Jude the Obscure

rom that week Jude Fawley and Sue walked no more in the town of
Aldbrickham.

Whither they had gone nobody knew, chiefly because nobody cared to
know. Any one sufficiently curious to trace the steps of such an
obscure pair might have discovered without great trouble that they had
taken advantage of his adaptive craftsmanship to enter on a shifting,
almost nomadic, life, which was not without its pleasantness for a
time.

Wherever Jude heard of free-stone work to be done, thither he went,
choosing by preference places remote from his old haunts and Sue’s. He
laboured at a job, long or briefly, till it was finished; and then
moved on.

Two whole years and a half passed thus. Sometimes he might have been
found shaping the mullions of a country mansion, sometimes setting the
parapet of a town-hall, sometimes ashlaring an hotel at Sandbourne,
sometimes a museum at Casterbridge, sometimes as far down as Exonbury,
sometimes at Stoke-Barehills. Later still he was at Kennetbridge, a
thriving town not more than a dozen miles south of Marygreen, this
being his nearest approach to the village where he was known; for he
had a sensitive dread of being questioned as to his life and fortunes
by those who had been acquainted with him during his ardent young
manhood of study and promise, and his brief and unhappy married life at
that time.

At some of these places he would be detained for months, at others only
a few weeks. His curious and sudden antipathy to ecclesiastical work,
both episcopal and noncomformist, which had risen in him when suffering
under a smarting sense of misconception, remained with him in cold
blood, less from any fear of renewed censure than from an
ultra-conscientiousness which would not allow him to seek a living out
of those who would disapprove of his ways; also, too, from a sense of
inconsistency between his former dogmas and his present practice,
hardly a shred of the beliefs with which he had first gone up to
Christminster now remaining with him. He was mentally approaching the
position which Sue had occupied when he first met her.

On a Saturday evening in May, nearly three years after Arabella’s
recognition of Sue and himself at the agricultural show, some of those
who there encountered each other met again.

It was the spring fair at Kennetbridge, and, though this ancient
trade-meeting had much dwindled from its dimensions of former times,
the long straight street of the borough presented a lively scene about
midday. At this hour a light trap, among other vehicles, was driven
into the town by the north road, and up to the door of a temperance
inn. There alighted two women, one the driver, an ordinary country
person, the other a finely built figure in the deep mourning of a
widow. Her sombre suit, of pronounced cut, caused her to appear a
little out of place in the medley and bustle of a provincial fair.

“I will just find out where it is, Anny,” said the widow-lady to her
companion, when the horse and cart had been taken by a man who came
forward: “and then I’ll come back, and meet you here; and we’ll go in
and have something to eat and drink. I begin to feel quite a sinking.”

“With all my heart,” said the other. “Though I would sooner have put up
at the Chequers or The Jack. You can’t get much at these temperance
houses.”

“Now, don’t you give way to gluttonous desires, my child,” said the
woman in weeds reprovingly. “This is the proper place. Very well: we’ll
meet in half an hour, unless you come with me to find out where the
site of the new chapel is?”

“I don’t care to. You can tell me.”

The companions then went their several ways, the one in crape walking
firmly along with a mien of disconnection from her miscellaneous
surroundings. Making inquiries she came to a hoarding, within which
were excavations denoting the foundations of a building; and on the
boards without one or two large posters announcing that the
foundation-stone of the chapel about to be erected would be laid that
afternoon at three o’clock by a London preacher of great popularity
among his body.

Having ascertained thus much the immensely weeded widow retraced her
steps, and gave herself leisure to observe the movements of the fair.
By and by her attention was arrested by a little stall of cakes and
ginger-breads, standing between the more pretentious erections of
trestles and canvas. It was covered with an immaculate cloth, and
tended by a young woman apparently unused to the business, she being
accompanied by a boy with an octogenarian face, who assisted her.

“Upon my—senses!” murmured the widow to herself. “His wife Sue—if she
is so!” She drew nearer to the stall. “How do you do, Mrs. Fawley?” she
said blandly.

Sue changed colour and recognized Arabella through the crape veil.

“How are you, Mrs. Cartlett?” she said stiffly. And then perceiving
Arabella’s garb her voice grew sympathetic in spite of herself.
“What?—you have lost—”

“My poor husband. Yes. He died suddenly, six weeks ago, leaving me none
too well off, though he was a kind husband to me. But whatever profit
there is in public-house keeping goes to them that brew the liquors,
and not to them that retail ’em… And you, my little old man! You don’t
know me, I expect?”

“Yes, I do. You be the woman I thought wer my mother for a bit, till I
found you wasn’t,” replied Father Time, who had learned to use the
Wessex tongue quite naturally by now.

“All right. Never mind. I am a friend.”

“Juey,” said Sue suddenly, “go down to the station platform with this
tray—there’s another train coming in, I think.”

When he was gone Arabella continued: “He’ll never be a beauty, will he,
poor chap! Does he know I am his mother really?”

“No. He thinks there is some mystery about his parentage—that’s all.
Jude is going to tell him when he is a little older.”

“But how do you come to be doing this? I am surprised.”

“It is only a temporary occupation—a fancy of ours while we are in a
difficulty.”

“Then you are living with him still?”

“Yes.”

“Married?”

“Of course.”

“Any children?”

“Two.”

“And another coming soon, I see.”

Sue writhed under the hard and direct questioning, and her tender
little mouth began to quiver.

“Lord—I mean goodness gracious—what is there to cry about? Some folks
would be proud enough!”

“It is not that I am ashamed—not as you think! But it seems such a
terribly tragic thing to bring beings into the world—so
presumptuous—that I question my right to do it sometimes!”

“Take it easy, my dear… But you don’t tell me why you do such a thing
as this? Jude used to be a proud sort of chap—above any business
almost, leave alone keeping a standing.”

“Perhaps my husband has altered a little since then. I am sure he is
not proud now!” And Sue’s lips quivered again. “I am doing this because
he caught a chill early in the year while putting up some stonework of
a music-hall, at Quartershot, which he had to do in the rain, the work
having to be executed by a fixed day. He is better than he was; but it
has been a long, weary time! We have had an old widow friend with us to
help us through it; but she’s leaving soon.”

“Well, I am respectable too, thank God, and of a serious way of
thinking since my loss. Why did you choose to sell gingerbreads?”

“That’s a pure accident. He was brought up to the baking business, and
it occurred to him to try his hand at these, which he can make without
coming out of doors. We call them Christminster cakes. They are a great
success.”

“I never saw any like ’em. Why, they are windows and towers, and
pinnacles! And upon my word they are very nice.” She had helped
herself, and was unceremoniously munching one of the cakes.

“Yes. They are reminiscences of the Christminster Colleges. Traceried
windows, and cloisters, you see. It was a whim of his to do them in
pastry.”

“Still harping on Christminster—even in his cakes!” laughed Arabella.
“Just like Jude. A ruling passion. What a queer fellow he is, and
always will be!”

Sue sighed, and she looked her distress at hearing him criticized.

“Don’t you think he is? Come now; you do, though you are so fond of
him!”

“Of course Christminster is a sort of fixed vision with him, which I
suppose he’ll never be cured of believing in. He still thinks it a
great centre of high and fearless thought, instead of what it is, a
nest of commonplace schoolmasters whose characteristic is timid
obsequiousness to tradition.”

Arabella was quizzing Sue with more regard of how she was speaking than
of what she was saying. “How odd to hear a woman selling cakes talk
like that!” she said. “Why don’t you go back to school-keeping?”

She shook her head. “They won’t have me.”

“Because of the divorce, I suppose?”

“That and other things. And there is no reason to wish it. We gave up
all ambition, and were never so happy in our lives till his illness
came.”

“Where are you living?”

“I don’t care to say.”

“Here in Kennetbridge?”

Sue’s manner showed Arabella that her random guess was right.

“Here comes the boy back again,” continued Arabella. “My boy and
Jude’s!”

Sue’s eyes darted a spark. “You needn’t throw that in my face!” she
cried.

“Very well—though I half-feel as if I should like to have him with me!
… But Lord, I don’t want to take him from ’ee—ever I should sin to
speak so profane—though I should think you must have enough of your
own! He’s in very good hands, that I know; and I am not the woman to
find fault with what the Lord has ordained. I’ve reached a more
resigned frame of mind.”

“Indeed! I wish I had been able to do so.”

“You should try,” replied the widow, from the serene heights of a soul
conscious not only of spiritual but of social superiority. “I make no
boast of my awakening, but I’m not what I was. After Cartlett’s death I
was passing the chapel in the street next ours, and went into it for
shelter from a shower of rain. I felt a need of some sort of support
under my loss, and, as ’twas righter than gin, I took to going there
regular, and found it a great comfort. But I’ve left London now, you
know, and at present I am living at Alfredston, with my friend Anny, to
be near my own old country. I’m not come here to the fair to-day.
There’s to be the foundation-stone of a new chapel laid this afternoon
by a popular London preacher, and I drove over with Anny. Now I must go
back to meet her.”

Then Arabella wished Sue good-bye, and went on.