Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/520

 still warm. She listened at his chest. All was still within. The bumping of near thirty years had ceased.

After her first appalled sense of what had happened the faint notes of a military or other brass band from the river reached her ears; and in a provoked tone she exclaimed: "To think he should die just now! Why did he die just now!" Then, meditating another moment or two, she went to the door, softly closed it as before and again descended the stairs.

"Here she is!" said one of the workmen. "We wondered if you were coming, after all. Come along; we must be quick to get a good place.... Well, how is he? Sleeping well still? Of course, we don't want to drag 'ee away if―"

"Oh yes—sleeping quite sound. He won't wake yet," she said, hurriedly.

They went with the crowd down Cardinal Street, where they presently reached the bridge, and the gay barges burst upon their view. Thence they passed by a narrow slit down to the river-side path—now dusty, hot, and thronged. Almost as soon as they had arrived the grand procession of boats began, the oars smacking with a loud kiss on the face of the stream as they were lowered from the perpendicular.

"Oh, I say—how jolly! I'm glad I've come," said Arabella. "And—it can't hurt my husband—my being away."

On the opposite side of the river, on the crowded barges, were gorgeous nosegays of feminine beauty, fashionably arrayed in green, pink, blue, and white. The blue flag of the boat club denoted the centre of interest, beneath which a band in red uniform gave out the notes she had already heard in the death-chamber. Collegians of all sorts, in canoes with ladies, watching keenly for "our" boat, darted up and down. While she regarded the lively scene somebody touched Arabella in the ribs and, looking round, she saw Vilbert.