Jude the Obscure

he unnoticed lives that the pair had hitherto led began, from the day
of the suspended wedding onwards, to be observed and discussed by other
persons than Arabella. The society of Spring Street and the
neighbourhood generally did not understand, and probably could not have
been made to understand, Sue and Jude’s private minds, emotions,
positions, and fears. The curious facts of a child coming to them
unexpectedly, who called Jude “Father,” and Sue “Mother,” and a hitch
in a marriage ceremony intended for quietness to be performed at a
registrar’s office, together with rumours of the undefended cases in
the law-courts, bore only one translation to plain minds.

Little Time—for though he was formally turned into “Jude,” the apt
nickname stuck to him—would come home from school in the evening, and
repeat inquiries and remarks that had been made to him by the other
boys; and cause Sue, and Jude when he heard them, a great deal of pain
and sadness.

The result was that shortly after the attempt at the registrar’s the
pair went off—to London it was believed—for several days, hiring
somebody to look to the boy. When they came back they let it be
understood indirectly, and with total indifference and weariness of
mien, that they were legally married at last. Sue, who had previously
been called Mrs. Bridehead now openly adopted the name of Mrs. Fawley.
Her dull, cowed, and listless manner for days seemed to substantiate
all this.

But the mistake (as it was called) of their going away so secretly to
do the business, kept up much of the mystery of their lives; and they
found that they made not such advances with their neighbours as they
had expected to do thereby. A living mystery was not much less
interesting than a dead scandal.

The baker’s lad and the grocer’s boy, who at first had used to lift
their hats gallantly to Sue when they came to execute their errands, in
these days no longer took the trouble to render her that homage, and
the neighbouring artizans’ wives looked straight along the pavement
when they encountered her.

Nobody molested them, it is true; but an oppressive atmosphere began to
encircle their souls, particularly after their excursion to the show,
as if that visit had brought some evil influence to bear on them. And
their temperaments were precisely of a kind to suffer from this
atmosphere, and to be indisposed to lighten it by vigorous and open
statements. Their apparent attempt at reparation had come too late to
be effective.

The headstone and epitaph orders fell off: and two or three months
later, when autumn came, Jude perceived that he would have to return to
journey-work again, a course all the more unfortunate just now, in that
he had not as yet cleared off the debt he had unavoidably incurred in
the payment of the law-costs of the previous year.

One evening he sat down to share the common meal with Sue and the child
as usual. “I am thinking,” he said to her, “that I’ll hold on here no
longer. The life suits us, certainly; but if we could get away to a
place where we are unknown, we should be lighter hearted, and have a
better chance. And so I am afraid we must break it up here, however
awkward for you, poor dear!”

Sue was always much affected at a picture of herself as an object of
pity, and she saddened.

“Well—I am not sorry,” said she presently. “I am much depressed by the
way they look at me here. And you have been keeping on this house and
furniture entirely for me and the boy! You don’t want it yourself, and
the expense is unnecessary. But whatever we do, wherever we go, you
won’t take him away from me, Jude dear? I could not let him go now! The
cloud upon his young mind makes him so pathetic to me; I do hope to
lift it some day! And he loves me so. You won’t take him away from me?”

“Certainly I won’t, dear little girl! We’ll get nice lodgings, wherever
we go. I shall be moving about probably—getting a job here and a job
there.”

“I shall do something too, of course, till—till— Well, now I can’t be
useful in the lettering it behoves me to turn my hand to something
else.”

“Don’t hurry about getting employment,” he said regretfully. “I don’t
want you to do that. I wish you wouldn’t, Sue. The boy and yourself are
enough for you to attend to.”

There was a knock at the door, and Jude answered it. Sue could hear the
conversation:

“Is Mr. Fawley at home? … Biles and Willis, the building contractors,
sent me to know if you’ll undertake the relettering of the ten
commandments in a little church they’ve been restoring lately in the
country near here.”

Jude reflected, and said he could undertake it.

“It is not a very artistic job,” continued the messenger. “The
clergyman is a very old-fashioned chap, and he has refused to let
anything more be done to the church than cleaning and repairing.”

“Excellent old man!” said Sue to herself, who was sentimentally opposed
to the horrors of over-restoration.

“The Ten Commandments are fixed to the east end,” the messenger went
on, “and they want doing up with the rest of the wall there, since he
won’t have them carted off as old materials belonging to the contractor
in the usual way of the trade.”

A bargain as to terms was struck, and Jude came indoors. “There, you
see,” he said cheerfully. “One more job yet, at any rate, and you can
help in it—at least you can try. We shall have all the church to
ourselves, as the rest of the work is finished.”

Next day Jude went out to the church, which was only two miles off. He
found that what the contractor’s clerk had said was true. The tables of
the Jewish law towered sternly over the utensils of Christian grace, as
the chief ornament of the chancel end, in the fine dry style of the
last century. And as their framework was constructed of ornamental
plaster they could not be taken down for repair. A portion, crumbled by
damp, required renewal; and when this had been done, and the whole
cleansed, he began to renew the lettering. On the second morning Sue
came to see what assistance she could render, and also because they
liked to be together.

The silence and emptiness of the building gave her confidence, and,
standing on a safe low platform erected by Jude, which she was
nevertheless timid at mounting, she began painting in the letters of
the first Table while he set about mending a portion of the second. She
was quite pleased at her powers; she had acquired them in the days she
painted illumined texts for the church-fitting shop at Christminster.
Nobody seemed likely to disturb them; and the pleasant twitter of
birds, and rustle of October leafage, came in through an open window,
and mingled with their talk.

They were not, however, to be left thus snug and peaceful for long.
About half-past twelve there came footsteps on the gravel without. The
old vicar and his churchwarden entered, and, coming up to see what was
being done, seemed surprised to discover that a young woman was
assisting. They passed on into an aisle, at which time the door again
opened, and another figure entered—a small one, that of little Time,
who was crying. Sue had told him where he might find her between
school-hours, if he wished. She came down from her perch, and said,
“What’s the matter, my dear?”

“I couldn’t stay to eat my dinner in school, because they said—” He
described how some boys had taunted him about his nominal mother, and
Sue, grieved, expressed her indignation to Jude aloft. The child went
into the churchyard, and Sue returned to her work. Meanwhile the door
had opened again, and there shuffled in with a businesslike air the
white-aproned woman who cleaned the church. Sue recognized her as one
who had friends in Spring Street, whom she visited. The church-cleaner
looked at Sue, gaped, and lifted her hands; she had evidently
recognized Jude’s companion as the latter had recognized her. Next came
two ladies, and after talking to the charwoman they also moved forward,
and as Sue stood reaching upward, watched her hand tracing the letters,
and critically regarded her person in relief against the white wall,
till she grew so nervous that she trembled visibly.

They went back to where the others were standing, talking in
undertones: and one said—Sue could not hear which—“She’s his wife, I
suppose?”

“Some say Yes: some say No,” was the reply from the charwoman.

“Not? Then she ought to be, or somebody’s—that’s very clear!”

“They’ve only been married a very few weeks, whether or no.”

“A strange pair to be painting the Two Tables! I wonder Biles and
Willis could think of such a thing as hiring those!”

The churchwarden supposed that Biles and Willis knew of nothing wrong,
and then the other, who had been talking to the old woman, explained
what she meant by calling them strange people.

The probable drift of the subdued conversation which followed was made
plain by the churchwarden breaking into an anecdote, in a voice that
everybody in the church could hear, though obviously suggested by the
present situation:

“Well, now, it is a curious thing, but my grandfather told me a strange
tale of a most immoral case that happened at the painting of the
Commandments in a church out by Gaymead—which is quite within a walk of
this one. In them days Commandments were mostly done in gilt letters on
a black ground, and that’s how they were out where I say, before the
owld church was rebuilded. It must have been somewhere about a hundred
years ago that them Commandments wanted doing up just as ours do here,
and they had to get men from Aldbrickham to do ’em. Now they wished to
get the job finished by a particular Sunday, so the men had to work
late Saturday night, against their will, for overtime was not paid then
as ’tis now. There was no true religion in the country at that date,
neither among pa’sons, clerks, nor people, and to keep the men up to
their work the vicar had to let ’em have plenty of drink during the
afternoon. As evening drawed on they sent for some more themselves;
rum, by all account. It got later and later, and they got more and more
fuddled, till at last they went a-putting their rum-bottle and rummers
upon the communion table, and drawed up a trestle or two, and sate
round comfortable and poured out again right hearty bumpers. No sooner
had they tossed off their glasses than, so the story goes, they fell
down senseless, one and all. How long they bode so they didn’t know,
but when they came to themselves there was a terrible thunder-storm
a-raging, and they seemed to see in the gloom a dark figure with very
thin legs and a curious voot, a-standing on the ladder, and finishing
their work. When it got daylight they could see that the work was
really finished, and couldn’t at all mind finishing it themselves. They
went home, and the next thing they heard was that a great scandal had
been caused in the church that Sunday morning, for when the people came
and service began, all saw that the Ten Commandments wez painted with
the ‘nots’ left out. Decent people wouldn’t attend service there for a
long time, and the Bishop had to be sent for to reconsecrate the
church. That’s the tradition as I used to hear it as a child. You must
take it for what it is wo’th, but this case to-day has reminded me o’t,
as I say.”

The visitors gave one more glance, as if to see whether Jude and Sue
had left the “nots” out likewise, and then severally left the church,
even the old woman at last. Sue and Jude, who had not stopped working,
sent back the child to school, and remained without speaking; till,
looking at her narrowly, he found she had been crying silently.

“Never mind, comrade!” he said. “I know what it is!”

“I can’t bear that they, and everybody, should think people wicked
because they may have chosen to live their own way! It is really these
opinions that make the best intentioned people reckless, and actually
become immoral!”

“Never be cast down! It was only a funny story.”

“Ah, but we suggested it! I am afraid I have done you mischief, Jude,
instead of helping you by coming!”

To have suggested such a story was certainly not very exhilarating, in
a serious view of their position. However, in a few minutes Sue seemed
to see that their position this morning had a ludicrous side, and
wiping her eyes she laughed.

“It is droll, after all,” she said, “that we two, of all people, with
our queer history, should happen to be here painting the Ten
Commandments! You a reprobate, and I—in my condition… O dear!” … And
with her hand over her eyes she laughed again silently and
intermittently, till she was quite weak.

“That’s better,” said Jude gaily. “Now we are right again, aren’t we,
little girl!”

“Oh but it is serious, all the same!” she sighed as she took up the
brush and righted herself. “But do you see they don’t think we are
married? They won’t believe it! It is extraordinary!”

“I don’t care whether they think so or not,” said Jude. “I shan’t take
any more trouble to make them.”

They sat down to lunch—which they had brought with them not to hinder
time—and having eaten it, were about to set to work anew when a man
entered the church, and Jude recognized in him the contractor Willis.
He beckoned to Jude, and spoke to him apart.

“Here—I’ve just had a complaint about this,” he said, with rather
breathless awkwardness. “I don’t wish to go into the matter—as of
course I didn’t know what was going on—but I am afraid I must ask you
and her to leave off, and let somebody else finish this! It is best, to
avoid all unpleasantness. I’ll pay you for the week, all the same.”

Jude was too independent to make any fuss; and the contractor paid him,
and left. Jude picked up his tools, and Sue cleansed her brush. Then
their eyes met.

“How could we be so simple as to suppose we might do this!” said she,
dropping to her tragic note. “Of course we ought not—I ought not—to
have come!”

“I had no idea that anybody was going to intrude into such a lonely
place and see us!” Jude returned. “Well, it can’t be helped, dear; and
of course I wouldn’t wish to injure Willis’s trade-connection by
staying.” They sat down passively for a few minutes, proceeded out of
the church, and overtaking the boy pursued their thoughtful way to
Aldbrickham.

Fawley had still a pretty zeal in the cause of education, and, as was
natural with his experiences, he was active in furthering “equality of
opportunity” by any humble means open to him. He had joined an
Artizans’ Mutual Improvement Society established in the town about the
time of his arrival there; its members being young men of all creeds
and denominations, including Churchmen, Congregationalists, Baptists,
Unitarians, Positivists, and others—Agnostics had scarcely been heard
of at this time—their one common wish to enlarge their minds forming a
sufficiently close bond of union. The subscription was small, and the
room homely; and Jude’s activity, uncustomary acquirements, and, above
all, singular intuition on what to read and how to set about
it—begotten of his years of struggle against malignant stars—had led to
his being placed on the committee.

A few evenings after his dismissal from the church repairs, and before
he had obtained any more work to do, he went to attend a meeting of the
aforesaid committee. It was late when he arrived: all the others had
come, and as he entered they looked dubiously at him, and hardly
uttered a word of greeting. He guessed that something bearing on
himself had been either discussed or mooted. Some ordinary business was
transacted, and it was disclosed that the number of subscriptions had
shown a sudden falling off for that quarter. One member—a really
well-meaning and upright man—began speaking in enigmas about certain
possible causes: that it behoved them to look well into their
constitution; for if the committee were not respected, and had not at
least, in their differences, a common standard of conduct, they would
bring the institution to the ground. Nothing further was said in Jude’s
presence, but he knew what this meant; and turning to the table wrote a
note resigning his office there and then.

Thus the supersensitive couple were more and more impelled to go away.
And then bills were sent in, and the question arose, what could Jude do
with his great-aunt’s heavy old furniture, if he left the town to
travel he knew not whither? This, and the necessity of ready money,
compelled him to decide on an auction, much as he would have preferred
to keep the venerable goods.

The day of the sale came on; and Sue for the last time cooked her own,
the child’s, and Jude’s breakfast in the little house he had furnished.
It chanced to be a wet day; moreover Sue was unwell, and not wishing to
desert her poor Jude in such gloomy circumstances, for he was compelled
to stay awhile, she acted on the suggestion of the auctioneer’s man,
and ensconced herself in an upper room, which could be emptied of its
effects, and so kept closed to the bidders. Here Jude discovered her;
and with the child, and their few trunks, baskets, and bundles, and two
chairs and a table that were not in the sale, the two sat in meditative
talk.

Footsteps began stamping up and down the bare stairs, the comers
inspecting the goods, some of which were of so quaint and ancient a
make as to acquire an adventitious value as art. Their door was tried
once or twice, and to guard themselves against intrusion Jude wrote
“Private” on a scrap of paper, and stuck it upon the panel.

They soon found that, instead of the furniture, their own personal
histories and past conduct began to be discussed to an unexpected and
intolerable extent by the intending bidders. It was not till now that
they really discovered what a fools’ paradise of supposed unrecognition
they had been living in of late. Sue silently took her companion’s
hand, and with eyes on each other they heard these passing remarks—the
quaint and mysterious personality of Father Time being a subject which
formed a large ingredient in the hints and innuendoes. At length the
auction began in the room below, whence they could hear each familiar
article knocked down, the highly prized ones cheaply, the unconsidered
at an unexpected price.

“People don’t understand us,” he sighed heavily. “I am glad we have
decided to go.”

“The question is, where to?”

“It ought to be to London. There one can live as one chooses.”

“No—not London, dear! I know it well. We should be unhappy there.”

“Why?”

“Can’t you think?”

“Because Arabella is there?”

“That’s the chief reason.”

“But in the country I shall always be uneasy lest there should be some
more of our late experience. And I don’t care to lessen it by
explaining, for one thing, all about the boy’s history. To cut him off
from his past I have determined to keep silence. I am sickened of
ecclesiastical work now; and I shouldn’t like to accept it, if offered
me!”

“You ought to have learnt classic. Gothic is barbaric art, after all.
Pugin was wrong, and Wren was right. Remember the interior of
Christminster Cathedral—almost the first place in which we looked in
each other’s faces. Under the picturesqueness of those Norman details
one can see the grotesque childishness of uncouth people trying to
imitate the vanished Roman forms, remembered by dim tradition only.”

“Yes—you have half-converted me to that view by what you have said
before. But one can work, and despise what one does. I must do
something, if not church-gothic.”

“I wish we could both follow an occupation in which personal
circumstances don’t count,” she said, smiling up wistfully. “I am as
disqualified for teaching as you are for ecclesiastical art. You must
fall back upon railway stations, bridges, theatres, music-halls,
hotels—everything that has no connection with conduct.”

“I am not skilled in those… I ought to take to bread-baking. I grew up
in the baking business with aunt, you know. But even a baker must be
conventional, to get customers.”

“Unless he keeps a cake and gingerbread stall at markets and fairs,
where people are gloriously indifferent to everything except the
quality of the goods.”

Their thoughts were diverted by the voice of the auctioneer: “Now this
antique oak settle—a unique example of old English furniture, worthy
the attention of all collectors!”

“That was my great-grandfather’s,” said Jude. “I wish we could have
kept the poor old thing!”

One by one the articles went, and the afternoon passed away. Jude and
the other two were getting tired and hungry, but after the conversation
they had heard they were shy of going out while the purchasers were in
their line of retreat. However, the later lots drew on, and it became
necessary to emerge into the rain soon, to take on Sue’s things to
their temporary lodging.

“Now the next lot: two pairs of pigeons, all alive and plump—a nice pie
for somebody for next Sunday’s dinner!”

The impending sale of these birds had been the most trying suspense of
the whole afternoon. They were Sue’s pets, and when it was found that
they could not possibly be kept, more sadness was caused than by
parting from all the furniture. Sue tried to think away her tears as
she heard the trifling sum that her dears were deemed to be worth
advanced by small stages to the price at which they were finally
knocked down. The purchaser was a neighbouring poulterer, and they were
unquestionably doomed to die before the next market day.

Noting her dissembled distress Jude kissed her, and said it was time to
go and see if the lodgings were ready. He would go on with the boy, and
fetch her soon.

When she was left alone she waited patiently, but Jude did not come
back. At last she started, the coast being clear, and on passing the
poulterer’s shop, not far off, she saw her pigeons in a hamper by the
door. An emotion at sight of them, assisted by the growing dusk of
evening, caused her to act on impulse, and first looking around her
quickly, she pulled out the peg which fastened down the cover, and went
on. The cover was lifted from within, and the pigeons flew away with a
clatter that brought the chagrined poulterer cursing and swearing to
the door.

Sue reached the lodging trembling, and found Jude and the boy making it
comfortable for her. “Do the buyers pay before they bring away the
things?” she asked breathlessly.

“Yes, I think. Why?”

“Because, then, I’ve done such a wicked thing!” And she explained, in
bitter contrition.

“I shall have to pay the poulterer for them, if he doesn’t catch them,”
said Jude. “But never mind. Don’t fret about it, dear.”

“It was so foolish of me! Oh why should Nature’s law be mutual
butchery!”

“Is it so, Mother?” asked the boy intently.

“Yes!” said Sue vehemently.

“Well, they must take their chance, now, poor things,” said Jude. “As
soon as the sale-account is wound up, and our bills paid, we go.”

“Where do we go to?” asked Time, in suspense.

“We must sail under sealed orders, that nobody may trace us… We mustn’t
go to Alfredston, or to Melchester, or to Shaston, or to Christminster.
Apart from those we may go anywhere.”

“Why mustn’t we go there, Father?”

“Because of a cloud that has gathered over us; though ‘we have wronged
no man, corrupted no man, defrauded no man!’ Though perhaps we have
‘done that which was right in our own eyes.’”