Jude the Obscure

owever, if God disposed not, woman did. The next morning but one
brought him this note from her:

Don’t come next week. On your own account don’t! We were too free,
under the influence of that morbid hymn and the twilight. Think no more
than you can help of

SUSANNA FLORENCE MARY.

The disappointment was keen. He knew her mood, the look of her face,
when she subscribed herself at length thus. But, whatever her mood, he
could not say she was wrong in her view. He replied:

I acquiesce. You are right. It is a lesson in renunciation which I
suppose I ought to learn at this season.

JUDE.

He despatched the note on Easter Eve, and there seemed a finality in
their decisions. But other forces and laws than theirs were in
operation. On Easter Monday morning he received a message from the
Widow Edlin, whom he had directed to telegraph if anything serious
happened:

Your aunt is sinking. Come at once.

He threw down his tools and went. Three and a half hours later he was
crossing the downs about Marygreen, and presently plunged into the
concave field across which the short cut was made to the village. As he
ascended on the other side a labouring man, who had been watching his
approach from a gate across the path, moved uneasily, and prepared to
speak. “I can see in his face that she is dead,” said Jude. “Poor Aunt
Drusilla!”

It was as he had supposed, and Mrs. Edlin had sent out the man to break
the news to him.

“She wouldn’t have knowed ’ee. She lay like a doll wi’ glass eyes; so
it didn’t matter that you wasn’t here,” said he.

Jude went on to the house, and in the afternoon, when everything was
done, and the layers-out had finished their beer, and gone, he sat down
alone in the silent place. It was absolutely necessary to communicate
with Sue, though two or three days earlier they had agreed to mutual
severance. He wrote in the briefest terms:

Aunt Drusilla is dead, having been taken almost suddenly. The funeral
is on Friday afternoon.

He remained in and about Marygreen through the intervening days, went
out on Friday morning to see that the grave was finished, and wondered
if Sue would come. She had not written, and that seemed to signify
rather that she would come than that she would not. Having timed her by
her only possible train, he locked the door about mid-day, and crossed
the hollow field to the verge of the upland by the Brown House, where
he stood and looked over the vast prospect northwards, and over the
nearer landscape in which Alfredston stood. Two miles behind it a jet
of white steam was travelling from the left to the right of the
picture.

There was a long time to wait, even now, till he would know if she had
arrived. He did wait, however, and at last a small hired vehicle pulled
up at the bottom of the hill, and a person alighted, the conveyance
going back, while the passenger began ascending the hill. He knew her;
and she looked so slender to-day that it seemed as if she might be
crushed in the intensity of a too passionate embrace—such as it was not
for him to give. Two-thirds of the way up her head suddenly took a
solicitous poise, and he knew that she had at that moment recognized
him. Her face soon began a pensive smile, which lasted till, having
descended a little way, he met her.

“I thought,” she began with nervous quickness, “that it would be so sad
to let you attend the funeral alone! And so—at the last moment—I came.”

“Dear faithful Sue!” murmured Jude.

With the elusiveness of her curious double nature, however, Sue did not
stand still for any further greeting, though it wanted some time to the
burial. A pathos so unusually compounded as that which attached to this
hour was unlikely to repeat itself for years, if ever, and Jude would
have paused, and meditated, and conversed. But Sue either saw it not at
all, or, seeing it more than he, would not allow herself to feel it.

The sad and simple ceremony was soon over, their progress to the church
being almost at a trot, the bustling undertaker having a more important
funeral an hour later, three miles off. Drusilla was put into the new
ground, quite away from her ancestors. Sue and Jude had gone side by
side to the grave, and now sat down to tea in the familiar house; their
lives united at least in this last attention to the dead.

“She was opposed to marriage, from first to last, you say?” murmured
Sue.

“Yes. Particularly for members of our family.”

Her eyes met his, and remained on him awhile.

“We are rather a sad family, don’t you think, Jude?”

“She said we made bad husbands and wives. Certainly we make unhappy
ones. At all events, I do, for one!”

Sue was silent. “Is it wrong, Jude,” she said with a tentative tremor,
“for a husband or wife to tell a third person that they are unhappy in
their marriage? If a marriage ceremony is a religious thing, it is
possibly wrong; but if it is only a sordid contract, based on material
convenience in householding, rating, and taxing, and the inheritance of
land and money by children, making it necessary that the male parent
should be known—which it seems to be—why surely a person may say, even
proclaim upon the housetops, that it hurts and grieves him or her?”

“I have said so, anyhow, to you.”

Presently she went on: “Are there many couples, do you think, where one
dislikes the other for no definite fault?”

“Yes, I suppose. If either cares for another person, for instance.”

“But even apart from that? Wouldn’t the woman, for example, be very
bad-natured if she didn’t like to live with her husband; merely”—her
voice undulated, and he guessed things—“merely because she had a
personal feeling against it—a physical objection—a fastidiousness, or
whatever it may be called—although she might respect and be grateful to
him? I am merely putting a case. Ought she to try to overcome her
pruderies?”

Jude threw a troubled look at her. He said, looking away: “It would be
just one of those cases in which my experiences go contrary to my
dogmas. Speaking as an order-loving man—which I hope I am, though I
fear I am not—I should say, yes. Speaking from experience and unbiased
nature, I should say, no. … Sue, I believe you are not happy!”

“Of course I am!” she contradicted. “How can a woman be unhappy who has
only been married eight weeks to a man she chose freely?”

“‘Chose freely!’”

“Why do you repeat it? … But I have to go back by the six o’clock
train. You will be staying on here, I suppose?”

“For a few days to wind up Aunt’s affairs. This house is gone now.
Shall I go to the train with you?”

A little laugh of objection came from Sue. “I think not. You may come
part of the way.”

“But stop—you can’t go to-night! That train won’t take you to Shaston.
You must stay and go back to-morrow. Mrs. Edlin has plenty of room, if
you don’t like to stay here?”

“Very well,” she said dubiously. “I didn’t tell him I would come for
certain.”

Jude went to the widow’s house adjoining, to let her know; and
returning in a few minutes sat down again.

“It is horrible how we are circumstanced, Sue—horrible!” he said
abruptly, with his eyes bent to the floor.

“No! Why?”

“I can’t tell you all my part of the gloom. Your part is that you ought
not to have married him. I saw it before you had done it, but I thought
I mustn’t interfere. I was wrong. I ought to have!”

“But what makes you assume all this, dear?”

“Because—I can see you through your feathers, my poor little bird!”

Her hand lay on the table, and Jude put his upon it. Sue drew hers
away.

“That’s absurd, Sue,” cried he, “after what we’ve been talking about! I
am more strict and formal than you, if it comes to that; and that you
should object to such an innocent action shows that you are
ridiculously inconsistent!”

“Perhaps it was too prudish,” she said repentantly. “Only I have
fancied it was a sort of trick of ours—too frequent perhaps. There, you
may hold it as much as you like. Is that good of me?”

“Yes; very.”

“But I must tell him.”

“Who?”

“Richard.”

“Oh—of course, if you think it necessary. But as it means nothing it
may be bothering him needlessly.”

“Well—are you sure you mean it only as my cousin?”

“Absolutely sure. I have no feelings of love left in me.”

“That’s news. How has it come to be?”

“I’ve seen Arabella.”

She winced at the hit; then said curiously, “When did you see her?”

“When I was at Christminster.”

“So she’s come back; and you never told me! I suppose you will live
with her now?”

“Of course—just as you live with your husband.”

She looked at the window pots with the geraniums and cactuses, withered
for want of attention, and through them at the outer distance, till her
eyes began to grow moist. “What is it?” said Jude, in a softened tone.

“Why should you be so glad to go back to her if—if what you used to say
to me is still true—I mean if it were true then! Of course it is not
now! How could your heart go back to Arabella so soon?”

“A special Providence, I suppose, helped it on its way.”

“Ah—it isn’t true!” she said with gentle resentment. “You are teasing
me—that’s all—because you think I am not happy!”

“I don’t know. I don’t wish to know.”

“If I were unhappy it would be my fault, my wickedness; not that I
should have a right to dislike him! He is considerate to me in
everything; and he is very interesting, from the amount of general
knowledge he has acquired by reading everything that comes in his way.
… Do you think, Jude, that a man ought to marry a woman his own age, or
one younger than himself—eighteen years—as I am than he?”

“It depends upon what they feel for each other.”

He gave her no opportunity of self-satisfaction, and she had to go on
unaided, which she did in a vanquished tone, verging on tears:

“I—I think I must be equally honest with you as you have been with me.
Perhaps you have seen what it is I want to say?—that though I like Mr.
Phillotson as a friend, I don’t like him—it is a torture to me to—live
with him as a husband!—There, now I have let it out—I couldn’t help it,
although I have been—pretending I am happy.—Now you’ll have a contempt
for me for ever, I suppose!” She bent down her face upon her hands as
they lay upon the cloth, and silently sobbed in little jerks that made
the fragile three-legged table quiver.

“I have only been married a month or two!” she went on, still remaining
bent upon the table, and sobbing into her hands. “And it is said that
what a woman shrinks from—in the early days of her marriage—she shakes
down to with comfortable indifference in half a dozen years. But that
is much like saying that the amputation of a limb is no affliction,
since a person gets comfortably accustomed to the use of a wooden leg
or arm in the course of time!”

Jude could hardly speak, but he said, “I thought there was something
wrong, Sue! Oh, I thought there was!”

“But it is not as you think!—there is nothing wrong except my own
wickedness, I suppose you’d call it—a repugnance on my part, for a
reason I cannot disclose, and what would not be admitted as one by the
world in general! … What tortures me so much is the necessity of being
responsive to this man whenever he wishes, good as he is morally!—the
dreadful contract to feel in a particular way in a matter whose essence
is its voluntariness! … I wish he would beat me, or be faithless to me,
or do some open thing that I could talk about as a justification for
feeling as I do! But he does nothing, except that he has grown a little
cold since he has found out how I feel. That’s why he didn’t come to
the funeral… Oh, I am very miserable—I don’t know what to do! … Don’t
come near me, Jude, because you mustn’t. Don’t—don’t!”

But he had jumped up and put his face against hers—or rather against
her ear, her face being inaccessible.

“I told you not to, Jude!”

“I know you did—I only wish to—console you! It all arose through my
being married before we met, didn’t it? You would have been my wife,
Sue, wouldn’t you, if it hadn’t been for that?”

Instead of replying she rose quickly, and saying she was going to walk
to her aunt’s grave in the churchyard to recover herself, went out of
the house. Jude did not follow her. Twenty minutes later he saw her
cross the village green towards Mrs. Edlin’s, and soon she sent a
little girl to fetch her bag, and tell him she was too tired to see him
again that night.

In the lonely room of his aunt’s house, Jude sat watching the cottage
of the Widow Edlin as it disappeared behind the night shade. He knew
that Sue was sitting within its walls equally lonely and disheartened;
and again questioned his devotional motto that all was for the best.

He retired to rest early, but his sleep was fitful from the sense that
Sue was so near at hand. At some time near two o’clock, when he was
beginning to sleep more soundly, he was aroused by a shrill squeak that
had been familiar enough to him when he lived regularly at Marygreen.
It was the cry of a rabbit caught in a gin. As was the little
creature’s habit, it did not soon repeat its cry; and probably would
not do so more than once or twice; but would remain bearing its torture
till the morrow when the trapper would come and knock it on the head.

He who in his childhood had saved the lives of the earthworms now began
to picture the agonies of the rabbit from its lacerated leg. If it were
a “bad catch” by the hind-leg, the animal would tug during the ensuing
six hours till the iron teeth of the trap had stripped the leg-bone of
its flesh, when, should a weak-springed instrument enable it to escape,
it would die in the fields from the mortification of the limb. If it
were a “good catch,” namely, by the fore-leg, the bone would be broken
and the limb nearly torn in two in attempts at an impossible escape.

Almost half an hour passed, and the rabbit repeated its cry. Jude could
rest no longer till he had put it out of its pain, so dressing himself
quickly he descended, and by the light of the moon went across the
green in the direction of the sound. He reached the hedge bordering the
widow’s garden, when he stood still. The faint click of the trap as
dragged about by the writhing animal guided him now, and reaching the
spot he struck the rabbit on the back of the neck with the side of his
palm, and it stretched itself out dead.

He was turning away when he saw a woman looking out of the open
casement at a window on the ground floor of the adjacent cottage.
“Jude!” said a voice timidly—Sue’s voice. “It is you—is it not?”

“Yes, dear!”

“I haven’t been able to sleep at all, and then I heard the rabbit, and
couldn’t help thinking of what it suffered, till I felt I must come
down and kill it! But I am so glad you got there first… They ought not
to be allowed to set these steel traps, ought they!”

Jude had reached the window, which was quite a low one, so that she was
visible down to her waist. She let go the casement-stay and put her
hand upon his, her moonlit face regarding him wistfully.

“Did it keep you awake?” he said.

“No—I was awake.”

“How was that?”

“Oh, you know—now! I know you, with your religious doctrines, think
that a married woman in trouble of a kind like mine commits a mortal
sin in making a man the confidant of it, as I did you. I wish I hadn’t,
now!”

“Don’t wish it, dear,” he said. “That may have been my view; but my
doctrines and I begin to part company.”

“I knew it—I knew it! And that’s why I vowed I wouldn’t disturb your
belief. But—I am so glad to see you!—and, oh, I didn’t mean to see
you again, now the last tie between us, Aunt Drusilla, is dead!”

Jude seized her hand and kissed it. “There is a stronger one left!” he
said. “I’ll never care about my doctrines or my religion any more! Let
them go! Let me help you, even if I do love you, and even if you…”

“Don’t say it!—I know what you mean; but I can’t admit so much as that.
There! Guess what you like, but don’t press me to answer questions!”

“I wish you were happy, whatever I may be!”

“I can’t be! So few could enter into my feeling—they would say ’twas
my fanciful fastidiousness, or something of that sort, and condemn me…
It is none of the natural tragedies of love that’s love’s usual tragedy
in civilized life, but a tragedy artificially manufactured for people
who in a natural state would find relief in parting! … It would have
been wrong, perhaps, for me to tell my distress to you, if I had been
able to tell it to anybody else. But I have nobody. And I must tell
somebody! Jude, before I married him I had never thought out fully what
marriage meant, even though I knew. It was idiotic of me—there is no
excuse. I was old enough, and I thought I was very experienced. So I
rushed on, when I had got into that training school scrape, with all
the cock-sureness of the fool that I was! … I am certain one ought to
be allowed to undo what one had done so ignorantly! I daresay it
happens to lots of women, only they submit, and I kick… When people of
a later age look back upon the barbarous customs and superstitions of
the times that we have the unhappiness to live in, what will they
say!”

“You are very bitter, darling Sue! How I wish—I wish—”

“You must go in now!”

In a moment of impulse she bent over the sill, and laid her face upon
his hair, weeping, and then imprinting a scarcely perceptible little
kiss upon the top of his head, withdrawing quickly, so that he could
not put his arms round her, as otherwise he unquestionably would have
done. She shut the casement, and he returned to his cottage.