Jude the Obscure
“Still harping on Christminster—even in his cakes!” laughed Arabella.
“Just like Jude. A ruling passion. What a queer fellow he is, and
always will be!”
Sue sighed, and she looked her distress at hearing him criticized.
“Don’t you think he is? Come now; you do, though you are so fond of
him!”
“Of course Christminster is a sort of fixed vision with him, which I
suppose he’ll never be cured of believing in. He still thinks it a
great centre of high and fearless thought, instead of what it is, a
nest of commonplace schoolmasters whose characteristic is timid
obsequiousness to tradition.”
Arabella was quizzing Sue with more regard of how she was speaking than
of what she was saying. “How odd to hear a woman selling cakes talk
like that!” she said. “Why don’t you go back to school-keeping?”
She shook her head. “They won’t have me.”
“Because of the divorce, I suppose?”
“That and other things. And there is no reason to wish it. We gave up
all ambition, and were never so happy in our lives till his illness
came.”
“Where are you living?”
“I don’t care to say.”
“Here in Kennetbridge?”
Sue’s manner showed Arabella that her random guess was right.
“Here comes the boy back again,” continued Arabella. “My boy and
Jude’s!”
Sue’s eyes darted a spark. “You needn’t throw that in my face!” she
cried.
“Very well—though I half-feel as if I should like to have him with me!
… But Lord, I don’t want to take him from ’ee—ever I should sin to
speak so profane—though I should think you must have enough of your
own! He’s in very good hands, that I know; and I am not the woman to
find fault with what the Lord has ordained. I’ve reached a more
resigned frame of mind.”
“Indeed! I wish I had been able to do so.”
“You should try,” replied the widow, from the serene heights of a soul
conscious not only of spiritual but of social superiority. “I make no
boast of my awakening, but I’m not what I was. After Cartlett’s death I
was passing the chapel in the street next ours, and went into it for
shelter from a shower of rain. I felt a need of some sort of support
under my loss, and, as ’twas righter than gin, I took to going there
regular, and found it a great comfort. But I’ve left London now, you
know, and at present I am living at Alfredston, with my friend Anny, to
be near my own old country. I’m not come here to the fair to-day.
There’s to be the foundation-stone of a new chapel laid this afternoon
by a popular London preacher, and I drove over with Anny. Now I must go
back to meet her.”
Then Arabella wished Sue good-bye, and went on.
VIII
In the afternoon Sue and the other people bustling about Kennetbridge
fair could hear singing inside the placarded hoarding farther down the
street. Those who peeped through the opening saw a crowd of persons in
broadcloth, with hymn-books in their hands, standing round the
excavations for the new chapel-walls. Arabella Cartlett and her weeds
stood among them. She had a clear, powerful voice, which could be
distinctly heard with the rest, rising and falling to the tune, her
inflated bosom being also seen doing likewise.
It was two hours later on the same day that Anny and Mrs. Cartlett,
having had tea at the Temperance Hotel, started on their return journey
across the high and open country which stretches between Kennetbridge
and Alfredston. Arabella was in a thoughtful mood; but her thoughts
were not of the new chapel, as Anny at first surmised.
“No—it is something else,” at last said Arabella sullenly. “I came here
to-day never thinking of anybody but poor Cartlett, or of anything but
spreading the Gospel by means of this new tabernacle they’ve begun this
afternoon. But something has happened to turn my mind another way
quite. Anny, I’ve heard of un again, and I’ve seen _her_!”
“Who?”
“I’ve heard of Jude, and I’ve seen his wife. And ever since, do what I
will, and though I sung the hymns wi’ all my strength, I have not been
able to help thinking about ’n; which I’ve no right to do as a chapel
member.”
“Can’t ye fix your mind upon what was said by the London preacher
to-day, and try to get rid of your wandering fancies that way?”
“I do. But my wicked heart will ramble off in spite of myself!”
“Well—I know what it is to have a wanton mind o’ my own, too! If you
on’y knew what I do dream sometimes o’ nights quite against my wishes,
you’d say I had my struggles!” (Anny, too, had grown rather serious of
late, her lover having jilted her.)
“What shall I do about it?” urged Arabella morbidly.
“You could take a lock of your late-lost husband’s hair, and have it
made into a mourning brooch, and look at it every hour of the day.”
“I haven’t a morsel!—and if I had ’twould be no good… After all that’s
said about the comforts of this religion, I wish I had Jude back
again!”
“You must fight valiant against the feeling, since he’s another’s. And
I’ve heard that another good thing for it, when it afflicts volupshious
widows, is to go to your husband’s grave in the dusk of evening, and
stand a long while a-bowed down.”
“Pooh! I know as well as you what I should do; only I don’t do it!”
They drove in silence along the straight road till they were within the
horizon of Marygreen, which lay not far to the left of their route.
They came to the junction of the highway and the cross-lane leading to
that village, whose church-tower could be seen athwart the hollow. When
they got yet farther on, and were passing the lonely house in which
Arabella and Jude had lived during the first months of their marriage,
and where the pig-killing had taken place, she could control herself no
longer.
“He’s more mine than hers!” she burst out. “What right has she to him,
I should like to know! I’d take him from her if I could!”
“Fie, Abby! And your husband only six weeks gone! Pray against it!”
“Be damned if I do! Feelings are feelings! I won’t be a creeping
hypocrite any longer—so there!”
Arabella had hastily drawn from her pocket a bundle of tracts which she
had brought with her to distribute at the fair, and of which she had
given away several. As she spoke she flung the whole remainder of the
packet into the hedge. “I’ve tried that sort o’ physic and have failed
wi’ it. I must be as I was born!”
“Hush! You be excited, dear! Now you come along home quiet, and have a
cup of tea, and don’t let us talk about un no more. We won’t come out
this road again, as it leads to where he is, because it inflames ’ee
so. You’ll be all right again soon.”
Arabella did calm herself down by degrees; and they crossed the
ridge-way. When they began to descend the long, straight hill, they saw
plodding along in front of them an elderly man of spare stature and
thoughtful gait. In his hand he carried a basket; and there was a touch
of slovenliness in his attire, together with that indefinable something
in his whole appearance which suggested one who was his own
housekeeper, purveyor, confidant, and friend, through possessing nobody
else at all in the world to act in those capacities for him. The
remainder of the journey was down-hill, and guessing him to be going to
Alfredston they offered him a lift, which he accepted.
Arabella looked at him, and looked again, till at length she spoke. “If
I don’t mistake I am talking to Mr. Phillotson?”
The wayfarer faced round and regarded her in turn. “Yes; my name is
Phillotson,” he said. “But I don’t recognize you, ma’am.”
“I remember you well enough when you used to be schoolmaster out at
Marygreen, and I one of your scholars. I used to walk up there from
Cresscombe every day, because we had only a mistress down at our place,
and you taught better. But you wouldn’t remember me as I should
you?—Arabella Donn.”
He shook his head. “No,” he said politely, “I don’t recall the name.
And I should hardly recognize in your present portly self the slim
school child no doubt you were then.”
“Well, I always had plenty of flesh on my bones. However, I am staying
down here with some friends at present. You know, I suppose, who I
married?”
“No.”
“Jude Fawley—also a scholar of yours—at least a night scholar—for some
little time, I think? And known to you afterwards, if I am not
mistaken.”
“Dear me, dear me,” said Phillotson, starting out of his stiffness.
“_You_ Fawley’s wife? To be sure—he had a wife! And he—I understood—”
“Divorced her—as you did yours—perhaps for better reasons.”
“Indeed?”
“Well—he med have been right in doing it—right for both; for I soon
married again, and all went pretty straight till my husband died
lately. But you—you were decidedly wrong!”
“No,” said Phillotson, with sudden testiness. “I would rather not talk
of this, but—I am convinced I did only what was right, and just, and
moral. I have suffered for my act and opinions, but I hold to them;
though her loss was a loss to me in more ways than one!”
“You lost your school and good income through her, did you not?”
“I don’t care to talk of it. I have recently come back here—to
Marygreen. I mean.”
“You are keeping the school there again, just as formerly?”
The pressure of a sadness that would out unsealed him. “I am there,” he
replied. “Just as formerly, no. Merely on sufferance. It was a last
resource—a small thing to return to after my move upwards, and my long
indulged hopes—a returning to zero, with all its humiliations. But it
is a refuge. I like the seclusion of the place, and the vicar having
known me before my so-called eccentric conduct towards my wife had
ruined my reputation as a schoolmaster, he accepted my services when
all other schools were closed against me. However, although I take
fifty pounds a year here after taking above two hundred elsewhere, I
prefer it to running the risk of having my old domestic experiences
raked up against me, as I should do if I tried to make a move.”
“Right you are. A contented mind is a continual feast. She has done no
better.”
“She is not doing well, you mean?”
“I met her by accident at Kennetbridge this very day, and she is
anything but thriving. Her husband is ill, and she anxious. You made a
fool of a mistake about her, I tell ’ee again, and the harm you did
yourself by dirting your own nest serves you right, excusing the
liberty.”
“How?”
“She was innocent.”
“But nonsense! They did not even defend the case!”
“That was because they didn’t care to. She was quite innocent of what
obtained you your freedom, at the time you obtained it. I saw her just
afterwards, and proved it to myself completely by talking to her.”
Phillotson grasped the edge of the spring-cart, and appeared to be much
stressed and worried by the information. “Still—she wanted to go,” he
said.
“Yes. But you shouldn’t have let her. That’s the only way with these
fanciful women that chaw high—innocent or guilty. She’d have come round
in time. We all do! Custom does it! It’s all the same in the end!
However, I think she’s fond of her man still—whatever he med be of her.
You were too quick about her. _I_ shouldn’t have let her go! I should
have kept her chained on—her spirit for kicking would have been broke
soon enough! There’s nothing like bondage and a stone-deaf taskmaster
for taming us women. Besides, you’ve got the laws on your side. Moses
knew. Don’t you call to mind what he says?”
“Not for the moment, ma’am, I regret to say.”
“Call yourself a schoolmaster! I used to think o’t when they read it in
church, and I was carrying on a bit. ‘Then shall the man be guiltless;
but the woman shall bear her iniquity.’ Damn rough on us women; but we
must grin and put up wi’ it! Haw haw! Well; she’s got her deserts now.”
“Yes,” said Phillotson, with biting sadness. “Cruelty is the law
pervading all nature and society; and we can’t get out of it if we
would!”