Jude the Obscure
A glimmering candlelight shone from a front window, the shutters being
yet unclosed. He could see the interior clearly—the floor sinking a
couple of steps below the road without, which had become raised during
the centuries since the house was built. Sue, evidently just come in,
was standing with her hat on in this front parlour or sitting-room,
whose walls were lined with wainscoting of panelled oak reaching from
floor to ceiling, the latter being crossed by huge moulded beams only a
little way above her head. The mantelpiece was of the same heavy
description, carved with Jacobean pilasters and scroll-work. The
centuries did, indeed, ponderously overhang a young wife who passed her
time here.
She had opened a rosewood work-box, and was looking at a photograph.
Having contemplated it a little while she pressed it against her bosom,
and put it again in its place.
Then becoming aware that she had not obscured the windows she came
forward to do so, candle in hand. It was too dark for her to see Jude
without, but he could see her face distinctly, and there was an
unmistakable tearfulness about the dark, long-lashed eyes.
She closed the shutters, and Jude turned away to pursue his solitary
journey home. “Whose photograph was she looking at?” he said. He had
once given her his; but she had others, he knew. Yet it was his,
surely?
He knew he should go to see her again, according to her invitation.
Those earnest men he read of, the saints, whom Sue, with gentle
irreverence, called his demi-gods, would have shunned such encounters
if they doubted their own strength. But he could not. He might fast and
pray during the whole interval, but the human was more powerful in him
than the Divine.
II
However, if God disposed not, woman did. The next morning but one
brought him this note from her:
Don’t come next week. On your own account don’t! We were too free,
under the influence of that morbid hymn and the twilight. Think no more
than you can help of
SUSANNA FLORENCE MARY.
The disappointment was keen. He knew her mood, the look of her face,
when she subscribed herself at length thus. But, whatever her mood, he
could not say she was wrong in her view. He replied:
I acquiesce. You are right. It is a lesson in renunciation which I
suppose I ought to learn at this season.
JUDE.
He despatched the note on Easter Eve, and there seemed a finality in
their decisions. But other forces and laws than theirs were in
operation. On Easter Monday morning he received a message from the
Widow Edlin, whom he had directed to telegraph if anything serious
happened:
Your aunt is sinking. Come at once.
He threw down his tools and went. Three and a half hours later he was
crossing the downs about Marygreen, and presently plunged into the
concave field across which the short cut was made to the village. As he
ascended on the other side a labouring man, who had been watching his
approach from a gate across the path, moved uneasily, and prepared to
speak. “I can see in his face that she is dead,” said Jude. “Poor Aunt
Drusilla!”
It was as he had supposed, and Mrs. Edlin had sent out the man to break
the news to him.
“She wouldn’t have knowed ’ee. She lay like a doll wi’ glass eyes; so
it didn’t matter that you wasn’t here,” said he.
Jude went on to the house, and in the afternoon, when everything was
done, and the layers-out had finished their beer, and gone, he sat down
alone in the silent place. It was absolutely necessary to communicate
with Sue, though two or three days earlier they had agreed to mutual
severance. He wrote in the briefest terms:
Aunt Drusilla is dead, having been taken almost suddenly. The funeral
is on Friday afternoon.
He remained in and about Marygreen through the intervening days, went
out on Friday morning to see that the grave was finished, and wondered
if Sue would come. She had not written, and that seemed to signify
rather that she would come than that she would not. Having timed her by
her only possible train, he locked the door about mid-day, and crossed
the hollow field to the verge of the upland by the Brown House, where
he stood and looked over the vast prospect northwards, and over the
nearer landscape in which Alfredston stood. Two miles behind it a jet
of white steam was travelling from the left to the right of the
picture.
There was a long time to wait, even now, till he would know if she had
arrived. He did wait, however, and at last a small hired vehicle pulled
up at the bottom of the hill, and a person alighted, the conveyance
going back, while the passenger began ascending the hill. He knew her;
and she looked so slender to-day that it seemed as if she might be
crushed in the intensity of a too passionate embrace—such as it was not
for him to give. Two-thirds of the way up her head suddenly took a
solicitous poise, and he knew that she had at that moment recognized
him. Her face soon began a pensive smile, which lasted till, having
descended a little way, he met her.
“I thought,” she began with nervous quickness, “that it would be so sad
to let you attend the funeral alone! And so—at the last moment—I came.”
“Dear faithful Sue!” murmured Jude.
With the elusiveness of her curious double nature, however, Sue did not
stand still for any further greeting, though it wanted some time to the
burial. A pathos so unusually compounded as that which attached to this
hour was unlikely to repeat itself for years, if ever, and Jude would
have paused, and meditated, and conversed. But Sue either saw it not at
all, or, seeing it more than he, would not allow herself to feel it.
The sad and simple ceremony was soon over, their progress to the church
being almost at a trot, the bustling undertaker having a more important
funeral an hour later, three miles off. Drusilla was put into the new
ground, quite away from her ancestors. Sue and Jude had gone side by
side to the grave, and now sat down to tea in the familiar house; their
lives united at least in this last attention to the dead.
“She was opposed to marriage, from first to last, you say?” murmured
Sue.
“Yes. Particularly for members of our family.”
Her eyes met his, and remained on him awhile.
“We are rather a sad family, don’t you think, Jude?”
“She said we made bad husbands and wives. Certainly we make unhappy
ones. At all events, I do, for one!”
Sue was silent. “Is it wrong, Jude,” she said with a tentative tremor,
“for a husband or wife to tell a third person that they are unhappy in
their marriage? If a marriage ceremony is a religious thing, it is
possibly wrong; but if it is only a sordid contract, based on material
convenience in householding, rating, and taxing, and the inheritance of
land and money by children, making it necessary that the male parent
should be known—which it seems to be—why surely a person may say, even
proclaim upon the housetops, that it hurts and grieves him or her?”
“I have said so, anyhow, to you.”
Presently she went on: “Are there many couples, do you think, where one
dislikes the other for no definite fault?”
“Yes, I suppose. If either cares for another person, for instance.”
“But even apart from that? Wouldn’t the woman, for example, be very
bad-natured if she didn’t like to live with her husband; merely”—her
voice undulated, and he guessed things—“merely because she had a
personal feeling against it—a physical objection—a fastidiousness, or
whatever it may be called—although she might respect and be grateful to
him? I am merely putting a case. Ought she to try to overcome her
pruderies?”
Jude threw a troubled look at her. He said, looking away: “It would be
just one of those cases in which my experiences go contrary to my
dogmas. Speaking as an order-loving man—which I hope I am, though I
fear I am not—I should say, yes. Speaking from experience and unbiased
nature, I should say, no. … Sue, I believe you are not happy!”
“Of course I am!” she contradicted. “How can a woman be unhappy who has
only been married eight weeks to a man she chose freely?”
“‘Chose freely!’”
“Why do you repeat it? … But I have to go back by the six o’clock
train. You will be staying on here, I suppose?”
“For a few days to wind up Aunt’s affairs. This house is gone now.
Shall I go to the train with you?”
A little laugh of objection came from Sue. “I think not. You may come
part of the way.”
“But stop—you can’t go to-night! That train won’t take you to Shaston.
You must stay and go back to-morrow. Mrs. Edlin has plenty of room, if
you don’t like to stay here?”
“Very well,” she said dubiously. “I didn’t tell him I would come for
certain.”
Jude went to the widow’s house adjoining, to let her know; and
returning in a few minutes sat down again.
“It is horrible how we are circumstanced, Sue—horrible!” he said
abruptly, with his eyes bent to the floor.
“No! Why?”
“I can’t tell you all my part of the gloom. Your part is that you ought
not to have married him. I saw it before you had done it, but I thought
I mustn’t interfere. I was wrong. I ought to have!”
“But what makes you assume all this, dear?”
“Because—I can see you through your feathers, my poor little bird!”
Her hand lay on the table, and Jude put his upon it. Sue drew hers
away.
“That’s absurd, Sue,” cried he, “after what we’ve been talking about! I
am more strict and formal than you, if it comes to that; and that you
should object to such an innocent action shows that you are
ridiculously inconsistent!”
“Perhaps it was too prudish,” she said repentantly. “Only I have
fancied it was a sort of trick of ours—too frequent perhaps. There, you
may hold it as much as you like. Is that good of me?”
“Yes; very.”
“But I must tell him.”
“Who?”
“Richard.”
“Oh—of course, if you think it necessary. But as it means nothing it
may be bothering him needlessly.”
“Well—are you sure you mean it only as my cousin?”
“Absolutely sure. I have no feelings of love left in me.”
“That’s news. How has it come to be?”
“I’ve seen Arabella.”
She winced at the hit; then said curiously, “When did you see her?”
“When I was at Christminster.”
“So she’s come back; and you never told me! I suppose you will live
with her now?”
“Of course—just as you live with your husband.”
She looked at the window pots with the geraniums and cactuses, withered
for want of attention, and through them at the outer distance, till her
eyes began to grow moist. “What is it?” said Jude, in a softened tone.
“Why should you be so glad to go back to her if—if what you used to say
to me is still true—I mean if it were true then! Of course it is not
now! How could your heart go back to Arabella so soon?”
“A special Providence, I suppose, helped it on its way.”
“Ah—it isn’t true!” she said with gentle resentment. “You are teasing
me—that’s all—because you think I am not happy!”
“I don’t know. I don’t wish to know.”
“If I were unhappy it would be my fault, my wickedness; not that I
should have a right to dislike him! He is considerate to me in
everything; and he is very interesting, from the amount of general
knowledge he has acquired by reading everything that comes in his way.
… Do you think, Jude, that a man ought to marry a woman his own age, or
one younger than himself—eighteen years—as I am than he?”
“It depends upon what they feel for each other.”
He gave her no opportunity of self-satisfaction, and she had to go on
unaided, which she did in a vanquished tone, verging on tears:
“I—I think I must be equally honest with you as you have been with me.
Perhaps you have seen what it is I want to say?—that though I like Mr.
Phillotson as a friend, I don’t like him—it is a torture to me to—live
with him as a husband!—There, now I have let it out—I couldn’t help it,