Jude the Obscure
and we closed with each other; and that made the marriage. We still
love—you as well as I—_know_ it, Sue! Therefore our marriage is not
cancelled.”
“Yes; I know how you see it,” she answered with despairing
self-suppression. “But I am going to marry him again, as it would be
called by you. Strictly speaking you, too—don’t mind my saying it,
Jude!—you should take back—Arabella.”
“I should? Good God—what next! But how if you and I had married
legally, as we were on the point of doing?”
“I should have felt just the same—that ours was not a marriage. And I
would go back to Richard without repeating the sacrament, if he asked
me. But ‘the world and its ways have a certain worth’ (I suppose),
therefore I concede a repetition of the ceremony… Don’t crush all the
life out of me by satire and argument, I implore you! I was strongest
once, I know, and perhaps I treated you cruelly. But Jude, return good
for evil! I am the weaker now. Don’t retaliate upon me, but be kind. Oh
be kind to me—a poor wicked woman who is trying to mend!”
He shook his head hopelessly, his eyes wet. The blow of her bereavement
seemed to have destroyed her reasoning faculty. The once keen vision
was dimmed. “All wrong, all wrong!” he said huskily. “Error—perversity!
It drives me out of my senses. Do you care for him? Do you love him?
You know you don’t! It will be a fanatic prostitution—God forgive me,
yes—that’s what it will be!”
“I don’t love him—I must, must, own it, in deepest remorse! But I shall
try to learn to love him by obeying him.”
Jude argued, urged, implored; but her conviction was proof against all.
It seemed to be the one thing on earth on which she was firm, and that
her firmness in this had left her tottering in every other impulse and
wish she possessed.
“I have been considerate enough to let you know the whole truth, and to
tell it you myself,” she said in cut tones; “that you might not
consider yourself slighted by hearing of it at second hand. I have even
owned the extreme fact that I do not love him. I did not think you
would be so rough with me for doing so! I was going to ask you…”
“To give you away?”
“No. To send—my boxes to me—if you would. But I suppose you won’t.”
“Why, of course I will. What—isn’t he coming to fetch you—to marry you
from here? He won’t condescend to do that?”
“No—I won’t let him. I go to him voluntarily, just as I went away from
him. We are to be married at his little church at Marygreen.”
She was so sadly sweet in what he called her wrong-headedness that Jude
could not help being moved to tears more than once for pity of her. “I
never knew such a woman for doing impulsive penances, as you, Sue! No
sooner does one expect you to go straight on, as the one rational
proceeding, than you double round the corner!”
“Ah, well; let that go! … Jude, I must say good-bye! But I wanted you
to go to the cemetery with me. Let our farewell be there—beside the
graves of those who died to bring home to me the error of my views.”
They turned in the direction of the place, and the gate was opened to
them on application. Sue had been there often, and she knew the way to
the spot in the dark. They reached it, and stood still.
“It is here—I should like to part,” said she.
“So be it!”
“Don’t think me hard because I have acted on conviction. Your generous
devotion to me is unparalleled, Jude! Your worldly failure, if you have
failed, is to your credit rather than to your blame. Remember that the
best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly
good. Every successful man is more or less a selfish man. The devoted
fail… ‘Charity seeketh not her own.’”
“In that chapter we are at one, ever beloved darling, and on it we’ll
part friends. Its verses will stand fast when all the rest that you
call religion has passed away!”
“Well—don’t discuss it. Good-bye, Jude; my fellow-sinner, and kindest
friend!”
“Good-bye, my mistaken wife. Good-bye!”
V
The next afternoon the familiar Christminster fog still hung over all
things. Sue’s slim shape was only just discernible going towards the
station.
Jude had no heart to go to his work that day. Neither could he go
anywhere in the direction by which she would be likely to pass. He went
in an opposite one, to a dreary, strange, flat scene, where boughs
dripped, and coughs and consumption lurked, and where he had never been
before.
“Sue’s gone from me—gone!” he murmured miserably.
She in the meantime had left by the train, and reached Alfredston Road,
where she entered the steam-tram and was conveyed into the town. It had
been her request to Phillotson that he should not meet her. She wished,
she said, to come to him voluntarily, to his very house and
hearthstone.
It was Friday evening, which had been chosen because the schoolmaster
was disengaged at four o’clock that day till the Monday morning
following. The little car she hired at the Bear to drive her to
Marygreen set her down at the end of the lane, half a mile from the
village, by her desire, and preceded her to the schoolhouse with such
portion of her luggage as she had brought. On its return she
encountered it, and asked the driver if he had found the master’s house
open. The man informed her that he had, and that her things had been
taken in by the schoolmaster himself.
She could now enter Marygreen without exciting much observation. She
crossed by the well and under the trees to the pretty new school on the
other side, and lifted the latch of the dwelling without knocking.
Phillotson stood in the middle of the room, awaiting her, as requested.
“I’ve come, Richard,” said she, looking pale and shaken, and sinking
into a chair. “I cannot believe—you forgive your—wife!”
“Everything, darling Susanna,” said Phillotson.
She started at the endearment, though it had been spoken advisedly
without fervour. Then she nerved herself again.
“My children—are dead—and it is right that they should be! I am
glad—almost. They were sin-begotten. They were sacrificed to teach me
how to live! Their death was the first stage of my purification. That’s
why they have not died in vain! … You will take me back?”
He was so stirred by her pitiful words and tone that he did more than
he had meant to do. He bent and kissed her cheek.
Sue imperceptibly shrank away, her flesh quivering under the touch of
his lips.
Phillotson’s heart sank, for desire was renascent in him. “You still
have an aversion to me!”
“Oh no, dear—I have been driving through the damp, and I was chilly!”
she said, with a hurried smile of apprehension. “When are we going to
have the marriage? Soon?”
“To-morrow morning, early, I thought—if you really wish. I am sending
round to the vicar to let him know you are come. I have told him all,
and he highly approves—he says it will bring our lives to a triumphant
and satisfactory issue. But—are you sure of yourself? It is not too
late to refuse now if—you think you can’t bring yourself to it, you
know?”
“Yes, yes, I can! I want it done quick. Tell him, tell him at once! My
strength is tried by the undertaking—I can’t wait long!”
“Have something to eat and drink then, and go over to your room at Mrs.
Edlin’s. I’ll tell the vicar half-past eight to-morrow, before anybody
is about—if that’s not too soon for you? My friend Gillingham is here
to help us in the ceremony. He’s been good enough to come all the way
from Shaston at great inconvenience to himself.”
Unlike a woman in ordinary, whose eye is so keen for material things,
Sue seemed to see nothing of the room they were in, or any detail of
her environment. But on moving across the parlour to put down her muff
she uttered a little “Oh!” and grew paler than before. Her look was
that of the condemned criminal who catches sight of his coffin.
“What?” said Phillotson.
The flap of the bureau chanced to be open, and in placing her muff upon
it her eye had caught a document which lay there. “Oh—only a—funny
surprise!” she said, trying to laugh away her cry as she came back to
the table.
“Ah! Yes,” said Phillotson. “The licence… It has just come.”
Gillingham now joined them from his room above, and Sue nervously made
herself agreeable to him by talking on whatever she thought likely to
interest him, except herself, though that interested him most of all.
She obediently ate some supper, and prepared to leave for her lodging
hard by. Phillotson crossed the green with her, bidding her good-night
at Mrs. Edlin’s door.
The old woman accompanied Sue to her temporary quarters, and helped her
to unpack. Among other things she laid out a night-gown tastefully
embroidered.
“Oh—I didn’t know _that_ was put in!” said Sue quickly. “I didn’t mean
it to be. Here is a different one.” She handed a new and absolutely
plain garment, of coarse and unbleached calico.
“But this is the prettiest,” said Mrs. Edlin. “That one is no better
than very sackcloth o’ Scripture!”
“Yes—I meant it to be. Give me the other.”
She took it, and began rending it with all her might, the tears
resounding through the house like a screech-owl.
“But my dear, dear!—whatever....”
“It is adulterous! It signifies what I don’t feel—I bought it long
ago—to please Jude. It must be destroyed!”
Mrs. Edlin lifted her hands, and Sue excitedly continued to tear the
linen into strips, laying the pieces in the fire.
“You med ha’ give it to me!” said the widow. “It do make my heart ache
to see such pretty open-work as that a-burned by the flames—not that
ornamental night-rails can be much use to a’ ould ’ooman like I. My
days for such be all past and gone!”
“It is an accursed thing—it reminds me of what I want to forget!” Sue
repeated. “It is only fit for the fire.”
“Lord, you be too strict! What do ye use such words for, and condemn to
hell your dear little innocent children that’s lost to ’ee! Upon my
life I don’t call that religion!”
Sue flung her face upon the bed, sobbing. “Oh, don’t, don’t! That kills
me!” She remained shaken with her grief, and slipped down upon her
knees.
“I’ll tell ’ee what—you ought not to marry this man again!” said Mrs.
Edlin indignantly. “You are in love wi’ t’ other still!”
“Yes I must—I am his already!”
“Pshoo! You be t’ other man’s. If you didn’t like to commit yourselves
to the binding vow again, just at first, ’twas all the more credit to
your consciences, considering your reasons, and you med ha’ lived on,
and made it all right at last. After all, it concerned nobody but your
own two selves.”
“Richard says he’ll have me back, and I’m bound to go! If he had
refused, it might not have been so much my duty to—give up Jude. But—”
She remained with her face in the bed-clothes, and Mrs. Edlin left the
room.
Phillotson in the interval had gone back to his friend Gillingham, who
still sat over the supper-table. They soon rose, and walked out on the
green to smoke awhile. A light was burning in Sue’s room, a shadow
moving now and then across the blind.
Gillingham had evidently been impressed with the indefinable charm of
Sue, and after a silence he said, “Well: you’ve all but got her again
at last. She can’t very well go a second time. The pear has dropped
into your hand.”
“Yes! … I suppose I am right in taking her at her word. I confess there
seems a touch of selfishness in it. Apart from her being what she is,
of course, a luxury for a fogey like me, it will set me right in the
eyes of the clergy and orthodox laity, who have never forgiven me for
letting her go. So I may get back in some degree into my old track.”
“Well—if you’ve got any sound reason for marrying her again, do it now
in God’s name! I was always against your opening the cage-door and
letting the bird go in such an obviously suicidal way. You might have