Jude the Obscure
wearily in a chair. “They have requested me to send in my resignation
on account of my scandalous conduct in giving my tortured wife her
liberty—or, as they call it, condoning her adultery. But I shan’t
resign!”
“I think I would.”
“I won’t. It is no business of theirs. It doesn’t affect me in my
public capacity at all. They may expel me if they like.”
“If you make a fuss it will get into the papers, and you’ll never get
appointed to another school. You see, they have to consider what you
did as done by a teacher of youth—and its effects as such upon the
morals of the town; and, to ordinary opinion, your position is
indefensible. You must let me say that.”
To this good advice, however, Phillotson would not listen.
“I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t go unless I am turned out. And for
this reason; that by resigning I acknowledge I have acted wrongly by
her; when I am more and more convinced every day that in the sight of
Heaven and by all natural, straightforward humanity, I have acted
rightly.”
Gillingham saw that his rather headstrong friend would not be able to
maintain such a position as this; but he said nothing further, and in
due time—indeed, in a quarter of an hour—the formal letter of dismissal
arrived, the managers having remained behind to write it after
Phillotson’s withdrawal. The latter replied that he should not accept
dismissal; and called a public meeting, which he attended, although he
looked so weak and ill that his friend implored him to stay at home.
When he stood up to give his reasons for contesting the decision of the
managers he advanced them firmly, as he had done to his friend, and
contended, moreover, that the matter was a domestic theory which did
not concern them. This they over-ruled, insisting that the private
eccentricities of a teacher came quite within their sphere of control,
as it touched the morals of those he taught. Phillotson replied that he
did not see how an act of natural charity could injure morals.
All the respectable inhabitants and well-to-do fellow-natives of the
town were against Phillotson to a man. But, somewhat to his surprise,
some dozen or more champions rose up in his defence as from the ground.
It has been stated that Shaston was the anchorage of a curious and
interesting group of itinerants, who frequented the numerous fairs and
markets held up and down Wessex during the summer and autumn months.
Although Phillotson had never spoken to one of these gentlemen they now
nobly led the forlorn hope in his defence. The body included two cheap
Jacks, a shooting-gallery proprietor and the ladies who loaded the
guns, a pair of boxing-masters, a steam-roundabout manager, two
travelling broom-makers, who called themselves widows, a
gingerbread-stall keeper, a swing-boat owner, and a
“test-your-strength” man.
This generous phalanx of supporters, and a few others of independent
judgment, whose own domestic experiences had been not without
vicissitude, came up and warmly shook hands with Phillotson; after
which they expressed their thoughts so strongly to the meeting that
issue was joined, the result being a general scuffle, wherein a black
board was split, three panes of the school windows were broken, an
inkbottle was spilled over a town-councillor’s shirt front, a
churchwarden was dealt such a topper with the map of Palestine that his
head went right through Samaria, and many black eyes and bleeding noses
were given, one of which, to everybody’s horror, was the venerable
incumbent’s, owing to the zeal of an emancipated chimney-sweep, who
took the side of Phillotson’s party. When Phillotson saw the blood
running down the rector’s face he deplored almost in groans the
untoward and degrading circumstances, regretted that he had not
resigned when called upon, and went home so ill that next morning he
could not leave his bed.
The farcical yet melancholy event was the beginning of a serious
illness for him; and he lay in his lonely bed in the pathetic state of
mind of a middle-aged man who perceives at length that his life,
intellectual and domestic, is tending to failure and gloom. Gillingham
came to see him in the evenings, and on one occasion mentioned Sue’s
name.
“She doesn’t care anything about me!” said Phillotson. “Why should
she?”
“She doesn’t know you are ill.”
“So much the better for both of us.”
“Where are her lover and she living?”
“At Melchester—I suppose; at least he was living there some time ago.”
When Gillingham reached home he sat and reflected, and at last wrote an
anonymous line to Sue, on the bare chance of its reaching her, the
letter being enclosed in an envelope addressed to Jude at the diocesan
capital. Arriving at that place it was forwarded to Marygreen in North
Wessex, and thence to Aldbrickham by the only person who knew his
present address—the widow who had nursed his aunt.
Three days later, in the evening, when the sun was going down in
splendour over the lowlands of Blackmoor, and making the Shaston
windows like tongues of fire to the eyes of the rustics in that vale,
the sick man fancied that he heard somebody come to the house, and a
few minutes after there was a tap at the bedroom door. Phillotson did
not speak; the door was hesitatingly opened, and there entered—Sue.
She was in light spring clothing, and her advent seemed ghostly—like
the flitting in of a moth. He turned his eyes upon her, and flushed;
but appeared to check his primary impulse to speak.
“I have no business here,” she said, bending her frightened face to
him. “But I heard you were ill—very ill; and—and as I know that you
recognize other feelings between man and woman than physical love, I
have come.”
“I am not very ill, my dear friend. Only unwell.”
“I didn’t know that; and I am afraid that only a severe illness would
have justified my coming!”
“Yes… yes. And I almost wish you had not come! It is a little too
soon—that’s all I mean. Still, let us make the best of it. You haven’t
heard about the school, I suppose?”
“No—what about it?”
“Only that I am going away from here to another place. The managers and
I don’t agree, and we are going to part—that’s all.”
Sue did not for a moment, either now or later, suspect what troubles
had resulted to him from letting her go; it never once seemed to cross
her mind, and she had received no news whatever from Shaston. They
talked on slight and ephemeral subjects, and when his tea was brought
up he told the amazed little servant that a cup was to be set for Sue.
That young person was much more interested in their history than they
supposed, and as she descended the stairs she lifted her eyes and hands
in grotesque amazement. While they sipped Sue went to the window and
thoughtfully said, “It is such a beautiful sunset, Richard.”
“They are mostly beautiful from here, owing to the rays crossing the
mist of the vale. But I lose them all, as they don’t shine into this
gloomy corner where I lie.”
“Wouldn’t you like to see this particular one? It is like heaven
opened.”
“Ah yes! But I can’t.”
“I’ll help you to.”
“No—the bedstead can’t be shifted.”
“But see how I mean.”
She went to where a swing-glass stood, and taking it in her hands
carried it to a spot by the window where it could catch the sunshine,
moving the glass till the beams were reflected into Phillotson’s face.
“There—you can see the great red sun now!” she said. “And I am sure it
will cheer you—I do so hope it will!” She spoke with a childlike,
repentant kindness, as if she could not do too much for him.
Phillotson smiled sadly. “You are an odd creature!” he murmured as the
sun glowed in his eyes. “The idea of your coming to see me after what
has passed!”
“Don’t let us go back upon that!” she said quickly. “I have to catch
the omnibus for the train, as Jude doesn’t know I have come; he was out
when I started; so I must return home almost directly. Richard, I am so
very glad you are better. You don’t hate me, do you? You have been such
a kind friend to me!”
“I am glad to know you think so,” said Phillotson huskily. “No. I don’t
hate you!”
It grew dusk quickly in the gloomy room during their intermittent chat,
and when candles were brought and it was time to leave she put her hand
in his or rather allowed it to flit through his; for she was
significantly light in touch. She had nearly closed the door when he
said, “Sue!” He had noticed that, in turning away from him, tears were
on her face and a quiver in her lip.
It was bad policy to recall her—he knew it while he pursued it. But he
could not help it. She came back.
“Sue,” he murmured, “do you wish to make it up, and stay? I’ll forgive
you and condone everything!”
“Oh you can’t, you can’t!” she said hastily. “You can’t condone it
now!”
“_He_ is your husband now, in effect, you mean, of course?”
“You may assume it. He is obtaining a divorce from his wife Arabella.”
“His wife! It is altogether news to me that he has a wife.”
“It was a bad marriage.”
“Like yours.”
“Like mine. He is not doing it so much on his own account as on hers.
She wrote and told him it would be a kindness to her, since then she
could marry and live respectably. And Jude has agreed.”
“A wife… A kindness to her. Ah, yes; a kindness to her to release her
altogether… But I don’t like the sound of it. I can forgive, Sue.”
“No, no! You can’t have me back now I have been so wicked—as to do what
I have done!”
There had arisen in Sue’s face that incipient fright which showed
itself whenever he changed from friend to husband, and which made her
adopt any line of defence against marital feeling in him. “I _must_ go
now. I’ll come again—may I?”
“I don’t ask you to go, even now. I ask you to stay.”
“I thank you, Richard; but I must. As you are not so ill as I thought,
I _cannot_ stay!”
“She’s his—his from lips to heel!” said Phillotson; but so faintly that
in closing the door she did not hear it. The dread of a reactionary
change in the schoolmaster’s sentiments, coupled, perhaps, with a faint
shamefacedness at letting even him know what a slipshod lack of
thoroughness, from a man’s point of view, characterized her transferred
allegiance, prevented her telling him of her, thus far, incomplete
relations with Jude; and Phillotson lay writhing like a man in hell as
he pictured the prettily dressed, maddening compound of sympathy and
averseness who bore his name, returning impatiently to the home of her
lover.
Gillingham was so interested in Phillotson’s affairs, and so seriously
concerned about him, that he walked up the hill-side to Shaston two or
three times a week, although, there and back, it was a journey of nine
miles, which had to be performed between tea and supper, after a hard
day’s work in school. When he called on the next occasion after Sue’s
visit his friend was downstairs, and Gillingham noticed that his
restless mood had been supplanted by a more fixed and composed one.
“She’s been here since you called last,” said Phillotson.
“Not Mrs. Phillotson?”
“Yes.”
“Ah! You have made it up?”
“No… She just came, patted my pillow with her little white hand, played
the thoughtful nurse for half an hour, and went away.”
“Well—I’m hanged! A little hussy!”
“What do you say?”
“Oh—nothing!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what a tantalizing, capricious little woman! If she were not
your wife—”
“She is not; she’s another man’s except in name and law. And I have
been thinking—it was suggested to me by a conversation I had with
her—that, in kindness to her, I ought to dissolve the legal tie
altogether; which, singularly enough, I think I can do, now she has
been back, and refused my request to stay after I said I had forgiven
her. I believe that fact would afford me opportunity of doing it,