Jude the Obscure
“I suppose we can have some beer,” said Arabella.
“Beer, oh yes. I had forgotten that. Somehow it seems odd to come to a
public-house for beer on a Sunday evening.”
“But we didn’t.”
“No, we didn’t.” Jude by this time wished he was out of such an
uncongenial atmosphere; but he ordered the beer, which was promptly
brought.
Arabella tasted it. “Ugh!” she said.
Jude tasted. “What’s the matter with it?” he asked. “I don’t understand
beer very much now, it is true. I like it well enough, but it is bad to
read on, and I find coffee better. But this seems all right.”
“Adulterated—I can’t touch it!” She mentioned three or four ingredients
that she detected in the liquor beyond malt and hops, much to Jude’s
surprise.
“How much you know!” he said good-humouredly.
Nevertheless she returned to the beer and drank her share, and they
went on their way. It was now nearly dark, and as soon as they had
withdrawn from the lights of the town they walked closer together, till
they touched each other. She wondered why he did not put his arm round
her waist, but he did not; he merely said what to himself seemed a
quite bold enough thing: “Take my arm.”
She took it, thoroughly, up to the shoulder. He felt the warmth of her
body against his, and putting his stick under his other arm held with
his right hand her right as it rested in its place.
“Now we are well together, dear, aren’t we?” he observed.
“Yes,” said she; adding to herself: “Rather mild!”
“How fast I have become!” he was thinking.
Thus they walked till they reached the foot of the upland, where they
could see the white highway ascending before them in the gloom. From
this point the only way of getting to Arabella’s was by going up the
incline, and dipping again into her valley on the right. Before they
had climbed far they were nearly run into by two men who had been
walking on the grass unseen.
“These lovers—you find ’em out o’ doors in all seasons and
weathers—lovers and homeless dogs only,” said one of the men as they
vanished down the hill.
Arabella tittered lightly.
“Are we lovers?” asked Jude.
“You know best.”
“But you can tell me?”
For answer she inclined her head upon his shoulder. Jude took the hint,
and encircling her waist with his arm, pulled her to him and kissed
her.
They walked now no longer arm in arm but, as she had desired, clasped
together. After all, what did it matter since it was dark, said Jude to
himself. When they were half-way up the long hill they paused as by
arrangement, and he kissed her again. They reached the top, and he
kissed her once more.
“You can keep your arm there, if you would like to,” she said gently.
He did so, thinking how trusting she was.
Thus they slowly went towards her home. He had left his cottage at
half-past three, intending to be sitting down again to the New
Testament by half-past five. It was nine o’clock when, with another
embrace, he stood to deliver her up at her father’s door.
She asked him to come in, if only for a minute, as it would seem so odd
otherwise, and as if she had been out alone in the dark. He gave way,
and followed her in. Immediately that the door was opened he found, in
addition to her parents, several neighbours sitting round. They all
spoke in a congratulatory manner, and took him seriously as Arabella’s
intended partner.
They did not belong to his set or circle, and he felt out of place and
embarrassed. He had not meant this: a mere afternoon of pleasant
walking with Arabella, that was all he had meant. He did not stay
longer than to speak to her stepmother, a simple, quiet woman without
features or character; and bidding them all good night plunged with a
sense of relief into the track over the down.
But that sense was only temporary: Arabella soon re-asserted her sway
in his soul. He walked as if he felt himself to be another man from the
Jude of yesterday. What were his books to him? what were his
intentions, hitherto adhered to so strictly, as to not wasting a single
minute of time day by day? “Wasting!” It depended on your point of view
to define that: he was just living for the first time: not wasting
life. It was better to love a woman than to be a graduate, or a parson;
ay, or a pope!
When he got back to the house his aunt had gone to bed, and a general
consciousness of his neglect seemed written on the face of all things
confronting him. He went upstairs without a light, and the dim interior
of his room accosted him with sad inquiry. There lay his book open,
just as he had left it, and the capital letters on the title-page
regarded him with fixed reproach in the grey starlight, like the
unclosed eyes of a dead man:
Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ.
* * * * * * * * *
Jude had to leave early next morning for his usual week of absence at
lodgings; and it was with a sense of futility that he threw into his
basket upon his tools and other necessaries the unread book he had
brought with him.
He kept his impassioned doings a secret almost from himself. Arabella,
on the contrary, made them public among all her friends and
acquaintances.
Retracing by the light of dawn the road he had followed a few hours
earlier under cover of darkness, with his sweetheart by his side, he
reached the bottom of the hill, where he walked slowly, and stood
still. He was on the spot where he had given her the first kiss. As the
sun had only just risen it was possible that nobody had passed there
since. Jude looked on the ground and sighed. He looked closely, and
could just discern in the damp dust the imprints of their feet as they
had stood locked in each other’s arms. She was not there now, and “the
embroidery of imagination upon the stuff of nature” so depicted her
past presence that a void was in his heart which nothing could fill. A
pollard willow stood close to the place, and that willow was different
from all other willows in the world. Utter annihilation of the six days
which must elapse before he could see her again as he had promised
would have been his intensest wish if he had had only the week to live.
An hour and a half later Arabella came along the same way with her two
companions of the Saturday. She passed unheedingly the scene of the
kiss, and the willow that marked it, though chattering freely on the
subject to the other two.
“And what did he tell ’ee next?”
“Then he said—” And she related almost word for word some of his
tenderest speeches. If Jude had been behind the fence he would have
felt not a little surprised at learning how very few of his sayings and
doings on the previous evening were private.
“You’ve got him to care for ’ee a bit, ’nation if you han’t!” murmured
Anny judicially. “It’s well to be you!”
In a few moments Arabella replied in a curiously low, hungry tone of
latent sensuousness: “I’ve got him to care for me: yes! But I want him
to more than care for me; I want him to have me—to marry me! I must
have him. I can’t do without him. He’s the sort of man I long for. I
shall go mad if I can’t give myself to him altogether! I felt I should
when I first saw him!”
“As he is a romancing, straightfor’ard, honest chap, he’s to be had,
and as a husband, if you set about catching him in the right way.”
Arabella remained thinking awhile. “What med be the right way?” she
asked.
“Oh you don’t know—you don’t!” said Sarah, the third girl.
“On my word I don’t!—No further, that is, than by plain courting, and
taking care he don’t go too far!”
The third girl looked at the second. “She _don’t_ know!”
“’Tis clear she don’t!” said Anny.
“And having lived in a town, too, as one may say! Well, we can teach
’ee som’at then, as well as you us.”
“Yes. And how do you mean—a sure way to gain a man? Take me for an
innocent, and have done wi’ it!”
“As a husband.”
“As a husband.”
“A countryman that’s honourable and serious-minded such as he; God
forbid that I should say a sojer, or sailor, or commercial gent from
the towns, or any of them that be slippery with poor women! I’d do no
friend that harm!”
“Well, such as he, of course!”
Arabella’s companions looked at each other, and turning up their eyes
in drollery began smirking. Then one went up close to Arabella, and,
although nobody was near, imparted some information in a low tone, the
other observing curiously the effect upon Arabella.
“Ah!” said the last-named slowly. “I own I didn’t think of that way! …
But suppose he _isn’t_ honourable? A woman had better not have tried
it!”
“Nothing venture nothing have! Besides, you make sure that he’s
honourable before you begin. You’d be safe enough with yours. I wish I
had the chance! Lots of girls do it; or do you think they’d get married
at all?”
Arabella pursued her way in silent thought. “I’ll try it!” she
whispered; but not to them.
VIII
One week’s end Jude was as usual walking out to his aunt’s at Marygreen
from his lodging in Alfredston, a walk which now had large attractions
for him quite other than his desire to see his aged and morose
relative. He diverged to the right before ascending the hill with the
single purpose of gaining, on his way, a glimpse of Arabella that
should not come into the reckoning of regular appointments. Before
quite reaching the homestead his alert eye perceived the top of her
head moving quickly hither and thither over the garden hedge. Entering
the gate he found that three young unfattened pigs had escaped from
their sty by leaping clean over the top, and that she was endeavouring
unassisted to drive them in through the door which she had set open.
The lines of her countenance changed from the rigidity of business to
the softness of love when she saw Jude, and she bent her eyes
languishingly upon him. The animals took advantage of the pause by
doubling and bolting out of the way.
“They were only put in this morning!” she cried, stimulated to pursue
in spite of her lover’s presence. “They were drove from Spaddleholt
Farm only yesterday, where Father bought ’em at a stiff price enough.
They are wanting to get home again, the stupid toads! Will you shut the
garden gate, dear, and help me to get ’em in. There are no men folk at
home, only Mother, and they’ll be lost if we don’t mind.”
He set himself to assist, and dodged this way and that over the potato
rows and the cabbages. Every now and then they ran together, when he
caught her for a moment and kissed her. The first pig was got back
promptly; the second with some difficulty; the third a long-legged
creature, was more obstinate and agile. He plunged through a hole in
the garden hedge, and into the lane.
“He’ll be lost if I don’t follow ’n!” said she. “Come along with me!”
She rushed in full pursuit out of the garden, Jude alongside her,
barely contriving to keep the fugitive in sight. Occasionally they
would shout to some boy to stop the animal, but he always wriggled past
and ran on as before.
“Let me take your hand, darling,” said Jude. “You are getting out of
breath.” She gave him her now hot hand with apparent willingness, and
they trotted along together.
“This comes of driving ’em home,” she remarked. “They always know the
way back if you do that. They ought to have been carted over.”
By this time the pig had reached an unfastened gate admitting to the
open down, across which he sped with all the agility his little legs
afforded. As soon as the pursuers had entered and ascended to the top
of the high ground it became apparent that they would have to run all
the way to the farmer’s if they wished to get at him. From this summit
he could be seen as a minute speck, following an unerring line towards
his old home.
“It is no good!” cried Arabella. “He’ll be there long before we get
there. It don’t matter now we know he’s not lost or stolen on the way.