Jude the Obscure
“No, no: of course you don’t. Only it shows what kind of woman—”
“Don’t speak of her I say! She’s a fool! And she’s an angel, too, poor
dear!”
“If it’s done, he’ll have a chance of getting back to his old position,
by everybody’s account, so Anny says. All his well-wishers will be
pleased, including the bishop himself.”
“Do spare me, Arabella.”
Arabella was duly installed in the little attic, and at first she did
not come near Jude at all. She went to and fro about her own business,
which, when they met for a moment on the stairs or in the passage, she
informed him was that of obtaining another place in the occupation she
understood best. When Jude suggested London as affording the most
likely opening in the liquor trade, she shook her head. “No—the
temptations are too many,” she said. “Any humble tavern in the country
before that for me.”
On the Sunday morning following, when he breakfasted later than on
other days, she meekly asked him if she might come in to breakfast with
him, as she had broken her teapot, and could not replace it
immediately, the shops being shut.
“Yes, if you like,” he said indifferently.
While they sat without speaking she suddenly observed: “You seem all in
a brood, old man. I’m sorry for you.”
“I am all in a brood.”
“It is about her, I know. It’s no business of mine, but I could find
out all about the wedding—if it really did take place—if you wanted to
know.”
“How could you?”
“I wanted to go to Alfredston to get a few things I left there. And I
could see Anny, who’ll be sure to have heard all about it, as she has
friends at Marygreen.”
Jude could not bear to acquiesce in this proposal; but his suspense
pitted itself against his discretion, and won in the struggle. “You can
ask about it if you like,” he said. “I’ve not heard a sound from there.
It must have been very private, if—they have married.”
“I am afraid I haven’t enough cash to take me there and back, or I
should have gone before. I must wait till I have earned some.”
“Oh—I can pay the journey for you,” he said impatiently. And thus his
suspense as to Sue’s welfare, and the possible marriage, moved him to
dispatch for intelligence the last emissary he would have thought of
choosing deliberately.
Arabella went, Jude requesting her to be home not later than by the
seven o’clock train. When she had gone he said: “Why should I have
charged her to be back by a particular time! She’s nothing to me—nor
the other neither!”
But having finished work he could not help going to the station to meet
Arabella, dragged thither by feverish haste to get the news she might
bring, and know the worst. Arabella had made dimples most successfully
all the way home, and when she stepped out of the railway carriage she
smiled. He merely said “Well?” with the very reverse of a smile.
“They are married.”
“Yes—of course they are!” he returned. She observed, however, the hard
strain upon his lip as he spoke.
“Anny says she has heard from Belinda, her relation out at Marygreen,
that it was very sad, and curious!”
“How do you mean sad? She wanted to marry him again, didn’t she? And he
her!”
“Yes—that was it. She wanted to in one sense, but not in the other.
Mrs. Edlin was much upset by it all, and spoke out her mind at
Phillotson. But Sue was that excited about it that she burnt her best
embroidery that she’d worn with you, to blot you out entirely. Well—if
a woman feels like it, she ought to do it. I commend her for it, though
others don’t.” Arabella sighed. “She felt he was her only husband, and
that she belonged to nobody else in the sight of God A’mighty while he
lived. Perhaps another woman feels the same about herself, too!”
Arabella sighed again.
“I don’t want any cant!” exclaimed Jude.
“It isn’t cant,” said Arabella. “I feel exactly the same as she!”
He closed that issue by remarking abruptly: “Well—now I know all I
wanted to know. Many thanks for your information. I am not going back
to my lodgings just yet.” And he left her straightway.
In his misery and depression Jude walked to well-nigh every spot in the
city that he had visited with Sue; thence he did not know whither, and
then thought of going home to his usual evening meal. But having all
the vices of his virtues, and some to spare, he turned into a public
house, for the first time during many months. Among the possible
consequences of her marriage Sue had not dwelt on this.
Arabella, meanwhile, had gone back. The evening passed, and Jude did
not return. At half-past nine Arabella herself went out, first
proceeding to an outlying district near the river where her father
lived, and had opened a small and precarious pork-shop lately.
“Well,” she said to him, “for all your rowing me that night, I’ve
called in, for I have something to tell you. I think I shall get
married and settled again. Only you must help me: and you can do no
less, after what I’ve stood ’ee.”
“I’ll do anything to get thee off my hands!”
“Very well. I am now going to look for my young man. He’s on the loose
I’m afraid, and I must get him home. All I want you to do to-night is
not to fasten the door, in case I should want to sleep here, and should
be late.”
“I thought you’d soon get tired of giving yourself airs and keeping
away!”
“Well—don’t do the door. That’s all I say.”
She then sallied out again, and first hastening back to Jude’s to make
sure that he had not returned, began her search for him. A shrewd guess
as to his probable course took her straight to the tavern which Jude
had formerly frequented, and where she had been barmaid for a brief
term. She had no sooner opened the door of the “Private Bar” than her
eyes fell upon him—sitting in the shade at the back of the compartment,
with his eyes fixed on the floor in a blank stare. He was drinking
nothing stronger than ale just then. He did not observe her, and she
entered and sat beside him.
Jude looked up, and said without surprise: “You’ve come to have
something, Arabella? … I’m trying to forget her: that’s all! But I
can’t; and I am going home.” She saw that he was a little way on in
liquor, but only a little as yet.
“I’ve come entirely to look for you, dear boy. You are not well. Now
you must have something better than that.” Arabella held up her finger
to the barmaid. “You shall have a liqueur—that’s better fit for a man
of education than beer. You shall have maraschino, or curaçao dry or
sweet, or cherry brandy. I’ll treat you, poor chap!”
“I don’t care which! Say cherry brandy… Sue has served me badly, very
badly. I didn’t expect it of Sue! I stuck to her, and she ought to have
stuck to me. I’d have sold my soul for her sake, but she wouldn’t risk
hers a jot for me. To save her own soul she lets mine go damn! … But it
isn’t her fault, poor little girl—I am sure it isn’t!”
How Arabella had obtained money did not appear, but she ordered a
liqueur each, and paid for them. When they had drunk these Arabella
suggested another; and Jude had the pleasure of being, as it were,
personally conducted through the varieties of spirituous delectation by
one who knew the landmarks well. Arabella kept very considerably in the
rear of Jude; but though she only sipped where he drank, she took as
much as she could safely take without losing her head—which was not a
little, as the crimson upon her countenance showed.
Her tone towards him to-night was uniformly soothing and cajoling; and
whenever he said “I don’t care what happens to me,” a thing he did
continually, she replied, “But I do very much!” The closing hour came,
and they were compelled to turn out; whereupon Arabella put her arm
round his waist, and guided his unsteady footsteps.
When they were in the streets she said: “I don’t know what our landlord
will say to my bringing you home in this state. I expect we are
fastened out, so that he’ll have to come down and let us in.”
“I don’t know—I don’t know.”
“That’s the worst of not having a home of your own. I tell you, Jude,
what we had best do. Come round to my father’s—I made it up with him a
bit to-day. I can let you in, and nobody will see you at all; and by
to-morrow morning you’ll be all right.”
“Anything—anywhere,” replied Jude. “What the devil does it matter to
me?”
They went along together, like any other fuddling couple, her arm still
round his waist, and his, at last, round hers; though with no amatory
intent; but merely because he was weary, unstable, and in need of
support.
“This—is th’ Martyrs’—burning-place,” he stammered as they dragged
across a broad street. “I remember—in old Fuller’s _Holy State_—and I
am reminded of it—by our passing by here—old Fuller in his _Holy State_
says, that at the burning of Ridley, Doctor Smith—preached sermon, and
took as his text _‘Though I give my body to be burned, and have not
charity, it profiteth me nothing.’_—Often think of it as I pass here.
Ridley was a—”
“Yes. Exactly. Very thoughtful of you, deary, even though it hasn’t
much to do with our present business.”
“Why, yes it has! I’m giving my body to be burned! But—ah you don’t
understand!—it wants Sue to understand such things! And I was her
seducer—poor little girl! And she’s gone—and I don’t care about myself!
Do what you like with me! … And yet she did it for conscience’ sake,
poor little Sue!”
“Hang her!—I mean, I think she was right,” hiccuped Arabella. “I’ve my
feelings too, like her; and I feel I belong to you in Heaven’s eye, and
to nobody else, till death us do part! It is—hic—never too late—hic to
mend!”
They had reached her father’s house, and she softly unfastened the
door, groping about for a light within.
The circumstances were not altogether unlike those of their entry into
the cottage at Cresscombe, such a long time before. Nor were perhaps
Arabella’s motives. But Jude did not think of that, though she did.
“I can’t find the matches, dear,” she said when she had fastened up the
door. “But never mind—this way. As quiet as you can, please.”
“It is as dark as pitch,” said Jude.
“Give me your hand, and I’ll lead you. That’s it. Just sit down here,
and I’ll pull off your boots. I don’t want to wake him.”
“Who?”
“Father. He’d make a row, perhaps.”
She pulled off his boots. “Now,” she whispered, “take hold of me—never
mind your weight. Now—first stair, second stair—”
“But—are we out in our old house by Marygreen?” asked the stupefied
Jude. “I haven’t been inside it for years till now! Hey? And where are
my books? That’s what I want to know?”
“We are at my house, dear, where there’s nobody to spy out how ill you
are. Now—third stair, fourth stair—that’s it. Now we shall get on.”
VII
Arabella was preparing breakfast in the downstairs back room of this
small, recently hired tenement of her father’s. She put her head into
the little pork-shop in front, and told Mr. Donn it was ready. Donn,
endeavouring to look like a master pork-butcher, in a greasy blue
blouse, and with a strap round his waist from which a steel dangled,
came in promptly.
“You must mind the shop this morning,” he said casually. “I’ve to go
and get some inwards and half a pig from Lumsdon, and to call
elsewhere. If you live here you must put your shoulder to the wheel, at
least till I get the business started!”
“Well, for to-day I can’t say.” She looked deedily into his face. “I’ve
got a prize upstairs.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“A husband—almost.”
“No!”
“Yes. It’s Jude. He’s come back to me.”
“Your old original one? Well, I’m damned!”
“Well, I always did like him, that I will say.”
“But how does he come to be up there?” said Donn, humour-struck, and
nodding to the ceiling.
“Don’t ask inconvenient questions, Father. What we’ve to do is to keep
him here till he and I are—as we were.”
“How was that?”
“Married.”