Jude the Obscure
somebody else, but she blindly fulfilled her engagement.”
“Loving the other?”
“Yes; with a curious tender solicitude seemingly; though her exact
feeling for him is a riddle to me—and to him too, I think—possibly to
herself. She is one of the oddest creatures I ever met. However, I have
been struck with these two facts; the extraordinary sympathy, or
similarity, between the pair. He is her cousin, which perhaps accounts
for some of it. They seem to be one person split in two! And with her
unconquerable aversion to myself as a husband, even though she may like
me as a friend, ’tis too much to bear longer. She has conscientiously
struggled against it, but to no purpose. I cannot bear it—I cannot! I
can’t answer her arguments—she has read ten times as much as I. Her
intellect sparkles like diamonds, while mine smoulders like brown
paper… She’s one too many for me!”
“She’ll get over it, good-now?”
“Never! It is—but I won’t go into it—there are reasons why she never
will. At last she calmly and firmly asked if she might leave me and go
to him. The climax came last night, when, owing to my entering her room
by accident, she jumped out of window—so strong was her dread of me!
She pretended it was a dream, but that was to soothe me. Now when a
woman jumps out of window without caring whether she breaks her neck or
no, she’s not to be mistaken; and this being the case I have come to a
conclusion: that it is wrong to so torture a fellow-creature any
longer; and I won’t be the inhuman wretch to do it, cost what it may!”
“What—you’ll let her go? And with her lover?”
“Whom with is her matter. I shall let her go; with him certainly, if
she wishes. I know I may be wrong—I know I can’t logically, or
religiously, defend my concession to such a wish of hers, or harmonize
it with the doctrines I was brought up in. Only I know one thing:
something within me tells me I am doing wrong in refusing her. I, like
other men, profess to hold that if a husband gets such a so-called
preposterous request from his wife, the only course that can possibly
be regarded as right and proper and honourable in him is to refuse it,
and put her virtuously under lock and key, and murder her lover
perhaps. But is that essentially right, and proper, and honourable, or
is it contemptibly mean and selfish? I don’t profess to decide. I
simply am going to act by instinct, and let principles take care of
themselves. If a person who has blindly walked into a quagmire cries
for help, I am inclined to give it, if possible.”
“But—you see, there’s the question of neighbours and society—what will
happen if everybody—”
“Oh, I am not going to be a philosopher any longer! I only see what’s
under my eyes.”
“Well—I don’t agree with your instinct, Dick!” said Gillingham gravely.
“I am quite amazed, to tell the truth, that such a sedate, plodding
fellow as you should have entertained such a craze for a moment. You
said when I called that she was puzzling and peculiar: I think you
are!”
“Have you ever stood before a woman whom you know to be intrinsically a
good woman, while she has pleaded for release—been the man she has
knelt to and implored indulgence of?”
“I am thankful to say I haven’t.”
“Then I don’t think you are in a position to give an opinion. I have
been that man, and it makes all the difference in the world, if one has
any manliness or chivalry in him. I had not the remotest idea—living
apart from women as I have done for so many years—that merely taking a
woman to church and putting a ring upon her finger could by any
possibility involve one in such a daily, continuous tragedy as that now
shared by her and me!”
“Well, I could admit some excuse for letting her leave you, provided
she kept to herself. But to go attended by a cavalier—that makes a
difference.”
“Not a bit. Suppose, as I believe, she would rather endure her present
misery than be made to promise to keep apart from him? All that is a
question for herself. It is not the same thing at all as the treachery
of living on with a husband and playing him false… However, she has not
distinctly implied living with him as wife, though I think she means
to... And, to the best of my understanding, it is not an ignoble,
merely animal, feeling between the two: that is the worst of it;
because it makes me think their affection will be enduring. I did not
mean to confess to you that in the first jealous weeks of my marriage,
before I had come to my right mind, I hid myself in the school one
evening when they were together there, and I heard what they said. I am
ashamed of it now, though I suppose I was only exercising a legal
right. I found from their manner that an extraordinary affinity, or
sympathy, entered into their attachment, which somehow took away all
flavour of grossness. Their supreme desire is to be together—to share
each other’s emotions, and fancies, and dreams.”
“Platonic!”
“Well no. Shelleyan would be nearer to it. They remind me of—what are
their names—Laon and Cythna. Also of Paul and Virginia a little. The
more I reflect, the more _entirely_ I am on their side!”
“But if people did as you want to do, there’d be a general domestic
disintegration. The family would no longer be the social unit.”
“Yes—I am all abroad, I suppose!” said Phillotson sadly. “I was never a
very bright reasoner, you remember. … And yet, I don’t see why the
woman and the children should not be the unit without the man.”
“By the Lord Harry!—Matriarchy! … Does _she_ say all this too?”
“Oh no. She little thinks I have out-Sued Sue in this—all in the last
twelve hours!”
“It will upset all received opinion hereabout. Good God—what will
Shaston say!”
“I don’t say that it won’t. I don’t know—I don’t know! … As I say, I am
only a feeler, not a reasoner.”
“Now,” said Gillingham, “let us take it quietly, and have something to
drink over it.” He went under the stairs, and produced a bottle of
cider-wine, of which they drank a rummer each. “I think you are rafted,
and not yourself,” he continued. “Do go back and make up your mind to
put up with a few whims. But keep her. I hear on all sides that she’s a
charming young thing.”
“Ah yes! That’s the bitterness of it! Well, I won’t stay. I have a long
walk before me.”
Gillingham accompanied his friend a mile on his way, and at parting
expressed his hope that this consultation, singular as its subject was,
would be the renewal of their old comradeship. “Stick to her!” were his
last words, flung into the darkness after Phillotson; from which his
friend answered “Aye, aye!”
But when Phillotson was alone under the clouds of night, and no sound
was audible but that of the purling tributaries of the Stour, he said,
“So Gillingham, my friend, you had no stronger arguments against it
than those!”
“I think she ought to be smacked, and brought to her senses—that’s what
I think!” murmured Gillingham, as he walked back alone.
The next morning came, and at breakfast Phillotson told Sue:
“You may go—with whom you will. I absolutely and unconditionally
agree.”
Having once come to this conclusion it seemed to Phillotson more and
more indubitably the true one. His mild serenity at the sense that he
was doing his duty by a woman who was at his mercy almost overpowered
his grief at relinquishing her.
Some days passed, and the evening of their last meal together had
come—a cloudy evening with wind—which indeed was very seldom absent in
this elevated place. How permanently it was imprinted upon his vision;
that look of her as she glided into the parlour to tea; a slim flexible
figure; a face, strained from its roundness, and marked by the pallors
of restless days and nights, suggesting tragic possibilities quite at
variance with her times of buoyancy; a trying of this morsel and that,
and an inability to eat either. Her nervous manner, begotten of a fear
lest he should be injured by her course, might have been interpreted by
a stranger as displeasure that Phillotson intruded his presence on her
for the few brief minutes that remained.
“You had better have a slice of ham or an egg, or something with your
tea? You can’t travel on a mouthful of bread and butter.”
She took the slice he helped her to; and they discussed as they sat
trivial questions of housekeeping, such as where he would find the key
of this or that cupboard, what little bills were paid, and what not.
“I am a bachelor by nature, as you know, Sue,” he said, in a heroic
attempt to put her at her ease. “So that being without a wife will not
really be irksome to me, as it might be to other men who have had one a
little while. I have, too, this grand hobby in my head of writing ‘The
Roman Antiquities of Wessex,’ which will occupy all my spare hours.”
“If you will send me some of the manuscript to copy at any time, as you
used to, I will do it with so much pleasure!” she said with amenable
gentleness. “I should much like to be some help to you still—as
a—f-f-friend.”
Phillotson mused, and said: “No, I think we ought to be really
separate, if we are to be at all. And for this reason, that I don’t
wish to ask you any questions, and particularly wish you not to give me
information as to your movements, or even your address… Now, what money
do you want? You must have some, you know.”
“Oh, of course, Richard, I couldn’t think of having any of your money
to go away from you with! I don’t want any either. I have enough of my
own to last me for a long while, and Jude will let me have—”
“I would rather not know anything about him, if you don’t mind. You are
free, absolutely; and your course is your own.”
“Very well. But I’ll just say that I have packed only a change or two
of my own personal clothing, and one or two little things besides that
are my very own. I wish you would look into my trunk before it is
closed. Besides that I have only a small parcel that will go into
Jude’s portmanteau.”
“Of course I shall do no such thing as examine your luggage! I wish you
would take three-quarters of the household furniture. I don’t want to
be bothered with it. I have a sort of affection for a little of it that
belonged to my poor mother and father. But the rest you are welcome to
whenever you like to send for it.”
“That I shall never do.”
“You go by the six-thirty train, don’t you? It is now a quarter to
six.”
“You… You don’t seem very sorry I am going, Richard!”
“Oh no—perhaps not.”
“I like you much for how you have behaved. It is a curious thing that
directly I have begun to regard you as not my husband, but as my old
teacher, I like you. I won’t be so affected as to say I love you,
because you know I don’t, except as a friend. But you do seem that to
me!”
Sue was for a few moments a little tearful at these reflections, and
then the station omnibus came round to take her up. Phillotson saw her
things put on the top, handed her in, and was obliged to make an
appearance of kissing her as he wished her good-bye, which she quite
understood and imitated. From the cheerful manner in which they parted
the omnibus-man had no other idea than that she was going for a short
visit.
When Phillotson got back into the house he went upstairs and opened the
window in the direction the omnibus had taken. Soon the noise of its
wheels died away. He came down then, his face compressed like that of
one bearing pain; he put on his hat and went out, following by the same
route for nearly a mile. Suddenly turning round he came home.
He had no sooner entered than the voice of his friend Gillingham
greeted him from the front room.
“I could make nobody hear; so finding your door open I walked in, and
made myself comfortable. I said I would call, you remember.”
“Yes. I am much obliged to you, Gillingham, particularly for coming
to-night.”
“How is Mrs.—”