Jude the Obscure
“She is quite well. She is gone—just gone. That’s her tea-cup, that she
drank out of only an hour ago. And that’s the plate she—” Phillotson’s
throat got choked up, and he could not go on. He turned and pushed the
tea-things aside.
“Have you had any tea, by the by?” he asked presently in a renewed
voice.
“No—yes—never mind,” said Gillingham, preoccupied. “Gone, you say she
is?”
“Yes… I would have died for her; but I wouldn’t be cruel to her in the
name of the law. She is, as I understand, gone to join her lover. What
they are going to do I cannot say. Whatever it may be she has my full
consent to.”
There was a stability, a ballast, in Phillotson’s pronouncement which
restrained his friend’s comment. “Shall I—leave you?” he asked.
“No, no. It is a mercy to me that you have come. I have some articles
to arrange and clear away. Would you help me?”
Gillingham assented; and having gone to the upper rooms the
schoolmaster opened drawers, and began taking out all Sue’s things that
she had left behind, and laying them in a large box. “She wouldn’t take
all I wanted her to,” he continued. “But when I made up my mind to her
going to live in her own way I did make up my mind.”
“Some men would have stopped at an agreement to separate.”
“I’ve gone into all that, and don’t wish to argue it. I was, and am,
the most old-fashioned man in the world on the question of marriage—in
fact I had never thought critically about its ethics at all. But
certain facts stared me in the face, and I couldn’t go against them.”
They went on with the packing silently. When it was done Phillotson
closed the box and turned the key.
“There,” he said. “To adorn her in somebody’s eyes; never again in
mine!”
V
Four-and-twenty hours before this time Sue had written the following
note to Jude:
It is as I told you; and I am leaving to-morrow evening. Richard and I
thought it could be done with less obtrusiveness after dark. I feel
rather frightened, and therefore ask you to be sure you are on the
Melchester platform to meet me. I arrive at a little to seven. I know
you will, of course, dear Jude; but I feel so timid that I can’t help
begging you to be punctual. He has been so _very_ kind to me through it
all!
Now to our meeting!
S.
As she was carried by the omnibus farther and farther down from the
mountain town—the single passenger that evening—she regarded the
receding road with a sad face. But no hesitation was apparent therein.
The up-train by which she was departing stopped by signal only. To Sue
it seemed strange that such a powerful organization as a railway train
should be brought to a stand-still on purpose for her—a fugitive from
her lawful home.
The twenty minutes’ journey drew towards its close, and Sue began
gathering her things together to alight. At the moment that the train
came to a stand-still by the Melchester platform a hand was laid on the
door and she beheld Jude. He entered the compartment promptly. He had a
black bag in his hand, and was dressed in the dark suit he wore on
Sundays and in the evening after work. Altogether he looked a very
handsome young fellow, his ardent affection for her burning in his
eyes.
“Oh Jude!” She clasped his hand with both hers, and her tense state
caused her to simmer over in a little succession of dry sobs. “I—I am
so glad! I get out here?”
“No. I get in, dear one! I’ve packed. Besides this bag I’ve only a big
box which is labelled.”
“But don’t I get out? Aren’t we going to stay here?”
“We couldn’t possibly, don’t you see. We are known here—I, at any rate,
am well known. I’ve booked for Aldbrickham; and here’s your ticket for
the same place, as you have only one to here.”
“I thought we should have stayed here,” she repeated.
“It wouldn’t have done at all.”
“Ah! Perhaps not.”
“There wasn’t time for me to write and say the place I had decided on.
Aldbrickham is a much bigger town—sixty or seventy thousand
inhabitants—and nobody knows anything about us there.”
“And you have given up your cathedral work here?”
“Yes. It was rather sudden—your message coming unexpectedly. Strictly,
I might have been made to finish out the week. But I pleaded urgency
and I was let off. I would have deserted any day at your command, dear
Sue. I have deserted more than that for you!”
“I fear I am doing you a lot of harm. Ruining your prospects of the
Church; ruining your progress in your trade; everything!”
“The Church is no more to me. Let it lie! _I_ am not to be one of
The soldier-saints who, row on row,
Burn upward each to his point of bliss,
if any such there be! My point of bliss is not upward, but here.”
“Oh I seem so bad—upsetting men’s courses like this!” said she, taking
up in her voice the emotion that had begun in his. But she recovered
her equanimity by the time they had travelled a dozen miles.
“He has been so good in letting me go,” she resumed. “And here’s a note
I found on my dressing-table, addressed to you.”
“Yes. He’s not an unworthy fellow,” said Jude, glancing at the note.
“And I am ashamed of myself for hating him because he married you.”
“According to the rule of women’s whims I suppose I ought to suddenly
love him, because he has let me go so generously and unexpectedly,” she
answered smiling. “But I am so cold, or devoid of gratitude, or so
something, that even this generosity hasn’t made me love him, or
repent, or want to stay with him as his wife; although I do feel I like
his large-mindedness, and respect him more than ever.”
“It may not work so well for us as if he had been less kind, and you
had run away against his will,” murmured Jude.
“That I _never_ would have done.”
Jude’s eyes rested musingly on her face. Then he suddenly kissed her;
and was going to kiss her again. “No—only once now—please, Jude!”
“That’s rather cruel,” he answered; but acquiesced. “Such a strange
thing has happened to me,” Jude continued after a silence. “Arabella
has actually written to ask me to get a divorce from her—in kindness to
her, she says. She wants to honestly and legally marry that man she has
already married virtually; and begs me to enable her to do it.”
“What have you done?”
“I have agreed. I thought at first I couldn’t do it without getting her
into trouble about that second marriage, and I don’t want to injure her
in any way. Perhaps she’s no worse than I am, after all! But nobody
knows about it over here, and I find it will not be a difficult
proceeding at all. If she wants to start afresh I have only too obvious
reasons for not hindering her.”
“Then you’ll be free?”
“Yes, I shall be free.”
“Where are we booked for?” she asked, with the discontinuity that
marked her to-night.
“Aldbrickham, as I said.”
“But it will be very late when we get there?”
“Yes. I thought of that, and I wired for a room for us at the
Temperance Hotel there.”
“One?”
“Yes—one.”
She looked at him. “Oh Jude!” Sue bent her forehead against the corner
of the compartment. “I thought you might do it; and that I was
deceiving you. But I didn’t mean that!”
In the pause which followed, Jude’s eyes fixed themselves with a
stultified expression on the opposite seat. “Well!” he said… “Well!”
He remained in silence; and seeing how discomfited he was she put her
face against his cheek, murmuring, “Don’t be vexed, dear!”
“Oh—there’s no harm done,” he said. “But—I understood it like that… Is
this a sudden change of mind?”
“You have no right to ask me such a question; and I shan’t answer!” she
said, smiling.
“My dear one, your happiness is more to me than anything—although we
seem to verge on quarrelling so often!—and your will is law to me. I am
something more than a mere—selfish fellow, I hope. Have it as you
wish!” On reflection his brow showed perplexity. “But perhaps it is
that you don’t love me—not that you have become conventional! Much as,
under your teaching, I hate convention, I hope it _is_ that, not the
other terrible alternative!”
Even at this obvious moment for candour Sue could not be quite candid
as to the state of that mystery, her heart. “Put it down to my
timidity,” she said with hurried evasiveness; “to a woman’s natural
timidity when the crisis comes. I may feel as well as you that I have a
perfect right to live with you as you thought—from this moment. I may
hold the opinion that, in a proper state of society, the father of a
woman’s child will be as much a private matter of hers as the cut of
her underlinen, on whom nobody will have any right to question her. But
partly, perhaps, because it is by his generosity that I am now free, I
would rather not be other than a little rigid. If there had been a
rope-ladder, and he had run after us with pistols, it would have seemed
different, and I may have acted otherwise. But don’t press me and
criticize me, Jude! Assume that I haven’t the courage of my opinions. I
know I am a poor miserable creature. My nature is not so passionate as
yours!”
He repeated simply! “I thought—what I naturally thought. But if we are
not lovers, we are not. Phillotson thought so, I am sure. See, here is
what he has written to me.” He opened the letter she had brought, and
read:
“I make only one condition—that you are tender and kind to her. I know
you love her. But even love may be cruel at times. You are made for
each other: it is obvious, palpable, to any unbiased older person. You
were all along ‘the shadowy third’ in my short life with her. I repeat,
take care of Sue.”
“He’s a good fellow, isn’t he!” she said with latent tears. On
reconsideration she added, “He was very resigned to letting me go—too
resigned almost! I never was so near being in love with him as when he
made such thoughtful arrangements for my being comfortable on my
journey, and offering to provide money. Yet I was not. If I loved him
ever so little as a wife, I’d go back to him even now.”
“But you don’t, do you?”
“It is true—oh so terribly true!—I don’t.”
“Nor me neither, I half-fear!” he said pettishly. “Nor anybody perhaps!
Sue, sometimes, when I am vexed with you, I think you are incapable of
real love.”
“That’s not good and loyal of you!” she said, and drawing away from him
as far as she could, looked severely out into the darkness. She added
in hurt tones, without turning round: “My liking for you is not as some
women’s perhaps. But it is a delight in being with you, of a supremely
delicate kind, and I don’t want to go further and risk it by—an attempt
to intensify it! I quite realized that, as woman with man, it was a
risk to come. But, as me with you, I resolved to trust you to set my
wishes above your gratification. Don’t discuss it further, dear Jude!”
“Of course, if it would make you reproach yourself… but you do like me
very much, Sue? Say you do! Say that you do a quarter, a tenth, as much
as I do you, and I’ll be content!”
“I’ve let you kiss me, and that tells enough.”
“Just once or so!”
“Well—don’t be a greedy boy.”
He leant back, and did not look at her for a long time. That episode in
her past history of which she had told him—of the poor Christminster
graduate whom she had handled thus, returned to Jude’s mind; and he saw
himself as a possible second in such a torturing destiny.
“This is a queer elopement!” he murmured. “Perhaps you are making a
cat’s paw of me with Phillotson all this time. Upon my word it almost
seems so—to see you sitting up there so prim!”
“Now you mustn’t be angry—I won’t let you!” she coaxed, turning and
moving nearer to him. “You did kiss me just now, you know; and I didn’t
dislike you to, I own it, Jude. Only I don’t want to let you do it
again, just yet—considering how we are circumstanced, don’t you see!”
He could never resist her when she pleaded (as she well knew). And they