him out of the house, and as she went back she said to herself, "Well, weak women must provide for a rainy day. And if my poor fellow up-stairs do go off—as I suppose he will soon—it's well to keep chances open. And I can't pick and choose now as I could when I was younger. And one must take the old if one can't get the young."