Jude the Obscure

T >> Thomas Hardy >> Jude the Obscure


"I am a bachelor by nature, as you know, Sue," he said, in a heroic
attempt to put her at her ease. "So that being without a wife will
not really be irksome to me, as it might be to other men who have
had one a little while. I have, too, this grand hobby in my head of
writing 'The Roman Antiquities of Wessex,' which will occupy all my
spare hours."

"If you will send me some of the manuscript to copy at any time,
as you used to, I will do it with so much pleasure!" she said with
amenable gentleness. "I should much like to be some help to you
still--as a--friend."

Phillotson mused, and said: "No, I think we ought to be really
separate, if we are to be at all. And for this reason, that I don't
wish to ask you any questions, and particularly wish you not to give
me information as to your movements, or even your address... Now,
what money do you want? You must have some, you know."

"Oh, of course, Richard, I couldn't think of having any of your money
to go away from you with! I don't want any either. I have enough of
my own to last me for a long while, and Jude will let me have--"

"I would rather not know anything about him, if you don't mind.
You are free, absolutely; and your course is your own."

"Very well. But I'll just say that I have packed only a change or
two of my own personal clothing, and one or two little things besides
that are my very own. I wish you would look into my trunk before it
is closed. Besides that I have only a small parcel that will go into
Jude's portmanteau."

"Of course I shall do no such thing as examine your luggage! I wish
you would take three-quarters of the household furniture. I don't
want to be bothered with it. I have a sort of affection for a little
of it that belonged to my poor mother and father. But the rest you
are welcome to whenever you like to send for it."

"That I shall never do."

"You go by the six-thirty train, don't you? It is now a quarter to
six."

"You... You don't seem very sorry I am going, Richard!"

"Oh no--perhaps not."

"I like you much for how you have behaved. It is a curious thing
that directly I have begun to regard you as not my husband, but as
my old teacher, I like you. I won't be so affected as to say I love
you, because you know I don't, except as a friend. But you do seem
that to me!"

Sue was for a few moments a little tearful at these reflections, and
then the station omnibus came round to take her up. Phillotson saw
her things put on the top, handed her in, and was obliged to make an
appearance of kissing her as he wished her good-bye, which she quite
understood and imitated. From the cheerful manner in which they
parted the omnibus-man had no other idea than that she was going for
a short visit.

When Phillotson got back into the house he went upstairs and opened
the window in the direction the omnibus had taken. Soon the noise of
its wheels died away. He came down then, his face compressed like
that of one bearing pain; he put on his hat and went out, following
by the same route for nearly a mile. Suddenly turning round he came
home.

He had no sooner entered than the voice of his friend Gillingham
greeted him from the front room.

"I could make nobody hear; so finding your door open I walked in, and
made myself comfortable. I said I would call, you remember."

"Yes. I am much obliged to you, Gillingham, particularly for coming
to-night."

"How is Mrs.--"

"She is quite well. She is gone--just gone. That's her tea-cup,
that she drank out of only an hour ago. And that's the plate
she--" Phillotson's throat got choked up, and he could not go on.
He turned and pushed the tea-things aside.

"Have you had any tea, by the by?" he asked presently in a renewed
voice.

"No--yes--never mind," said Gillingham, preoccupied. "Gone, you say
she is?"

"Yes... I would have died for her; but I wouldn't be cruel to her
in the name of the law. She is, as I understand, gone to join her
lover. What they are going to do I cannot say. Whatever it may be
she has my full consent to."

There was a stability, a ballast, in Phillotson's pronouncement which
restrained his friend's comment. "Shall I--leave you?" he asked.

"No, no. It is a mercy to me that you have come. I have some
articles to arrange and clear away. Would you help me?"

Gillingham assented; and having gone to the upper rooms the
schoolmaster opened drawers, and began taking out all Sue's things
that she had left behind, and laying them in a large box. "She
wouldn't take all I wanted her to," he continued. "But when I made
up my mind to her going to live in her own way I did make up my
mind."

"Some men would have stopped at an agreement to separate."

"I've gone into all that, and don't wish to argue it. I was, and
am, the most old-fashioned man in the world on the question of
marriage--in fact I had never thought critically about its ethics
at all. But certain facts stared me in the face, and I couldn't go
against them."

They went on with the packing silently. When it was done Phillotson
closed the box and turned the key.

"There," he said. "To adorn her in somebody's eyes; never again in
mine!"



V


Four-and-twenty hours before this time Sue had written the following
note to Jude:


It is as I told you; and I am leaving to-morrow evening.
Richard and I thought it could be done with less
obtrusiveness after dark. I feel rather frightened, and
therefore ask you to be sure you are on the Melchester
platform to meet me. I arrive at a little to seven. I
know you will, of course, dear Jude; but I feel so timid
that I can't help begging you to be punctual. He has
been so VERY kind to me through it all!

Now to our meeting!

S.


As she was carried by the omnibus farther and farther down from
the mountain town--the single passenger that evening--she regarded
the receding road with a sad face. But no hesitation was apparent
therein.

The up-train by which she was departing stopped by signal only. To
Sue it seemed strange that such a powerful organization as a railway
train should be brought to a stand-still on purpose for her--a
fugitive from her lawful home.

The twenty minutes' journey drew towards its close, and Sue began
gathering her things together to alight. At the moment that the
train came to a stand-still by the Melchester platform a hand was
laid on the door and she beheld Jude. He entered the compartment
promptly. He had a black bag in his hand, and was dressed in
the dark suit he wore on Sundays and in the evening after work.
Altogether he looked a very handsome young fellow, his ardent
affection for her burning in his eyes.

"Oh Jude!" She clasped his hand with both hers, and her tense state
caused her to simmer over in a little succession of dry sobs. "I--I
am so glad! I get out here?"

"No. I get in, dear one! I've packed. Besides this bag I've only a
big box which is labelled."

"But don't I get out? Aren't we going to stay here?"

"We couldn't possibly, don't you see. We are known here--I, at any
rate, am well known. I've booked for Aldbrickham; and here's your
ticket for the same place, as you have only one to here."

"I thought we should have stayed here," she repeated.

"It wouldn't have done at all."

"Ah! Perhaps not."

"There wasn't time for me to write and say the place I had decided
on. Aldbrickham is a much bigger town--sixty or seventy thousand
inhabitants--and nobody knows anything about us there."

"And you have given up your cathedral work here?"

"Yes. It was rather sudden--your message coming unexpectedly.
Strictly, I might have been made to finish out the week. But I
pleaded urgency and I was let off. I would have deserted any day at
your command, dear Sue. I have deserted more than that for you!"

"I fear I am doing you a lot of harm. Ruining your prospects of the
Church; ruining your progress in your trade; everything!"

"The Church is no more to me. Let it lie! _I_ am not to be one of


The soldier-saints who, row on row,
Burn upward each to his point of bliss,


if any such there be! My point of bliss is not upward, but here."

"Oh I seem so bad--upsetting men's courses like this!" said she,
taking up in her voice the emotion that had begun in his. But she
recovered her equanimity by the time they had travelled a dozen
miles.

"He has been so good in letting me go," she resumed. "And here's a
note I found on my dressing-table, addressed to you."

"Yes. He's not an unworthy fellow," said Jude, glancing at the note.
"And I am ashamed of myself for hating him because he married you."

"According to the rule of women's whims I suppose I ought to suddenly
love him, because he has let me go so generously and unexpectedly,"
she answered smiling. "But I am so cold, or devoid of gratitude, or
so something, that even this generosity hasn't made me love him, or
repent, or want to stay with him as his wife; although I do feel I
like his large-mindedness, and respect him more than ever."

"It may not work so well for us as if he had been less kind, and you
had run away against his will," murmured Jude.

"That I NEVER would have done."

Jude's eyes rested musingly on her face. Then he suddenly kissed
her; and was going to kiss her again. "No--only once now--please,
Jude!"

"That's rather cruel," he answered; but acquiesced. "Such a strange
thing has happened to me," Jude continued after a silence. "Arabella
has actually written to ask me to get a divorce from her--in kindness
to her, she says. She wants to honestly and legally marry that man
she has already married virtually; and begs me to enable her to do
it."

"What have you done?"

"I have agreed. I thought at first I couldn't do it without getting
her into trouble about that second marriage, and I don't want to
injure her in any way. Perhaps she's no worse than I am, after all!
But nobody knows about it over here, and I find it will not be a
difficult proceeding at all. If she wants to start afresh I have
only too obvious reasons for not hindering her."

"Then you'll be free?"

"Yes, I shall be free."

"Where are we booked for?" she asked, with the discontinuity that
marked her to-night.

"Aldbrickham, as I said."

"But it will be very late when we get there?"

"Yes. I thought of that, and I wired for a room for us at the
Temperance Hotel there."

"One?"

"Yes--one."

She looked at him. "Oh Jude!" Sue bent her forehead against the
corner of the compartment. "I thought you might do it; and that I
was deceiving you. But I didn't mean that!"

In the pause which followed, Jude's eyes fixed themselves with
a stultified expression on the opposite seat. "Well!" he
said... "Well!"

He remained in silence; and seeing how discomfited he was she put her
face against his cheek, murmuring, "Don't be vexed, dear!"

"Oh--there's no harm done," he said. "But--I understood it like
that... Is this a sudden change of mind?"

"You have no right to ask me such a question; and I shan't answer!"
she said, smiling.

"My dear one, your happiness is more to me than anything--although we
seem to verge on quarrelling so often!--and your will is law to me.
I am something more than a mere--selfish fellow, I hope. Have it as
you wish!" On reflection his brow showed perplexity. "But perhaps
it is that you don't love me--not that you have become conventional!
Much as, under your teaching, I hate convention, I hope it IS that,
not the other terrible alternative!"

Even at this obvious moment for candour Sue could not be quite candid
as to the state of that mystery, her heart. "Put it down to my
timidity," she said with hurried evasiveness; "to a woman's natural
timidity when the crisis comes. I may feel as well as you that I
have a perfect right to live with you as you thought--from this
moment. I may hold the opinion that, in a proper state of society,
the father of a woman's child will be as much a private matter of
hers as the cut of her underlinen, on whom nobody will have any
right to question her. But partly, perhaps, because it is by his
generosity that I am now free, I would rather not be other than a
little rigid. If there had been a rope-ladder, and he had run after
us with pistols, it would have seemed different, and I may have acted
otherwise. But don't press me and criticize me, Jude! Assume that
I haven't the courage of my opinions. I know I am a poor miserable
creature. My nature is not so passionate as yours!"

He repeated simply! "I thought--what I naturally thought. But if we
are not lovers, we are not. Phillotson thought so, I am sure. See,
here is what he has written to me." He opened the letter she had
brought, and read:

"I make only one condition--that you are tender and kind to her. I
know you love her. But even love may be cruel at times. You are
made for each other: it is obvious, palpable, to any unbiased older
person. You were all along 'the shadowy third' in my short life with
her. I repeat, take care of Sue."

"He's a good fellow, isn't he!" she said with latent tears. On
reconsideration she added, "He was very resigned to letting me
go--too resigned almost! I never was so near being in love with him
as when he made such thoughtful arrangements for my being comfortable
on my journey, and offering to provide money. Yet I was not. If I
loved him ever so little as a wife, I'd go back to him even now."

"But you don't, do you?"

"It is true--oh so terribly true!--I don't."

"Nor me neither, I half-fear!" he said pettishly. "Nor anybody
perhaps! Sue, sometimes, when I am vexed with you, I think you are
incapable of real love."

"That's not good and loyal of you!" she said, and drawing away from
him as far as she could, looked severely out into the darkness. She
added in hurt tones, without turning round: "My liking for you is
not as some women's perhaps. But it is a delight in being with you,
of a supremely delicate kind, and I don't want to go further and risk
it by--an attempt to intensify it! I quite realized that, as woman
with man, it was a risk to come. But, as me with you, I resolved to
trust you to set my wishes above your gratification. Don't discuss
it further, dear Jude!"

"Of course, if it would make you reproach yourself... but you do
like me very much, Sue? Say you do! Say that you do a quarter, a
tenth, as much as I do you, and I'll be content!"

"I've let you kiss me, and that tells enough."

"Just once or so!"

"Well--don't be a greedy boy."

He leant back, and did not look at her for a long time. That
episode in her past history of which she had told him--of the poor
Christminster graduate whom she had handled thus, returned to Jude's
mind; and he saw himself as a possible second in such a torturing
destiny.

"This is a queer elopement!" he murmured. "Perhaps you are making
a cat's paw of me with Phillotson all this time. Upon my word it
almost seems so--to see you sitting up there so prim!"

"Now you mustn't be angry--I won't let you!" she coaxed, turning and
moving nearer to him. "You did kiss me just now, you know; and I
didn't dislike you to, I own it, Jude. Only I don't want to let you
do it again, just yet--considering how we are circumstanced, don't
you see!"

He could never resist her when she pleaded (as she well knew). And
they sat side by side with joined hands, till she aroused herself at
some thought.

"I can't possibly go to that Temperance Inn, after your telegraphing
that message!"

"Why not?"

"You can see well enough!"

"Very well; there'll be some other one open, no doubt. I have
sometimes thought, since your marrying Phillotson because of a stupid
scandal, that under the affectation of independent views you are as
enslaved to the social code as any woman I know!"

"Not mentally. But I haven't the courage of my views, as I said
before. I didn't marry him altogether because of the scandal.
But sometimes a woman's LOVE OF BEING LOVED gets the better of her
conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a
man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love
him at all. Then, when she sees him suffering, her remorse sets in,
and she does what she can to repair the wrong."

"You simply mean that you flirted outrageously with him, poor old
chap, and then repented, and to make reparation, married him, though
you tortured yourself to death by doing it."

"Well--if you will put it brutally!--it was a little like that--that
and the scandal together--and your concealing from me what you ought
to have told me before!"

He could see that she was distressed and tearful at his criticisms,
and soothed her, saying: "There, dear; don't mind! Crucify me, if
you will! You know you are all the world to me, whatever you do!"

"I am very bad and unprincipled--I know you think that!" she said,
trying to blink away her tears.

"I think and know you are my dear Sue, from whom neither length nor
breadth, nor things present nor things to come, can divide me!"

Though so sophisticated in many things she was such a child in others
that this satisfied her, and they reached the end of their journey
on the best of terms. It was about ten o'clock when they arrived at
Aldbrickham, the county town of North Wessex. As she would not go
to the Temperance Hotel because of the form of his telegram, Jude
inquired for another; and a youth who volunteered to find one wheeled
their luggage to the George farther on, which proved to be the inn at
which Jude had stayed with Arabella on that one occasion of their
meeting after their division for years.

Owing, however, to their now entering it by another door, and to his
preoccupation, he did not at first recognize the place. When they
had engaged their respective rooms they went down to a late supper.
During Jude's temporary absence the waiting-maid spoke to Sue.

"I think, ma'am, I remember your relation, or friend, or whatever he
is, coming here once before--late, just like this, with his wife--a
lady, at any rate, that wasn't you by no manner of means--jest as med
be with you now."

"Oh do you?" said Sue, with a certain sickness of heart. "Though I
think you must be mistaken! How long ago was it?"

"About a month or two. A handsome, full-figured woman. They had
this room."

When Jude came back and sat down to supper Sue seemed moping and
miserable. "Jude," she said to him plaintively, at their parting
that night upon the landing, "it is not so nice and pleasant as it
used to be with us! I don't like it here--I can't bear the place!
And I don't like you so well as I did!"

"How fidgeted you seem, dear! Why do you change like this?"

"Because it was cruel to bring me here!"

"Why?"

"You were lately here with Arabella. There, now I have said it!"

"Dear me, why--" said Jude looking round him. "Yes--it is the same!
I really didn't know it, Sue. Well--it is not cruel, since we have
come as we have--two relations staying together."

"How long ago was it you were here? Tell me, tell me!"

"The day before I met you in Christminster, when we went back to
Marygreen together. I told you I had met her."

"Yes, you said you had met her, but you didn't tell me all. Your
story was that you had met as estranged people, who were not husband
and wife at all in Heaven's sight--not that you had made it up with
her."

"We didn't make it up," he said sadly. "I can't explain, Sue."

"You've been false to me; you, my last hope! And I shall never
forget it, never!"

"But by your own wish, dear Sue, we are only to be friends, not
lovers! It is so very inconsistent of you to--"

"Friends can be jealous!"

"I don't see that. You concede nothing to me and I have to concede
everything to you. After all, you were on good terms with your
husband at that time."

"No, I wasn't, Jude. Oh how can you think so! And you have taken me
in, even if you didn't intend to." She was so mortified that he was
obliged to take her into her room and close the door lest the people
should hear. "Was it this room? Yes it was--I see by your look it
was! I won't have it for mine! Oh it was treacherous of you to have
her again! _I_ jumped out of the window!"

"But Sue, she was, after all, my legal wife, if not--"

Slipping down on her knees Sue buried her face in the bed and wept.

"I never knew such an unreasonable--such a dog-in-the-manger
feeling," said Jude. "I am not to approach you, nor anybody else!"

"Oh don't you UNDERSTAND my feeling! Why don't you! Why are you so
gross! _I_ jumped out of the window!"

"Jumped out of window?"

"I can't explain!"

It was true that he did not understand her feelings very well. But
he did a little; and began to love her none the less.

"I--I thought you cared for nobody--desired nobody in the world but
me at that time--and ever since!" continued Sue.

"It is true. I did not, and don't now!" said Jude, as distressed as
she.

"But you must have thought much of her! Or--"

"No--I need not--you don't understand me either--women never do! Why
should you get into such a tantrum about nothing?"

Looking up from the quilt she pouted provokingly: "If it hadn't been
for that, perhaps I would have gone on to the Temperance Hotel, after
all, as you proposed; for I was beginning to think I did belong to
you!"

"Oh, it is of no consequence!" said Jude distantly.

"I thought, of course, that she had never been really your wife since
she left you of her own accord years and years ago! My sense of it
was, that a parting such as yours from her, and mine from him, ended
the marriage."

"I can't say more without speaking against her, and I don't want
to do that," said he. "Yet I must tell you one thing, which would
settle the matter in any case. She has married another man--really
married him! I knew nothing about it till after the visit we made
here."

"Married another? ... It is a crime--as the world treats it, but
does not believe."

"There--now you are yourself again. Yes, it is a crime--as you don't
hold, but would fearfully concede. But I shall never inform against
her! And it is evidently a prick of conscience in her that has led
her to urge me to get a divorce, that she may remarry this man
legally. So you perceive I shall not be likely to see her again."

"And you didn't really know anything of this when you saw her?" said
Sue more gently, as she rose.

"I did not. Considering all things, I don't think you ought to be
angry, darling!"

"I am not. But I shan't go to the Temperance Hotel!"

He laughed. "Never mind!" he said. "So that I am near you, I am
comparatively happy. It is more than this earthly wretch called Me
deserves--you spirit, you disembodied creature, you dear, sweet,
tantalizing phantom--hardly flesh at all; so that when I put my arms
round you I almost expect them to pass through you as through air!
Forgive me for being gross, as you call it! Remember that our
calling cousins when really strangers was a snare. The enmity of our
parents gave a piquancy to you in my eyes that was intenser even than
the novelty of ordinary new acquaintance."

"Say those pretty lines, then, from Shelley's 'Epipsychidion' as if
they meant me!" she solicited, slanting up closer to him as they
stood. "Don't you know them?"

"I know hardly any poetry," he replied mournfully.

"Don't you? These are some of them:


There was a Being whom my spirit oft
Met on its visioned wanderings far aloft.

* * * * *

A seraph of Heaven, too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman...


Oh it is too flattering, so I won't go on! But say it's me! Say
it's me!"

"It is you, dear; exactly like you!"

"Now I forgive you! And you shall kiss me just once there--not very
long." She put the tip of her finger gingerly to her cheek; and he
did as commanded. "You do care for me very much, don't you, in spite
of my not--you know?"

"Yes, sweet!" he said with a sigh; and bade her good-night.



VI


In returning to his native town of Shaston as schoolmaster Phillotson
had won the interest and awakened the memories of the inhabitants,
who, though they did not honour him for his miscellaneous aquirements
as he would have been honoured elsewhere, retained for him a sincere
regard. When, shortly after his arrival, he brought home a pretty
wife--awkwardly pretty for him, if he did not take care, they
said--they were glad to have her settle among them.

For some time after her flight from that home Sue's absence did not
excite comment. Her place as monitor in the school was taken by
another young woman within a few days of her vacating it, which
substitution also passed without remark, Sue's services having been
of a provisional nature only. When, however, a month had passed, and
Phillotson casually admitted to an acquaintance that he did not know
where his wife was staying, curiosity began to be aroused; till,
jumping to conclusions, people ventured to affirm that Sue had played
him false and run away from him. The schoolmaster's growing languor
and listlessness over his work gave countenance to the idea.