Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Part Sixth

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[13594]     Part Sixth
[13595]     
[13596]     
[13597]     AT CHRISTMINSTER AGAIN
[13598]     
[13599]     
[13600]     
[13601]        "... And she humbled her body greatly, and all the places
[13602]         of her joy she filled with her torn hair."--ESTHER (Apoc.).
[13603]     
[13604]     
[13605]           "There are two who decline, a woman and I,
[13606]           And enjoy our death in the darkness here."
[13607]                                    --R. BROWNING.
[13608]     
[13609]     
[13610]     I
[13611]     
[13612]     
[13613]     On their arrival the station was lively with straw-hatted young men,
[13614]     welcoming young girls who bore a remarkable family likeness to their
[13615]     welcomers, and who were dressed up in the brightest and lightest of
[13616]     raiment.
[13617]     
[13618]     "The place seems gay," said Sue. "Why--it is Remembrance
[13619]     Day!--Jude--how sly of you--you came to-day on purpose!"
[13620]     
[13621]     "Yes," said Jude quietly, as he took charge of the small child, and
[13622]     told Arabella's boy to keep close to them, Sue attending to their own
[13623]     eldest. "I thought we might as well come to-day as on any other."
[13624]     
[13625]     "But I am afraid it will depress you!" she said, looking anxiously at
[13626]     him up and down.
[13627]     
[13628]     "Oh, I mustn't let it interfere with our business; and we have a good
[13629]     deal to do before we shall be settled here. The first thing is
[13630]     lodgings."
[13631]     
[13632]     Having left their luggage and his tools at the station they proceeded
[13633]     on foot up the familiar street, the holiday people all drifting in
[13634]     the same direction. Reaching the Fourways they were about to turn
[13635]     off to where accommodation was likely to be found when, looking at
[13636]     the clock and the hurrying crowd, Jude said: "Let us go and see the
[13637]     procession, and never mind the lodgings just now? We can get them
[13638]     afterwards."
[13639]     
[13640]     "Oughtn't we to get a house over our heads first?" she asked.
[13641]     
[13642]     But his soul seemed full of the anniversary, and together they went
[13643]     down Chief Street, their smallest child in Jude's arms, Sue leading
[13644]     her little girl, and Arabella's boy walking thoughtfully and silently
[13645]     beside them. Crowds of pretty sisters in airy costumes, and meekly
[13646]     ignorant parents who had known no college in their youth, were under
[13647]     convoy in the same direction by brothers and sons bearing the opinion
[13648]     written large on them that no properly qualified human beings had
[13649]     lived on earth till they came to grace it here and now.
[13650]     
[13651]     "My failure is reflected on me by every one of those young
[13652]     fellows," said Jude. "A lesson on presumption is awaiting me
[13653]     to-day!--Humiliation Day for me! ... If you, my dear darling, hadn't
[13654]     come to my rescue, I should have gone to the dogs with despair!"
[13655]     
[13656]     She saw from his face that he was getting into one of his
[13657]     tempestuous, self-harrowing moods. "It would have been better if we
[13658]     had gone at once about our own affairs, dear," she answered. "I am
[13659]     sure this sight will awaken old sorrows in you, and do no good!"
[13660]     
[13661]     "Well--we are near; we will see it now," said he.
[13662]     
[13663]     They turned in on the left by the church with the Italian porch,
[13664]     whose helical columns were heavily draped with creepers, and pursued
[13665]     the lane till there arose on Jude's sight the circular theatre with
[13666]     that well-known lantern above it, which stood in his mind as the sad
[13667]     symbol of his abandoned hopes, for it was from that outlook that he
[13668]     had finally surveyed the City of Colleges on the afternoon of his
[13669]     great meditation, which convinced him at last of the futility of his
[13670]     attempt to be a son of the university.
[13671]     
[13672]     To-day, in the open space stretching between this building and the
[13673]     nearest college, stood a crowd of expectant people. A passage was
[13674]     kept clear through their midst by two barriers of timber, extending
[13675]     from the door of the college to the door of the large building
[13676]     between it and the theatre.
[13677]     
[13678]     "Here is the place--they are just going to pass!" cried Jude in
[13679]     sudden excitement. And pushing his way to the front he took up a
[13680]     position close to the barrier, still hugging the youngest child in
[13681]     his arms, while Sue and the others kept immediately behind him.
[13682]     The crowd filled in at their back, and fell to talking, joking, and
[13683]     laughing as carriage after carriage drew up at the lower door of
[13684]     the college, and solemn stately figures in blood-red robes began to
[13685]     alight. The sky had grown overcast and livid, and thunder rumbled
[13686]     now and then.
[13687]     
[13688]     Father Time shuddered. "It do seem like the Judgment Day!" he
[13689]     whispered.
[13690]     
[13691]     "They are only learned doctors," said Sue.
[13692]     
[13693]     While they waited big drops of rain fell on their heads and
[13694]     shoulders, and the delay grew tedious. Sue again wished not to stay.
[13695]     
[13696]     "They won't be long now," said Jude, without turning his head.
[13697]     
[13698]     But the procession did not come forth, and somebody in the crowd, to
[13699]     pass the time, looked at the façade of the nearest college, and said
[13700]     he wondered what was meant by the Latin inscription in its midst.
[13701]     Jude, who stood near the inquirer, explained it, and finding that
[13702]     the people all round him were listening with interest, went on to
[13703]     describe the carving of the frieze (which he had studied years
[13704]     before), and to criticize some details of masonry in other college
[13705]     fronts about the city.
[13706]     
[13707]     The idle crowd, including the two policemen at the doors, stared like
[13708]     the Lycaonians at Paul, for Jude was apt to get too enthusiastic over
[13709]     any subject in hand, and they seemed to wonder how the stranger
[13710]     should know more about the buildings of their town than they
[13711]     themselves did; till one of them said: "Why, I know that man; he used
[13712]     to work here years ago--Jude Fawley, that's his name! Don't you mind
[13713]     he used to be nicknamed Tutor of St. Slums, d'ye mind?--because he
[13714]     aimed at that line o' business? He's married, I suppose, then, and
[13715]     that's his child he's carrying. Taylor would know him, as he knows
[13716]     everybody."
[13717]     
[13718]     The speaker was a man named Jack Stagg, with whom Jude had formerly
[13719]     worked in repairing the college masonries; Tinker Taylor was seen to
[13720]     be standing near. Having his attention called the latter cried
[13721]     across the barriers to Jude: "You've honoured us by coming back
[13722]     again, my friend!"
[13723]     
[13724]     Jude nodded.
[13725]     
[13726]     "An' you don't seem to have done any great things for yourself by
[13727]     going away?"
[13728]     
[13729]     Jude assented to this also.
[13730]     
[13731]     "Except found more mouths to fill!" This came in a new voice, and
[13732]     Jude recognized its owner to be Uncle Joe, another mason whom he had
[13733]     known.
[13734]     
[13735]     Jude replied good-humouredly that he could not dispute it; and from
[13736]     remark to remark something like a general conversation arose between
[13737]     him and the crowd of idlers, during which Tinker Taylor asked Jude if
[13738]     he remembered the Apostles' Creed in Latin still, and the night of
[13739]     the challenge in the public house.
[13740]     
[13741]     "But Fortune didn't lie that way?" threw in Joe. "Yer powers wasn't
[13742]     enough to carry 'ee through?"
[13743]     
[13744]     "Don't answer them any more!" entreated Sue.
[13745]     
[13746]     "I don't think I like Christminster!" murmured little Time
[13747]     mournfully, as he stood submerged and invisible in the crowd.
[13748]     
[13749]     But finding himself the centre of curiosity, quizzing, and comment,
[13750]     Jude was not inclined to shrink from open declarations of what he
[13751]     had no great reason to be ashamed of; and in a little while was
[13752]     stimulated to say in a loud voice to the listening throng generally:
[13753]     
[13754]     "It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man--that
[13755]     question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing
[13756]     at the present moment in these uprising times--whether to follow
[13757]     uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his
[13758]     aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and
[13759]     re-shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I
[13760]     failed. But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a
[13761]     wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though
[13762]     that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays--I mean, not by their
[13763]     essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes. If I had
[13764]     ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in red and black that
[13765]     we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said: 'See how
[13766]     wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature!' But
[13767]     having ended no better than I began they say: 'See what a fool that
[13768]     fellow was in following a freak of his fancy!'
[13769]     
[13770]     "However it was my poverty and not my will that consented to be
[13771]     beaten. It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do
[13772]     in one; and my impulses--affections--vices perhaps they should be
[13773]     called--were too strong not to hamper a man without advantages; who
[13774]     should be as cold-blooded as a fish and as selfish as a pig to have a
[13775]     really good chance of being one of his country's worthies. You may
[13776]     ridicule me--I am quite willing that you should--I am a fit subject,
[13777]     no doubt. But I think if you knew what I have gone through these
[13778]     last few years you would rather pity me. And if they knew"--he
[13779]     nodded towards the college at which the dons were severally
[13780]     arriving--"it is just possible they would do the same."
[13781]     
[13782]     "He do look ill and worn-out, it is true!" said a woman.
[13783]     
[13784]     Sue's face grew more emotional; but though she stood close to Jude
[13785]     she was screened.
[13786]     
[13787]     "I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a
[13788]     frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral
[13789]     story," continued Jude, beginning to grow bitter, though he had
[13790]     opened serenely enough. "I was, perhaps, after all, a paltry victim
[13791]     to the spirit of mental and social restlessness that makes so many
[13792]     unhappy in these days!"
[13793]     
[13794]     "Don't tell them that!" whispered Sue with tears, at perceiving
[13795]     Jude's state of mind. "You weren't that. You struggled nobly to
[13796]     acquire knowledge, and only the meanest souls in the world would
[13797]     blame you!"
[13798]     
[13799]     Jude shifted the child into a more easy position on his arm, and
[13800]     concluded: "And what I appear, a sick and poor man, is not the worst
[13801]     of me. I am in a chaos of principles--groping in the dark--acting by
[13802]     instinct and not after example. Eight or nine years ago when I came
[13803]     here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped
[13804]     away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt
[13805]     if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following
[13806]     inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give
[13807]     pleasure to those I love best. There, gentlemen, since you wanted to
[13808]     know how I was getting on, I have told you. Much good may it do you!
[13809]     I cannot explain further here. I perceive there is something wrong
[13810]     somewhere in our social formulas: what it is can only be discovered
[13811]     by men or women with greater insight than mine--if, indeed, they ever
[13812]     discover it--at least in our time. 'For who knoweth what is good for
[13813]     man in this life?--and who can tell a man what shall be after him
[13814]     under the sun?'"
[13815]     
[13816]     "Hear, hear," said the populace.
[13817]     
[13818]     "Well preached!" said Tinker Taylor. And privately to his
[13819]     neighbours: "Why, one of them jobbing pa'sons swarming about here,
[13820]     that takes the services when our head reverends want a holiday,
[13821]     wouldn't ha' discoursed such doctrine for less than a guinea down?
[13822]     Hey? I'll take my oath not one o' 'em would! And then he must have
[13823]     had it wrote down for 'n. And this only a working-man!"
[13824]     
[13825]     As a sort of objective commentary on Jude's remarks there drove up
[13826]     at this moment with a belated doctor, robed and panting, a cab whose
[13827]     horse failed to stop at the exact point required for setting down the
[13828]     hirer, who jumped out and entered the door. The driver, alighting,
[13829]     began to kick the animal in the belly.
[13830]     
[13831]     "If that can be done," said Jude, "at college gates in the most
[13832]     religious and educational city in the world, what shall we say as to
[13833]     how far we've got?"
[13834]     
[13835]     "Order!" said one of the policemen, who had been engaged with a
[13836]     comrade in opening the large doors opposite the college. "Keep yer
[13837]     tongue quiet, my man, while the procession passes." The rain came on
[13838]     more heavily, and all who had umbrellas opened them. Jude was not
[13839]     one of these, and Sue only possessed a small one, half sunshade. She
[13840]     had grown pale, though Jude did not notice it then.
[13841]     
[13842]     "Let us go on, dear," she whispered, endeavouring to shelter him.
[13843]     "We haven't any lodgings yet, remember, and all our things are at the
[13844]     station; and you are by no means well yet. I am afraid this wet will
[13845]     hurt you!"
[13846]     
[13847]     "They are coming now. Just a moment, and I'll go!" said he.
[13848]     
[13849]     A peal of six bells struck out, human faces began to crowd the
[13850]     windows around, and the procession of heads of houses and new doctors
[13851]     emerged, their red and black gowned forms passing across the field of
[13852]     Jude's vision like inaccessible planets across an object glass.
[13853]     
[13854]     As they went their names were called by knowing informants, and when
[13855]     they reached the old round theatre of Wren a cheer rose high.
[13856]     
[13857]     "Let's go that way!" cried Jude, and though it now rained steadily
[13858]     he seemed not to know it, and took them round to the theatre. Here
[13859]     they stood upon the straw that was laid to drown the discordant noise
[13860]     of wheels, where the quaint and frost-eaten stone busts encircling
[13861]     the building looked with pallid grimness on the proceedings, and in
[13862]     particular at the bedraggled Jude, Sue, and their children, as at
[13863]     ludicrous persons who had no business there.
[13864]     
[13865]     "I wish I could get in!" he said to her fervidly. "Listen--I may
[13866]     catch a few words of the Latin speech by staying here; the windows
[13867]     are open."
[13868]     
[13869]     However, beyond the peals of the organ, and the shouts and hurrahs
[13870]     between each piece of oratory, Jude's standing in the wet did not
[13871]     bring much Latin to his intelligence more than, now and then, a
[13872]     sonorous word in _um_ or _ibus_.
[13873]     
[13874]     "Well--I'm an outsider to the end of my days!" he sighed after a
[13875]     while. "Now I'll go, my patient Sue. How good of you to wait in the
[13876]     rain all this time--to gratify my infatuation! I'll never care any
[13877]     more about the infernal cursed place, upon my soul I won't! But what
[13878]     made you tremble so when we were at the barrier? And how pale you
[13879]     are, Sue!"
[13880]     
[13881]     "I saw Richard amongst the people on the other side."
[13882]     
[13883]     "Ah--did you!"
[13884]     
[13885]     "He is evidently come up to Jerusalem to see the festival like the
[13886]     rest of us: and on that account is probably living not so very far
[13887]     away. He had the same hankering for the university that you had, in
[13888]     a milder form. I don't think he saw me, though he must have heard
[13889]     you speaking to the crowd. But he seemed not to notice."
[13890]     
[13891]     "Well--suppose he did. Your mind is free from worries about him now,
[13892]     my Sue?"
[13893]     
[13894]     "Yes, I suppose so. But I am weak. Although I know it is all right
[13895]     with our plans, I felt a curious dread of him; an awe, or terror, of
[13896]     conventions I don't believe in. It comes over me at times like a
[13897]     sort of creeping paralysis, and makes me so sad!"
[13898]     
[13899]     "You are getting tired, Sue. Oh--I forgot, darling! Yes, we'll go
[13900]     on at once."
[13901]     
[13902]     They started in quest of the lodging, and at last found something
[13903]     that seemed to promise well, in Mildew Lane--a spot which to Jude was
[13904]     irresistible--though to Sue it was not so fascinating--a narrow lane
[13905]     close to the back of a college, but having no communication with
[13906]     it. The little houses were darkened to gloom by the high collegiate
[13907]     buildings, within which life was so far removed from that of the
[13908]     people in the lane as if it had been on opposite sides of the globe;
[13909]     yet only a thickness of wall divided them. Two or three of the
[13910]     houses had notices of rooms to let, and the newcomers knocked at the
[13911]     door of one, which a woman opened.
[13912]     
[13913]     "Ah--listen!" said Jude suddenly, instead of addressing her.
[13914]     
[13915]     "What?"
[13916]     
[13917]     "Why the bells--what church can that be? The tones are familiar."
[13918]     
[13919]     Another peal of bells had begun to sound out at some distance off.
[13920]     
[13921]     "I don't know!" said the landlady tartly. "Did you knock to ask
[13922]     that?"
[13923]     
[13924]     "No; for lodgings," said Jude, coming to himself.
[13925]     
[13926]     The householder scrutinized Sue's figure a moment. "We haven't any
[13927]     to let," said she, shutting the door.
[13928]     
[13929]     Jude looked discomfited, and the boy distressed. "Now, Jude," said
[13930]     Sue, "let me try. You don't know the way."
[13931]     
[13932]     They found a second place hard by; but here the occupier, observing
[13933]     not only Sue, but the boy and the small children, said civilly, "I am
[13934]     sorry to say we don't let where there are children"; and also closed
[13935]     the door.
[13936]     
[13937]     The small child squared its mouth and cried silently, with an
[13938]     instinct that trouble loomed. The boy sighed. "I don't like
[13939]     Christminster!" he said. "Are the great old houses gaols?"
[13940]     
[13941]     "No; colleges," said Jude; "which perhaps you'll study in some day."
[13942]     
[13943]     "I'd rather not!" the boy rejoined.
[13944]     
[13945]     "Now we'll try again," said Sue. "I'll pull my cloak more round
[13946]     me... Leaving Kennetbridge for this place is like coming from
[13947]     Caiaphas to Pilate! ... How do I look now, dear?"
[13948]     
[13949]     "Nobody would notice it now," said Jude.
[13950]     
[13951]     There was one other house, and they tried a third time. The woman
[13952]     here was more amiable; but she had little room to spare, and could
[13953]     only agree to take in Sue and the children if her husband could go
[13954]     elsewhere. This arrangement they perforce adopted, in the stress
[13955]     from delaying their search till so late. They came to terms with
[13956]     her, though her price was rather high for their pockets. But they
[13957]     could not afford to be critical till Jude had time to get a more
[13958]     permanent abode; and in this house Sue took possession of a back room
[13959]     on the second floor with an inner closet-room for the children. Jude
[13960]     stayed and had a cup of tea; and was pleased to find that the window
[13961]     commanded the back of another of the colleges. Kissing all four he
[13962]     went to get a few necessaries and look for lodgings for himself.
[13963]     
[13964]     When he was gone the landlady came up to talk a little with Sue, and
[13965]     gather something of the circumstances of the family she had taken in.
[13966]     Sue had not the art of prevarication, and, after admitting several
[13967]     facts as to their late difficulties and wanderings, she was startled
[13968]     by the landlady saying suddenly:
[13969]     
[13970]     "Are you really a married woman?"
[13971]     
[13972]     Sue hesitated; and then impulsively told the woman that her husband
[13973]     and herself had each been unhappy in their first marriages, after
[13974]     which, terrified at the thought of a second irrevocable union, and
[13975]     lest the conditions of the contract should kill their love, yet
[13976]     wishing to be together, they had literally not found the courage
[13977]     to repeat it, though they had attempted it two or three times.
[13978]     Therefore, though in her own sense of the words she was a married
[13979]     woman, in the landlady's sense she was not.
[13980]     
[13981]     The housewife looked embarrassed, and went downstairs. Sue sat by
[13982]     the window in a reverie, watching the rain. Her quiet was broken by
[13983]     the noise of someone entering the house, and then the voices of a
[13984]     man and woman in conversation in the passage below. The landlady's
[13985]     husband had arrived, and she was explaining to him the incoming of
[13986]     the lodgers during his absence.
[13987]     
[13988]     His voice rose in sudden anger. "Now who wants such a woman here?
[13989]     and perhaps a confinement! ... Besides, didn't I say I wouldn't have
[13990]     children? The hall and stairs fresh painted, to be kicked about by
[13991]     them! You must have known all was not straight with 'em--coming like
[13992]     that. Taking in a family when I said a single man."
[13993]     
[13994]     The wife expostulated, but, as it seemed, the husband insisted on
[13995]     his point; for presently a tap came to Sue's door, and the woman
[13996]     appeared.
[13997]     
[13998]     "I am sorry to tell you, ma'am," she said, "that I can't let you have
[13999]     the room for the week after all. My husband objects; and therefore
[14000]     I must ask you to go. I don't mind your staying over to-night, as
[14001]     it is getting late in the afternoon; but I shall be glad if you can
[14002]     leave early in the morning."
[14003]     
[14004]     Though she knew that she was entitled to the lodging for a week, Sue
[14005]     did not wish to create a disturbance between the wife and husband,
[14006]     and she said she would leave as requested. When the landlady had
[14007]     gone Sue looked out of the window again. Finding that the rain had
[14008]     ceased she proposed to the boy that, after putting the little ones
[14009]     to bed, they should go out and search about for another place, and
[14010]     bespeak it for the morrow, so as not to be so hard-driven then as
[14011]     they had been that day.
[14012]     
[14013]     Therefore, instead of unpacking her boxes, which had just been sent
[14014]     on from the station by Jude, they sallied out into the damp though
[14015]     not unpleasant streets, Sue resolving not to disturb her husband
[14016]     with the news of her notice to quit while he was perhaps worried
[14017]     in obtaining a lodging for himself. In the company of the boy she
[14018]     wandered into this street and into that; but though she tried a dozen
[14019]     different houses she fared far worse alone than she had fared in
[14020]     Jude's company, and could get nobody to promise her a room for the
[14021]     following day. Every householder looked askance at such a woman and
[14022]     child inquiring for accommodation in the gloom.
[14023]     
[14024]     "I ought not to be born, ought I?" said the boy with misgiving.
[14025]     
[14026]     Thoroughly tired at last Sue returned to the place where she was
[14027]     not welcome, but where at least she had temporary shelter. In her
[14028]     absence Jude had left his address; but knowing how weak he still was
[14029]     she adhered to her determination not to disturb him till the next
[14030]     day.
[14031]     
[14032]     
[14033]     
[14034]     II
[14035]     
[14036]     
[14037]     Sue sat looking at the bare floor of the room, the house being little
[14038]     more than an old intramural cottage, and then she regarded the scene
[14039]     outside the uncurtained window. At some distance opposite, the outer
[14040]     walls of Sarcophagus College--silent, black, and windowless--threw
[14041]     their four centuries of gloom, bigotry, and decay into the little
[14042]     room she occupied, shutting out the moonlight by night and the sun by
[14043]     day. The outlines of Rubric College also were discernible beyond the
[14044]     other, and the tower of a third farther off still. She thought of
[14045]     the strange operation of a simple-minded man's ruling passion, that
[14046]     it should have led Jude, who loved her and the children so tenderly,
[14047]     to place them here in this depressing purlieu, because he was still
[14048]     haunted by his dream. Even now he did not distinctly hear the
[14049]     freezing negative that those scholared walls had echoed to his
[14050]     desire.
[14051]     
[14052]     The failure to find another lodging, and the lack of room in this
[14053]     house for his father, had made a deep impression on the boy--a
[14054]     brooding undemonstrative horror seemed to have seized him. The
[14055]     silence was broken by his saying: "Mother, WHAT shall we do
[14056]     to-morrow!"
[14057]     
[14058]     "I don't know!" said Sue despondently. "I am afraid this will
[14059]     trouble your father."
[14060]     
[14061]     "I wish Father was quite well, and there had been room for him!
[14062]     Then it wouldn't matter so much! Poor Father!"
[14063]     
[14064]     "It wouldn't!"
[14065]     
[14066]     "Can I do anything?"
[14067]     
[14068]     "No! All is trouble, adversity, and suffering!"
[14069]     
[14070]     "Father went away to give us children room, didn't he?"
[14071]     
[14072]     "Partly."
[14073]     
[14074]     "It would be better to be out o' the world than in it, wouldn't it?"
[14075]     
[14076]     "It would almost, dear."
[14077]     
[14078]     "'Tis because of us children, too, isn't it, that you can't get a
[14079]     good lodging?"
[14080]     
[14081]     "Well--people do object to children sometimes."
[14082]     
[14083]     "Then if children make so much trouble, why do people have 'em?"
[14084]     
[14085]     "Oh--because it is a law of nature."
[14086]     
[14087]     "But we don't ask to be born?"
[14088]     
[14089]     "No indeed."
[14090]     
[14091]     "And what makes it worse with me is that you are not my real mother,
[14092]     and you needn't have had me unless you liked. I oughtn't to have
[14093]     come to 'ee--that's the real truth! I troubled 'em in Australia,
[14094]     and I trouble folk here. I wish I hadn't been born!"
[14095]     
[14096]     "You couldn't help it, my dear."
[14097]     
[14098]     "I think that whenever children be born that are not wanted they
[14099]     should be killed directly, before their souls come to 'em, and not
[14100]     allowed to grow big and walk about!"
[14101]     
[14102]     Sue did not reply. She was doubtfully pondering how to treat this
[14103]     too reflective child.
[14104]     
[14105]     She at last concluded that, so far as circumstances permitted, she
[14106]     would be honest and candid with one who entered into her difficulties
[14107]     like an aged friend.
[14108]     
[14109]     "There is going to be another in our family soon," she hesitatingly
[14110]     remarked.
[14111]     
[14112]     "How?"
[14113]     
[14114]     "There is going to be another baby."
[14115]     
[14116]     "What!" The boy jumped up wildly. "Oh God, Mother, you've never
[14117]     a-sent for another; and such trouble with what you've got!"
[14118]     
[14119]     "Yes, I have, I am sorry to say!" murmured Sue, her eyes glistening
[14120]     with suspended tears.
[14121]     
[14122]     The boy burst out weeping. "Oh you don't care, you don't care!" he
[14123]     cried in bitter reproach. "How EVER could you, Mother, be so wicked
[14124]     and cruel as this, when you needn't have done it till we was better
[14125]     off, and Father well! To bring us all into MORE trouble! No room
[14126]     for us, and Father a-forced to go away, and we turned out to-morrow;
[14127]     and yet you be going to have another of us soon! ... 'Tis done o'
[14128]     purpose!--'tis--'tis!" He walked up and down sobbing.
[14129]     
[14130]     "Y-you must forgive me, little Jude!" she pleaded, her bosom heaving
[14131]     now as much as the boy's. "I can't explain--I will when you are
[14132]     older. It does seem--as if I had done it on purpose, now we are in
[14133]     these difficulties! I can't explain, dear! But it--is not quite on
[14134]     purpose--I can't help it!"
[14135]     
[14136]     "Yes it is--it must be! For nobody would interfere with us, like
[14137]     that, unless you agreed! I won't forgive you, ever, ever! I'll
[14138]     never believe you care for me, or Father, or any of us any more!"
[14139]     
[14140]     He got up, and went away into the closet adjoining her room, in which
[14141]     a bed had been spread on the floor. There she heard him say: "If we
[14142]     children was gone there'd be no trouble at all!"
[14143]     
[14144]     "Don't think that, dear," she cried, rather peremptorily. "But go to
[14145]     sleep!"
[14146]     
[14147]     The following morning she awoke at a little past six, and decided
[14148]     to get up and run across before breakfast to the inn which Jude had
[14149]     informed her to be his quarters, to tell him what had happened before
[14150]     he went out. She arose softly, to avoid disturbing the children,
[14151]     who, as she knew, must be fatigued by their exertions of yesterday.
[14152]     
[14153]     She found Jude at breakfast in the obscure tavern he had chosen as a
[14154]     counterpoise to the expense of her lodging: and she explained to him
[14155]     her homelessness. He had been so anxious about her all night, he
[14156]     said. Somehow, now it was morning, the request to leave the lodgings
[14157]     did not seem such a depressing incident as it had seemed the night
[14158]     before, nor did even her failure to find another place affect her so
[14159]     deeply as at first. Jude agreed with her that it would not be worth
[14160]     while to insist upon her right to stay a week, but to take immediate
[14161]     steps for removal.
[14162]     
[14163]     "You must all come to this inn for a day or two," he said. "It is
[14164]     a rough place, and it will not be so nice for the children, but we
[14165]     shall have more time to look round. There are plenty of lodgings in
[14166]     the suburbs--in my old quarter of Beersheba. Have breakfast with me
[14167]     now you are here, my bird. You are sure you are well? There will
[14168]     be plenty of time to get back and prepare the children's meal before
[14169]     they wake. In fact, I'll go with you."
[14170]     
[14171]     She joined Jude in a hasty meal, and in a quarter of an hour they
[14172]     started together, resolving to clear out from Sue's too respectable
[14173]     lodging immediately. On reaching the place and going upstairs she
[14174]     found that all was quiet in the children's room, and called to the
[14175]     landlady in timorous tones to please bring up the tea-kettle and
[14176]     something for their breakfast. This was perfunctorily done, and
[14177]     producing a couple of eggs which she had brought with her she put
[14178]     them into the boiling kettle, and summoned Jude to watch them for the
[14179]     youngsters, while she went to call them, it being now about half-past
[14180]     eight o'clock.
[14181]     
[14182]     Jude stood bending over the kettle, with his watch in his hand,
[14183]     timing the eggs, so that his back was turned to the little inner
[14184]     chamber where the children lay. A shriek from Sue suddenly caused
[14185]     him to start round. He saw that the door of the room, or rather
[14186]     closet--which had seemed to go heavily upon its hinges as she pushed
[14187]     it back--was open, and that Sue had sunk to the floor just within it.
[14188]     Hastening forward to pick her up he turned his eyes to the little
[14189]     bed spread on the boards; no children were there. He looked in
[14190]     bewilderment round the room. At the back of the door were fixed
[14191]     two hooks for hanging garments, and from these the forms of the two
[14192]     youngest children were suspended, by a piece of box-cord round each
[14193]     of their necks, while from a nail a few yards off the body of little
[14194]     Jude was hanging in a similar manner. An overturned chair was near
[14195]     the elder boy, and his glazed eyes were slanted into the room; but
[14196]     those of the girl and the baby boy were closed.
[14197]     
[14198]     Half-paralyzed by the strange and consummate horror of the scene he
[14199]     let Sue lie, cut the cords with his pocket-knife and threw the three
[14200]     children on the bed; but the feel of their bodies in the momentary
[14201]     handling seemed to say that they were dead. He caught up Sue, who
[14202]     was in fainting fits, and put her on the bed in the other room, after
[14203]     which he breathlessly summoned the landlady and ran out for a doctor.
[14204]     
[14205]     When he got back Sue had come to herself, and the two helpless
[14206]     women, bending over the children in wild efforts to restore them,
[14207]     and the triplet of little corpses, formed a sight which overthrew
[14208]     his self-command. The nearest surgeon came in, but, as Jude had
[14209]     inferred, his presence was superfluous. The children were past
[14210]     saving, for though their bodies were still barely cold it was
[14211]     conjectured that they had been hanging more than an hour. The
[14212]     probability held by the parents later on, when they were able to
[14213]     reason on the case, was that the elder boy, on waking, looked into
[14214]     the outer room for Sue, and, finding her absent, was thrown into a
[14215]     fit of aggravated despondency that the events and information of the
[14216]     evening before had induced in his morbid temperament. Moreover a
[14217]     piece of paper was found upon the floor, on which was written, in
[14218]     the boy's hand, with the bit of lead pencil that he carried:
[14219]     
[14220]     
[14221]        _Done because we are too menny._
[14222]     
[14223]     
[14224]     At sight of this Sue's nerves utterly gave way, an awful conviction
[14225]     that her discourse with the boy had been the main cause of the
[14226]     tragedy, throwing her into a convulsive agony which knew no
[14227]     abatement. They carried her away against her wish to a room on the
[14228]     lower floor; and there she lay, her slight figure shaken with her
[14229]     gasps, and her eyes staring at the ceiling, the woman of the house
[14230]     vainly trying to soothe her.
[14231]     
[14232]     They could hear from this chamber the people moving about above, and
[14233]     she implored to be allowed to go back, and was only kept from doing
[14234]     so by the assurance that, if there were any hope, her presence might
[14235]     do harm, and the reminder that it was necessary to take care of
[14236]     herself lest she should endanger a coming life. Her inquiries were
[14237]     incessant, and at last Jude came down and told her there was no hope.
[14238]     As soon as she could speak she informed him what she had said to the
[14239]     boy, and how she thought herself the cause of this.
[14240]     
[14241]     "No," said Jude. "It was in his nature to do it. The doctor says
[14242]     there are such boys springing up amongst us--boys of a sort unknown
[14243]     in the last generation--the outcome of new views of life. They seem
[14244]     to see all its terrors before they are old enough to have staying
[14245]     power to resist them. He says it is the beginning of the coming
[14246]     universal wish not to live. He's an advanced man, the doctor: but
[14247]     he can give no consolation to--"
[14248]     
[14249]     Jude had kept back his own grief on account of her; but he now
[14250]     broke down; and this stimulated Sue to efforts of sympathy which in
[14251]     some degree distracted her from her poignant self-reproach. When
[14252]     everybody was gone, she was allowed to see the children.
[14253]     
[14254]     The boy's face expressed the whole tale of their situation. On
[14255]     that little shape had converged all the inauspiciousness and shadow
[14256]     which had darkened the first union of Jude, and all the accidents,
[14257]     mistakes, fears, errors of the last. He was their nodal point, their
[14258]     focus, their expression in a single term. For the rashness of those
[14259]     parents he had groaned, for their ill assortment he had quaked, and
[14260]     for the misfortunes of these he had died.
[14261]     
[14262]     When the house was silent, and they could do nothing but await the
[14263]     coroner's inquest, a subdued, large, low voice spread into the air of
[14264]     the room from behind the heavy walls at the back.
[14265]     
[14266]     "What is it?" said Sue, her spasmodic breathing suspended.
[14267]     
[14268]     "The organ of the college chapel. The organist practising I suppose.
[14269]     It's the anthem from the seventy-third Psalm; 'Truly God is loving
[14270]     unto Israel.'"
[14271]     
[14272]     She sobbed again. "Oh, oh my babies! They had done no harm! Why
[14273]     should they have been taken away, and not I!"
[14274]     
[14275]     There was another stillness--broken at last by two persons in
[14276]     conversation somewhere without.
[14277]     
[14278]     "They are talking about us, no doubt!" moaned Sue. "'We are made a
[14279]     spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men!'"
[14280]     
[14281]     Jude listened--"No--they are not talking of us," he said. "They
[14282]     are two clergymen of different views, arguing about the eastward
[14283]     position. Good God--the eastward position, and all creation
[14284]     groaning!"
[14285]     
[14286]     Then another silence, till she was seized with another uncontrollable
[14287]     fit of grief. "There is something external to us which says, 'You
[14288]     shan't!' First it said, 'You shan't learn!' Then it said, 'You
[14289]     shan't labour!' Now it says, 'You shan't love!'"
[14290]     
[14291]     He tried to soothe her by saying, "That's bitter of you, darling."
[14292]     
[14293]     "But it's true!"
[14294]     
[14295]     Thus they waited, and she went back again to her room. The baby's
[14296]     frock, shoes, and socks, which had been lying on a chair at the time
[14297]     of his death, she would not now have removed, though Jude would fain
[14298]     have got them out of her sight. But whenever he touched them she
[14299]     implored him to let them lie, and burst out almost savagely at the
[14300]     woman of the house when she also attempted to put them away.
[14301]     
[14302]     Jude dreaded her dull apathetic silences almost more than her
[14303]     paroxysms. "Why don't you speak to me, Jude?" she cried out, after
[14304]     one of these. "Don't turn away from me! I can't BEAR the loneliness
[14305]     of being out of your looks!"
[14306]     
[14307]     "There, dear; here I am," he said, putting his face close to hers.
[14308]     
[14309]     "Yes... Oh, my comrade, our perfect union--our two-in-oneness--is
[14310]     now stained with blood!"
[14311]     
[14312]     "Shadowed by death--that's all."
[14313]     
[14314]     "Ah; but it was I who incited him really, though I didn't know I was
[14315]     doing it! I talked to the child as one should only talk to people of
[14316]     mature age. I said the world was against us, that it was better to
[14317]     be out of life than in it at this price; and he took it literally.
[14318]     And I told him I was going to have another child. It upset him. Oh
[14319]     how bitterly he upbraided me!"
[14320]     
[14321]     "Why did you do it, Sue?"
[14322]     
[14323]     "I can't tell. It was that I wanted to be truthful. I couldn't
[14324]     bear deceiving him as to the facts of life. And yet I wasn't
[14325]     truthful, for with a false delicacy I told him too obscurely.--Why
[14326]     was I half-wiser than my fellow-women? And not entirely wiser! Why
[14327]     didn't I tell him pleasant untruths, instead of half-realities? It
[14328]     was my want of self-control, so that I could neither conceal things
[14329]     nor reveal them!"
[14330]     
[14331]     "Your plan might have been a good one for the majority of cases; only
[14332]     in our peculiar case it chanced to work badly perhaps. He must have
[14333]     known sooner or later."
[14334]     
[14335]     "And I was just making my baby darling a new frock; and now I shall
[14336]     never see him in it, and never talk to him any more! ... My eyes are
[14337]     so swollen that I can scarcely see; and yet little more than a year
[14338]     ago I called myself happy! We went about loving each other too
[14339]     much--indulging ourselves to utter selfishness with each other! We
[14340]     said--do you remember?--that we would make a virtue of joy. I said
[14341]     it was Nature's intention, Nature's law and _raison d'être_ that we
[14342]     should be joyful in what instincts she afforded us--instincts which
[14343]     civilization had taken upon itself to thwart. What dreadful things I
[14344]     said! And now Fate has given us this stab in the back for being such
[14345]     fools as to take Nature at her word!"
[14346]     
[14347]     She sank into a quiet contemplation, till she said, "It is best,
[14348]     perhaps, that they should be gone.--Yes--I see it is! Better that
[14349]     they should be plucked fresh than stay to wither away miserably!"
[14350]     
[14351]     "Yes," replied Jude. "Some say that the elders should rejoice when
[14352]     their children die in infancy."
[14353]     
[14354]     "But they don't know! ... Oh my babies, my babies, could you be
[14355]     alive now! You may say the boy wished to be out of life, or he
[14356]     wouldn't have done it. It was not unreasonable for him to die: it
[14357]     was part of his incurably sad nature, poor little fellow! But then
[14358]     the others--my OWN children and yours!"
[14359]     
[14360]     Again Sue looked at the hanging little frock and at the socks and
[14361]     shoes; and her figure quivered like a string. "I am a pitiable
[14362]     creature," she said, "good neither for earth nor heaven any more!
[14363]     I am driven out of my mind by things! What ought to be done?"
[14364]     She stared at Jude, and tightly held his hand.
[14365]     
[14366]     "Nothing can be done," he replied. "Things are as they are, and will
[14367]     be brought to their destined issue."
[14368]     
[14369]     She paused. "Yes! Who said that?" she asked heavily.
[14370]     
[14371]     "It comes in the chorus of the _Agamemnon_. It has been in my mind
[14372]     continually since this happened."
[14373]     
[14374]     "My poor Jude--how you've missed everything!--you more than I, for
[14375]     I did get you! To think you should know that by your unassisted
[14376]     reading, and yet be in poverty and despair!"
[14377]     
[14378]     After such momentary diversions her grief would return in a wave.
[14379]     
[14380]     The jury duly came and viewed the bodies, the inquest was held; and
[14381]     next arrived the melancholy morning of the funeral. Accounts in
[14382]     the newspapers had brought to the spot curious idlers, who stood
[14383]     apparently counting the window-panes and the stones of the walls.
[14384]     Doubt of the real relations of the couple added zest to their
[14385]     curiosity. Sue had declared that she would follow the two little
[14386]     ones to the grave, but at the last moment she gave way, and the
[14387]     coffins were quietly carried out of the house while she was lying
[14388]     down. Jude got into the vehicle, and it drove away, much to the
[14389]     relief of the landlord, who now had only Sue and her luggage
[14390]     remaining on his hands, which he hoped to be also clear of later on
[14391]     in the day, and so to have freed his house from the exasperating
[14392]     notoriety it had acquired during the week through his wife's unlucky
[14393]     admission of these strangers. In the afternoon he privately
[14394]     consulted with the owner of the house, and they agreed that if any
[14395]     objection to it arose from the tragedy which had occurred there they
[14396]     would try to get its number changed.
[14397]     
[14398]     When Jude had seen the two little boxes--one containing little Jude,
[14399]     and the other the two smallest--deposited in the earth he hastened
[14400]     back to Sue, who was still in her room, and he therefore did not
[14401]     disturb her just then. Feeling anxious, however, he went again
[14402]     about four o'clock. The woman thought she was still lying down, but
[14403]     returned to him to say that she was not in her bedroom after all.
[14404]     Her hat and jacket, too, were missing: she had gone out. Jude
[14405]     hurried off to the public house where he was sleeping. She had not
[14406]     been there. Then bethinking himself of possibilities he went along
[14407]     the road to the cemetery, which he entered, and crossed to where the
[14408]     interments had recently taken place. The idlers who had followed to
[14409]     the spot by reason of the tragedy were all gone now. A man with a
[14410]     shovel in his hands was attempting to earth in the common grave of
[14411]     the three children, but his arm was held back by an expostulating
[14412]     woman who stood in the half-filled hole. It was Sue, whose coloured
[14413]     clothing, which she had never thought of changing for the mourning he
[14414]     had bought, suggested to the eye a deeper grief than the conventional
[14415]     garb of bereavement could express.
[14416]     
[14417]     "He's filling them in, and he shan't till I've seen my little ones
[14418]     again!" she cried wildly when she saw Jude. "I want to see them once
[14419]     more. Oh Jude--please Jude--I want to see them! I didn't know you
[14420]     would let them be taken away while I was asleep! You said perhaps I
[14421]     should see them once more before they were screwed down; and then you
[14422]     didn't, but took them away! Oh Jude, you are cruel to me too!"
[14423]     
[14424]     "She's been wanting me to dig out the grave again, and let her get
[14425]     to the coffins," said the man with the spade. "She ought to be took
[14426]     home, by the look o' her. She is hardly responsible, poor thing,
[14427]     seemingly. Can't dig 'em up again now, ma'am. Do ye go home with
[14428]     your husband, and take it quiet, and thank God that there'll be
[14429]     another soon to swage yer grief."
[14430]     
[14431]     But Sue kept asking piteously: "Can't I see them once more--just
[14432]     once! Can't I? Only just one little minute, Jude? It would not
[14433]     take long! And I should be so glad, Jude! I will be so good, and
[14434]     not disobey you ever any more, Jude, if you will let me? I would go
[14435]     home quietly afterwards, and not want to see them any more! Can't I?
[14436]     Why can't I?"
[14437]     
[14438]     Thus she went on. Jude was thrown into such acute sorrow that he
[14439]     almost felt he would try to get the man to accede. But it could
[14440]     do no good, and might make her still worse; and he saw that it
[14441]     was imperative to get her home at once. So he coaxed her, and
[14442]     whispered tenderly, and put his arm round her to support her; till
[14443]     she helplessly gave in, and was induced to leave the cemetery.
[14444]     
[14445]     He wished to obtain a fly to take her back in, but economy being so
[14446]     imperative she deprecated his doing so, and they walked along slowly,
[14447]     Jude in black crape, she in brown and red clothing. They were to
[14448]     have gone to a new lodging that afternoon, but Jude saw that it was
[14449]     not practicable, and in course of time they entered the now hated
[14450]     house. Sue was at once got to bed, and the doctor sent for.
[14451]     
[14452]     Jude waited all the evening downstairs. At a very late hour the
[14453]     intelligence was brought to him that a child had been prematurely
[14454]     born, and that it, like the others, was a corpse.
[14455]     
[14456]     
[14457]     
[14458]     III
[14459]     
[14460]     
[14461]     Sue was convalescent, though she had hoped for death, and Jude had
[14462]     again obtained work at his old trade. They were in other lodgings
[14463]     now, in the direction of Beersheba, and not far from the Church of
[14464]     Ceremonies--Saint Silas.
[14465]     
[14466]     They would sit silent, more bodeful of the direct antagonism of
[14467]     things than of their insensate and stolid obstructiveness. Vague
[14468]     and quaint imaginings had haunted Sue in the days when her intellect
[14469]     scintillated like a star, that the world resembled a stanza or melody
[14470]     composed in a dream; it was wonderfully excellent to the half-aroused
[14471]     intelligence, but hopelessly absurd at the full waking; that the
[14472]     first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not
[14473]     reflectively like a sage; that at the framing of the terrestrial
[14474]     conditions there seemed never to have been contemplated such
[14475]     a development of emotional perceptiveness among the creatures
[14476]     subject to those conditions as that reached by thinking and
[14477]     educated humanity. But affliction makes opposing forces loom
[14478]     anthropomorphous; and those ideas were now exchanged for a sense of
[14479]     Jude and herself fleeing from a persecutor.
[14480]     
[14481]     "We must conform!" she said mournfully. "All the ancient wrath of
[14482]     the Power above us has been vented upon us, His poor creatures, and
[14483]     we must submit. There is no choice. We must. It is no use fighting
[14484]     against God!"
[14485]     
[14486]     "It is only against man and senseless circumstance," said Jude.
[14487]     
[14488]     "True!" she murmured. "What have I been thinking of! I am getting
[14489]     as superstitious as a savage! ... But whoever or whatever our foe
[14490]     may be, I am cowed into submission. I have no more fighting strength
[14491]     left; no more enterprise. I am beaten, beaten! ... 'We are made a
[14492]     spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men!' I am always
[14493]     saying that now."
[14494]     
[14495]     "I feel the same!"
[14496]     
[14497]     "What shall we do? You are in work now; but remember, it may
[14498]     only be because our history and relations are not absolutely
[14499]     known... Possibly, if they knew our marriage had not been formalized they
[14500]     would turn you out of your job as they did at Aldbrickham!"
[14501]     
[14502]     "I hardly know. Perhaps they would hardly do that. However, I think
[14503]     that we ought to make it legal now--as soon as you are able to go
[14504]     out."
[14505]     
[14506]     "You think we ought?"
[14507]     
[14508]     "Certainly."
[14509]     
[14510]     And Jude fell into thought. "I have seemed to myself lately,"
[14511]     he said, "to belong to that vast band of men shunned by the
[14512]     virtuous--the men called seducers. It amazes me when I think of it!
[14513]     I have not been conscious of it, or of any wrongdoing towards you,
[14514]     whom I love more than myself. Yet I am one of those men! I wonder
[14515]     if any other of them are the same purblind, simple creatures as
[14516]     I? ... Yes, Sue--that's what I am. I seduced you... You were a
[14517]     distinct type--a refined creature, intended by Nature to be left
[14518]     intact. But I couldn't leave you alone!"
[14519]     
[14520]     "No, no, Jude!" she said quickly. "Don't reproach yourself with
[14521]     being what you are not. If anybody is to blame it is I."
[14522]     
[14523]     "I supported you in your resolve to leave Phillotson; and without me
[14524]     perhaps you wouldn't have urged him to let you go."
[14525]     
[14526]     "I should have, just the same. As to ourselves, the fact of our not
[14527]     having entered into a legal contract is the saving feature in our
[14528]     union. We have thereby avoided insulting, as it were, the solemnity
[14529]     of our first marriages."
[14530]     
[14531]     "Solemnity?" Jude looked at her with some surprise, and grew
[14532]     conscious that she was not the Sue of their earlier time.
[14533]     
[14534]     "Yes," she said, with a little quiver in her words, "I have had
[14535]     dreadful fears, a dreadful sense of my own insolence of action.
[14536]     I have thought--that I am still his wife!"
[14537]     
[14538]     "Whose?"
[14539]     
[14540]     "Richard's."
[14541]     
[14542]     "Good God, dearest!--why?"
[14543]     
[14544]     "Oh I can't explain! Only the thought comes to me."
[14545]     
[14546]     "It is your weakness--a sick fancy, without reason or meaning!
[14547]     Don't let it trouble you."
[14548]     
[14549]     Sue sighed uneasily.
[14550]     
[14551]     As a set-off against such discussions as these there had come
[14552]     an improvement in their pecuniary position, which earlier in
[14553]     their experience would have made them cheerful. Jude had quite
[14554]     unexpectedly found good employment at his old trade almost directly
[14555]     he arrived, the summer weather suiting his fragile constitution; and
[14556]     outwardly his days went on with that monotonous uniformity which
[14557]     is in itself so grateful after vicissitude. People seemed to have
[14558]     forgotten that he had ever shown any awkward aberrancies: and he
[14559]     daily mounted to the parapets and copings of colleges he could never
[14560]     enter, and renewed the crumbling freestones of mullioned windows he
[14561]     would never look from, as if he had known no wish to do otherwise.
[14562]     
[14563]     There was this change in him; that he did not often go to any service
[14564]     at the churches now. One thing troubled him more than any other;
[14565]     that Sue and himself had mentally travelled in opposite directions
[14566]     since the tragedy: events which had enlarged his own views of life,
[14567]     laws, customs, and dogmas, had not operated in the same manner on
[14568]     Sue's. She was no longer the same as in the independent days, when
[14569]     her intellect played like lambent lightning over conventions and
[14570]     formalities which he at that time respected, though he did not now.
[14571]     
[14572]     On a particular Sunday evening he came in rather late. She was
[14573]     not at home, but she soon returned, when he found her silent and
[14574]     meditative.
[14575]     
[14576]     "What are you thinking of, little woman?" he asked curiously.
[14577]     
[14578]     "Oh I can't tell clearly! I have thought that we have been selfish,
[14579]     careless, even impious, in our courses, you and I. Our life has been
[14580]     a vain attempt at self-delight. But self-abnegation is the higher
[14581]     road. We should mortify the flesh--the terrible flesh--the curse of
[14582]     Adam!"
[14583]     
[14584]     "Sue!" he murmured. "What has come over you?"
[14585]     
[14586]     "We ought to be continually sacrificing ourselves on the altar of
[14587]     duty! But I have always striven to do what has pleased me. I well
[14588]     deserved the scourging I have got! I wish something would take the
[14589]     evil right out of me, and all my monstrous errors, and all my sinful
[14590]     ways!"
[14591]     
[14592]     "Sue--my own too suffering dear!--there's no evil woman in you. Your
[14593]     natural instincts are perfectly healthy; not quite so impassioned,
[14594]     perhaps, as I could wish; but good, and dear, and pure. And as I
[14595]     have often said, you are absolutely the most ethereal, least sensual
[14596]     woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman sexlessness. Why do you
[14597]     talk in such a changed way? We have not been selfish, except when no
[14598]     one could profit by our being otherwise. You used to say that human
[14599]     nature was noble and long-suffering, not vile and corrupt, and at
[14600]     last I thought you spoke truly. And now you seem to take such a much
[14601]     lower view!"
[14602]     
[14603]     "I want a humble heart; and a chastened mind; and I have never had
[14604]     them yet!"
[14605]     
[14606]     "You have been fearless, both as a thinker and as a feeler, and you
[14607]     deserved more admiration than I gave. I was too full of narrow
[14608]     dogmas at that time to see it."
[14609]     
[14610]     "Don't say that, Jude! I wish my every fearless word and thought
[14611]     could be rooted out of my history. Self-renunciation--that's
[14612]     everything! I cannot humiliate myself too much. I should like to
[14613]     prick myself all over with pins and bleed out the badness that's in
[14614]     me!"
[14615]     
[14616]     "Hush!" he said, pressing her little face against his breast as if
[14617]     she were an infant. "It is bereavement that has brought you to this!
[14618]     Such remorse is not for you, my sensitive plant, but for the wicked
[14619]     ones of the earth--who never feel it!"
[14620]     
[14621]     "I ought not to stay like this," she murmured, when she had remained
[14622]     in the position a long while.
[14623]     
[14624]     "Why not?"
[14625]     
[14626]     "It is indulgence."
[14627]     
[14628]     "Still on the same tack! But is there anything better on earth than
[14629]     that we should love one another?"
[14630]     
[14631]     "Yes. It depends on the sort of love; and yours--ours--is the
[14632]     wrong."
[14633]     
[14634]     "I won't have it, Sue! Come, when do you wish our marriage to be
[14635]     signed in a vestry?"
[14636]     
[14637]     She paused, and looked up uneasily. "Never," she whispered.
[14638]     
[14639]     Not knowing the whole of her meaning he took the objection serenely,
[14640]     and said nothing. Several minutes elapsed, and he thought she had
[14641]     fallen asleep; but he spoke softly, and found that she was wide awake
[14642]     all the time. She sat upright and sighed.
[14643]     
[14644]     "There is a strange, indescribable perfume or atmosphere about you
[14645]     to-night, Sue," he said. "I mean not only mentally, but about your
[14646]     clothes, also. A sort of vegetable scent, which I seem to know, yet
[14647]     cannot remember."
[14648]     
[14649]     "It is incense."
[14650]     
[14651]     "Incense?"
[14652]     
[14653]     "I have been to the service at St. Silas', and I was in the fumes of
[14654]     it."
[14655]     
[14656]     "Oh--St. Silas."
[14657]     
[14658]     "Yes. I go there sometimes."
[14659]     
[14660]     "Indeed. You go there!"
[14661]     
[14662]     "You see, Jude, it is lonely here in the weekday mornings, when you
[14663]     are at work, and I think and think of--of my--" She stopped till she
[14664]     could control the lumpiness of her throat. "And I have taken to go
[14665]     in there, as it is so near."
[14666]     
[14667]     "Oh well--of course, I say nothing against it. Only it is odd, for
[14668]     you. They little think what sort of chiel is amang them!"
[14669]     
[14670]     "What do you mean, Jude?"
[14671]     
[14672]     "Well--a sceptic, to be plain."
[14673]     
[14674]     "How can you pain me so, dear Jude, in my trouble! Yet I know you
[14675]     didn't mean it. But you ought not to say that."
[14676]     
[14677]     "I won't. But I am much surprised!"
[14678]     
[14679]     "Well--I want to tell you something else, Jude. You won't be angry,
[14680]     will you? I have thought of it a good deal since my babies died.
[14681]     I don't think I ought to be your wife--or as your wife--any longer."
[14682]     
[14683]     "What? ... But you ARE!"
[14684]     
[14685]     "From your point of view; but--"
[14686]     
[14687]     "Of course we were afraid of the ceremony, and a good many others
[14688]     would have been in our places, with such strong reasons for fears.
[14689]     But experience has proved how we misjudged ourselves, and overrated
[14690]     our infirmities; and if you are beginning to respect rites and
[14691]     ceremonies, as you seem to be, I wonder you don't say it shall be
[14692]     carried out instantly? You certainly ARE my wife, Sue, in all but
[14693]     law. What do you mean by what you said?"
[14694]     
[14695]     "I don't think I am!"
[14696]     
[14697]     "Not? But suppose we HAD gone through the ceremony? Would you feel
[14698]     that you were then?"
[14699]     
[14700]     "No. I should not feel even then that I was. I should feel worse
[14701]     than I do now."
[14702]     
[14703]     "Why so--in the name of all that's perverse, my dear?"
[14704]     
[14705]     "Because I am Richard's."
[14706]     
[14707]     "Ah--you hinted that absurd fancy to me before!"
[14708]     
[14709]     "It was only an impression with me then; I feel more and more
[14710]     convinced as time goes on that--I belong to him, or to nobody."
[14711]     
[14712]     "My good heavens--how we are changing places!"
[14713]     
[14714]     "Yes. Perhaps so."
[14715]     
[14716]     Some few days later, in the dusk of the summer evening, they were
[14717]     sitting in the same small room downstairs, when a knock came to the
[14718]     front door of the carpenter's house where they were lodging, and in a
[14719]     few moments there was a tap at the door of their room. Before they
[14720]     could open it the comer did so, and a woman's form appeared.
[14721]     
[14722]     "Is Mr. Fawley here?"
[14723]     
[14724]     Jude and Sue started as he mechanically replied in the affirmative,
[14725]     for the voice was Arabella's.
[14726]     
[14727]     He formally requested her to come in, and she sat down in the window
[14728]     bench, where they could distinctly see her outline against the light;
[14729]     but no characteristic that enabled them to estimate her general
[14730]     aspect and air. Yet something seemed to denote that she was not
[14731]     quite so comfortably circumstanced, nor so bouncingly attired, as she
[14732]     had been during Cartlett's lifetime.
[14733]     
[14734]     The three attempted an awkward conversation about the tragedy, of
[14735]     which Jude had felt it to be his duty to inform her immediately,
[14736]     though she had never replied to his letter.
[14737]     
[14738]     "I have just come from the cemetery," she said. "I inquired and
[14739]     found the child's grave. I couldn't come to the funeral--thank you
[14740]     for inviting me all the same. I read all about it in the papers,
[14741]     and I felt I wasn't wanted... No--I couldn't come to the funeral,"
[14742]     repeated Arabella, who, seeming utterly unable to reach the ideal of
[14743]     a catastrophic manner, fumbled with iterations. "But I am glad I
[14744]     found the grave. As 'tis your trade, Jude, you'll be able to put up
[14745]     a handsome stone to 'em."
[14746]     
[14747]     "I shall put up a headstone," said Jude drearily.
[14748]     
[14749]     "He was my child, and naturally I feel for him."
[14750]     
[14751]     "I hope so. We all did."
[14752]     
[14753]     "The others that weren't mine I didn't feel so much for, as was
[14754]     natural."
[14755]     
[14756]     "Of course."
[14757]     
[14758]     A sigh came from the dark corner where Sue sat.
[14759]     
[14760]     "I had often wished I had mine with me," continued Mrs. Cartlett.
[14761]     "Perhaps 'twouldn't have happened then! But of course I didn't wish
[14762]     to take him away from your wife."
[14763]     
[14764]     "I am not his wife," came from Sue.
[14765]     
[14766]     The unexpectedness of her words struck Jude silent.
[14767]     
[14768]     "Oh, I beg your pardon, I'm sure," said Arabella. "I thought you
[14769]     were!"
[14770]     
[14771]     Jude had known from the quality of Sue's tone that her new and
[14772]     transcendental views lurked in her words; but all except their
[14773]     obvious meaning was, naturally, missed by Arabella. The latter,
[14774]     after evincing that she was struck by Sue's avowal, recovered
[14775]     herself, and went on to talk with placid bluntness about "her" boy,
[14776]     for whom, though in his lifetime she had shown no care at all,
[14777]     she now exhibited a ceremonial mournfulness that was apparently
[14778]     sustaining to the conscience. She alluded to the past, and in making
[14779]     some remark appealed again to Sue. There was no answer: Sue had
[14780]     invisibly left the room.
[14781]     
[14782]     "She said she was not your wife?" resumed Arabella in another voice.
[14783]     "Why should she do that?"
[14784]     
[14785]     "I cannot inform you," said Jude shortly.
[14786]     
[14787]     "She is, isn't she? She once told me so."
[14788]     
[14789]     "I don't criticize what she says."
[14790]     
[14791]     "Ah--I see! Well, my time is up. I am staying here to-night, and
[14792]     thought I could do no less than call, after our mutual affliction.
[14793]     I am sleeping at the place where I used to be barmaid, and to-morrow
[14794]     I go back to Alfredston. Father is come home again, and I am living
[14795]     with him."
[14796]     
[14797]     "He has returned from Australia?" said Jude with languid curiosity.
[14798]     
[14799]     "Yes. Couldn't get on there. Had a rough time of it. Mother died
[14800]     of dys--what do you call it--in the hot weather, and Father and two
[14801]     of the young ones have just got back. He has got a cottage near the
[14802]     old place, and for the present I am keeping house for him."
[14803]     
[14804]     Jude's former wife had maintained a stereotyped manner of strict good
[14805]     breeding even now that Sue was gone, and limited her stay to a number
[14806]     of minutes that should accord with the highest respectability. When
[14807]     she had departed Jude, much relieved, went to the stairs and called
[14808]     Sue--feeling anxious as to what had become of her.
[14809]     
[14810]     There was no answer, and the carpenter who kept the lodgings said she
[14811]     had not come in. Jude was puzzled, and became quite alarmed at her
[14812]     absence, for the hour was growing late. The carpenter called his
[14813]     wife, who conjectured that Sue might have gone to St. Silas' church,
[14814]     as she often went there.
[14815]     
[14816]     "Surely not at this time o' night?" said Jude. "It is shut."
[14817]     
[14818]     "She knows somebody who keeps the key, and she has it whenever she
[14819]     wants it."
[14820]     
[14821]     "How long has she been going on with this?"
[14822]     
[14823]     "Oh, some few weeks, I think."
[14824]     
[14825]     Jude went vaguely in the direction of the church, which he had never
[14826]     once approached since he lived out that way years before, when his
[14827]     young opinions were more mystical than they were now. The spot was
[14828]     deserted, but the door was certainly unfastened; he lifted the latch
[14829]     without noise, and pushing to the door behind him, stood absolutely
[14830]     still inside. The prevalent silence seemed to contain a faint sound,
[14831]     explicable as a breathing, or a sobbing, which came from the other
[14832]     end of the building. The floor-cloth deadened his footsteps as he
[14833]     moved in that direction through the obscurity, which was broken only
[14834]     by the faintest reflected night-light from without.
[14835]     
[14836]     High overhead, above the chancel steps, Jude could discern a huge,
[14837]     solidly constructed Latin cross--as large, probably, as the original
[14838]     it was designed to commemorate. It seemed to be suspended in the
[14839]     air by invisible wires; it was set with large jewels, which faintly
[14840]     glimmered in some weak ray caught from outside, as the cross swayed
[14841]     to and fro in a silent and scarcely perceptible motion. Underneath,
[14842]     upon the floor, lay what appeared to be a heap of black clothes, and
[14843]     from this was repeated the sobbing that he had heard before. It was
[14844]     his Sue's form, prostrate on the paving.
[14845]     
[14846]     "Sue!" he whispered.
[14847]     
[14848]     Something white disclosed itself; she had turned up her face.
[14849]     
[14850]     "What--do you want with me here, Jude?" she said almost sharply.
[14851]     "You shouldn't come! I wanted to be alone! Why did you intrude
[14852]     here?"
[14853]     
[14854]     "How can you ask!" he retorted in quick reproach, for his full heart
[14855]     was wounded to its centre at this attitude of hers towards him.
[14856]     "Why do I come? Who has a right to come, I should like to know, if
[14857]     I have not! I, who love you better than my own self--better--far
[14858]     better--than you have loved me! What made you leave me to come here
[14859]     alone?"
[14860]     
[14861]     "Don't criticize me, Jude--I can't bear it!--I have often told
[14862]     you so. You must take me as I am. I am a wretch--broken by my
[14863]     distractions! I couldn't BEAR it when Arabella came--I felt so
[14864]     utterly miserable I had to come away. She seems to be your wife
[14865]     still, and Richard to be my husband!"
[14866]     
[14867]     "But they are nothing to us!"
[14868]     
[14869]     "Yes, dear friend, they are. I see marriage differently now. My
[14870]     babies have been taken from me to show me this! Arabella's child
[14871]     killing mine was a judgement--the right slaying the wrong. What,
[14872]     WHAT shall I do! I am such a vile creature--too worthless to mix
[14873]     with ordinary human beings!"
[14874]     
[14875]     "This is terrible!" said Jude, verging on tears. "It is monstrous
[14876]     and unnatural for you to be so remorseful when you have done no
[14877]     wrong!"
[14878]     
[14879]     "Ah--you don't know my badness!"
[14880]     
[14881]     He returned vehemently: "I do! Every atom and dreg of it! You make
[14882]     me hate Christianity, or mysticism, or Sacerdotalism, or whatever it
[14883]     may be called, if it's that which has caused this deterioration in
[14884]     you. That a woman-poet, a woman-seer, a woman whose soul shone like
[14885]     a diamond--whom all the wise of the world would have been proud of,
[14886]     if they could have known you--should degrade herself like this! I am
[14887]     glad I had nothing to do with Divinity--damn glad--if it's going to
[14888]     ruin you in this way!"
[14889]     
[14890]     "You are angry, Jude, and unkind to me, and don't see how things
[14891]     are."
[14892]     
[14893]     "Then come along home with me, dearest, and perhaps I shall. I am
[14894]     overburdened--and you, too, are unhinged just now." He put his arm
[14895]     round her and lifted her; but though she came, she preferred to walk
[14896]     without his support.
[14897]     
[14898]     "I don't dislike you, Jude," she said in a sweet and imploring voice.
[14899]     "I love you as much as ever! Only--I ought not to love you--any
[14900]     more. Oh I must not any more!"
[14901]     
[14902]     "I can't own it."
[14903]     
[14904]     "But I have made up my mind that I am not your wife! I belong to
[14905]     him--I sacramentally joined myself to him for life. Nothing can
[14906]     alter it!"
[14907]     
[14908]     "But surely we are man and wife, if ever two people were in this
[14909]     world? Nature's own marriage it is, unquestionably!"
[14910]     
[14911]     "But not Heaven's. Another was made for me there, and ratified
[14912]     eternally in the church at Melchester."
[14913]     
[14914]     "Sue, Sue--affliction has brought you to this unreasonable state!
[14915]     After converting me to your views on so many things, to find you
[14916]     suddenly turn to the right-about like this--for no reason whatever,
[14917]     confounding all you have formerly said through sentiment merely!
[14918]     You root out of me what little affection and reverence I had left in
[14919]     me for the Church as an old acquaintance... What I can't understand
[14920]     in you is your extraordinary blindness now to your old logic. Is it
[14921]     peculiar to you, or is it common to woman? Is a woman a thinking
[14922]     unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer? How you
[14923]     argued that marriage was only a clumsy contract--which it is--how you
[14924]     showed all the objections to it--all the absurdities! If two and two
[14925]     made four when we were happy together, surely they make four now? I
[14926]     can't understand it, I repeat!"
[14927]     
[14928]     "Ah, dear Jude; that's because you are like a totally deaf man
[14929]     observing people listening to music. You say 'What are they
[14930]     regarding? Nothing is there.' But something is."
[14931]     
[14932]     "That is a hard saying from you; and not a true parallel! You threw
[14933]     off old husks of prejudices, and taught me to do it; and now you go
[14934]     back upon yourself. I confess I am utterly stultified in my estimate
[14935]     of you."
[14936]     
[14937]     "Dear friend, my only friend, don't be hard with me! I can't help
[14938]     being as I am, I am convinced I am right--that I see the light at
[14939]     last. But oh, how to profit by it!"
[14940]     
[14941]     They walked along a few more steps till they were outside the
[14942]     building and she had returned the key. "Can this be the girl," said
[14943]     Jude when she came back, feeling a slight renewal of elasticity now
[14944]     that he was in the open street; "can this be the girl who brought
[14945]     the pagan deities into this most Christian city?--who mimicked Miss
[14946]     Fontover when she crushed them with her heel?--quoted Gibbon, and
[14947]     Shelley, and Mill? Where are dear Apollo, and dear Venus now!"
[14948]     
[14949]     "Oh don't, don't be so cruel to me, Jude, and I so unhappy!" she
[14950]     sobbed. "I can't bear it! I was in error--I cannot reason with you.
[14951]     I was wrong--proud in my own conceit! Arabella's coming was the
[14952]     finish. Don't satirize me: it cuts like a knife!"
[14953]     
[14954]     He flung his arms round her and kissed her passionately there in the
[14955]     silent street, before she could hinder him. They went on till they
[14956]     came to a little coffee-house. "Jude," she said with suppressed
[14957]     tears, "would you mind getting a lodging here?"
[14958]     
[14959]     "I will--if, if you really wish? But do you? Let me go to our door
[14960]     and understand you."
[14961]     
[14962]     He went and conducted her in. She said she wanted no supper, and
[14963]     went in the dark upstairs and struck a light. Turning she found that
[14964]     Jude had followed her, and was standing at the chamber door. She
[14965]     went to him, put her hand in his, and said "Good-night."
[14966]     
[14967]     "But Sue! Don't we live here?"
[14968]     
[14969]     "You said you would do as I wished!"
[14970]     
[14971]     "Yes. Very well! ... Perhaps it was wrong of me to argue
[14972]     distastefully as I have done! Perhaps as we couldn't conscientiously
[14973]     marry at first in the old-fashioned way, we ought to have parted.
[14974]     Perhaps the world is not illuminated enough for such experiments as
[14975]     ours! Who were we, to think we could act as pioneers!"
[14976]     
[14977]     "I am so glad you see that much, at any rate. I never deliberately
[14978]     meant to do as I did. I slipped into my false position through
[14979]     jealousy and agitation!"
[14980]     
[14981]     "But surely through love--you loved me?"
[14982]     
[14983]     "Yes. But I wanted to let it stop there, and go on always as mere
[14984]     lovers; until--"
[14985]     
[14986]     "But people in love couldn't live for ever like that!"
[14987]     
[14988]     "Women could: men can't, because they--won't. An average woman is
[14989]     in this superior to an average man--that she never instigates, only
[14990]     responds. We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more."
[14991]     
[14992]     "I was the unhappy cause of the change, as I have said
[14993]     before! ... Well, as you will! ... But human nature can't help
[14994]     being itself."
[14995]     
[14996]     "Oh yes--that's just what it has to learn--self-mastery."
[14997]     
[14998]     "I repeat--if either were to blame it was not you but I."
[14999]     
[15000]     "No--it was I. Your wickedness was only the natural man's desire
[15001]     to possess the woman. Mine was not the reciprocal wish till envy
[15002]     stimulated me to oust Arabella. I had thought I ought in charity to
[15003]     let you approach me--that it was damnably selfish to torture you as
[15004]     I did my other friend. But I shouldn't have given way if you hadn't
[15005]     broken me down by making me fear you would go back to her... But
[15006]     don't let us say any more about it! Jude, will you leave me to
[15007]     myself now?"
[15008]     
[15009]     "Yes... But Sue--my wife, as you are!" he burst out; "my old
[15010]     reproach to you was, after all, a true one. You have never loved me
[15011]     as I love you--never--never! Yours is not a passionate heart--your
[15012]     heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of
[15013]     fay, or sprite--not a woman!"
[15014]     
[15015]     "At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew
[15016]     you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with
[15017]     you; but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals
[15018]     almost more than unbridled passion--the craving to attract and
[15019]     captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man--was in me; and
[15020]     when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then--I don't
[15021]     know how it was--I couldn't bear to let you go--possibly to Arabella
[15022]     again--and so I got to love you, Jude. But you see, however fondly
[15023]     it ended, it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart
[15024]     ache for me without letting mine ache for you."
[15025]     
[15026]     "And now you add to your cruelty by leaving me!"
[15027]     
[15028]     "Ah--yes! The further I flounder, the more harm I do!"
[15029]     
[15030]     "O Sue!" said he with a sudden sense of his own danger. "Do not
[15031]     do an immoral thing for moral reasons! You have been my social
[15032]     salvation. Stay with me for humanity's sake! You know what a weak
[15033]     fellow I am. My two arch-enemies you know--my weakness for womankind
[15034]     and my impulse to strong liquor. Don't abandon me to them, Sue, to
[15035]     save your own soul only! They have been kept entirely at a distance
[15036]     since you became my guardian-angel! Since I have had you I have been
[15037]     able to go into any temptations of the sort, without risk. Isn't
[15038]     my safety worth a little sacrifice of dogmatic principle? I am in
[15039]     terror lest, if you leave me, it will be with me another case of the
[15040]     pig that was washed turning back to his wallowing in the mire!"
[15041]     
[15042]     Sue burst out weeping. "Oh, but you must not, Jude! You won't!
[15043]     I'll pray for you night and day!"
[15044]     
[15045]     "Well--never mind; don't grieve," said Jude generously. "I did
[15046]     suffer, God knows, about you at that time; and now I suffer again.
[15047]     But perhaps not so much as you. The woman mostly gets the worst of
[15048]     it in the long run!"
[15049]     
[15050]     "She does."
[15051]     
[15052]     "Unless she is absolutely worthless and contemptible. And this one
[15053]     is not that, anyhow!"
[15054]     
[15055]     Sue drew a nervous breath or two. "She is--I fear! ... Now
[15056]     Jude--good-night,--please!"
[15057]     
[15058]     "I mustn't stay?--Not just once more? As it has been so many
[15059]     times--O Sue, my wife, why not!"
[15060]     
[15061]     "No--no--not wife! ... I am in your hands, Jude--don't tempt me back
[15062]     now I have advanced so far!"
[15063]     
[15064]     "Very well. I do your bidding. I owe that to you, darling, in
[15065]     penance for how I overruled it at the first time. My God, how
[15066]     selfish I was! Perhaps--perhaps I spoilt one of the highest and
[15067]     purest loves that ever existed between man and woman! ... Then let
[15068]     the veil of our temple be rent in two from this hour!"
[15069]     
[15070]     He went to the bed, removed one of the pair of pillows thereon, and
[15071]     flung it to the floor.
[15072]     
[15073]     Sue looked at him, and bending over the bed-rail wept silently.
[15074]     "You don't see that it is a matter of conscience with me, and not
[15075]     of dislike to you!" she brokenly murmured. "Dislike to you! But I
[15076]     can't say any more--it breaks my heart--it will be undoing all I
[15077]     have begun! Jude--good-night!"
[15078]     
[15079]     "Good-night," he said, and turned to go.
[15080]     
[15081]     "Oh but you shall kiss me!" said she, starting up. "I
[15082]     can't--bear--!"
[15083]     
[15084]     He clasped her, and kissed her weeping face as he had scarcely ever
[15085]     done before, and they remained in silence till she said, "Good-bye,
[15086]     good-bye!" And then gently pressing him away she got free, trying to
[15087]     mitigate the sadness by saying: "We'll be dear friends just the same,
[15088]     Jude, won't we? And we'll see each other sometimes--yes!--and forget
[15089]     all this, and try to be as we were long ago?"
[15090]     
[15091]     Jude did not permit himself to speak, but turned and descended the
[15092]     stairs.
[15093]     
[15094]     
[15095]     
[15096]     IV
[15097]     
[15098]     
[15099]     The man whom Sue, in her mental _volte-face_, was now regarding as
[15100]     her inseparable husband, lived still at Marygreen.
[15101]     
[15102]     On the day before the tragedy of the children, Phillotson had seen
[15103]     both her and Jude as they stood in the rain at Christminster watching
[15104]     the procession to the theatre. But he had said nothing of it at the
[15105]     moment to his companion Gillingham, who, being an old friend, was
[15106]     staying with him at the village aforesaid, and had, indeed, suggested
[15107]     the day's trip to Christminster.
[15108]     
[15109]     "What are you thinking of?" said Gillingham, as they went home. "The
[15110]     university degree you never obtained?"
[15111]     
[15112]     "No, no," said Phillotson gruffly. "Of somebody I saw to-day." In a
[15113]     moment he added, "Susanna."
[15114]     
[15115]     "I saw her, too."
[15116]     
[15117]     "You said nothing."
[15118]     
[15119]     "I didn't wish to draw your attention to her. But, as you did see
[15120]     her, you should have said: 'How d'ye do, my dear-that-was?'"
[15121]     
[15122]     "Ah, well. I might have. But what do you think of this: I have good
[15123]     reason for supposing that she was innocent when I divorced her--that
[15124]     I was all wrong. Yes, indeed! Awkward, isn't it?"
[15125]     
[15126]     "She has taken care to set you right since, anyhow, apparently."
[15127]     
[15128]     "H'm. That's a cheap sneer. I ought to have waited, unquestionably."
[15129]     
[15130]     At the end of the week, when Gillingham had gone back to his school
[15131]     near Shaston, Phillotson, as was his custom, went to Alfredston
[15132]     market; ruminating again on Arabella's intelligence as he walked down
[15133]     the long hill which he had known before Jude knew it, though his
[15134]     history had not beaten so intensely upon its incline. Arrived in
[15135]     the town he bought his usual weekly local paper; and when he had sat
[15136]     down in an inn to refresh himself for the five miles' walk back, he
[15137]     pulled the paper from his pocket and read awhile. The account of the
[15138]     "strange suicide of a stone-mason's children" met his eye.
[15139]     
[15140]     Unimpassioned as he was, it impressed him painfully, and puzzled him
[15141]     not a little, for he could not understand the age of the elder child
[15142]     being what it was stated to be. However, there was no doubt that the
[15143]     newspaper report was in some way true.
[15144]     
[15145]     "Their cup of sorrow is now full!" he said: and thought and thought
[15146]     of Sue, and what she had gained by leaving him.
[15147]     
[15148]     Arabella having made her home at Alfredston, and the schoolmaster
[15149]     coming to market there every Saturday, it was not wonderful that in
[15150]     a few weeks they met again--the precise time being just alter her
[15151]     return from Christminster, where she had stayed much longer than she
[15152]     had at first intended, keeping an interested eye on Jude, though Jude
[15153]     had seen no more of her. Phillotson was on his way homeward when he
[15154]     encountered Arabella, and she was approaching the town.
[15155]     
[15156]     "You like walking out this way, Mrs. Cartlett?" he said.
[15157]     
[15158]     "I've just begun to again," she replied. "It is where I lived
[15159]     as maid and wife, and all the past things of my life that are
[15160]     interesting to my feelings are mixed up with this road. And they
[15161]     have been stirred up in me too, lately; for I've been visiting at
[15162]     Christminster. Yes; I've seen Jude."
[15163]     
[15164]     "Ah! How do they bear their terrible affliction?"
[15165]     
[15166]     "In a ve-ry strange way--ve-ry strange! She don't live with him any
[15167]     longer. I only heard of it as a certainty just before I left; though
[15168]     I had thought things were drifting that way from their manner when I
[15169]     called on them."
[15170]     
[15171]     "Not live with her husband? Why, I should have thought 'twould have
[15172]     united them more."
[15173]     
[15174]     "He's not her husband, after all. She has never really married him
[15175]     although they have passed as man and wife so long. And now, instead
[15176]     of this sad event making 'em hurry up, and get the thing done
[15177]     legally, she's took in a queer religious way, just as I was in my
[15178]     affliction at losing Cartlett, only hers is of a more 'sterical sort
[15179]     than mine. And she says, so I was told, that she's your wife in the
[15180]     eye of Heaven and the Church--yours only; and can't be anybody else's
[15181]     by any act of man."
[15182]     
[15183]     "Ah--indeed? ... Separated, have they!"
[15184]     
[15185]     "You see, the eldest boy was mine--"
[15186]     
[15187]     "Oh--yours!"
[15188]     
[15189]     "Yes, poor little fellow--born in lawful wedlock, thank God. And
[15190]     perhaps she feels, over and above other things, that I ought to have
[15191]     been in her place. I can't say. However, as for me, I am soon off
[15192]     from here. I've got Father to look after now, and we can't live in
[15193]     such a hum-drum place as this. I hope soon to be in a bar again at
[15194]     Christminster, or some other big town."
[15195]     
[15196]     They parted. When Phillotson had ascended the hill a few steps he
[15197]     stopped, hastened back, and called her.
[15198]     
[15199]     "What is, or was, their address?"
[15200]     
[15201]     Arabella gave it.
[15202]     
[15203]     "Thank you. Good afternoon."
[15204]     
[15205]     Arabella smiled grimly as she resumed her way, and practised
[15206]     dimple-making all along the road from where the pollard willows begin
[15207]     to the old almshouses in the first street of the town.
[15208]     
[15209]     Meanwhile Phillotson ascended to Marygreen, and for the first time
[15210]     during a lengthened period he lived with a forward eye. On crossing
[15211]     under the large trees of the green to the humble schoolhouse to which
[15212]     he had been reduced he stood a moment, and pictured Sue coming out of
[15213]     the door to meet him. No man had ever suffered more inconvenience
[15214]     from his own charity, Christian or heathen, than Phillotson had done
[15215]     in letting Sue go. He had been knocked about from pillar to post at
[15216]     the hands of the virtuous almost beyond endurance; he had been nearly
[15217]     starved, and was now dependent entirely upon the very small stipend
[15218]     from the school of this village (where the parson had got ill-spoken
[15219]     of for befriending him). He had often thought of Arabella's remarks
[15220]     that he should have been more severe with Sue, that her recalcitrant
[15221]     spirit would soon have been broken. Yet such was his obstinate and
[15222]     illogical disregard of opinion, and of the principles in which he had
[15223]     been trained, that his convictions on the rightness of his course
[15224]     with his wife had not been disturbed.
[15225]     
[15226]     Principles which could be subverted by feeling in one direction were
[15227]     liable to the same catastrophe in another. The instincts which had
[15228]     allowed him to give Sue her liberty now enabled him to regard her
[15229]     as none the worse for her life with Jude. He wished for her still,
[15230]     in his curious way, if he did not love her, and, apart from policy,
[15231]     soon felt that he would be gratified to have her again as his, always
[15232]     provided that she came willingly.
[15233]     
[15234]     But artifice was necessary, he had found, for stemming the cold and
[15235]     inhumane blast of the world's contempt. And here were the materials
[15236]     ready made. By getting Sue back and remarrying her on the
[15237]     respectable plea of having entertained erroneous views of her, and
[15238]     gained his divorce wrongfully, he might acquire some comfort, resume
[15239]     his old courses, perhaps return to the Shaston school, if not even to
[15240]     the Church as a licentiate.
[15241]     
[15242]     He thought he would write to Gillingham to inquire his views, and
[15243]     what he thought of his, Phillotson's, sending a letter to her.
[15244]     Gillingham replied, naturally, that now she was gone it were best to
[15245]     let her be, and considered that if she were anybody's wife she was
[15246]     the wife of the man to whom she had borne three children and owed
[15247]     such tragical adventures. Probably, as his attachment to her seemed
[15248]     unusually strong, the singular pair would make their union legal in
[15249]     course of time, and all would be well, and decent, and in order.
[15250]     
[15251]     "But they won't--Sue won't!" exclaimed Phillotson to himself.
[15252]     "Gillingham is so matter of fact. She's affected by Christminster
[15253]     sentiment and teaching. I can see her views on the indissolubility
[15254]     of marriage well enough, and I know where she got them. They are not
[15255]     mine; but I shall make use of them to further mine."
[15256]     
[15257]     He wrote a brief reply to Gillingham. "I know I am entirely wrong,
[15258]     but I don't agree with you. As to her having lived with and had
[15259]     three children by him, my feeling is (though I can advance no logical
[15260]     or moral defence of it, on the old lines) that it has done little
[15261]     more than finish her education. I shall write to her, and learn
[15262]     whether what that woman said is true or no."
[15263]     
[15264]     As he had made up his mind to do this before he had written to his
[15265]     friend, there had not been much reason for writing to the latter at
[15266]     all. However, it was Phillotson's way to act thus.
[15267]     
[15268]     He accordingly addressed a carefully considered epistle to Sue, and,
[15269]     knowing her emotional temperament, threw a Rhadamanthine strictness
[15270]     into the lines here and there, carefully hiding his heterodox
[15271]     feelings, not to frighten her. He stated that, it having come to his
[15272]     knowledge that her views had considerably changed, he felt compelled
[15273]     to say that his own, too, were largely modified by events subsequent
[15274]     to their parting. He would not conceal from her that passionate
[15275]     love had little to do with his communication. It arose from a wish
[15276]     to make their lives, if not a success, at least no such disastrous
[15277]     failure as they threatened to become, through his acting on what
[15278]     he had considered at the time a principle of justice, charity, and
[15279]     reason.
[15280]     
[15281]     To indulge one's instinctive and uncontrolled sense of justice and
[15282]     right, was not, he had found, permitted with impunity in an old
[15283]     civilization like ours. It was necessary to act under an acquired
[15284]     and cultivated sense of the same, if you wished to enjoy an average
[15285]     share of comfort and honour; and to let crude loving kindness take
[15286]     care of itself.
[15287]     
[15288]     He suggested that she should come to him there at Marygreen.
[15289]     
[15290]     On second thoughts he took out the last paragraph but one; and having
[15291]     rewritten the letter he dispatched it immediately, and in some
[15292]     excitement awaited the issue.
[15293]     
[15294]     
[15295]     
[15296]     A few days after a figure moved through the white fog which enveloped
[15297]     the Beersheba suburb of Christminster, towards the quarter in which
[15298]     Jude Fawley had taken up his lodging since his division from Sue. A
[15299]     timid knock sounded upon the door of his abode.
[15300]     
[15301]     It was evening--so he was at home; and by a species of divination he
[15302]     jumped up and rushed to the door himself.
[15303]     
[15304]     "Will you come out with me? I would rather not come in. I want
[15305]     to--to talk with you--and to go with you to the cemetery."
[15306]     
[15307]     It had been in the trembling accents of Sue that these words came.
[15308]     Jude put on his hat. "It is dreary for you to be out," he said.
[15309]     "But if you prefer not to come in, I don't mind."
[15310]     
[15311]     "Yes--I do. I shall not keep you long."
[15312]     
[15313]     Jude was too much affected to go on talking at first; she, too, was
[15314]     now such a mere cluster of nerves that all initiatory power seemed
[15315]     to have left her, and they proceeded through the fog like Acherontic
[15316]     shades for a long while, without sound or gesture.
[15317]     
[15318]     "I want to tell you," she presently said, her voice now quick, now
[15319]     slow, "so that you may not hear of it by chance. I am going back to
[15320]     Richard. He has--so magnanimously--agreed to forgive all."
[15321]     
[15322]     "Going back? How can you go--"
[15323]     
[15324]     "He is going to marry me again. That is for form's sake, and to
[15325]     satisfy the world, which does not see things as they are. But of
[15326]     course I AM his wife already. Nothing has changed that."
[15327]     
[15328]     He turned upon her with an anguish that was well-nigh fierce.
[15329]     
[15330]     "But you are MY wife! Yes, you are. You know it. I have always
[15331]     regretted that feint of ours in going away and pretending to come
[15332]     back legally married, to save appearances. I loved you, and you
[15333]     loved me; and we closed with each other; and that made the marriage.
[15334]     We still love--you as well as I--KNOW it, Sue! Therefore our
[15335]     marriage is not cancelled."
[15336]     
[15337]     "Yes; I know how you see it," she answered with despairing
[15338]     self-suppression. "But I am going to marry him again, as it would
[15339]     be called by you. Strictly speaking you, too--don't mind my saying
[15340]     it, Jude!--you should take back--Arabella."
[15341]     
[15342]     "I should? Good God--what next! But how if you and I had married
[15343]     legally, as we were on the point of doing?"
[15344]     
[15345]     "I should have felt just the same--that ours was not a marriage.
[15346]     And I would go back to Richard without repeating the sacrament, if
[15347]     he asked me. But 'the world and its ways have a certain worth' (I
[15348]     suppose): therefore I concede a repetition of the ceremony... Don't
[15349]     crush all the life out of me by satire and argument, I implore you!
[15350]     I was strongest once, I know, and perhaps I treated you cruelly.
[15351]     But Jude, return good for evil! I am the weaker now. Don't
[15352]     retaliate upon me, but be kind. Oh be kind to me--a poor wicked
[15353]     woman who is trying to mend!"
[15354]     
[15355]     He shook his head hopelessly, his eyes wet. The blow of her
[15356]     bereavement seemed to have destroyed her reasoning faculty. The once
[15357]     keen vision was dimmed. "All wrong, all wrong!" he said huskily.
[15358]     "Error--perversity! It drives me out of my senses. Do you care for
[15359]     him? Do you love him? You know you don't! It will be a fanatic
[15360]     prostitution--God forgive me, yes--that's what it will be!"
[15361]     
[15362]     "I don't love him--I must, must, own it, in deepest remorse! But I
[15363]     shall try to learn to love him by obeying him."
[15364]     
[15365]     Jude argued, urged, implored; but her conviction was proof against
[15366]     all. It seemed to be the one thing on earth on which she was firm,
[15367]     and that her firmness in this had left her tottering in every other
[15368]     impulse and wish she possessed.
[15369]     
[15370]     "I have been considerate enough to let you know the whole truth,
[15371]     and to tell it you myself," she said in cut tones; "that you might
[15372]     not consider yourself slighted by hearing of it at second hand. I
[15373]     have even owned the extreme fact that I do not love him. I did not
[15374]     think you would be so rough with me for doing so! I was going to
[15375]     ask you..."
[15376]     
[15377]     "To give you away?"
[15378]     
[15379]     "No. To send--my boxes to me--if you would. But I suppose you
[15380]     won't."
[15381]     
[15382]     "Why, of course I will. What--isn't he coming to fetch you--to marry
[15383]     you from here? He won't condescend to do that?"
[15384]     
[15385]     "No--I won't let him. I go to him voluntarily, just as I went away
[15386]     from him. We are to be married at his little church at Marygreen."
[15387]     
[15388]     She was so sadly sweet in what he called her wrong-headedness that
[15389]     Jude could not help being moved to tears more than once for pity of
[15390]     her. "I never knew such a woman for doing impulsive penances, as
[15391]     you, Sue! No sooner does one expect you to go straight on, as the
[15392]     one rational proceeding, than you double round the corner!"
[15393]     
[15394]     "Ah, well; let that go! ... Jude, I must say good-bye! But I wanted
[15395]     you to go to the cemetery with me. Let our farewell be there--beside
[15396]     the graves of those who died to bring home to me the error of my
[15397]     views."
[15398]     
[15399]     They turned in the direction of the place, and the gate was opened to
[15400]     them on application. Sue had been there often, and she knew the way
[15401]     to the spot in the dark. They reached it, and stood still.
[15402]     
[15403]     "It is here--I should like to part," said she.
[15404]     
[15405]     "So be it!"
[15406]     
[15407]     "Don't think me hard because I have acted on conviction. Your
[15408]     generous devotion to me is unparalleled, Jude! Your worldly failure,
[15409]     if you have failed, is to your credit rather than to your blame.
[15410]     Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do
[15411]     themselves no worldly good. Every successful man is more or less a
[15412]     selfish man. The devoted fail... 'Charity seeketh not her own.'"
[15413]     
[15414]     "In that chapter we are at one, ever beloved darling, and on it we'll
[15415]     part friends. Its verses will stand fast when all the rest that you
[15416]     call religion has passed away!"
[15417]     
[15418]     "Well--don't discuss it. Good-bye, Jude; my fellow-sinner, and
[15419]     kindest friend!"
[15420]     
[15421]     "Good-bye, my mistaken wife. Good-bye!"
[15422]     
[15423]     
[15424]     
[15425]     V
[15426]     
[15427]     
[15428]     The next afternoon the familiar Christminster fog still hung over all
[15429]     things. Sue's slim shape was only just discernible going towards the
[15430]     station.
[15431]     
[15432]     Jude had no heart to go to his work that day. Neither could he go
[15433]     anywhere in the direction by which she would be likely to pass.
[15434]     He went in an opposite one, to a dreary, strange, flat scene, where
[15435]     boughs dripped, and coughs and consumption lurked, and where he had
[15436]     never been before.
[15437]     
[15438]     "Sue's gone from me--gone!" he murmured miserably.
[15439]     
[15440]     She in the meantime had left by the train, and reached Alfredston
[15441]     Road, where she entered the steam-tram and was conveyed into the
[15442]     town. It had been her request to Phillotson that he should not meet
[15443]     her. She wished, she said, to come to him voluntarily, to his very
[15444]     house and hearthstone.
[15445]     
[15446]     It was Friday evening, which had been chosen because the schoolmaster
[15447]     was disengaged at four o'clock that day till the Monday morning
[15448]     following. The little car she hired at the Bear to drive her to
[15449]     Marygreen set her down at the end of the lane, half a mile from the
[15450]     village, by her desire, and preceded her to the schoolhouse with
[15451]     such portion of her luggage as she had brought. On its return she
[15452]     encountered it, and asked the driver if he had found the master's
[15453]     house open. The man informed her that he had, and that her things
[15454]     had been taken in by the schoolmaster himself.
[15455]     
[15456]     She could now enter Marygreen without exciting much observation.
[15457]     She crossed by the well and under the trees to the pretty new school
[15458]     on the other side, and lifted the latch of the dwelling without
[15459]     knocking. Phillotson stood in the middle of the room, awaiting her,
[15460]     as requested.
[15461]     
[15462]     "I've come, Richard," said she, looking pale and shaken, and sinking
[15463]     into a chair. "I cannot believe--you forgive your--wife!"
[15464]     
[15465]     "Everything, darling Susanna," said Phillotson.
[15466]     
[15467]     She started at the endearment, though it had been spoken advisedly
[15468]     without fervour. Then she nerved herself again.
[15469]     
[15470]     "My children--are dead--and it is right that they should be! I am
[15471]     glad--almost. They were sin-begotten. They were sacrificed to teach
[15472]     me how to live! Their death was the first stage of my purification.
[15473]     That's why they have not died in vain! ... You will take me back?"
[15474]     
[15475]     He was so stirred by her pitiful words and tone that he did more than
[15476]     he had meant to do. He bent and kissed her cheek.
[15477]     
[15478]     Sue imperceptibly shrank away, her flesh quivering under the touch of
[15479]     his lips.
[15480]     
[15481]     Phillotson's heart sank, for desire was renascent in him. "You still
[15482]     have an aversion to me!"
[15483]     
[15484]     "Oh no, dear--I have been driving through the damp, and I was
[15485]     chilly!" she said, with a hurried smile of apprehension. "When are
[15486]     we going to have the marriage? Soon?"
[15487]     
[15488]     "To-morrow morning, early, I thought--if you really wish. I am
[15489]     sending round to the vicar to let him know you are come. I have told
[15490]     him all, and he highly approves--he says it will bring our lives to
[15491]     a triumphant and satisfactory issue. But--are you sure of yourself?
[15492]     It is not too late to refuse now if--you think you can't bring
[15493]     yourself to it, you know?"
[15494]     
[15495]     "Yes, yes, I can! I want it done quick. Tell him, tell him at once!
[15496]     My strength is tried by the undertaking--I can't wait long!"
[15497]     
[15498]     "Have something to eat and drink then, and go over to your room
[15499]     at Mrs. Edlin's. I'll tell the vicar half-past eight to-morrow,
[15500]     before anybody is about--if that's not too soon for you? My friend
[15501]     Gillingham is here to help us in the ceremony. He's been good enough
[15502]     to come all the way from Shaston at great inconvenience to himself."
[15503]     
[15504]     Unlike a woman in ordinary, whose eye is so keen for material things,
[15505]     Sue seemed to see nothing of the room they were in, or any detail of
[15506]     her environment. But on moving across the parlour to put down her
[15507]     muff she uttered a little "Oh!" and grew paler than before. Her look
[15508]     was that of the condemned criminal who catches sight of his coffin.
[15509]     
[15510]     "What?" said Phillotson.
[15511]     
[15512]     The flap of the bureau chanced to be open, and in placing her muff
[15513]     upon it her eye had caught a document which lay there. "Oh--only
[15514]     a--funny surprise!" she said, trying to laugh away her cry as she
[15515]     came back to the table.
[15516]     
[15517]     "Ah! Yes," said Phillotson. "The licence.... It has just come."
[15518]     
[15519]     Gillingham now joined them from his room above, and Sue nervously
[15520]     made herself agreeable to him by talking on whatever she thought
[15521]     likely to interest him, except herself, though that interested him
[15522]     most of all. She obediently ate some supper, and prepared to leave
[15523]     for her lodging hard by. Phillotson crossed the green with her,
[15524]     bidding her good-night at Mrs. Edlin's door.
[15525]     
[15526]     The old woman accompanied Sue to her temporary quarters, and helped
[15527]     her to unpack. Among other things she laid out a night-gown
[15528]     tastefully embroidered.
[15529]     
[15530]     "Oh--I didn't know THAT was put in!" said Sue quickly. "I didn't
[15531]     mean it to be. Here is a different one." She handed a new and
[15532]     absolutely plain garment, of coarse and unbleached calico.
[15533]     
[15534]     "But this is the prettiest," said Mrs. Edlin. "That one is no better
[15535]     than very sackcloth o' Scripture!"
[15536]     
[15537]     "Yes--I meant it to be. Give me the other."
[15538]     
[15539]     She took it, and began rending it with all her might, the tears
[15540]     resounding through the house like a screech-owl.
[15541]     
[15542]     "But my dear, dear!--whatever..."
[15543]     
[15544]     "It is adulterous! It signifies what I don't feel--I bought it long
[15545]     ago--to please Jude. It must be destroyed!"
[15546]     
[15547]     Mrs. Edlin lifted her hands, and Sue excitedly continued to tear the
[15548]     linen into strips, laying the pieces in the fire.
[15549]     
[15550]     "You med ha' give it to me!" said the widow. "It do make my heart
[15551]     ache to see such pretty open-work as that a-burned by the flames--not
[15552]     that ornamental night-rails can be much use to a' ould 'ooman like I.
[15553]     My days for such be all past and gone!"
[15554]     
[15555]     "It is an accursed thing--it reminds me of what I want to forget!"
[15556]     Sue repeated. "It is only fit for the fire."
[15557]     
[15558]     "Lord, you be too strict! What do ye use such words for, and condemn
[15559]     to hell your dear little innocent children that's lost to 'ee! Upon
[15560]     my life I don't call that religion!"
[15561]     
[15562]     Sue flung her face upon the bed, sobbing. "Oh, don't, don't! That
[15563]     kills me!" She remained shaken with her grief, and slipped down upon
[15564]     her knees.
[15565]     
[15566]     "I'll tell 'ee what--you ought not to marry this man again!" said
[15567]     Mrs. Edlin indignantly. "You are in love wi' t' other still!"
[15568]     
[15569]     "Yes I must--I am his already!"
[15570]     
[15571]     "Pshoo! You be t' other man's. If you didn't like to commit
[15572]     yourselves to the binding vow again, just at first, 'twas all the
[15573]     more credit to your consciences, considering your reasons, and you
[15574]     med ha' lived on, and made it all right at last. After all, it
[15575]     concerned nobody but your own two selves."
[15576]     
[15577]     "Richard says he'll have me back, and I'm bound to go! If he had
[15578]     refused, it might not have been so much my duty to--give up Jude.
[15579]     But--" She remained with her face in the bed-clothes, and Mrs. Edlin
[15580]     left the room.
[15581]     
[15582]     Phillotson in the interval had gone back to his friend Gillingham,
[15583]     who still sat over the supper-table. They soon rose, and walked out
[15584]     on the green to smoke awhile. A light was burning in Sue's room, a
[15585]     shadow moving now and then across the blind.
[15586]     
[15587]     Gillingham had evidently been impressed with the indefinable charm of
[15588]     Sue, and after a silence he said, "Well: you've all but got her again
[15589]     at last. She can't very well go a second time. The pear has dropped
[15590]     into your hand."
[15591]     
[15592]     "Yes! ... I suppose I am right in taking her at her word. I confess
[15593]     there seems a touch of selfishness in it. Apart from her being what
[15594]     she is, of course, a luxury for a fogy like me, it will set me right
[15595]     in the eyes of the clergy and orthodox laity, who have never forgiven
[15596]     me for letting her go. So I may get back in some degree into my old
[15597]     track."
[15598]     
[15599]     "Well--if you've got any sound reason for marrying her again, do it
[15600]     now in God's name! I was always against your opening the cage-door
[15601]     and letting the bird go in such an obviously suicidal way. You might
[15602]     have been a school inspector by this time, or a reverend, if you
[15603]     hadn't been so weak about her."
[15604]     
[15605]     "I did myself irreparable damage--I know it."
[15606]     
[15607]     "Once you've got her housed again, stick to her."
[15608]     
[15609]     Phillotson was more evasive to-night. He did not care to admit
[15610]     clearly that his taking Sue to him again had at bottom nothing to
[15611]     do with repentance of letting her go, but was, primarily, a human
[15612]     instinct flying in the face of custom and profession. He said,
[15613]     "Yes--I shall do that. I know woman better now. Whatever justice
[15614]     there was in releasing her, there was little logic, for one holding
[15615]     my views on other subjects."
[15616]     
[15617]     Gillingham looked at him, and wondered whether it would ever happen
[15618]     that the reactionary spirit induced by the world's sneers and his own
[15619]     physical wishes would make Phillotson more orthodoxly cruel to her
[15620]     than he had erstwhile been informally and perversely kind.
[15621]     
[15622]     "I perceive it won't do to give way to impulse," Phillotson resumed,
[15623]     feeling more and more every minute the necessity of acting up to his
[15624]     position. "I flew in the face of the Church's teaching; but I did it
[15625]     without malice prepense. Women are so strange in their influence
[15626]     that they tempt you to misplaced kindness. However, I know myself
[15627]     better now. A little judicious severity, perhaps..."
[15628]     
[15629]     "Yes; but you must tighten the reins by degrees only. Don't be too
[15630]     strenuous at first. She'll come to any terms in time."
[15631]     
[15632]     The caution was unnecessary, though Phillotson did not say so. "I
[15633]     remember what my vicar at Shaston said, when I left after the row
[15634]     that was made about my agreeing to her elopement. 'The only thing
[15635]     you can do to retrieve your position and hers is to admit your error
[15636]     in not restraining her with a wise and strong hand, and to get her
[15637]     back again if she'll come, and be firm in the future.' But I was
[15638]     so headstrong at that time that I paid no heed. And that after the
[15639]     divorce she should have thought of doing so I did not dream."
[15640]     
[15641]     The gate of Mrs. Edlin's cottage clicked, and somebody began crossing
[15642]     in the direction of the school. Phillotson said "Good-night."
[15643]     
[15644]     "Oh, is that Mr. Phillotson," said Mrs. Edlin. "I was going over
[15645]     to see 'ee. I've been upstairs with her, helping her to unpack her
[15646]     things; and upon my word, sir, I don't think this ought to be!"
[15647]     
[15648]     "What--the wedding?"
[15649]     
[15650]     "Yes. She's forcing herself to it, poor dear little thing; and
[15651]     you've no notion what she's suffering. I was never much for religion
[15652]     nor against it, but it can't be right to let her do this, and you
[15653]     ought to persuade her out of it. Of course everybody will say it was
[15654]     very good and forgiving of 'ee to take her to 'ee again. But for my
[15655]     part I don't."
[15656]     
[15657]     "It's her wish, and I am willing," said Phillotson with grave
[15658]     reserve, opposition making him illogically tenacious now. "A great
[15659]     piece of laxity will be rectified."
[15660]     
[15661]     "I don't believe it. She's his wife if anybody's. She's had three
[15662]     children by him, and he loves her dearly; and it's a wicked shame to
[15663]     egg her on to this, poor little quivering thing! She's got nobody
[15664]     on her side. The one man who'd be her friend the obstinate creature
[15665]     won't allow to come near her. What first put her into this mood o'
[15666]     mind, I wonder!"
[15667]     
[15668]     "I can't tell. Not I certainly. It is all voluntary on her part.
[15669]     Now that's all I have to say." Phillotson spoke stiffly. "You've
[15670]     turned round, Mrs. Edlin. It is unseemly of you!"
[15671]     
[15672]     "Well. I knowed you'd be affronted at what I had to say; but I don't
[15673]     mind that. The truth's the truth."
[15674]     
[15675]     "I'm not affronted, Mrs. Edlin. You've been too kind a neighbour
[15676]     for that. But I must be allowed to know what's best for myself and
[15677]     Susanna. I suppose you won't go to church with us, then?"
[15678]     
[15679]     "No. Be hanged if I can... I don't know what the times be coming
[15680]     to! Matrimony have growed to be that serious in these days that one
[15681]     really do feel afeard to move in it at all. In my time we took it
[15682]     more careless; and I don't know that we was any the worse for it!
[15683]     When I and my poor man were jined in it we kept up the junketing all
[15684]     the week, and drunk the parish dry, and had to borrow half a crown
[15685]     to begin housekeeping!"
[15686]     
[15687]     When Mrs. Edlin had gone back to her cottage Phillotson spoke
[15688]     moodily. "I don't know whether I ought to do it--at any rate quite
[15689]     so rapidly."
[15690]     
[15691]     "Why?"
[15692]     
[15693]     "If she is really compelling herself to this against her
[15694]     instincts--merely from this new sense of duty or religion--I ought
[15695]     perhaps to let her wait a bit."
[15696]     
[15697]     "Now you've got so far you ought not to back out of it. That's my
[15698]     opinion."
[15699]     
[15700]     "I can't very well put it off now; that's true. But I had a qualm
[15701]     when she gave that little cry at sight of the licence."
[15702]     
[15703]     "Now, never you have qualms, old boy. I mean to give her away
[15704]     to-morrow morning, and you mean to take her. It has always been on
[15705]     my conscience that I didn't urge more objections to your letting her
[15706]     go, and now we've got to this stage I shan't be content if I don't
[15707]     help you to set the matter right."
[15708]     
[15709]     Phillotson nodded, and seeing how staunch his friend was, became
[15710]     more frank. "No doubt when it gets known what I've done I shall
[15711]     be thought a soft fool by many. But they don't know Sue as I do.
[15712]     Though so elusive, hers is such an honest nature at bottom that I
[15713]     don't think she has ever done anything against her conscience. The
[15714]     fact of her having lived with Fawley goes for nothing. At the time
[15715]     she left me for him she thought she was quite within her right. Now
[15716]     she thinks otherwise."
[15717]     
[15718]     The next morning came, and the self-sacrifice of the woman on the
[15719]     altar of what she was pleased to call her principles was acquiesced
[15720]     in by these two friends, each from his own point of view. Phillotson
[15721]     went across to the Widow Edlin's to fetch Sue a few minutes after
[15722]     eight o'clock. The fog of the previous day or two on the low-lands
[15723]     had travelled up here by now, and the trees on the green caught
[15724]     armfuls, and turned them into showers of big drops. The bride was
[15725]     waiting, ready; bonnet and all on. She had never in her life looked
[15726]     so much like the lily her name connoted as she did in that pallid
[15727]     morning light. Chastened, world-weary, remorseful, the strain on her
[15728]     nerves had preyed upon her flesh and bones, and she appeared smaller
[15729]     in outline than she had formerly done, though Sue had not been a
[15730]     large woman in her days of rudest health.
[15731]     
[15732]     "Prompt," said the schoolmaster, magnanimously taking her hand.
[15733]     But he checked his impulse to kiss her, remembering her start of
[15734]     yesterday, which unpleasantly lingered in his mind.
[15735]     
[15736]     Gillingham joined them, and they left the house, Widow Edlin
[15737]     continuing steadfast in her refusal to assist in the ceremony.
[15738]     
[15739]     "Where is the church?" said Sue. She had not lived there for any
[15740]     length of time since the old church was pulled down, and in her
[15741]     preoccupation forgot the new one.
[15742]     
[15743]     "Up here," said Phillotson; and presently the tower loomed large and
[15744]     solemn in the fog. The vicar had already crossed to the building,
[15745]     and when they entered he said pleasantly: "We almost want candles."
[15746]     
[15747]     "You do--wish me to be yours, Richard?" gasped Sue in a whisper.
[15748]     
[15749]     "Certainly, dear: above all things in the world."
[15750]     
[15751]     Sue said no more; and for the second or third time he felt he was not
[15752]     quite following out the humane instinct which had induced him to let
[15753]     her go.
[15754]     
[15755]     There they stood, five altogether: the parson, the clerk, the couple,
[15756]     and Gillingham; and the holy ordinance was resolemnized forthwith.
[15757]     In the nave of the edifice were two or three villagers, and when the
[15758]     clergyman came to the words, "What God hath joined," a woman's voice
[15759]     from among these was heard to utter audibly:
[15760]     
[15761]     "God hath jined indeed!"
[15762]     
[15763]     It was like a re-enactment by the ghosts of their former selves of
[15764]     the similar scene which had taken place at Melchester years before.
[15765]     When the books were signed the vicar congratulated the husband
[15766]     and wife on having performed a noble, and righteous, and mutually
[15767]     forgiving act. "All's well that ends well," he said smiling.
[15768]     "May you long be happy together, after thus having been 'saved as by
[15769]     fire.'"
[15770]     
[15771]     They came down the nearly empty building, and crossed to the
[15772]     schoolhouse. Gillingham wanted to get home that night, and left
[15773]     early. He, too, congratulated the couple. "Now," he said in parting
[15774]     from Phillotson, who walked out a little way, "I shall be able to
[15775]     tell the people in your native place a good round tale; and they'll
[15776]     all say 'Well done,' depend on it."
[15777]     
[15778]     When the schoolmaster got back Sue was making a pretence of doing
[15779]     some housewifery as if she lived there. But she seemed timid at his
[15780]     approach, and compunction wrought on him at sight of it.
[15781]     
[15782]     "Of course, my dear, I shan't expect to intrude upon your personal
[15783]     privacy any more than I did before," he said gravely. "It is for our
[15784]     good socially to do this, and that's its justification, if it was not
[15785]     my reason." Sue brightened a little.
[15786]     
[15787]     
[15788]     
[15789]     VI
[15790]     
[15791]     
[15792]     The place was the door of Jude's lodging in the out-skirts of
[15793]     Christminster--far from the precincts of St. Silas' where he had
[15794]     formerly lived, which saddened him to sickness. The rain was coming
[15795]     down. A woman in shabby black stood on the doorstep talking to Jude,
[15796]     who held the door in his hand.
[15797]     
[15798]     "I am lonely, destitute, and houseless--that's what I am! Father has
[15799]     turned me out of doors after borrowing every penny I'd got, to put it
[15800]     into his business, and then accusing me of laziness when I was only
[15801]     waiting for a situation. I am at the mercy of the world! If you
[15802]     can't take me and help me, Jude, I must go to the workhouse, or to
[15803]     something worse. Only just now two undergraduates winked at me as I
[15804]     came along. 'Tis hard for a woman to keep virtuous where there's so
[15805]     many young men!"
[15806]     
[15807]     The woman in the rain who spoke thus was Arabella, the evening being
[15808]     that of the day after Sue's remarriage with Phillotson.
[15809]     
[15810]     "I am sorry for you, but I am only in lodgings," said Jude coldly.
[15811]     
[15812]     "Then you turn me away?"
[15813]     
[15814]     "I'll give you enough to get food and lodging for a few days."
[15815]     
[15816]     "Oh, but can't you have the kindness to take me in? I cannot endure
[15817]     going to a public house to lodge; and I am so lonely. Please, Jude,
[15818]     for old times' sake!"
[15819]     
[15820]     "No, no," said Jude hastily. "I don't want to be reminded of those
[15821]     things; and if you talk about them I shall not help you."
[15822]     
[15823]     "Then I suppose I must go!" said Arabella. She bent her head against
[15824]     the doorpost and began sobbing.
[15825]     
[15826]     "The house is full," said Jude. "And I have only a little extra room
[15827]     to my own--not much more than a closet--where I keep my tools, and
[15828]     templates, and the few books I have left!"
[15829]     
[15830]     "That would be a palace for me!"
[15831]     
[15832]     "There is no bedstead in it."
[15833]     
[15834]     "A bit of a bed could be made on the floor. It would be good enough
[15835]     for me."
[15836]     
[15837]     Unable to be harsh with her, and not knowing what to do, Jude called
[15838]     the man who let the lodgings, and said this was an acquaintance of
[15839]     his in great distress for want of temporary shelter.
[15840]     
[15841]     "You may remember me as barmaid at the Lamb and Flag formerly?" spoke
[15842]     up Arabella. "My father has insulted me this afternoon, and I've
[15843]     left him, though without a penny!"
[15844]     
[15845]     The householder said he could not recall her features. "But still,
[15846]     if you are a friend of Mr. Fawley's we'll do what we can for a day
[15847]     or two--if he'll make himself answerable?"
[15848]     
[15849]     "Yes, yes," said Jude. "She has really taken me quite unawares; but
[15850]     I should wish to help her out of her difficulty." And an arrangement
[15851]     was ultimately come to under which a bed was to be thrown down in
[15852]     Jude's lumber-room, to make it comfortable for Arabella till she
[15853]     could get out of the strait she was in--not by her own fault, as she
[15854]     declared--and return to her father's again.
[15855]     
[15856]     While they were waiting for this to be done Arabella said: "You know
[15857]     the news, I suppose?"
[15858]     
[15859]     "I guess what you mean; but I know nothing."
[15860]     
[15861]     "I had a letter from Anny at Alfredston to-day. She had just heard
[15862]     that the wedding was to be yesterday: but she didn't know if it had
[15863]     come off."
[15864]     
[15865]     "I don't wish to talk of it."
[15866]     
[15867]     "No, no: of course you don't. Only it shows what kind of woman--"
[15868]     
[15869]     "Don't speak of her I say! She's a fool! And she's an angel, too,
[15870]     poor dear!"
[15871]     
[15872]     "If it's done, he'll have a chance of getting back to his old
[15873]     position, by everybody's account, so Anny says. All his well-wishers
[15874]     will be pleased, including the bishop himself."
[15875]     
[15876]     "Do spare me, Arabella."
[15877]     
[15878]     Arabella was duly installed in the little attic, and at first she
[15879]     did not come near Jude at all. She went to and fro about her own
[15880]     business, which, when they met for a moment on the stairs or in the
[15881]     passage, she informed him was that of obtaining another place in
[15882]     the occupation she understood best. When Jude suggested London as
[15883]     affording the most likely opening in the liquor trade, she shook her
[15884]     head. "No--the temptations are too many," she said. "Any humble
[15885]     tavern in the country before that for me."
[15886]     
[15887]     On the Sunday morning following, when he breakfasted later than on
[15888]     other days, she meekly asked him if she might come in to breakfast
[15889]     with him, as she had broken her teapot, and could not replace it
[15890]     immediately, the shops being shut.
[15891]     
[15892]     "Yes, if you like," he said indifferently.
[15893]     
[15894]     While they sat without speaking she suddenly observed: "You seem all
[15895]     in a brood, old man. I'm sorry for you."
[15896]     
[15897]     "I am all in a brood."
[15898]     
[15899]     "It is about her, I know. It's no business of mine, but I could find
[15900]     out all about the wedding--if it really did take place--if you wanted
[15901]     to know."
[15902]     
[15903]     "How could you?"
[15904]     
[15905]     "I wanted to go to Alfredston to get a few things I left there. And
[15906]     I could see Anny, who'll be sure to have heard all about it, as she
[15907]     has friends at Marygreen."
[15908]     
[15909]     Jude could not bear to acquiesce in this proposal; but his suspense
[15910]     pitted itself against his discretion, and won in the struggle. "You
[15911]     can ask about it if you like," he said. "I've not heard a sound from
[15912]     there. It must have been very private, if--they have married."
[15913]     
[15914]     "I am afraid I haven't enough cash to take me there and back, or I
[15915]     should have gone before. I must wait till I have earned some."
[15916]     
[15917]     "Oh--I can pay the journey for you," he said impatiently. And thus
[15918]     his suspense as to Sue's welfare, and the possible marriage, moved
[15919]     him to dispatch for intelligence the last emissary he would have
[15920]     thought of choosing deliberately.
[15921]     
[15922]     Arabella went, Jude requesting her to be home not later than by
[15923]     the seven o'clock train. When she had gone he said: "Why should I
[15924]     have charged her to be back by a particular time! She's nothing to
[15925]     me--nor the other neither!"
[15926]     
[15927]     But having finished work he could not help going to the station to
[15928]     meet Arabella, dragged thither by feverish haste to get the news
[15929]     she might bring, and know the worst. Arabella had made dimples
[15930]     most successfully all the way home, and when she stepped out of the
[15931]     railway carriage she smiled. He merely said "Well?" with the very
[15932]     reverse of a smile.
[15933]     
[15934]     "They are married."
[15935]     
[15936]     "Yes--of course they are!" he returned. She observed, however, the
[15937]     hard strain upon his lip as he spoke.
[15938]     
[15939]     "Anny says she has heard from Belinda, her relation out at Marygreen,
[15940]     that it was very sad, and curious!"
[15941]     
[15942]     "How do you mean sad? She wanted to marry him again, didn't she?
[15943]     And he her!"
[15944]     
[15945]     "Yes--that was it. She wanted to in one sense, but not in the
[15946]     other. Mrs. Edlin was much upset by it all, and spoke out her mind
[15947]     at Phillotson. But Sue was that excited about it that she burnt her
[15948]     best embroidery that she'd worn with you, to blot you out entirely.
[15949]     Well--if a woman feels like it, she ought to do it. I commend her
[15950]     for it, though others don't." Arabella sighed. "She felt he was her
[15951]     only husband, and that she belonged to nobody else in the sight of
[15952]     God A'mighty while he lived. Perhaps another woman feels the same
[15953]     about herself, too!" Arabella sighed again.
[15954]     
[15955]     "I don't want any cant!" exclaimed Jude.
[15956]     
[15957]     "It isn't cant," said Arabella. "I feel exactly the same as she!"
[15958]     
[15959]     He closed that issue by remarking abruptly: "Well--now I know all I
[15960]     wanted to know. Many thanks for your information. I am not going
[15961]     back to my lodgings just yet." And he left her straightway.
[15962]     
[15963]     In his misery and depression Jude walked to well-nigh every spot
[15964]     in the city that he had visited with Sue; thence he did not know
[15965]     whither, and then thought of going home to his usual evening meal.
[15966]     But having all the vices of his virtues, and some to spare, he turned
[15967]     into a public house, for the first time during many months. Among
[15968]     the possible consequences of her marriage Sue had not dwelt on this.
[15969]     
[15970]     Arabella, meanwhile, had gone back. The evening passed, and Jude
[15971]     did not return. At half-past nine Arabella herself went out, first
[15972]     proceeding to an outlying district near the river where her father
[15973]     lived, and had opened a small and precarious pork-shop lately.
[15974]     
[15975]     "Well," she said to him, "for all your rowing me that night, I've
[15976]     called in, for I have something to tell you. I think I shall get
[15977]     married and settled again. Only you must help me: and you can do
[15978]     no less, after what I've stood 'ee."
[15979]     
[15980]     "I'll do anything to get thee off my hands!"
[15981]     
[15982]     "Very well. I am now going to look for my young man. He's on the
[15983]     loose I'm afraid, and I must get him home. All I want you to do
[15984]     to-night is not to fasten the door, in case I should want to sleep
[15985]     here, and should be late."
[15986]     
[15987]     "I thought you'd soon get tired of giving yourself airs and keeping
[15988]     away!"
[15989]     
[15990]     "Well--don't do the door. That's all I say."
[15991]     
[15992]     She then sallied out again, and first hastening back to Jude's to
[15993]     make sure that he had not returned, began her search for him. A
[15994]     shrewd guess as to his probable course took her straight to the
[15995]     tavern which Jude had formerly frequented, and where she had been
[15996]     barmaid for a brief term. She had no sooner opened the door of the
[15997]     "Private Bar" than her eyes fell upon him--sitting in the shade at
[15998]     the back of the compartment, with his eyes fixed on the floor in a
[15999]     blank stare. He was drinking nothing stronger than ale just then.
[16000]     He did not observe her, and she entered and sat beside him.
[16001]     
[16002]     Jude looked up, and said without surprise: "You've come to have
[16003]     something, Arabella? ... I'm trying to forget her: that's all! But
[16004]     I can't; and I am going home." She saw that he was a little way on
[16005]     in liquor, but only a little as yet.
[16006]     
[16007]     "I've come entirely to look for you, dear boy. You are not well.
[16008]     Now you must have something better than that." Arabella held up her
[16009]     finger to the barmaid. "You shall have a liqueur--that's better fit
[16010]     for a man of education than beer. You shall have maraschino, or
[16011]     curaçao dry or sweet, or cherry brandy. I'll treat you, poor chap!"
[16012]     
[16013]     "I don't care which! Say cherry brandy... Sue has served me badly,
[16014]     very badly. I didn't expect it of Sue! I stuck to her, and she
[16015]     ought to have stuck to me. I'd have sold my soul for her sake, but
[16016]     she wouldn't risk hers a jot for me. To save her own soul she lets
[16017]     mine go damn! ... But it isn't her fault, poor little girl--I am
[16018]     sure it isn't!"
[16019]     
[16020]     How Arabella had obtained money did not appear, but she ordered a
[16021]     liqueur each, and paid for them. When they had drunk these Arabella
[16022]     suggested another; and Jude had the pleasure of being, as it were,
[16023]     personally conducted through the varieties of spirituous delectation
[16024]     by one who knew the landmarks well. Arabella kept very considerably
[16025]     in the rear of Jude; but though she only sipped where he drank, she
[16026]     took as much as she could safely take without losing her head--which
[16027]     was not a little, as the crimson upon her countenance showed.
[16028]     
[16029]     Her tone towards him to-night was uniformly soothing and cajoling;
[16030]     and whenever he said "I don't care what happens to me," a thing he
[16031]     did continually, she replied, "But I do very much!" The closing hour
[16032]     came, and they were compelled to turn out; whereupon Arabella put her
[16033]     arm round his waist, and guided his unsteady footsteps.
[16034]     
[16035]     When they were in the streets she said: "I don't know what our
[16036]     landlord will say to my bringing you home in this state. I expect we
[16037]     are fastened out, so that he'll have to come down and let us in."
[16038]     
[16039]     "I don't know--I don't know."
[16040]     
[16041]     "That's the worst of not having a home of your own. I tell you,
[16042]     Jude, what we had best do. Come round to my father's--I made it up
[16043]     with him a bit to-day. I can let you in, and nobody will see you at
[16044]     all; and by to-morrow morning you'll be all right."
[16045]     
[16046]     "Anything--anywhere," replied Jude. "What the devil does it matter
[16047]     to me?"
[16048]     
[16049]     They went along together, like any other fuddling couple, her arm
[16050]     still round his waist, and his, at last, round hers; though with no
[16051]     amatory intent; but merely because he was weary, unstable, and in
[16052]     need of support.
[16053]     
[16054]     "This--is th' Martyrs'--burning-place," he stammered as they
[16055]     dragged across a broad street. "I remember--in old Fuller's _Holy
[16056]     State_--and I am reminded of it--by our passing by here--old Fuller
[16057]     in his _Holy State_ says, that at the burning of Ridley, Doctor
[16058]     Smith--preached sermon, and took as his text _'Though I give my body
[16059]     to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.'_--Often
[16060]     think of it as I pass here. Ridley was a--"
[16061]     
[16062]     "Yes. Exactly. Very thoughtful of you, deary, even though it hasn't
[16063]     much to do with our present business."
[16064]     
[16065]     "Why, yes it has! I'm giving my body to be burned! But--ah you
[16066]     don't understand!--it wants Sue to understand such things! And I
[16067]     was her seducer--poor little girl! And she's gone--and I don't care
[16068]     about myself! Do what you like with me! ... And yet she did it for
[16069]     conscience' sake, poor little Sue!"
[16070]     
[16071]     "Hang her!--I mean, I think she was right," hiccuped Arabella. "I've
[16072]     my feelings too, like her; and I feel I belong to you in Heaven's
[16073]     eye, and to nobody else, till death us do part! It is--hic--never
[16074]     too late--hic to mend!"
[16075]     
[16076]     They had reached her father's house, and she softly unfastened the
[16077]     door, groping about for a light within.
[16078]     
[16079]     The circumstances were not altogether unlike those of their entry
[16080]     into the cottage at Cresscombe, such a long time before. Nor were
[16081]     perhaps Arabella's motives. But Jude did not think of that, though
[16082]     she did.
[16083]     
[16084]     "I can't find the matches, dear," she said when she had fastened up
[16085]     the door. "But never mind--this way. As quiet as you can, please."
[16086]     
[16087]     "It is as dark as pitch," said Jude.
[16088]     
[16089]     "Give me your hand, and I'll lead you. That's it. Just sit down
[16090]     here, and I'll pull off your boots. I don't want to wake him."
[16091]     
[16092]     "Who?"
[16093]     
[16094]     "Father. He'd make a row, perhaps."
[16095]     
[16096]     She pulled off his boots. "Now," she whispered, "take hold of
[16097]     me--never mind your weight. Now--first stair, second stair--"
[16098]     
[16099]     "But--are we out in our old house by Marygreen?" asked the stupefied
[16100]     Jude. "I haven't been inside it for years till now! Hey? And where
[16101]     are my books? That's what I want to know?"
[16102]     
[16103]     "We are at my house, dear, where there's nobody to spy out how ill
[16104]     you are. Now--third stair, fourth stair--that's it. Now we shall
[16105]     get on."
[16106]     
[16107]     
[16108]     
[16109]     VII
[16110]     
[16111]     
[16112]     Arabella was preparing breakfast in the downstairs back room of this
[16113]     small, recently hired tenement of her father's. She put her head
[16114]     into the little pork-shop in front, and told Mr. Donn it was ready.
[16115]     Donn, endeavouring to look like a master pork-butcher, in a greasy
[16116]     blue blouse, and with a strap round his waist from which a steel
[16117]     dangled, came in promptly.
[16118]     
[16119]     "You must mind the shop this morning," he said casually. "I've to
[16120]     go and get some inwards and half a pig from Lumsdon, and to call
[16121]     elsewhere. If you live here you must put your shoulder to the wheel,
[16122]     at least till I get the business started!"
[16123]     
[16124]     "Well, for to-day I can't say." She looked deedily into his face.
[16125]     "I've got a prize upstairs."
[16126]     
[16127]     "Oh? What's that?"
[16128]     
[16129]     "A husband--almost."
[16130]     
[16131]     "No!"
[16132]     
[16133]     "Yes. It's Jude. He's come back to me."
[16134]     
[16135]     "Your old original one? Well, I'm damned!"
[16136]     
[16137]     "Well, I always did like him, that I will say."
[16138]     
[16139]     "But how does he come to be up there?" said Donn, humour-struck, and
[16140]     nodding to the ceiling.
[16141]     
[16142]     "Don't ask inconvenient questions, Father. What we've to do is to
[16143]     keep him here till he and I are--as we were."
[16144]     
[16145]     "How was that?"
[16146]     
[16147]     "Married."
[16148]     
[16149]     "Ah... Well it is the rummest thing I ever heard of--marrying an
[16150]     old husband again, and so much new blood in the world! He's no
[16151]     catch, to my thinking. I'd have had a new one while I was about it."
[16152]     
[16153]     "It isn't rum for a woman to want her old husband back for
[16154]     respectability, though for a man to want his old wife back--well,
[16155]     perhaps it is funny, rather!" And Arabella was suddenly seized with
[16156]     a fit of loud laughter, in which her father joined more moderately.
[16157]     
[16158]     "Be civil to him, and I'll do the rest," she said when she had
[16159]     recovered seriousness. "He told me this morning that his head ached
[16160]     fit to burst, and he hardly seemed to know where he was. And no
[16161]     wonder, considering how he mixed his drink last night. We must keep
[16162]     him jolly and cheerful here for a day or two, and not let him go back
[16163]     to his lodging. Whatever you advance I'll pay back to you again.
[16164]     But I must go up and see how he is now, poor deary."
[16165]     
[16166]     Arabella ascended the stairs, softly opened the door of the first
[16167]     bedroom, and peeped in. Finding that her shorn Samson was asleep
[16168]     she entered to the bedside and stood regarding him. The fevered
[16169]     flush on his face from the debauch of the previous evening lessened
[16170]     the fragility of his ordinary appearance, and his long lashes,
[16171]     dark brows, and curly back hair and beard against the white pillow
[16172]     completed the physiognomy of one whom Arabella, as a woman of rank
[16173]     passions, still felt it worth while to recapture, highly important
[16174]     to recapture as a woman straitened both in means and in reputation.
[16175]     Her ardent gaze seemed to affect him; his quick breathing became
[16176]     suspended, and he opened his eyes.
[16177]     
[16178]     "How are you now, dear?" said she. "It is I--Arabella."
[16179]     
[16180]     "Ah!--where--oh yes, I remember! You gave me shelter... I am
[16181]     stranded--ill--demoralized--damn bad! That's what I am!"
[16182]     
[16183]     "Then do stay here. There's nobody in the house but father and me,
[16184]     and you can rest till you are thoroughly well. I'll tell them at
[16185]     the stoneworks that you are knocked up."
[16186]     
[16187]     "I wonder what they are thinking at the lodgings!"
[16188]     
[16189]     "I'll go round and explain. Perhaps you had better let me pay up, or
[16190]     they'll think we've run away?"
[16191]     
[16192]     "Yes. You'll find enough money in my pocket there."
[16193]     
[16194]     Quite indifferent, and shutting his eyes because he could not bear
[16195]     the daylight in his throbbing eye-balls, Jude seemed to doze again.
[16196]     Arabella took his purse, softly left the room, and putting on her
[16197]     outdoor things went off to the lodgings she and he had quitted the
[16198]     evening before.
[16199]     
[16200]     Scarcely half an hour had elapsed ere she reappeared round the
[16201]     corner, walking beside a lad wheeling a truck on which were piled all
[16202]     Jude's household possessions, and also the few of Arabella's things
[16203]     which she had taken to the lodging for her short sojourn there.
[16204]     Jude was in such physical pain from his unfortunate break-down of
[16205]     the previous night, and in such mental pain from the loss of Sue and
[16206]     from having yielded in his half-somnolent state to Arabella, that
[16207]     when he saw his few chattels unpacked and standing before his eyes in
[16208]     this strange bedroom, intermixed with woman's apparel, he scarcely
[16209]     considered how they had come there, or what their coming signalized.
[16210]     
[16211]     "Now," said Arabella to her father downstairs, "we must keep plenty
[16212]     of good liquor going in the house these next few days. I know his
[16213]     nature, and if he once gets into that fearfully low state that he
[16214]     does get into sometimes, he'll never do the honourable thing by me
[16215]     in this world, and I shall be left in the lurch. He must be kept
[16216]     cheerful. He has a little money in the savings bank, and he has
[16217]     given me his purse to pay for anything necessary. Well, that will
[16218]     be the licence; for I must have that ready at hand, to catch him
[16219]     the moment he's in the humour. You must pay for the liquor. A few
[16220]     friends, and a quiet convivial party would be the thing, if we could
[16221]     get it up. It would advertise the shop, and help me too."
[16222]     
[16223]     "That can be got up easy enough by anybody who'll afford victuals and
[16224]     drink... Well yes--it would advertise the shop--that's true."
[16225]     
[16226]     Three days later, when Jude had recovered somewhat from the fearful
[16227]     throbbing of his eyes and brain, but was still considerably confused
[16228]     in his mind by what had been supplied to him by Arabella during
[16229]     the interval--to keep him, jolly, as she expressed it--the quiet
[16230]     convivial gathering, suggested by her, to wind Jude up to the
[16231]     striking point, took place.
[16232]     
[16233]     Donn had only just opened his miserable little pork and sausage
[16234]     shop, which had as yet scarce any customers; nevertheless that party
[16235]     advertised it well, and the Donns acquired a real notoriety among a
[16236]     certain class in Christminster who knew not the colleges, nor their
[16237]     works, nor their ways. Jude was asked if he could suggest any guest
[16238]     in addition to those named by Arabella and her father, and in a
[16239]     saturnine humour of perfect recklessness mentioned Uncle Joe, and
[16240]     Stagg, and the decayed auctioneer, and others whom he remembered as
[16241]     having been frequenters of the well-known tavern during his bout
[16242]     therein years before. He also suggested Freckles and Bower o' Bliss.
[16243]     Arabella took him at his word so far as the men went, but drew the
[16244]     line at the ladies.
[16245]     
[16246]     Another man they knew, Tinker Taylor, though he lived in the same
[16247]     street, was not invited; but as he went homeward from a late job on
[16248]     the evening of the party, he had occasion to call at the shop for
[16249]     trotters. There were none in, but he was promised some the next
[16250]     morning. While making his inquiry Taylor glanced into the back room,
[16251]     and saw the guests sitting round, card-playing, and drinking, and
[16252]     otherwise enjoying themselves at Donn's expense. He went home to
[16253]     bed, and on his way out next morning wondered how the party went
[16254]     off. He thought it hardly worth while to call at the shop for his
[16255]     provisions at that hour, Donn and his daughter being probably not up,
[16256]     if they caroused late the night before. However, he found in passing
[16257]     that the door was open, and he could hear voices within, though the
[16258]     shutters of the meat-stall were not down. He went and tapped at the
[16259]     sitting-room door, and opened it.
[16260]     
[16261]     "Well--to be sure!" he said, astonished.
[16262]     
[16263]     Hosts and guests were sitting card-playing, smoking, and talking,
[16264]     precisely as he had left them eleven hours earlier; the gas was
[16265]     burning and the curtains drawn, though it had been broad daylight
[16266]     for two hours out of doors.
[16267]     
[16268]     "Yes!" cried Arabella, laughing. "Here we are, just the same. We
[16269]     ought to be ashamed of ourselves, oughtn't we! But it is a sort of
[16270]     housewarming, you see; and our friends are in no hurry. Come in, Mr.
[16271]     Taylor, and sit down."
[16272]     
[16273]     The tinker, or rather reduced ironmonger, was nothing loath, and
[16274]     entered and took a seat. "I shall lose a quarter, but never mind,"
[16275]     he said. "Well, really, I could hardly believe my eyes when I looked
[16276]     in! It seemed as if I was flung back again into last night, all of a
[16277]     sudden."
[16278]     
[16279]     "So you are. Pour out for Mr. Taylor."
[16280]     
[16281]     He now perceived that she was sitting beside Jude, her arm being
[16282]     round his waist. Jude, like the rest of the company, bore on his
[16283]     face the signs of how deeply he had been indulging.
[16284]     
[16285]     "Well, we've been waiting for certain legal hours to arrive, to
[16286]     tell the truth," she continued bashfully, and making her spirituous
[16287]     crimson look as much like a maiden blush as possible. "Jude and I
[16288]     have decided to make up matters between us by tying the knot again,
[16289]     as we find we can't do without one another after all. So, as a
[16290]     bright notion, we agreed to sit on till it was late enough, and go
[16291]     and do it off-hand."
[16292]     
[16293]     Jude seemed to pay no great heed to what she was announcing, or
[16294]     indeed to anything whatever. The entrance of Taylor infused fresh
[16295]     spirit into the company, and they remained sitting, till Arabella
[16296]     whispered to her father: "Now we may as well go."
[16297]     
[16298]     "But the parson don't know?"
[16299]     
[16300]     "Yes, I told him last night that we might come between eight and
[16301]     nine, as there were reasons of decency for doing it as early and
[16302]     quiet as possible; on account of it being our second marriage, which
[16303]     might make people curious to look on if they knew. He highly
[16304]     approved."
[16305]     
[16306]     "Oh very well: I'm ready," said her father, getting up and shaking
[16307]     himself.
[16308]     
[16309]     "Now, old darling," she said to Jude. "Come along, as you promised."
[16310]     
[16311]     "When did I promise anything?" asked he, whom she had made so tipsy
[16312]     by her special knowledge of that line of business as almost to have
[16313]     made him sober again--or to seem so to those who did not know him.
[16314]     
[16315]     "Why!" said Arabella, affecting dismay. "You've promised to marry me
[16316]     several times as we've sat here to-night. These gentlemen have heard
[16317]     you."
[16318]     
[16319]     "I don't remember it," said Jude doggedly. "There's only one
[16320]     woman--but I won't mention her in this Capharnaum!"
[16321]     
[16322]     Arabella looked towards her father. "Now, Mr. Fawley be honourable,"
[16323]     said Donn. "You and my daughter have been living here together these
[16324]     three or four days, quite on the understanding that you were going to
[16325]     marry her. Of course I shouldn't have had such goings on in my house
[16326]     if I hadn't understood that. As a point of honour you must do it
[16327]     now."
[16328]     
[16329]     "Don't say anything against my honour!" enjoined Jude hotly,
[16330]     standing up. "I'd marry the W---- of Babylon rather than do
[16331]     anything dishonourable! No reflection on you, my dear. It is a
[16332]     mere rhetorical figure--what they call in the books, hyperbole."
[16333]     
[16334]     "Keep your figures for your debts to friends who shelter you," said
[16335]     Donn.
[16336]     
[16337]     "If I am bound in honour to marry her--as I suppose I am--though
[16338]     how I came to be here with her I know no more than a dead man--marry
[16339]     her I will, so help me God! I have never behaved dishonourably to
[16340]     a woman or to any living thing. I am not a man who wants to save
[16341]     himself at the expense of the weaker among us!"
[16342]     
[16343]     "There--never mind him, deary," said she, putting her cheek against
[16344]     Jude's. "Come up and wash your face, and just put yourself tidy, and
[16345]     off we'll go. Make it up with Father."
[16346]     
[16347]     They shook hands. Jude went upstairs with her, and soon came down
[16348]     looking tidy and calm. Arabella, too, had hastily arranged herself,
[16349]     and accompanied by Donn away they went.
[16350]     
[16351]     "Don't go," she said to the guests at parting. "I've told the little
[16352]     maid to get the breakfast while we are gone; and when we come back
[16353]     we'll all have some. A good strong cup of tea will set everybody
[16354]     right for going home."
[16355]     
[16356]     
[16357]     
[16358]     When Arabella, Jude, and Donn had disappeared on their matrimonial
[16359]     errand the assembled guests yawned themselves wider awake, and
[16360]     discussed the situation with great interest. Tinker Taylor, being
[16361]     the most sober, reasoned the most lucidly.
[16362]     
[16363]     "I don't wish to speak against friends," he said. "But it do seem a
[16364]     rare curiosity for a couple to marry over again! If they couldn't
[16365]     get on the first time when their minds were limp, they won't the
[16366]     second, by my reckoning."
[16367]     
[16368]     "Do you think he'll do it?"
[16369]     
[16370]     "He's been put upon his honour by the woman, so he med."
[16371]     
[16372]     "He'd hardly do it straight off like this. He's got no licence nor
[16373]     anything."
[16374]     
[16375]     "She's got that, bless you. Didn't you hear her say so to her
[16376]     father?"
[16377]     
[16378]     "Well," said Tinker Taylor, relighting his pipe at the gas-jet.
[16379]     "Take her all together, limb by limb, she's not such a bad-looking
[16380]     piece--particular by candlelight. To be sure, halfpence that have
[16381]     been in circulation can't be expected to look like new ones from
[16382]     the mint. But for a woman that's been knocking about the four
[16383]     hemispheres for some time, she's passable enough. A little bit thick
[16384]     in the flitch perhaps: but I like a woman that a puff o' wind won't
[16385]     blow down."
[16386]     
[16387]     Their eyes followed the movements of the little girl as she spread
[16388]     the breakfast-cloth on the table they had been using, without wiping
[16389]     up the slops of the liquor. The curtains were undrawn, and the
[16390]     expression of the house made to look like morning. Some of the
[16391]     guests, however, fell asleep in their chairs. One or two went to the
[16392]     door, and gazed along the street more than once. Tinker Taylor was
[16393]     the chief of these, and after a time he came in with a leer on his
[16394]     face.
[16395]     
[16396]     "By Gad, they are coming! I think the deed's done!"
[16397]     
[16398]     "No," said Uncle Joe, following him in. "Take my word, he turned
[16399]     rusty at the last minute. They are walking in a very unusual way;
[16400]     and that's the meaning of it!"
[16401]     
[16402]     They waited in silence till the wedding-party could be heard entering
[16403]     the house. First into the room came Arabella boisterously; and her
[16404]     face was enough to show that her strategy had succeeded.
[16405]     
[16406]     "Mrs. Fawley, I presume?" said Tinker Taylor with mock courtesy.
[16407]     
[16408]     "Certainly. Mrs. Fawley again," replied Arabella blandly, pulling
[16409]     off her glove and holding out her left hand. "There's the padlock,
[16410]     see... Well, he was a very nice, gentlemanly man indeed. I mean
[16411]     the clergyman. He said to me as gentle as a babe when all was done:
[16412]     'Mrs. Fawley, I congratulate you heartily,' he says. 'For having
[16413]     heard your history, and that of your husband, I think you have both
[16414]     done the right and proper thing. And for your past errors as a wife,
[16415]     and his as a husband, I think you ought now to be forgiven by the
[16416]     world, as you have forgiven each other,' says he. Yes: he was a very
[16417]     nice, gentlemanly man. 'The Church don't recognize divorce in her
[16418]     dogma, strictly speaking,' he says: 'and bear in mind the words of
[16419]     the service in your goings out and your comings in: What God hath
[16420]     joined together let no man put asunder.' Yes: he was a very nice,
[16421]     gentlemanly man... But, Jude, my dear, you were enough to make a cat
[16422]     laugh! You walked that straight, and held yourself that steady, that
[16423]     one would have thought you were going 'prentice to a judge; though I
[16424]     knew you were seeing double all the time, from the way you fumbled
[16425]     with my finger."
[16426]     
[16427]     "I said I'd do anything to--save a woman's honour," muttered Jude.
[16428]     "And I've done it!"
[16429]     
[16430]     "Well now, old deary, come along and have some breakfast."
[16431]     
[16432]     "I want--some--more whisky," said Jude stolidly.
[16433]     
[16434]     "Nonsense, dear. Not now! There's no more left. The tea will take
[16435]     the muddle out of our heads, and we shall be as fresh as larks."
[16436]     
[16437]     "All right. I've--married you. She said I ought to marry you again,
[16438]     and I have straightway. It is true religion! Ha--ha--ha!"
[16439]     
[16440]     
[16441]     
[16442]     VIII
[16443]     
[16444]     
[16445]     Michaelmas came and passed, and Jude and his wife, who had lived but
[16446]     a short time in her father's house after their remarriage, were in
[16447]     lodgings on the top floor of a dwelling nearer to the centre of the
[16448]     city.
[16449]     
[16450]     He had done a few days' work during the two or three months since
[16451]     the event, but his health had been indifferent, and it was now
[16452]     precarious. He was sitting in an arm-chair before the fire, and
[16453]     coughed a good deal.
[16454]     
[16455]     "I've got a bargain for my trouble in marrying thee over
[16456]     again!" Arabella was saying to him. "I shall have to keep 'ee
[16457]     entirely--that's what 'twill come to! I shall have to make black-pot
[16458]     and sausages, and hawk 'em about the street, all to support an
[16459]     invalid husband I'd no business to be saddled with at all. Why
[16460]     didn't you keep your health, deceiving one like this? You were well
[16461]     enough when the wedding was!"
[16462]     
[16463]     "Ah, yes!" said he, laughing acridly. "I have been thinking of
[16464]     my foolish feeling about the pig you and I killed during our
[16465]     first marriage. I feel now that the greatest mercy that could be
[16466]     vouchsafed to me would be that something should serve me as I served
[16467]     that animal."
[16468]     
[16469]     This was the sort of discourse that went on between them every day
[16470]     now. The landlord of the lodging, who had heard that they were a
[16471]     queer couple, had doubted if they were married at all, especially
[16472]     as he had seen Arabella kiss Jude one evening when she had taken a
[16473]     little cordial; and he was about to give them notice to quit, till by
[16474]     chance overhearing her one night haranguing Jude in rattling terms,
[16475]     and ultimately flinging a shoe at his head, he recognized the note of
[16476]     genuine wedlock; and concluding that they must be respectable, said
[16477]     no more.
[16478]     
[16479]     Jude did not get any better, and one day he requested Arabella, with
[16480]     considerable hesitation, to execute a commission for him. She asked
[16481]     him indifferently what it was.
[16482]     
[16483]     "To write to Sue."
[16484]     
[16485]     "What in the name--do you want me to write to her for?"
[16486]     
[16487]     "To ask how she is, and if she'll come to see me, because I'm ill,
[16488]     and should like to see her--once again."
[16489]     
[16490]     "It is like you to insult a lawful wife by asking such a thing!"
[16491]     
[16492]     "It is just in order not to insult you that I ask you to do it. You
[16493]     know I love Sue. I don't wish to mince the matter--there stands the
[16494]     fact: I love her. I could find a dozen ways of sending a letter to
[16495]     her without your knowledge. But I wish to be quite above-board with
[16496]     you, and with her husband. A message through you asking her to come
[16497]     is at least free from any odour of intrigue. If she retains any of
[16498]     her old nature at all, she'll come."
[16499]     
[16500]     "You've no respect for marriage whatever, or its rights and duties!"
[16501]     
[16502]     "What DOES it matter what my opinions are--a wretch like me! Can
[16503]     it matter to anybody in the world who comes to see me for half an
[16504]     hour--here with one foot in the grave! ... Come, please write,
[16505]     Arabella!" he pleaded. "Repay my candour by a little generosity!"
[16506]     
[16507]     "I should think NOT!"
[16508]     
[16509]     "Not just once?--Oh do!" He felt that his physical weakness had
[16510]     taken away all his dignity.
[16511]     
[16512]     "What do you want HER to know how you are for? She don't want to see
[16513]     'ee. She's the rat that forsook the sinking ship!"
[16514]     
[16515]     "Don't, don't!"
[16516]     
[16517]     "And I stuck to un--the more fool I! Have that strumpet in the house
[16518]     indeed!"
[16519]     
[16520]     Almost as soon as the words were spoken Jude sprang from the chair,
[16521]     and before Arabella knew where she was he had her on her back upon a
[16522]     little couch which stood there, he kneeling above her.
[16523]     
[16524]     "Say another word of that sort," he whispered, "and I'll kill
[16525]     you--here and now! I've everything to gain by it--my own death not
[16526]     being the least part. So don't think there's no meaning in what I
[16527]     say!"
[16528]     
[16529]     "What do you want me to do?" gasped Arabella.
[16530]     
[16531]     "Promise never to speak of her."
[16532]     
[16533]     "Very well. I do."
[16534]     
[16535]     "I take your word," he said scornfully as he loosened her. "But what
[16536]     it is worth I can't say."
[16537]     
[16538]     "You couldn't kill the pig, but you could kill me!"
[16539]     
[16540]     "Ah--there you have me! No--I couldn't kill you--even in a passion.
[16541]     Taunt away!"
[16542]     
[16543]     He then began coughing very much, and she estimated his life with an
[16544]     appraiser's eye as he sank back ghastly pale. "I'll send for her,"
[16545]     Arabella murmured, "if you'll agree to my being in the room with you
[16546]     all the time she's here."
[16547]     
[16548]     The softer side of his nature, the desire to see Sue, made him unable
[16549]     to resist the offer even now, provoked as he had been; and he replied
[16550]     breathlessly: "Yes, I agree. Only send for her!"
[16551]     
[16552]     In the evening he inquired if she had written.
[16553]     
[16554]     "Yes," she said; "I wrote a note telling her you were ill, and asking
[16555]     her to come to-morrow or the day after. I haven't posted it yet."
[16556]     
[16557]     The next day Jude wondered if she really did post it, but would not
[16558]     ask her; and foolish Hope, that lives on a drop and a crumb, made him
[16559]     restless with expectation. He knew the times of the possible trains,
[16560]     and listened on each occasion for sounds of her.
[16561]     
[16562]     She did not come; but Jude would not address Arabella again thereon.
[16563]     He hoped and expected all the next day; but no Sue appeared; neither
[16564]     was there any note of reply. Then Jude decided in the privacy of his
[16565]     mind that Arabella had never posted hers, although she had written
[16566]     it. There was something in her manner which told it. His physical
[16567]     weakness was such that he shed tears at the disappointment when she
[16568]     was not there to see. His suspicions were, in fact, well founded.
[16569]     Arabella, like some other nurses, thought that your duty towards your
[16570]     invalid was to pacify him by any means short of really acting upon
[16571]     his fancies.
[16572]     
[16573]     He never said another word to her about his wish or his conjecture.
[16574]     A silent, undiscerned resolve grew up in him, which gave him, if not
[16575]     strength, stability and calm. One midday when, after an absence of
[16576]     two hours, she came into the room, she beheld the chair empty.
[16577]     
[16578]     Down she flopped on the bed, and sitting, meditated. "Now where the
[16579]     devil is my man gone to!" she said.
[16580]     
[16581]     A driving rain from the north-east had been falling with more or less
[16582]     intermission all the morning, and looking from the window at the
[16583]     dripping spouts it seemed impossible to believe that any sick man
[16584]     would have ventured out to almost certain death. Yet a conviction
[16585]     possessed Arabella that he had gone out, and it became a certainty
[16586]     when she had searched the house. "If he's such a fool, let him be!"
[16587]     she said. "I can do no more."
[16588]     
[16589]     Jude was at that moment in a railway train that was drawing near to
[16590]     Alfredston, oddly swathed, pale as a monumental figure in alabaster,
[16591]     and much stared at by other passengers. An hour later his thin form,
[16592]     in the long great-coat and blanket he had come with, but without an
[16593]     umbrella, could have been seen walking along the five-mile road to
[16594]     Marygreen. On his face showed the determined purpose that alone
[16595]     sustained him, but to which has weakness afforded a sorry foundation.
[16596]     By the up-hill walk he was quite blown, but he pressed on; and at
[16597]     half-past three o'clock stood by the familiar well at Marygreen.
[16598]     The rain was keeping everybody indoors; Jude crossed the green to the
[16599]     church without observation, and found the building open. Here he
[16600]     stood, looking forth at the school, whence he could hear the usual
[16601]     sing-song tones of the little voices that had not learnt Creation's
[16602]     groan.
[16603]     
[16604]     He waited till a small boy came from the school--one evidently
[16605]     allowed out before hours for some reason or other. Jude held up his
[16606]     hand, and the child came.
[16607]     
[16608]     "Please call at the schoolhouse and ask Mrs. Phillotson if she will
[16609]     be kind enough to come to the church for a few minutes."
[16610]     
[16611]     The child departed, and Jude heard him knock at the door of the
[16612]     dwelling. He himself went further into the church. Everything
[16613]     was new, except a few pieces of carving preserved from the wrecked
[16614]     old fabric, now fixed against the new walls. He stood by these:
[16615]     they seemed akin to the perished people of that place who were his
[16616]     ancestors and Sue's.
[16617]     
[16618]     A light footstep, which might have been accounted no more than an
[16619]     added drip to the rainfall, sounded in the porch, and he looked
[16620]     round.
[16621]     
[16622]     "Oh--I didn't think it was you! I didn't--Oh, Jude!" A hysterical
[16623]     catch in her breath ended in a succession of them. He advanced, but
[16624]     she quickly recovered and went back.
[16625]     
[16626]     "Don't go--don't go!" he implored. "This is my last time! I thought
[16627]     it would be less intrusive than to enter your house. And I shall
[16628]     never come again. Don't then be unmerciful. Sue, Sue! We are
[16629]     acting by the letter; and 'the letter killeth'!"
[16630]     
[16631]     "I'll stay--I won't be unkind!" she said, her mouth quivering and her
[16632]     tears flowing as she allowed him to come closer. "But why did you
[16633]     come, and do this wrong thing, after doing such a right thing as you
[16634]     have done?"
[16635]     
[16636]     "What right thing?"
[16637]     
[16638]     "Marrying Arabella again. It was in the Alfredston paper. She has
[16639]     never been other than yours, Jude--in a proper sense. And therefore
[16640]     you did so well--Oh so well!--in recognizing it--and taking her to
[16641]     you again."
[16642]     
[16643]     "God above--and is that all I've come to hear? If there is anything
[16644]     more degrading, immoral, unnatural, than another in my life, it is
[16645]     this meretricious contract with Arabella which has been called doing
[16646]     the right thing! And you too--you call yourself Phillotson's wife!
[16647]     HIS wife! You are mine."
[16648]     
[16649]     "Don't make me rush away from you--I can't bear much! But on this
[16650]     point I am decided."
[16651]     
[16652]     "I cannot understand how you did it--how you think it--I cannot!"
[16653]     
[16654]     "Never mind that. He is a kind husband to me--And I--I've wrestled
[16655]     and struggled, and fasted, and prayed. I have nearly brought my body
[16656]     into complete subjection. And you mustn't--will you--wake--"
[16657]     
[16658]     "Oh you darling little fool; where is your reason? You seem to have
[16659]     suffered the loss of your faculties! I would argue with you if I
[16660]     didn't know that a woman in your state of feeling is quite beyond all
[16661]     appeals to her brains. Or is it that you are humbugging yourself, as
[16662]     so many women do about these things; and don't actually believe what
[16663]     you pretend to, and only are indulging in the luxury of the emotion
[16664]     raised by an affected belief?"
[16665]     
[16666]     "Luxury! How can you be so cruel!"
[16667]     
[16668]     "You dear, sad, soft, most melancholy wreck of a promising human
[16669]     intellect that it has ever been my lot to behold! Where is your
[16670]     scorn of convention gone? I WOULD have died game!"
[16671]     
[16672]     "You crush, almost insult me, Jude! Go away from me!" She turned
[16673]     off quickly.
[16674]     
[16675]     "I will. I would never come to see you again, even if I had the
[16676]     strength to come, which I shall not have any more. Sue, Sue, you are
[16677]     not worth a man's love!"
[16678]     
[16679]     Her bosom began to go up and down. "I can't endure you to say that!"
[16680]     she burst out, and her eye resting on him a moment, she turned back
[16681]     impulsively. "Don't, don't scorn me! Kiss me, oh kiss me lots
[16682]     of times, and say I am not a coward and a contemptible humbug--I
[16683]     can't bear it!" She rushed up to him and, with her mouth on his,
[16684]     continued: "I must tell you--oh I must--my darling Love! It has
[16685]     been--only a church marriage--an apparent marriage I mean! He
[16686]     suggested it at the very first!"
[16687]     
[16688]     "How?"
[16689]     
[16690]     "I mean it is a nominal marriage only. It hasn't been more than that
[16691]     at all since I came back to him!"
[16692]     
[16693]     "Sue!" he said. Pressing her to him in his arms he bruised her
[16694]     lips with kisses: "If misery can know happiness, I have a moment's
[16695]     happiness now! Now, in the name of all you hold holy, tell me the
[16696]     truth, and no lie. You do love me still?"
[16697]     
[16698]     "I do! You know it too well! ... But I MUSTN'T do this! I mustn't
[16699]     kiss you back as I would!"
[16700]     
[16701]     "But do!"
[16702]     
[16703]     "And yet you are so dear!--and you look so ill--"
[16704]     
[16705]     "And so do you! There's one more, in memory of our dead little
[16706]     children--yours and mine!"
[16707]     
[16708]     The words struck her like a blow, and she bent her head. "I
[16709]     MUSTN'T--I CAN'T go on with this!" she gasped presently. "But there,
[16710]     there, darling; I give you back your kisses; I do, I do! ... And now
[16711]     I'll HATE myself for ever for my sin!"
[16712]     
[16713]     "No--let me make my last appeal. Listen to this! We've both
[16714]     remarried out of our senses. I was made drunk to do it. You were
[16715]     the same. I was gin-drunk; you were creed-drunk. Either form of
[16716]     intoxication takes away the nobler vision... Let us then shake off
[16717]     our mistakes, and run away together!"
[16718]     
[16719]     "No; again no! ... Why do you tempt me so far, Jude! It is too
[16720]     merciless! ... But I've got over myself now. Don't follow me--don't
[16721]     look at me. Leave me, for pity's sake!"
[16722]     
[16723]     She ran up the church to the east end, and Jude did as she requested.
[16724]     He did not turn his head, but took up his blanket, which she had not
[16725]     seen, and went straight out. As he passed the end of the church she
[16726]     heard his coughs mingling with the rain on the windows, and in a last
[16727]     instinct of human affection, even now unsubdued by her fetters, she
[16728]     sprang up as if to go and succour him. But she knelt down again, and
[16729]     stopped her ears with her hands till all possible sound of him had
[16730]     passed away.
[16731]     
[16732]     He was by this time at the corner of the green, from which the path
[16733]     ran across the fields in which he had scared rooks as a boy. He
[16734]     turned and looked back, once, at the building which still contained
[16735]     Sue; and then went on, knowing that his eyes would light on that
[16736]     scene no more.
[16737]     
[16738]     There are cold spots up and down Wessex in autumn and winter weather;
[16739]     but the coldest of all when a north or east wind is blowing is the
[16740]     crest of the down by the Brown House, where the road to Alfredston
[16741]     crosses the old Ridgeway. Here the first winter sleets and snows
[16742]     fall and lie, and here the spring frost lingers last unthawed. Here
[16743]     in the teeth of the north-east wind and rain Jude now pursued his
[16744]     way, wet through, the necessary slowness of his walk from lack of his
[16745]     former strength being insufficent to maintain his heat. He came to
[16746]     the milestone, and, raining as it was, spread his blanket and lay
[16747]     down there to rest. Before moving on he went and felt at the back
[16748]     of the stone for his own carving. It was still there; but nearly
[16749]     obliterated by moss. He passed the spot where the gibbet of his
[16750]     ancestor and Sue's had stood, and descended the hill.
[16751]     
[16752]     It was dark when he reached Alfredston, where he had a cup of tea,
[16753]     the deadly chill that began to creep into his bones being too much
[16754]     for him to endure fasting. To get home he had to travel by a steam
[16755]     tram-car, and two branches of railway, with much waiting at a
[16756]     junction. He did not reach Christminster till ten o'clock.
[16757]     
[16758]     
[16759]     
[16760]     IX
[16761]     
[16762]     
[16763]     On the platform stood Arabella. She looked him up and down.
[16764]     
[16765]     "You've been to see her?" she asked.
[16766]     
[16767]     "I have," said Jude, literally tottering with cold and lassitude.
[16768]     
[16769]     "Well, now you'd best march along home."
[16770]     
[16771]     The water ran out of him as he went, and he was compelled to lean
[16772]     against the wall to support himself while coughing.
[16773]     
[16774]     "You've done for yourself by this, young man," said she. "I don't
[16775]     know whether you know it."
[16776]     
[16777]     "Of course I do. I meant to do for myself."
[16778]     
[16779]     "What--to commit suicide?"
[16780]     
[16781]     "Certainly."
[16782]     
[16783]     "Well, I'm blest! Kill yourself for a woman."
[16784]     
[16785]     "Listen to me, Arabella. You think you are the stronger; and so
[16786]     you are, in a physical sense, now. You could push me over like a
[16787]     nine-pin. You did not send that letter the other day, and I could
[16788]     not resent your conduct. But I am not so weak in another way as
[16789]     you think. I made up my mind that a man confined to his room by
[16790]     inflammation of the lungs, a fellow who had only two wishes left in
[16791]     the world, to see a particular woman, and then to die, could neatly
[16792]     accomplish those two wishes at one stroke by taking this journey in
[16793]     the rain. That I've done. I have seen her for the last time, and
[16794]     I've finished myself--put an end to a feverish life which ought never
[16795]     to have been begun!"
[16796]     
[16797]     "Lord--you do talk lofty! Won't you have something warm to drink?"
[16798]     
[16799]     "No thank you. Let's get home."
[16800]     
[16801]     They went along by the silent colleges, and Jude kept stopping.
[16802]     
[16803]     "What are you looking at?"
[16804]     
[16805]     "Stupid fancies. I see, in a way, those spirits of the dead again,
[16806]     on this my last walk, that I saw when I first walked here!"
[16807]     
[16808]     "What a curious chap you are!"
[16809]     
[16810]     "I seem to see them, and almost hear them rustling. But I don't
[16811]     revere all of them as I did then. I don't believe in half of them.
[16812]     The theologians, the apologists, and their kin the metaphysicians,
[16813]     the high-handed statesmen, and others, no longer interest me. All
[16814]     that has been spoilt for me by the grind of stern reality!"
[16815]     
[16816]     The expression of Jude's corpselike face in the watery lamplight was
[16817]     indeed as if he saw people where there was nobody. At moments he
[16818]     stood still by an archway, like one watching a figure walk out; then
[16819]     he would look at a window like one discerning a familiar face behind
[16820]     it. He seemed to hear voices, whose words he repeated as if to
[16821]     gather their meaning.
[16822]     
[16823]     "They seem laughing at me!"
[16824]     
[16825]     "Who?"
[16826]     
[16827]     "Oh--I was talking to myself! The phantoms all about here, in the
[16828]     college archways, and windows. They used to look friendly in the old
[16829]     days, particularly Addison, and Gibbon, and Johnson, and Dr. Browne,
[16830]     and Bishop Ken--"
[16831]     
[16832]     "Come along do! Phantoms! There's neither living nor dead
[16833]     hereabouts except a damn policeman! I never saw the streets
[16834]     emptier."
[16835]     
[16836]     "Fancy! The Poet of Liberty used to walk here, and the great
[16837]     Dissector of Melancholy there!"
[16838]     
[16839]     "I don't want to hear about 'em! They bore me."
[16840]     
[16841]     "Walter Raleigh is beckoning to me from that lane--Wycliffe--Harvey--
[16842]     Hooker--Arnold--and a whole crowd of Tractarian Shades--"
[16843]     
[16844]     "I DON'T WANT to know their names, I tell you! What do I care about
[16845]     folk dead and gone? Upon my soul you are more sober when you've been
[16846]     drinking than when you have not!"
[16847]     
[16848]     "I must rest a moment," he said; and as he paused, holding to the
[16849]     railings, he measured with his eye the height of a college front.
[16850]     "This is old Rubric. And that Sarcophagus; and Up that lane Crozier
[16851]     and Tudor: and all down there is Cardinal with its long front, and
[16852]     its windows with lifted eyebrows, representing the polite surprise of
[16853]     the university at the efforts of such as I."
[16854]     
[16855]     "Come along, and I'll treat you!"
[16856]     
[16857]     "Very well. It will help me home, for I feel the chilly fog from
[16858]     the meadows of Cardinal as if death-claws were grabbing me through
[16859]     and through. As Antigone said, I am neither a dweller among men nor
[16860]     ghosts. But, Arabella, when I am dead, you'll see my spirit flitting
[16861]     up and down here among these!"
[16862]     
[16863]     "Pooh! You mayn't die after all. You are tough enough yet, old
[16864]     man."
[16865]     
[16866]     
[16867]     
[16868]     It was night at Marygreen, and the rain of the afternoon showed no
[16869]     sign of abatement. About the time at which Jude and Arabella were
[16870]     walking the streets of Christminster homeward, the Widow Edlin
[16871]     crossed the green, and opened the back door of the schoolmaster's
[16872]     dwelling, which she often did now before bedtime, to assist Sue in
[16873]     putting things away.
[16874]     
[16875]     Sue was muddling helplessly in the kitchen, for she was not a good
[16876]     housewife, though she tried to be, and grew impatient of domestic
[16877]     details.
[16878]     
[16879]     "Lord love 'ee, what do ye do that yourself for, when I've come o'
[16880]     purpose! You knew I should come."
[16881]     
[16882]     "Oh--I don't know--I forgot! No, I didn't forget. I did it to
[16883]     discipline myself. I have scrubbed the stairs since eight o'clock.
[16884]     I MUST practise myself in my household duties. I've shamefully
[16885]     neglected them!"
[16886]     
[16887]     "Why should ye? He'll get a better school, perhaps be a parson, in
[16888]     time, and you'll keep two servants. 'Tis a pity to spoil them pretty
[16889]     hands."
[16890]     
[16891]     "Don't talk of my pretty hands, Mrs. Edlin. This pretty body of mine
[16892]     has been the ruin of me already!"
[16893]     
[16894]     "Pshoo--you've got no body to speak of! You put me more in mind
[16895]     of a sperrit. But there seems something wrong to-night, my dear.
[16896]     Husband cross?"
[16897]     
[16898]     "No. He never is. He's gone to bed early."
[16899]     
[16900]     "Then what is it?"
[16901]     
[16902]     "I cannot tell you. I have done wrong to-day. And I want to
[16903]     eradicate it... Well--I will tell you this--Jude has been here this
[16904]     afternoon, and I find I still love him--oh, grossly! I cannot tell
[16905]     you more."
[16906]     
[16907]     "Ah!" said the widow. "I told 'ee how 'twould be!"
[16908]     
[16909]     "But it shan't be! I have not told my husband of his visit; it is
[16910]     not necessary to trouble him about it, as I never mean to see Jude
[16911]     any more. But I am going to make my conscience right on my duty to
[16912]     Richard--by doing a penance--the ultimate thing. I must!"
[16913]     
[16914]     "I wouldn't--since he agrees to it being otherwise, and it has gone
[16915]     on three months very well as it is."
[16916]     
[16917]     "Yes--he agrees to my living as I choose; but I feel it is an
[16918]     indulgence I ought not to exact from him. It ought not to have been
[16919]     accepted by me. To reverse it will be terrible--but I must be more
[16920]     just to him. O why was I so unheroic!"
[16921]     
[16922]     "What is it you don't like in him?" asked Mrs. Edlin curiously.
[16923]     
[16924]     "I cannot tell you. It is something... I cannot say. The mournful
[16925]     thing is, that nobody would admit it as a reason for feeling as I do;
[16926]     so that no excuse is left me."
[16927]     
[16928]     "Did you ever tell Jude what it was?"
[16929]     
[16930]     "Never."
[16931]     
[16932]     "I've heard strange tales o' husbands in my time," observed the widow
[16933]     in a lowered voice. "They say that when the saints were upon the
[16934]     earth devils used to take husbands' forms o' nights, and get poor
[16935]     women into all sorts of trouble. But I don't know why that should
[16936]     come into my head, for it is only a tale... What a wind and rain it
[16937]     is to-night! Well--don't be in a hurry to alter things, my dear.
[16938]     Think it over."
[16939]     
[16940]     "No, no! I've screwed my weak soul up to treating him more
[16941]     courteously--and it must be now--at once--before I break down!"
[16942]     
[16943]     "I don't think you ought to force your nature. No woman ought to be
[16944]     expected to."
[16945]     
[16946]     "It is my duty. I will drink my cup to the dregs!"
[16947]     
[16948]     Half an hour later when Mrs. Edlin put on her bonnet and shawl to
[16949]     leave, Sue seemed to be seized with vague terror.
[16950]     
[16951]     "No--no--don't go, Mrs. Edlin," she implored, her eyes enlarged, and
[16952]     with a quick nervous look over her shoulder.
[16953]     
[16954]     "But it is bedtime, child."
[16955]     
[16956]     "Yes, but--there's the little spare room--my room that was. It is
[16957]     quite ready. Please stay, Mrs. Edlin!--I shall want you in the
[16958]     morning."
[16959]     
[16960]     "Oh well--I don't mind, if you wish. Nothing will happen to my four
[16961]     old walls, whether I be there or no."
[16962]     
[16963]     She then fastened up the doors, and they ascended the stairs
[16964]     together.
[16965]     
[16966]     "Wait here, Mrs. Edlin," said Sue. "I'll go into my old room a
[16967]     moment by myself."
[16968]     
[16969]     Leaving the widow on the landing Sue turned to the chamber which had
[16970]     been hers exclusively since her arrival at Marygreen, and pushing to
[16971]     the door knelt down by the bed for a minute or two. She then arose,
[16972]     and taking her night-gown from the pillow undressed and came out to
[16973]     Mrs. Edlin. A man could be heard snoring in the room opposite. She
[16974]     wished Mrs. Edlin good-night, and the widow entered the room that Sue
[16975]     had just vacated.
[16976]     
[16977]     Sue unlatched the other chamber door, and, as if seized with
[16978]     faintness, sank down outside it. Getting up again she half opened
[16979]     the door, and said "Richard." As the word came out of her mouth she
[16980]     visibly shuddered.
[16981]     
[16982]     The snoring had quite ceased for some time, but he did not reply.
[16983]     Sue seemed relieved, and hurried back to Mrs. Edlin's chamber. "Are
[16984]     you in bed, Mrs. Edlin?" she asked.
[16985]     
[16986]     "No, dear," said the widow, opening the door. "I be old and slow,
[16987]     and it takes me a long while to un-ray. I han't unlaced my jumps
[16988]     yet."
[16989]     
[16990]     "I--don't hear him! And perhaps--perhaps--"
[16991]     
[16992]     "What, child?"
[16993]     
[16994]     "Perhaps he's dead!" she gasped. "And then--I should be FREE, and I
[16995]     could go to Jude! ... Ah--no--I forgot HER--and God!"
[16996]     
[16997]     "Let's go and hearken. No--he's snoring again. But the rain and the
[16998]     wind is so loud that you can hardly hear anything but between
[16999]     whiles."
[17000]     
[17001]     Sue had dragged herself back. "Mrs. Edlin, good-night again! I am
[17002]     sorry I called you out." The widow retreated a second time.
[17003]     
[17004]     The strained, resigned look returned to Sue's face when she was
[17005]     alone. "I must do it--I must! I must drink to the dregs!" she
[17006]     whispered. "Richard!" she said again.
[17007]     
[17008]     "Hey--what? Is that you, Susanna?"
[17009]     
[17010]     "Yes."
[17011]     
[17012]     "What do you want? Anything the matter? Wait a moment." He pulled
[17013]     on some articles of clothing, and came to the door. "Yes?"
[17014]     
[17015]     "When we were at Shaston I jumped out of the window rather than that
[17016]     you should come near me. I have never reversed that treatment till
[17017]     now--when I have come to beg your pardon for it, and ask you to let
[17018]     me in."
[17019]     
[17020]     "Perhaps you only think you ought to do this? I don't wish you to
[17021]     come against your impulses, as I have said."
[17022]     
[17023]     "But I beg to be admitted." She waited a moment, and repeated,
[17024]     "I beg to be admitted! I have been in error--even to-day. I have
[17025]     exceeded my rights. I did not mean to tell you, but perhaps I ought.
[17026]     I sinned against you this afternoon."
[17027]     
[17028]     "How?"
[17029]     
[17030]     "I met Jude! I didn't know he was coming. And--"
[17031]     
[17032]     "Well?"
[17033]     
[17034]     "I kissed him, and let him kiss me."
[17035]     
[17036]     "Oh--the old story!"
[17037]     
[17038]     "Richard, I didn't know we were going to kiss each other till we
[17039]     did!"
[17040]     
[17041]     "How many times?"
[17042]     
[17043]     "A good many. I don't know. I am horrified to look back on it, and
[17044]     the least I can do after it is to come to you like this."
[17045]     
[17046]     "Come--this is pretty bad, after what I've done! Anything else to
[17047]     confess?"
[17048]     
[17049]     "No." She had been intending to say: "I called him my darling love."
[17050]     But, as a contrite woman always keeps back a little, that portion of
[17051]     the scene remained untold. She went on: "I am never going to see him
[17052]     any more. He spoke of some things of the past: and it overcame me.
[17053]     He spoke of--the children. But, as I have said, I am glad--almost
[17054]     glad I mean--that they are dead, Richard. It blots out all that life
[17055]     of mine!"
[17056]     
[17057]     "Well--about not seeing him again any more. Come--you really mean
[17058]     this?" There was something in Phillotson's tone now which seemed to
[17059]     show that his three months of remarriage with Sue had somehow not
[17060]     been so satisfactory as his magnanimity or amative patience had
[17061]     anticipated.
[17062]     
[17063]     "Yes, yes!"
[17064]     
[17065]     "Perhaps you'll swear it on the New Testament?"
[17066]     
[17067]     "I will."
[17068]     
[17069]     He went back to the room and brought out a little brown Testament.
[17070]     "Now then: So help you God!"
[17071]     
[17072]     She swore.
[17073]     
[17074]     "Very good!"
[17075]     
[17076]     "Now I supplicate you, Richard, to whom I belong, and whom I wish to
[17077]     honour and obey, as I vowed, to let me in."
[17078]     
[17079]     "Think it over well. You know what it means. Having you back in the
[17080]     house was one thing--this another. So think again."
[17081]     
[17082]     "I have thought--I wish this!"
[17083]     
[17084]     "That's a complaisant spirit--and perhaps you are right. With a
[17085]     lover hanging about, a half-marriage should be completed. But I
[17086]     repeat my reminder this third and last time."
[17087]     
[17088]     "It is my wish! ... O God!"
[17089]     
[17090]     "What did you say 'O God' for?"
[17091]     
[17092]     "I don't know!"
[17093]     
[17094]     "Yes you do! But ..." He gloomily considered her thin and fragile
[17095]     form a moment longer as she crouched before him in her night-clothes.
[17096]     "Well, I thought it might end like this," he said presently. "I owe
[17097]     you nothing, after these signs; but I'll take you in at your word,
[17098]     and forgive you."
[17099]     
[17100]     He put his arm round her to lift her up. Sue started back.
[17101]     
[17102]     "What's the matter?" he asked, speaking for the first time sternly.
[17103]     "You shrink from me again?--just as formerly!"
[17104]     
[17105]     "No, Richard--I--I--was not thinking--"
[17106]     
[17107]     "You wish to come in here?"
[17108]     
[17109]     "Yes."
[17110]     
[17111]     "You still bear in mind what it means?"
[17112]     
[17113]     "Yes. It is my duty!"
[17114]     
[17115]     Placing the candlestick on the chest of drawers he led her through
[17116]     the doorway, and lifting her bodily, kissed her. A quick look of
[17117]     aversion passed over her face, but clenching her teeth she uttered
[17118]     no cry.
[17119]     
[17120]     Mrs. Edlin had by this time undressed, and was about to get into bed
[17121]     when she said to herself: "Ah--perhaps I'd better go and see if the
[17122]     little thing is all right. How it do blow and rain!"
[17123]     
[17124]     The widow went out on the landing, and saw that Sue had disappeared. "Ah!
[17125]     Poor soul! Weddings be funerals 'a b'lieve nowadays. Fifty-five
[17126]     years ago, come Fall, since my man and I married! Times have changed
[17127]     since then!"
[17128]     
[17129]     
[17130]     
[17131]     X
[17132]     
[17133]     
[17134]     Despite himself Jude recovered somewhat, and worked at his trade for
[17135]     several weeks. After Christmas, however, he broke down again.
[17136]     
[17137]     With the money he had earned he shifted his lodgings to a yet more
[17138]     central part of the town. But Arabella saw that he was not likely
[17139]     to do much work for a long while, and was cross enough at the turn
[17140]     affairs had taken since her remarriage to him. "I'm hanged if you
[17141]     haven't been clever in this last stroke!" she would say, "to get a
[17142]     nurse for nothing by marrying me!"
[17143]     
[17144]     Jude was absolutely indifferent to what she said, and indeed, often
[17145]     regarded her abuse in a humorous light. Sometimes his mood was more
[17146]     earnest, and as he lay he often rambled on upon the defeat of his
[17147]     early aims.
[17148]     
[17149]     "Every man has some little power in some one direction," he would
[17150]     say. "I was never really stout enough for the stone trade,
[17151]     particularly the fixing. Moving the blocks always used to strain
[17152]     me, and standing the trying draughts in buildings before the windows
[17153]     are in always gave me colds, and I think that began the mischief
[17154]     inside. But I felt I could do one thing if I had the opportunity.
[17155]     I could accumulate ideas, and impart them to others. I wonder if the
[17156]     founders had such as I in their minds--a fellow good for nothing else
[17157]     but that particular thing? ... I hear that soon there is going to
[17158]     be a better chance for such helpless students as I was. There are
[17159]     schemes afoot for making the university less exclusive, and extending
[17160]     its influence. I don't know much about it. And it is too late, too
[17161]     late for me! Ah--and for how many worthier ones before me!"
[17162]     
[17163]     "How you keep a-mumbling!" said Arabella. "I should have thought
[17164]     you'd have got over all that craze about books by this time. And so
[17165]     you would, if you'd had any sense to begin with. You are as bad now
[17166]     as when we were first married."
[17167]     
[17168]     On one occasion while soliloquizing thus he called her "Sue"
[17169]     unconsciously.
[17170]     
[17171]     "I wish you'd mind who you are talking to!" said Arabella
[17172]     indignantly. "Calling a respectable married woman by the name of
[17173]     that--" She remembered herself and he did not catch the word.
[17174]     
[17175]     But in the course of time, when she saw how things were going, and
[17176]     how very little she had to fear from Sue's rivalry, she had a fit of
[17177]     generosity. "I suppose you want to see your--Sue?" she said. "Well,
[17178]     I don't mind her coming. You can have her here if you like."
[17179]     
[17180]     "I don't wish to see her again."
[17181]     
[17182]     "Oh--that's a change!"
[17183]     
[17184]     "And don't tell her anything about me--that I'm ill, or anything.
[17185]     She has chosen her course. Let her go!"
[17186]     
[17187]     One day he received a surprise. Mrs. Edlin came to see him, quite
[17188]     on her own account. Jude's wife, whose feelings as to where his
[17189]     affections were centred had reached absolute indifference by
[17190]     this time, went out, leaving the old woman alone with Jude. He
[17191]     impulsively asked how Sue was, and then said bluntly, remembering
[17192]     what Sue had told him: "I suppose they are still only husband and
[17193]     wife in name?"
[17194]     
[17195]     Mrs. Edlin hesitated. "Well, no--it's different now. She's begun it
[17196]     quite lately--all of her own free will."
[17197]     
[17198]     "When did she begin?" he asked quickly.
[17199]     
[17200]     "The night after you came. But as a punishment to her poor self.
[17201]     He didn't wish it, but she insisted."
[17202]     
[17203]     "Sue, my Sue--you darling fool--this is almost more than I can
[17204]     endure! ... Mrs. Edlin--don't be frightened at my rambling--I've
[17205]     got to talk to myself lying here so many hours alone--she was once
[17206]     a woman whose intellect was to mine like a star to a benzoline lamp:
[17207]     who saw all MY superstitions as cobwebs that she could brush away
[17208]     with a word. Then bitter affliction came to us, and her intellect
[17209]     broke, and she veered round to darkness. Strange difference of sex,
[17210]     that time and circumstance, which enlarge the views of most men,
[17211]     narrow the views of women almost invariably. And now the ultimate
[17212]     horror has come--her giving herself like this to what she loathes, in
[17213]     her enslavement to forms! She, so sensitive, so shrinking, that the
[17214]     very wind seemed to blow on her with a touch of deference... As for
[17215]     Sue and me when we were at our own best, long ago--when our minds
[17216]     were clear, and our love of truth fearless--the time was not ripe
[17217]     for us! Our ideas were fifty years too soon to be any good to us.
[17218]     And so the resistance they met with brought reaction in her, and
[17219]     recklessness and ruin on me! ... There--this, Mrs. Edlin, is how
[17220]     I go on to myself continually, as I lie here. I must be boring you
[17221]     awfully."
[17222]     
[17223]     "Not at all, my dear boy. I could hearken to 'ee all day."
[17224]     
[17225]     As Jude reflected more and more on her news, and grew more restless,
[17226]     he began in his mental agony to use terribly profane language about
[17227]     social conventions, which started a fit of coughing. Presently there
[17228]     came a knock at the door downstairs. As nobody answered it Mrs.
[17229]     Edlin herself went down.
[17230]     
[17231]     The visitor said blandly: "The doctor." The lanky form was that of
[17232]     Physician Vilbert, who had been called in by Arabella.
[17233]     
[17234]     "How is my patient at present?" asked the physician.
[17235]     
[17236]     "Oh bad--very bad! Poor chap, he got excited, and do blaspeam
[17237]     terribly, since I let out some gossip by accident--the more to my
[17238]     blame. But there--you must excuse a man in suffering for what he
[17239]     says, and I hope God will forgive him."
[17240]     
[17241]     "Ah. I'll go up and see him. Mrs. Fawley at home?"
[17242]     
[17243]     "She's not in at present, but she'll be here soon."
[17244]     
[17245]     Vilbert went; but though Jude had hitherto taken the medicines of
[17246]     that skilful practitioner with the greatest indifference whenever
[17247]     poured down his throat by Arabella, he was now so brought to bay by
[17248]     events that he vented his opinion of Vilbert in the physician's face,
[17249]     and so forcibly, and with such striking epithets, that Vilbert soon
[17250]     scurried downstairs again. At the door he met Arabella, Mrs. Edlin
[17251]     having left. Arabella inquired how he thought her husband was
[17252]     now, and seeing that the doctor looked ruffled, asked him to take
[17253]     something. He assented.
[17254]     
[17255]     "I'll bring it to you here in the passage," she said. "There's
[17256]     nobody but me about the house to-day."
[17257]     
[17258]     She brought him a bottle and a glass, and he drank.
[17259]     
[17260]     Arabella began shaking with suppressed laughter. "What is this, my
[17261]     dear?" he asked, smacking his lips.
[17262]     
[17263]     "Oh--a drop of wine--and something in it." Laughing again she said:
[17264]     "I poured your own love-philtre into it, that you sold me at the
[17265]     agricultural show, don't you re-member?"
[17266]     
[17267]     "I do, I do! Clever woman! But you must be prepared for the
[17268]     consequences." Putting his arm round her shoulders he kissed her
[17269]     there and then.
[17270]     
[17271]     "Don't don't," she whispered, laughing good-humouredly. "My man will
[17272]     hear."
[17273]     
[17274]     She let him out of the house, and as she went back she said to
[17275]     herself: "Well! Weak women must provide for a rainy day. And if my
[17276]     poor fellow upstairs do go off--as I suppose he will soon--it's well
[17277]     to keep chances open. And I can't pick and choose now as I could
[17278]     when I was younger. And one must take the old if one can't get the
[17279]     young."
[17280]     
[17281]     
[17282]     
[17283]     XI
[17284]     
[17285]     
[17286]     The last pages to which the chronicler of these lives would ask the
[17287]     reader's attention are concerned with the scene in and out of Jude's
[17288]     bedroom when leafy summer came round again.
[17289]     
[17290]     His face was now so thin that his old friends would hardly have known
[17291]     him. It was afternoon, and Arabella was at the looking-glass curling
[17292]     her hair, which operation she performed by heating an umbrella-stay
[17293]     in the flame of a candle she had lighted, and using it upon the
[17294]     flowing lock. When she had finished this, practised a dimple, and
[17295]     put on her things, she cast her eyes round upon Jude. He seemed to
[17296]     be sleeping, though his position was an elevated one, his malady
[17297]     preventing him lying down.
[17298]     
[17299]     Arabella, hatted, gloved, and ready, sat down and waited, as if
[17300]     expecting some one to come and take her place as nurse.
[17301]     
[17302]     Certain sounds from without revealed that the town was in festivity,
[17303]     though little of the festival, whatever it might have been, could be
[17304]     seen here. Bells began to ring, and the notes came into the room
[17305]     through the open window, and travelled round Jude's head in a hum.
[17306]     They made her restless, and at last she said to herself: "Why ever
[17307]     doesn't Father come!"
[17308]     
[17309]     She looked again at Jude, critically gauged his ebbing life, as she
[17310]     had done so many times during the late months, and glancing at his
[17311]     watch, which was hung up by way of timepiece, rose impatiently.
[17312]     Still he slept, and coming to a resolution she slipped from the room,
[17313]     closed the door noiselessly, and descended the stairs. The house
[17314]     was empty. The attraction which moved Arabella to go abroad had
[17315]     evidently drawn away the other inmates long before.
[17316]     
[17317]     It was a warm, cloudless, enticing day. She shut the front door, and
[17318]     hastened round into Chief Street, and when near the theatre could
[17319]     hear the notes of the organ, a rehearsal for a coming concert being
[17320]     in progress. She entered under the archway of Oldgate College, where
[17321]     men were putting up awnings round the quadrangle for a ball in the
[17322]     hall that evening. People who had come up from the country for the
[17323]     day were picnicking on the grass, and Arabella walked along the
[17324]     gravel paths and under the aged limes. But finding this place rather
[17325]     dull she returned to the streets, and watched the carriages drawing
[17326]     up for the concert, numerous dons and their wives, and undergraduates
[17327]     with gay female companions, crowding up likewise. When the doors
[17328]     were closed, and the concert began, she moved on.
[17329]     
[17330]     The powerful notes of that concert rolled forth through the swinging
[17331]     yellow blinds of the open windows, over the housetops, and into the
[17332]     still air of the lanes. They reached so far as to the room in which
[17333]     Jude lay; and it was about this time that his cough began again and
[17334]     awakened him.
[17335]     
[17336]     As soon as he could speak he murmured, his eyes still closed: "A
[17337]     little water, please."
[17338]     
[17339]     Nothing but the deserted room received his appeal, and he coughed
[17340]     to exhaustion again--saying still more feebly: "Water--some
[17341]     water--Sue--Arabella!"
[17342]     
[17343]     The room remained still as before. Presently he gasped again:
[17344]     "Throat--water--Sue--darling--drop of water--please--oh please!"
[17345]     
[17346]     No water came, and the organ notes, faint as a bee's hum, rolled in
[17347]     as before.
[17348]     
[17349]     While he remained, his face changing, shouts and hurrahs came from
[17350]     somewhere in the direction of the river.
[17351]     
[17352]     "Ah--yes! The Remembrance games," he murmured. "And I here. And
[17353]     Sue defiled!"
[17354]     
[17355]     The hurrahs were repeated, drowning the faint organ notes. Jude's
[17356]     face changed more: he whispered slowly, his parched lips scarcely
[17357]     moving:
[17358]     
[17359]     _"Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it
[17360]     was said, There is a man-child conceived."_
[17361]     
[17362]     ("Hurrah!")
[17363]     
[17364]     _"Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither
[17365]     let the light shine upon it. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no
[17366]     joyful voice come therein."_
[17367]     
[17368]     ("Hurrah!")
[17369]     
[17370]     _"Why died I not from the womb? Why did i not give up the ghost when
[17371]     I came out of the belly? ... For now should I have lain still and
[17372]     been quiet. I should have slept: then had I been at rest!"_
[17373]     
[17374]     ("Hurrah!")
[17375]     
[17376]     _"There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the
[17377]     oppressor... The small and the great are there; and the servant is
[17378]     free from his master. Wherefore is light given to him that is in
[17379]     misery, and life unto the bitter in soul?"_
[17380]     
[17381]     
[17382]     
[17383]     Meanwhile Arabella, in her journey to discover what was going on,
[17384]     took a short cut down a narrow street and through an obscure nook
[17385]     into the quad of Cardinal. It was full of bustle, and brilliant
[17386]     in the sunlight with flowers and other preparations for a ball
[17387]     here also. A carpenter nodded to her, one who had formerly been a
[17388]     fellow-workman of Jude's. A corridor was in course of erection from
[17389]     the entrance to the hall staircase, of gay red and buff bunting.
[17390]     Waggon-loads of boxes containing bright plants in full bloom were
[17391]     being placed about, and the great staircase was covered with red
[17392]     cloth. She nodded to one workman and another, and ascended to the
[17393]     hall on the strength of their acquaintance, where they were putting
[17394]     down a new floor and decorating for the dance.
[17395]     
[17396]     The cathedral bell close at hand was sounding for five o'clock
[17397]     service.
[17398]     
[17399]     "I should not mind having a spin there with a fellow's arm round my
[17400]     waist," she said to one of the men. "But Lord, I must be getting
[17401]     home again--there's a lot to do. No dancing for me!"
[17402]     
[17403]     When she reached home she was met at the door by Stagg, and one or
[17404]     two other of Jude's fellow stoneworkers. "We are just going down
[17405]     to the river," said the former, "to see the boat-bumping. But we've
[17406]     called round on our way to ask how your husband is."
[17407]     
[17408]     "He's sleeping nicely, thank you," said Arabella.
[17409]     
[17410]     "That's right. Well now, can't you give yourself half an hour's
[17411]     relaxation, Mrs. Fawley, and come along with us? 'Twould do you
[17412]     good."
[17413]     
[17414]     "I should like to go," said she. "I've never seen the boat-racing,
[17415]     and I hear it is good fun."
[17416]     
[17417]     "Come along!"
[17418]     
[17419]     "How I WISH I could!" She looked longingly down the street. "Wait
[17420]     a minute, then. I'll just run up and see how he is now. Father is
[17421]     with him, I believe; so I can most likely come."
[17422]     
[17423]     They waited, and she entered. Downstairs the inmates were absent
[17424]     as before, having, in fact, gone in a body to the river where the
[17425]     procession of boats was to pass. When she reached the bedroom she
[17426]     found that her father had not even now come.
[17427]     
[17428]     "Why couldn't he have been here!" she said impatiently. "He wants to
[17429]     see the boats himself--that's what it is!"
[17430]     
[17431]     However, on looking round to the bed she brightened, for she saw
[17432]     that Jude was apparently sleeping, though he was not in the usual
[17433]     half-elevated posture necessitated by his cough. He had slipped
[17434]     down, and lay flat. A second glance caused her to start, and she
[17435]     went to the bed. His face was quite white, and gradually becoming
[17436]     rigid. She touched his fingers; they were cold, though his body was
[17437]     still warm. She listened at his chest. All was still within. The
[17438]     bumping of near thirty years had ceased.
[17439]     
[17440]     After her first appalled sense of what had happened the faint notes
[17441]     of a military or other brass band from the river reached her ears;
[17442]     and in a provoked tone she exclaimed, "To think he should die just
[17443]     now! Why did he die just now!" Then meditating another moment or
[17444]     two she went to the door, softly closed it as before, and again
[17445]     descended the stairs.
[17446]     
[17447]     "Here she is!" said one of the workmen. "We wondered if you were
[17448]     coming after all. Come along; we must be quick to get a good
[17449]     place... Well, how is he? Sleeping well still? Of course, we don't
[17450]     want to drag 'ee away if--"
[17451]     
[17452]     "Oh yes--sleeping quite sound. He won't wake yet," she said
[17453]     hurriedly.
[17454]     
[17455]     They went with the crowd down Cardinal Street, where they presently
[17456]     reached the bridge, and the gay barges burst upon their view. Thence
[17457]     they passed by a narrow slit down to the riverside path--now dusty,
[17458]     hot, and thronged. Almost as soon as they had arrived the grand
[17459]     procession of boats began; the oars smacking with a loud kiss on the
[17460]     face of the stream, as they were lowered from the perpendicular.
[17461]     
[17462]     "Oh, I say--how jolly! I'm glad I've come," said Arabella. "And--it
[17463]     can't hurt my husband--my being away."
[17464]     
[17465]     On the opposite side of the river, on the crowded barges, were
[17466]     gorgeous nosegays of feminine beauty, fashionably arrayed in green,
[17467]     pink, blue, and white. The blue flag of the boat club denoted the
[17468]     centre of interest, beneath which a band in red uniform gave out the
[17469]     notes she had already heard in the death-chamber. Collegians of all
[17470]     sorts, in canoes with ladies, watching keenly for "our" boat, darted
[17471]     up and down. While she regarded the lively scene somebody touched
[17472]     Arabella in the ribs, and looking round she saw Vilbert.
[17473]     
[17474]     "That philtre is operating, you know!" he said with a leer. "Shame
[17475]     on 'ee to wreck a heart so!"
[17476]     
[17477]     "I shan't talk of love to-day."
[17478]     
[17479]     "Why not? It is a general holiday."
[17480]     
[17481]     She did not reply. Vilbert's arm stole round her waist, which act
[17482]     could be performed unobserved in the crowd. An arch expression
[17483]     overspread Arabella's face at the feel of the arm, but she kept her
[17484]     eyes on the river as if she did not know of the embrace.
[17485]     
[17486]     The crowd surged, pushing Arabella and her friends sometimes nearly
[17487]     into the river, and she would have laughed heartily at the horse-play
[17488]     that succeeded, if the imprint on her mind's eye of a pale,
[17489]     statuesque countenance she had lately gazed upon had not sobered her
[17490]     a little.
[17491]     
[17492]     The fun on the water reached the acme of excitement; there were
[17493]     immersions, there were shouts: the race was lost and won, the pink
[17494]     and blue and yellow ladies retired from the barges, and the people
[17495]     who had watched began to move.
[17496]     
[17497]     "Well--it's been awfully good," cried Arabella. "But I think I must
[17498]     get back to my poor man. Father is there, so far as I know; but I
[17499]     had better get back."
[17500]     
[17501]     "What's your hurry?"
[17502]     
[17503]     "Well, I must go... Dear, dear, this is awkward!"
[17504]     
[17505]     At the narrow gangway where the people ascended from the riverside
[17506]     path to the bridge the crowd was literally jammed into one hot
[17507]     mass--Arabella and Vilbert with the rest; and here they remained
[17508]     motionless, Arabella exclaiming, "Dear, dear!" more and more
[17509]     impatiently; for it had just occurred to her mind that if Jude were
[17510]     discovered to have died alone an inquest might be deemed necessary.
[17511]     
[17512]     "What a fidget you are, my love," said the physician, who, being
[17513]     pressed close against her by the throng, had no need of personal
[17514]     effort for contact. "Just as well have patience: there's no getting
[17515]     away yet!"
[17516]     
[17517]     It was nearly ten minutes before the wedged multitude moved
[17518]     sufficiently to let them pass through. As soon as she got up
[17519]     into the street Arabella hastened on, forbidding the physician to
[17520]     accompany her further that day. She did not go straight to her
[17521]     house; but to the abode of a woman who performed the last necessary
[17522]     offices for the poorer dead; where she knocked.
[17523]     
[17524]     "My husband has just gone, poor soul," she said. "Can you come and
[17525]     lay him out?"
[17526]     
[17527]     Arabella waited a few minutes; and the two women went along, elbowing
[17528]     their way through the stream of fashionable people pouring out of
[17529]     Cardinal meadow, and being nearly knocked down by the carriages.
[17530]     
[17531]     "I must call at the sexton's about the bell, too," said Arabella.
[17532]     "It is just round here, isn't it? I'll meet you at my door."
[17533]     
[17534]     By ten o'clock that night Jude was lying on the bedstead at his
[17535]     lodging covered with a sheet, and straight as an arrow. Through the
[17536]     partly opened window the joyous throb of a waltz entered from the
[17537]     ball-room at Cardinal.
[17538]     
[17539]     
[17540]     
[17541]     Two days later, when the sky was equally cloudless, and the air
[17542]     equally still, two persons stood beside Jude's open coffin in the
[17543]     same little bedroom. On one side was Arabella, on the other the
[17544]     Widow Edlin. They were both looking at Jude's face, the worn old
[17545]     eyelids of Mrs. Edlin being red.
[17546]     
[17547]     "How beautiful he is!" said she.
[17548]     
[17549]     "Yes. He's a 'andsome corpse," said Arabella.
[17550]     
[17551]     The window was still open to ventilate the room, and it being about
[17552]     noontide the clear air was motionless and quiet without. From a
[17553]     distance came voices; and an apparent noise of persons stamping.
[17554]     
[17555]     "What's that?" murmured the old woman.
[17556]     
[17557]     "Oh, that's the doctors in the theatre, conferring honorary degrees
[17558]     on the Duke of Hamptonshire and a lot more illustrious gents of that
[17559]     sort. It's Remembrance Week, you know. The cheers come from the
[17560]     young men."
[17561]     
[17562]     "Aye; young and strong-lunged! Not like our poor boy here."
[17563]     
[17564]     An occasional word, as from some one making a speech, floated from
[17565]     the open windows of the theatre across to this quiet corner, at which
[17566]     there seemed to be a smile of some sort upon the marble features
[17567]     of Jude; while the old, superseded, Delphin editions of Virgil and
[17568]     Horace, and the dog-eared Greek Testament on the neighbouring shelf,
[17569]     and the few other volumes of the sort that he had not parted with,
[17570]     roughened with stone-dust where he had been in the habit of catching
[17571]     them up for a few minutes between his labours, seemed to pale to a
[17572]     sickly cast at the sounds. The bells struck out joyously; and their
[17573]     reverberations travelled round the bed-room.
[17574]     
[17575]     Arabella's eyes removed from Jude to Mrs. Edlin. "D'ye think she
[17576]     will come?" she asked.
[17577]     
[17578]     "I could not say. She swore not to see him again."
[17579]     
[17580]     "How is she looking?"
[17581]     
[17582]     "Tired and miserable, poor heart. Years and years older than when
[17583]     you saw her last. Quite a staid, worn woman now. 'Tis the man--she
[17584]     can't stomach un, even now!"
[17585]     
[17586]     "If Jude had been alive to see her, he would hardly have cared for
[17587]     her any more, perhaps."
[17588]     
[17589]     "That's what we don't know... Didn't he ever ask you to send for
[17590]     her, since he came to see her in that strange way?"
[17591]     
[17592]     "No. Quite the contrary. I offered to send, and he said I was not
[17593]     to let her know how ill he was."
[17594]     
[17595]     "Did he forgive her?"
[17596]     
[17597]     "Not as I know."
[17598]     
[17599]     "Well--poor little thing, 'tis to be believed she's found forgiveness
[17600]     somewhere! She said she had found peace!
[17601]     
[17602]     "She may swear that on her knees to the holy cross upon her necklace
[17603]     till she's hoarse, but it won't be true!" said Arabella. "She's
[17604]     never found peace since she left his arms, and never will again till
[17605]     she's as he is now!"