Jude the Obscure
before. But one can work, and despise what one does. I must do
something, if not church-gothic.”
“I wish we could both follow an occupation in which personal
circumstances don’t count,” she said, smiling up wistfully. “I am as
disqualified for teaching as you are for ecclesiastical art. You must
fall back upon railway stations, bridges, theatres, music-halls,
hotels—everything that has no connection with conduct.”
“I am not skilled in those… I ought to take to bread-baking. I grew up
in the baking business with aunt, you know. But even a baker must be
conventional, to get customers.”
“Unless he keeps a cake and gingerbread stall at markets and fairs,
where people are gloriously indifferent to everything except the
quality of the goods.”
Their thoughts were diverted by the voice of the auctioneer: “Now this
antique oak settle—a unique example of old English furniture, worthy
the attention of all collectors!”
“That was my great-grandfather’s,” said Jude. “I wish we could have
kept the poor old thing!”
One by one the articles went, and the afternoon passed away. Jude and
the other two were getting tired and hungry, but after the conversation
they had heard they were shy of going out while the purchasers were in
their line of retreat. However, the later lots drew on, and it became
necessary to emerge into the rain soon, to take on Sue’s things to
their temporary lodging.
“Now the next lot: two pairs of pigeons, all alive and plump—a nice pie
for somebody for next Sunday’s dinner!”
The impending sale of these birds had been the most trying suspense of
the whole afternoon. They were Sue’s pets, and when it was found that
they could not possibly be kept, more sadness was caused than by
parting from all the furniture. Sue tried to think away her tears as
she heard the trifling sum that her dears were deemed to be worth
advanced by small stages to the price at which they were finally
knocked down. The purchaser was a neighbouring poulterer, and they were
unquestionably doomed to die before the next market day.
Noting her dissembled distress Jude kissed her, and said it was time to
go and see if the lodgings were ready. He would go on with the boy, and
fetch her soon.
When she was left alone she waited patiently, but Jude did not come
back. At last she started, the coast being clear, and on passing the
poulterer’s shop, not far off, she saw her pigeons in a hamper by the
door. An emotion at sight of them, assisted by the growing dusk of
evening, caused her to act on impulse, and first looking around her
quickly, she pulled out the peg which fastened down the cover, and went
on. The cover was lifted from within, and the pigeons flew away with a
clatter that brought the chagrined poulterer cursing and swearing to
the door.
Sue reached the lodging trembling, and found Jude and the boy making it
comfortable for her. “Do the buyers pay before they bring away the
things?” she asked breathlessly.
“Yes, I think. Why?”
“Because, then, I’ve done such a wicked thing!” And she explained, in
bitter contrition.
“I shall have to pay the poulterer for them, if he doesn’t catch them,”
said Jude. “But never mind. Don’t fret about it, dear.”
“It was so foolish of me! Oh why should Nature’s law be mutual
butchery!”
“Is it so, Mother?” asked the boy intently.
“Yes!” said Sue vehemently.
“Well, they must take their chance, now, poor things,” said Jude. “As
soon as the sale-account is wound up, and our bills paid, we go.”
“Where do we go to?” asked Time, in suspense.
“We must sail under sealed orders, that nobody may trace us… We mustn’t
go to Alfredston, or to Melchester, or to Shaston, or to Christminster.
Apart from those we may go anywhere.”
“Why mustn’t we go there, Father?”
“Because of a cloud that has gathered over us; though ‘we have wronged
no man, corrupted no man, defrauded no man!’ Though perhaps we have
‘done that which was right in our own eyes.’”
VII
From that week Jude Fawley and Sue walked no more in the town of
Aldbrickham.
Whither they had gone nobody knew, chiefly because nobody cared to
know. Any one sufficiently curious to trace the steps of such an
obscure pair might have discovered without great trouble that they had
taken advantage of his adaptive craftsmanship to enter on a shifting,
almost nomadic, life, which was not without its pleasantness for a
time.
Wherever Jude heard of free-stone work to be done, thither he went,
choosing by preference places remote from his old haunts and Sue’s. He
laboured at a job, long or briefly, till it was finished; and then
moved on.
Two whole years and a half passed thus. Sometimes he might have been
found shaping the mullions of a country mansion, sometimes setting the
parapet of a town-hall, sometimes ashlaring an hotel at Sandbourne,
sometimes a museum at Casterbridge, sometimes as far down as Exonbury,
sometimes at Stoke-Barehills. Later still he was at Kennetbridge, a
thriving town not more than a dozen miles south of Marygreen, this
being his nearest approach to the village where he was known; for he
had a sensitive dread of being questioned as to his life and fortunes
by those who had been acquainted with him during his ardent young
manhood of study and promise, and his brief and unhappy married life at
that time.
At some of these places he would be detained for months, at others only
a few weeks. His curious and sudden antipathy to ecclesiastical work,
both episcopal and noncomformist, which had risen in him when suffering
under a smarting sense of misconception, remained with him in cold
blood, less from any fear of renewed censure than from an
ultra-conscientiousness which would not allow him to seek a living out
of those who would disapprove of his ways; also, too, from a sense of
inconsistency between his former dogmas and his present practice,
hardly a shred of the beliefs with which he had first gone up to
Christminster now remaining with him. He was mentally approaching the
position which Sue had occupied when he first met her.
On a Saturday evening in May, nearly three years after Arabella’s
recognition of Sue and himself at the agricultural show, some of those
who there encountered each other met again.
It was the spring fair at Kennetbridge, and, though this ancient
trade-meeting had much dwindled from its dimensions of former times,
the long straight street of the borough presented a lively scene about
midday. At this hour a light trap, among other vehicles, was driven
into the town by the north road, and up to the door of a temperance
inn. There alighted two women, one the driver, an ordinary country
person, the other a finely built figure in the deep mourning of a
widow. Her sombre suit, of pronounced cut, caused her to appear a
little out of place in the medley and bustle of a provincial fair.
“I will just find out where it is, Anny,” said the widow-lady to her
companion, when the horse and cart had been taken by a man who came
forward: “and then I’ll come back, and meet you here; and we’ll go in
and have something to eat and drink. I begin to feel quite a sinking.”
“With all my heart,” said the other. “Though I would sooner have put up
at the Chequers or The Jack. You can’t get much at these temperance
houses.”
“Now, don’t you give way to gluttonous desires, my child,” said the
woman in weeds reprovingly. “This is the proper place. Very well: we’ll
meet in half an hour, unless you come with me to find out where the
site of the new chapel is?”
“I don’t care to. You can tell me.”
The companions then went their several ways, the one in crape walking
firmly along with a mien of disconnection from her miscellaneous
surroundings. Making inquiries she came to a hoarding, within which
were excavations denoting the foundations of a building; and on the
boards without one or two large posters announcing that the
foundation-stone of the chapel about to be erected would be laid that
afternoon at three o’clock by a London preacher of great popularity
among his body.
Having ascertained thus much the immensely weeded widow retraced her
steps, and gave herself leisure to observe the movements of the fair.
By and by her attention was arrested by a little stall of cakes and
ginger-breads, standing between the more pretentious erections of
trestles and canvas. It was covered with an immaculate cloth, and
tended by a young woman apparently unused to the business, she being
accompanied by a boy with an octogenarian face, who assisted her.
“Upon my—senses!” murmured the widow to herself. “His wife Sue—if she
is so!” She drew nearer to the stall. “How do you do, Mrs. Fawley?” she
said blandly.
Sue changed colour and recognized Arabella through the crape veil.
“How are you, Mrs. Cartlett?” she said stiffly. And then perceiving
Arabella’s garb her voice grew sympathetic in spite of herself.
“What?—you have lost—”
“My poor husband. Yes. He died suddenly, six weeks ago, leaving me none
too well off, though he was a kind husband to me. But whatever profit
there is in public-house keeping goes to them that brew the liquors,
and not to them that retail ’em… And you, my little old man! You don’t
know me, I expect?”
“Yes, I do. You be the woman I thought wer my mother for a bit, till I
found you wasn’t,” replied Father Time, who had learned to use the
Wessex tongue quite naturally by now.
“All right. Never mind. I am a friend.”
“Juey,” said Sue suddenly, “go down to the station platform with this
tray—there’s another train coming in, I think.”
When he was gone Arabella continued: “He’ll never be a beauty, will he,
poor chap! Does he know I am his mother really?”
“No. He thinks there is some mystery about his parentage—that’s all.
Jude is going to tell him when he is a little older.”
“But how do you come to be doing this? I am surprised.”
“It is only a temporary occupation—a fancy of ours while we are in a
difficulty.”
“Then you are living with him still?”
“Yes.”
“Married?”
“Of course.”
“Any children?”
“Two.”
“And another coming soon, I see.”
Sue writhed under the hard and direct questioning, and her tender
little mouth began to quiver.
“Lord—I mean goodness gracious—what is there to cry about? Some folks
would be proud enough!”
“It is not that I am ashamed—not as you think! But it seems such a
terribly tragic thing to bring beings into the world—so
presumptuous—that I question my right to do it sometimes!”
“Take it easy, my dear… But you don’t tell me why you do such a thing
as this? Jude used to be a proud sort of chap—above any business
almost, leave alone keeping a standing.”
“Perhaps my husband has altered a little since then. I am sure he is
not proud now!” And Sue’s lips quivered again. “I am doing this because
he caught a chill early in the year while putting up some stonework of
a music-hall, at Quartershot, which he had to do in the rain, the work
having to be executed by a fixed day. He is better than he was; but it
has been a long, weary time! We have had an old widow friend with us to
help us through it; but she’s leaving soon.”
“Well, I am respectable too, thank God, and of a serious way of
thinking since my loss. Why did you choose to sell gingerbreads?”
“That’s a pure accident. He was brought up to the baking business, and
it occurred to him to try his hand at these, which he can make without
coming out of doors. We call them Christminster cakes. They are a great
success.”
“I never saw any like ’em. Why, they are windows and towers, and
pinnacles! And upon my word they are very nice.” She had helped
herself, and was unceremoniously munching one of the cakes.
“Yes. They are reminiscences of the Christminster Colleges. Traceried
windows, and cloisters, you see. It was a whim of his to do them in
pastry.”