Jude the Obscure
to call about the banns at once, so as to get the first publishing done
to-morrow, or we shall lose a week. Banns will do? We shall save a
pound or two.”
Sue absently agreed to banns. But her mind for the moment was running
on something else. A glow had passed away from her, and depression sat
upon her features.
“I feel I was wickedly selfish last night!” she murmured. “It was sheer
unkindness in me—or worse—to treat Arabella as I did. I didn’t care
about her being in trouble, and what she wished to tell you! Perhaps it
was really something she was justified in telling you. That’s some more
of my badness, I suppose! Love has its own dark morality when rivalry
enters in—at least, mine has, if other people’s hasn’t… I wonder how
she got on? I hope she reached the inn all right, poor woman.”
“Oh yes: she got on all right,” said Jude placidly.
“I hope she wasn’t shut out, and that she hadn’t to walk the streets in
the rain. Do you mind my putting on my waterproof and going to see if
she got in? I’ve been thinking of her all the morning.”
“Well—is it necessary? You haven’t the least idea how Arabella is able
to shift for herself. Still, darling, if you want to go and inquire you
can.”
There was no limit to the strange and unnecessary penances which Sue
would meekly undertake when in a contrite mood; and this going to see
all sorts of extraordinary persons whose relation to her was precisely
of a kind that would have made other people shun them was her instinct
ever, so that the request did not surprise him.
“And when you come back,” he added, “I’ll be ready to go about the
banns. You’ll come with me?”
Sue agreed, and went off under cloak and umbrella letting Jude kiss her
freely, and returning his kisses in a way she had never done before.
Times had decidedly changed. “The little bird is caught at last!” she
said, a sadness showing in her smile.
“No—only nested,” he assured her.
She walked along the muddy street till she reached the public house
mentioned by Arabella, which was not so very far off. She was informed
that Arabella had not yet left, and in doubt how to announce herself so
that her predecessor in Jude’s affections would recognize her, she sent
up word that a friend from Spring Street had called, naming the place
of Jude’s residence. She was asked to step upstairs, and on being shown
into a room found that it was Arabella’s bedroom, and that the latter
had not yet risen. She halted on the turn of her toe till Arabella
cried from the bed, “Come in and shut the door,” which Sue accordingly
did.
Arabella lay facing the window, and did not at once turn her head: and
Sue was wicked enough, despite her penitence, to wish for a moment that
Jude could behold her forerunner now, with the daylight full upon her.
She may have seemed handsome enough in profile under the lamps, but a
frowsiness was apparent this morning; and the sight of her own fresh
charms in the looking-glass made Sue’s manner bright, till she
reflected what a meanly sexual emotion this was in her, and hated
herself for it.
“I’ve just looked in to see if you got back comfortably last night,
that’s all,” she said gently. “I was afraid afterwards that you might
have met with any mishap?”
“Oh—how stupid this is! I thought my visitor was—your friend—your
husband—Mrs. Fawley, as I suppose you call yourself?” said Arabella,
flinging her head back upon the pillows with a disappointed toss, and
ceasing to retain the dimple she had just taken the trouble to produce.
“Indeed I don’t,” said Sue.
“Oh, I thought you might have, even if he’s not really yours. Decency
is decency, any hour of the twenty-four.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Sue stiffly. “He is mine, if you
come to that!”
“He wasn’t yesterday.”
Sue coloured roseate, and said, “How do you know?”
“From your manner when you talked to me at the door. Well, my dear,
you’ve been quick about it, and I expect my visit last night helped it
on—ha-ha! But I don’t want to get him away from you.”
Sue looked out at the rain, and at the dirty toilet-cover, and at the
detached tail of Arabella’s hair hanging on the looking-glass, just as
it had done in Jude’s time; and wished she had not come. In the pause
there was a knock at the door, and the chambermaid brought in a
telegram for “Mrs. Cartlett.”
Arabella opened it as she lay, and her ruffled look disappeared.
“I am much obliged to you for your anxiety about me,” she said blandly
when the maid had gone; “but it is not necessary you should feel it. My
man finds he can’t do without me after all, and agrees to stand by the
promise to marry again over here that he has made me all along. See
here! This is in answer to one from me.” She held out the telegram for
Sue to read, but Sue did not take it. “He asks me to come back. His
little corner public in Lambeth would go to pieces without me, he says.
But he isn’t going to knock me about when he has had a drop, any more
after we are spliced by English law than before! … As for you, I should
coax Jude to take me before the parson straight off, and have done with
it, if I were in your place. I say it as a friend, my dear.”
“He’s waiting to, any day,” returned Sue, with frigid pride.
“Then let him, in Heaven’s name. Life with a man is more businesslike
after it, and money matters work better. And then, you see, if you have
rows, and he turns you out of doors, you can get the law to protect
you, which you can’t otherwise, unless he half-runs you through with a
knife, or cracks your noddle with a poker. And if he bolts away from
you—I say it friendly, as woman to woman, for there’s never any knowing
what a man med do—you’ll have the sticks o’ furniture, and won’t be
looked upon as a thief. I shall marry my man over again, now he’s
willing, as there was a little flaw in the first ceremony. In my
telegram last night which this is an answer to, I told him I had almost
made it up with Jude; and that frightened him, I expect! Perhaps I
should quite have done it if it hadn’t been for you,” she said
laughing; “and then how different our histories might have been from
to-day! Never such a tender fool as Jude is if a woman seems in
trouble, and coaxes him a bit! Just as he used to be about birds and
things. However, as it happens, it is just as well as if I had made it
up, and I forgive you. And, as I say, I’d advise you to get the
business legally done as soon as possible. You’ll find it an awful
bother later on if you don’t.”
“I have told you he is asking me to marry him—to make our natural
marriage a legal one,” said Sue, with yet more dignity. “It was quite
by my wish that he didn’t the moment I was free.”
“Ah, yes—you are a oneyer too, like myself,” said Arabella, eyeing her
visitor with humorous criticism. “Bolted from your first, didn’t you,
like me?”
“Good morning!—I must go,” said Sue hastily.
“And I, too, must up and off!” replied the other, springing out of bed
so suddenly that the soft parts of her person shook. Sue jumped aside
in trepidation. “Lord, I am only a woman—not a six-foot sojer! … Just a
moment, dear,” she continued, putting her hand on Sue’s arm. “I really
did want to consult Jude on a little matter of business, as I told him.
I came about that more than anything else. Would he run up to speak to
me at the station as I am going? You think not. Well, I’ll write to him
about it. I didn’t want to write it, but never mind—I will.”
III
When Sue reached home Jude was awaiting her at the door to take the
initial step towards their marriage. She clasped his arm, and they went
along silently together, as true comrades oft-times do. He saw that she
was preoccupied, and forbore to question her.
“Oh Jude—I’ve been talking to her,” she said at last. “I wish I hadn’t!
And yet it is best to be reminded of things.”
“I hope she was civil.”
“Yes. I—I can’t help liking her—just a little bit! She’s not an
ungenerous nature; and I am so glad her difficulties have all suddenly
ended.” She explained how Arabella had been summoned back, and would be
enabled to retrieve her position. “I was referring to our old question.
What Arabella has been saying to me has made me feel more than ever how
hopelessly vulgar an institution legal marriage is—a sort of trap to
catch a man—I can’t bear to think of it. I wish I hadn’t promised to
let you put up the banns this morning!”
“Oh, don’t mind me. Any time will do for me. I thought you might like
to get it over quickly, now.”
“Indeed, I don’t feel any more anxious now than I did before. Perhaps
with any other man I might be a little anxious; but among the very few
virtues possessed by your family and mine, dear, I think I may set
staunchness. So I am not a bit frightened about losing you, now I
really am yours and you really are mine. In fact, I am easier in my
mind than I was, for my conscience is clear about Richard, who now has
a right to his freedom. I felt we were deceiving him before.”
“Sue, you seem when you are like this to be one of the women of some
grand old civilization, whom I used to read about in my bygone, wasted,
classical days, rather than a denizen of a mere Christian country. I
almost expect you to say at these times that you have just been talking
to some friend whom you met in the Via Sacra, about the latest news of
Octavia or Livia; or have been listening to Aspasia’s eloquence, or
have been watching Praxiteles chiselling away at his latest Venus,
while Phryne made complaint that she was tired of posing.”
They had now reached the house of the parish clerk. Sue stood back,
while her lover went up to the door. His hand was raised to knock when
she said: “Jude!”
He looked round.
“Wait a minute, would you mind?”
He came back to her.
“Just let us think,” she said timidly. “I had such a horrid dream one
night! … And Arabella—”
“What did Arabella say to you?” he asked.
“Oh, she said that when people were tied up you could get the law of a
man better if he beat you—and how when couples quarrelled… Jude, do you
think that when you must have me with you by law, we shall be so happy
as we are now? The men and women of our family are very generous when
everything depends upon their goodwill, but they always kick against
compulsion. Don’t you dread the attitude that insensibly arises out of
legal obligation? Don’t you think it is destructive to a passion whose
essence is its gratuitousness?”
“Upon my word, love, you are beginning to frighten me, too, with all
this foreboding! Well, let’s go back and think it over.”
Her face brightened. “Yes—so we will!” said she. And they turned from
the clerk’s door, Sue taking his arm and murmuring as they walked on
homeward:
Can you keep the bee from ranging,
Or the ring-dove’s neck from changing?
No! Nor fetter’d love…
They thought it over, or postponed thinking. Certainly they postponed
action, and seemed to live on in a dreamy paradise. At the end of a
fortnight or three weeks matters remained unadvanced, and no banns were
announced to the ears of any Aldbrickham congregation.
Whilst they were postponing and postponing thus a letter and a
newspaper arrived before breakfast one morning from Arabella. Seeing
the handwriting Jude went up to Sue’s room and told her, and as soon as
she was dressed she hastened down. Sue opened the newspaper; Jude the
letter. After glancing at the paper she held across the first page to
him with her finger on a paragraph; but he was so absorbed in his
letter that he did not turn awhile.
“Look!” said she.
He looked and read. The paper was one that circulated in South London
only, and the marked advertisement was simply the announcement of a
marriage at St. John’s Church, Waterloo Road, under the names,
“CARTLETT——DONN”; the united pair being Arabella and the inn-keeper.