Jude the Obscure
Nobody had been there.
As he could claim the downstairs sitting-room till twelve o’clock that
night he sat in it all the evening; and even when the clock had struck
eleven, and the family had retired, he could not shake off the feeling
that she would come back and sleep in the little room adjoining his own
in which she had slept so many previous days. Her actions were always
unpredictable: why should she not come? Gladly would he have compounded
for the denial of her as a sweetheart and wife by having her live thus
as a fellow-lodger and friend, even on the most distant terms. His
supper still remained spread, and going to the front door, and softly
setting it open, he returned to the room and sat as watchers sit on
Old-Midsummer eves, expecting the phantom of the Beloved. But she did
not come.
Having indulged in this wild hope he went upstairs, and looked out of
the window, and pictured her through the evening journey to London,
whither she and Phillotson had gone for their holiday; their rattling
along through the damp night to their hotel, under the same sky of
ribbed cloud as that he beheld, through which the moon showed its
position rather than its shape, and one or two of the larger stars made
themselves visible as faint nebulæ only. It was a new beginning of
Sue’s history. He projected his mind into the future, and saw her with
children more or less in her own likeness around her. But the
consolation of regarding them as a continuation of her identity was
denied to him, as to all such dreamers, by the wilfulness of Nature in
not allowing issue from one parent alone. Every desired renewal of an
existence is debased by being half alloy. “If at the estrangement or
death of my lost love, I could go and see her child—hers solely—there
would be comfort in it!” said Jude. And then he again uneasily saw, as
he had latterly seen with more and more frequency, the scorn of Nature
for man’s finer emotions, and her lack of interest in his aspirations.
The oppressive strength of his affection for Sue showed itself on the
morrow and following days yet more clearly. He could no longer endure
the light of the Melchester lamps; the sunshine was as drab paint, and
the blue sky as zinc. Then he received news that his old aunt was
dangerously ill at Marygreen, which intelligence almost coincided with
a letter from his former employer at Christminster, who offered him
permanent work of a good class if he would come back. The letters were
almost a relief to him. He started to visit Aunt Drusilla, and resolved
to go onward to Christminster to see what worth there might be in the
builder’s offer.
Jude found his aunt even worse than the communication from the Widow
Edlin had led him to expect. There was every possibility of her
lingering on for weeks or months, though little likelihood. He wrote to
Sue informing her of the state of her aunt, and suggesting that she
might like to see her aged relative alive. He would meet her at
Alfredston Road, the following evening, Monday, on his way back from
Christminster, if she could come by the up-train which crossed his
down-train at that station. Next morning, according, he went on to
Christminster, intending to return to Alfredston soon enough to keep
the suggested appointment with Sue.
The city of learning wore an estranged look, and he had lost all
feeling for its associations. Yet as the sun made vivid lights and
shades of the mullioned architecture of the façades, and drew patterns
of the crinkled battlements on the young turf of the quadrangles, Jude
thought he had never seen the place look more beautiful. He came to the
street in which he had first beheld Sue. The chair she had occupied
when, leaning over her ecclesiastical scrolls, a hog-hair brush in her
hand, her girlish figure had arrested the gaze of his inquiring eyes,
stood precisely in its former spot, empty. It was as if she were dead,
and nobody had been found capable of succeeding her in that artistic
pursuit. Hers was now the city phantom, while those of the intellectual
and devotional worthies who had once moved him to emotion were no
longer able to assert their presence there.
However, here he was; and in fulfilment of his intention he went on to
his former lodging in “Beersheba,” near the ritualistic church of St.
Silas. The old landlady who opened the door seemed glad to see him
again, and bringing some lunch informed him that the builder who had
employed him had called to inquire his address.
Jude went on to the stone-yard where he had worked. But the old sheds
and bankers were distasteful to him; he felt it impossible to engage
himself to return and stay in this place of vanished dreams. He longed
for the hour of the homeward train to Alfredston, where he might
probably meet Sue.
Then, for one ghastly half-hour of depression caused by these scenes,
there returned upon him that feeling which had been his undoing more
than once—that he was not worth the trouble of being taken care of
either by himself or others; and during this half-hour he met Tinker
Taylor, the bankrupt ecclesiastical ironmonger, at Fourways, who
proposed that they should adjourn to a bar and drink together. They
walked along the street till they stood before one of the great
palpitating centres of Christminster life, the inn wherein he formerly
had responded to the challenge to rehearse the Creed in Latin—now a
popular tavern with a spacious and inviting entrance, which gave
admittance to a bar that had been entirely renovated and refitted in
modern style since Jude’s residence here.
Tinker Taylor drank off his glass and departed, saying it was too
stylish a place now for him to feel at home in unless he was drunker
than he had money to be just then. Jude was longer finishing his, and
stood abstractedly silent in the, for the minute, almost empty place.
The bar had been gutted and newly arranged throughout, mahogany
fixtures having taken the place of the old painted ones, while at the
back of the standing-space there were stuffed sofa-benches. The room
was divided into compartments in the approved manner, between which
were screens of ground glass in mahogany framing, to prevent topers in
one compartment being put to the blush by the recognitions of those in
the next. On the inside of the counter two barmaids leant over the
white-handled beer-engines, and the row of little silvered taps inside,
dripping into a pewter trough.
Feeling tired, and having nothing more to do till the train left, Jude
sat down on one of the sofas. At the back of the barmaids rose
bevel-edged mirrors, with glass shelves running along their front, on
which stood precious liquids that Jude did not know the name of, in
bottles of topaz, sapphire, ruby and amethyst. The moment was enlivened
by the entrance of some customers into the next compartment, and the
starting of the mechanical tell-tale of monies received, which emitted
a ting-ting every time a coin was put in.
The barmaid attending to this compartment was invisible to Jude’s
direct glance, though a reflection of her back in the glass behind her
was occasionally caught by his eyes. He had only observed this
listlessly, when she turned her face for a moment to the glass to set
her hair tidy. Then he was amazed to discover that the face was
Arabella’s.
If she had come on to his compartment she would have seen him. But she
did not, this being presided over by the maiden on the other side. Abby
was in a black gown, with white linen cuffs and a broad white collar,
and her figure, more developed than formerly, was accentuated by a
bunch of daffodils that she wore on her left bosom. In the compartment
she served stood an electro-plated fountain of water over a
spirit-lamp, whose blue flame sent a steam from the top, all this being
visible to him only in the mirror behind her; which also reflected the
faces of the men she was attending to—one of them a handsome,
dissipated young fellow, possibly an undergraduate, who had been
relating to her an experience of some humorous sort.
“Oh, Mr. Cockman, now! How can you tell such a tale to me in my
innocence!” she cried gaily. “Mr. Cockman, what do you use to make your
moustache curl so beautiful?” As the young man was clean shaven, the
retort provoked a laugh at his expense.
“Come!” said he, “I’ll have a curaçao; and a light, please.”
She served the liqueur from one of the lovely bottles and striking a
match held it to his cigarette with ministering archness while he
whiffed.
“Well, have you heard from your husband lately, my dear?” he asked.
“Not a sound,” said she.
“Where is he?”
“I left him in Australia; and I suppose he’s there still.”
Jude’s eyes grew rounder.
“What made you part from him?”
“Don’t you ask questions, and you won’t hear lies.”
“Come then, give me my change, which you’ve been keeping from me for
the last quarter of an hour; and I’ll romantically vanish up the street
of this picturesque city.”
She handed the change over the counter, in taking which he caught her
fingers and held them. There was a slight struggle and titter, and he
bade her good-bye and left.
Jude had looked on with the eye of a dazed philosopher. It was
extraordinary how far removed from his life Arabella now seemed to be.
He could not realize their nominal closeness. And, this being the case,
in his present frame of mind he was indifferent to the fact that
Arabella was his wife indeed.
The compartment that she served emptied itself of visitors, and after a
brief thought he entered it, and went forward to the counter. Arabella
did not recognize him for a moment. Then their glances met. She
started; till a humorous impudence sparkled in her eyes, and she spoke.
“Well, I’m blest! I thought you were underground years ago!”
“Oh!”
“I never heard anything of you, or I don’t know that I should have come
here. But never mind! What shall I treat you to this afternoon? A
Scotch and soda? Come, anything that the house will afford, for old
acquaintance’ sake!”
“Thanks, Arabella,” said Jude without a smile. “But I don’t want
anything more than I’ve had.” The fact was that her unexpected presence
there had destroyed at a stroke his momentary taste for strong liquor
as completely as if it had whisked him back to his milk-fed infancy.
“That’s a pity, now you could get it for nothing.”
“How long have you been here?”
“About six weeks. I returned from Sydney three months ago. I always
liked this business, you know.”
“I wonder you came to this place!”
“Well, as I say, I thought you were gone to glory, and being in London
I saw the situation in an advertisement. Nobody was likely to know me
here, even if I had minded, for I was never in Christminster in my
growing up.”
“Why did you return from Australia?”
“Oh, I had my reasons… Then you are not a don yet?”
“No.”
“Not even a reverend?”
“No.”
“Nor so much as a rather reverend dissenting gentleman?”
“I am as I was.”
“True—you look so.” She idly allowed her fingers to rest on the pull of
the beer-engine as she inspected him critically. He observed that her
hands were smaller and whiter than when he had lived with her, and that
on the hand which pulled the engine she wore an ornamental ring set
with what seemed to be real sapphires—which they were, indeed, and were
much admired as such by the young men who frequented the bar.
“So you pass as having a living husband,” he continued.
“Yes. I thought it might be awkward if I called myself a widow, as I
should have liked.”
“True. I am known here a little.”
“I didn’t mean on that account—for as I said I didn’t expect you. It
was for other reasons.”
“What were they?”
“I don’t care to go into them,” she replied evasively. “I make a very
good living, and I don’t know that I want your company.”