Jude the Obscure

ichaelmas came and passed, and Jude and his wife, who had lived but a
short time in her father’s house after their remarriage, were in
lodgings on the top floor of a dwelling nearer to the centre of the
city.

He had done a few days’ work during the two or three months since the
event, but his health had been indifferent, and it was now precarious.
He was sitting in an arm-chair before the fire, and coughed a good
deal.

“I’ve got a bargain for my trouble in marrying thee over again!”
Arabella was saying to him. “I shall have to keep ’ee entirely—that’s
what ’twill come to! I shall have to make black-pot and sausages, and
hawk ’em about the street, all to support an invalid husband I’d no
business to be saddled with at all. Why didn’t you keep your health,
deceiving one like this? You were well enough when the wedding was!”

“Ah, yes!” said he, laughing acridly. “I have been thinking of my
foolish feeling about the pig you and I killed during our first
marriage. I feel now that the greatest mercy that could be vouchsafed
to me would be that something should serve me as I served that animal.”

This was the sort of discourse that went on between them every day now.
The landlord of the lodging, who had heard that they were a queer
couple, had doubted if they were married at all, especially as he had
seen Arabella kiss Jude one evening when she had taken a little
cordial; and he was about to give them notice to quit, till by chance
overhearing her one night haranguing Jude in rattling terms, and
ultimately flinging a shoe at his head, he recognized the note of
genuine wedlock; and concluding that they must be respectable, said no
more.

Jude did not get any better, and one day he requested Arabella, with
considerable hesitation, to execute a commission for him. She asked him
indifferently what it was.

“To write to Sue.”

“What in the name—do you want me to write to her for?”

“To ask how she is, and if she’ll come to see me, because I’m ill, and
should like to see her—once again.”

“It is like you to insult a lawful wife by asking such a thing!”

“It is just in order not to insult you that I ask you to do it. You
know I love Sue. I don’t wish to mince the matter—there stands the
fact: I love her. I could find a dozen ways of sending a letter to her
without your knowledge. But I wish to be quite above-board with you,
and with her husband. A message through you asking her to come is at
least free from any odour of intrigue. If she retains any of her old
nature at all, she’ll come.”

“You’ve no respect for marriage whatever, or its rights and duties!”

“What does it matter what my opinions are—a wretch like me! Can it
matter to anybody in the world who comes to see me for half an
hour—here with one foot in the grave! … Come, please write, Arabella!”
he pleaded. “Repay my candour by a little generosity!”

“I should think not!”

“Not just once?—Oh do!” He felt that his physical weakness had taken
away all his dignity.

“What do you want her to know how you are for? She don’t want to see
’ee. She’s the rat that forsook the sinking ship!”

“Don’t, don’t!”

“And I stuck to un—the more fool I! Have that strumpet in the house
indeed!”

Almost as soon as the words were spoken Jude sprang from the chair, and
before Arabella knew where she was he had her on her back upon a little
couch which stood there, he kneeling above her.

“Say another word of that sort,” he whispered, “and I’ll kill you—here
and now! I’ve everything to gain by it—my own death not being the least
part. So don’t think there’s no meaning in what I say!”

“What do you want me to do?” gasped Arabella.

“Promise never to speak of her.”

“Very well. I do.”

“I take your word,” he said scornfully as he loosened her. “But what it
is worth I can’t say.”

“You couldn’t kill the pig, but you could kill me!”

“Ah—there you have me! No—I couldn’t kill you—even in a passion. Taunt
away!”

He then began coughing very much, and she estimated his life with an
appraiser’s eye as he sank back ghastly pale. “I’ll send for her,”
Arabella murmured, “if you’ll agree to my being in the room with you
all the time she’s here.”

The softer side of his nature, the desire to see Sue, made him unable
to resist the offer even now, provoked as he had been; and he replied
breathlessly: “Yes, I agree. Only send for her!”

In the evening he inquired if she had written.

“Yes,” she said; “I wrote a note telling her you were ill, and asking
her to come to-morrow or the day after. I haven’t posted it yet.”

The next day Jude wondered if she really did post it, but would not ask
her; and foolish Hope, that lives on a drop and a crumb, made him
restless with expectation. He knew the times of the possible trains,
and listened on each occasion for sounds of her.

She did not come; but Jude would not address Arabella again thereon. He
hoped and expected all the next day; but no Sue appeared; neither was
there any note of reply. Then Jude decided in the privacy of his mind
that Arabella had never posted hers, although she had written it. There
was something in her manner which told it. His physical weakness was
such that he shed tears at the disappointment when she was not there to
see. His suspicions were, in fact, well founded. Arabella, like some
other nurses, thought that your duty towards your invalid was to pacify
him by any means short of really acting upon his fancies.

He never said another word to her about his wish or his conjecture. A
silent, undiscerned resolve grew up in him, which gave him, if not
strength, stability and calm. One midday when, after an absence of two
hours, she came into the room, she beheld the chair empty.

Down she flopped on the bed, and sitting, meditated. “Now where the
devil is my man gone to!” she said.

A driving rain from the north-east had been falling with more or less
intermission all the morning, and looking from the window at the
dripping spouts it seemed impossible to believe that any sick man would
have ventured out to almost certain death. Yet a conviction possessed
Arabella that he had gone out, and it became a certainty when she had
searched the house. “If he’s such a fool, let him be!” she said. “I can
do no more.”

Jude was at that moment in a railway train that was drawing near to
Alfredston, oddly swathed, pale as a monumental figure in alabaster,
and much stared at by other passengers. An hour later his thin form, in
the long great-coat and blanket he had come with, but without an
umbrella, could have been seen walking along the five-mile road to
Marygreen. On his face showed the determined purpose that alone
sustained him, but to which has weakness afforded a sorry foundation.
By the up-hill walk he was quite blown, but he pressed on; and at
half-past three o’clock stood by the familiar well at Marygreen. The
rain was keeping everybody indoors; Jude crossed the green to the
church without observation, and found the building open. Here he stood,
looking forth at the school, whence he could hear the usual sing-song
tones of the little voices that had not learnt Creation’s groan.

He waited till a small boy came from the school—one evidently allowed
out before hours for some reason or other. Jude held up his hand, and
the child came.

“Please call at the schoolhouse and ask Mrs. Phillotson if she will be
kind enough to come to the church for a few minutes.”

The child departed, and Jude heard him knock at the door of the
dwelling. He himself went further into the church. Everything was new,
except a few pieces of carving preserved from the wrecked old fabric,
now fixed against the new walls. He stood by these: they seemed akin to
the perished people of that place who were his ancestors and Sue’s.

A light footstep, which might have been accounted no more than an added
drip to the rainfall, sounded in the porch, and he looked round.

“Oh—I didn’t think it was you! I didn’t—Oh, Jude!” A hysterical catch
in her breath ended in a succession of them. He advanced, but she
quickly recovered and went back.

“Don’t go—don’t go!” he implored. “This is my last time! I thought it
would be less intrusive than to enter your house. And I shall never
come again. Don’t then be unmerciful. Sue, Sue! We are acting by the
letter; and ‘the letter killeth’!”

“I’ll stay—I won’t be unkind!” she said, her mouth quivering and her
tears flowing as she allowed him to come closer. “But why did you come,
and do this wrong thing, after doing such a right thing as you have
done?”

“What right thing?”

“Marrying Arabella again. It was in the Alfredston paper. She has never
been other than yours, Jude—in a proper sense. And therefore you did so
well—Oh so well!—in recognizing it—and taking her to you again.”

“God above—and is that all I’ve come to hear? If there is anything more
degrading, immoral, unnatural, than another in my life, it is this
meretricious contract with Arabella which has been called doing the
right thing! And you too—you call yourself Phillotson’s wife! His
wife! You are mine.”

“Don’t make me rush away from you—I can’t bear much! But on this point
I am decided.”

“I cannot understand how you did it—how you think it—I cannot!”

“Never mind that. He is a kind husband to me—And I—I’ve wrestled and
struggled, and fasted, and prayed. I have nearly brought my body into
complete subjection. And you mustn’t—will you—wake—”

“Oh you darling little fool; where is your reason? You seem to have
suffered the loss of your faculties! I would argue with you if I didn’t
know that a woman in your state of feeling is quite beyond all appeals
to her brains. Or is it that you are humbugging yourself, as so many
women do about these things; and don’t actually believe what you
pretend to, and only are indulging in the luxury of the emotion raised
by an affected belief?”

“Luxury! How can you be so cruel!”

“You dear, sad, soft, most melancholy wreck of a promising human
intellect that it has ever been my lot to behold! Where is your scorn
of convention gone? I would have died game!”

“You crush, almost insult me, Jude! Go away from me!” She turned off
quickly.

“I will. I would never come to see you again, even if I had the
strength to come, which I shall not have any more. Sue, Sue, you are
not worth a man’s love!”

Her bosom began to go up and down. “I can’t endure you to say that!”
she burst out, and her eye resting on him a moment, she turned back
impulsively. “Don’t, don’t scorn me! Kiss me, oh kiss me lots of times,
and say I am not a coward and a contemptible humbug—I can’t bear it!”
She rushed up to him and, with her mouth on his, continued: “I must
tell you—oh I must—my darling Love! It has been—only a church
marriage—an apparent marriage I mean! He suggested it at the very
first!”

“How?”

“I mean it is a nominal marriage only. It hasn’t been more than that at
all since I came back to him!”

“Sue!” he said. Pressing her to him in his arms, he bruised her lips
with kisses. “If misery can know happiness, I have a moment’s happiness
now! Now, in the name of all you hold holy, tell me the truth, and no
lie. You do love me still?”

“I do! You know it too well! … But I mustn’t do this! I mustn’t kiss
you back as I would!”

“But do!”

“And yet you are so dear!—and you look so ill—”

“And so do you! There’s one more, in memory of our dead little
children—yours and mine!”

The words struck her like a blow, and she bent her head. “I mustn’t—I
can’t go on with this!” she gasped presently. “But there, there,
darling; I give you back your kisses; I do, I do! … And now I’ll hate
myself for ever for my sin!”

“No—let me make my last appeal. Listen to this! We’ve both remarried
out of our senses. I was made drunk to do it. You were the same. I was
gin-drunk; you were creed-drunk. Either form of intoxication takes away
the nobler vision… Let us then shake off our mistakes, and run away
together!”

“No; again no! … Why do you tempt me so far, Jude! It is too merciless!
… But I’ve got over myself now. Don’t follow me—don’t look at me. Leave
me, for pity’s sake!”

She ran up the church to the east end, and Jude did as she requested.
He did not turn his head, but took up his blanket, which she had not
seen, and went straight out. As he passed the end of the church she
heard his coughs mingling with the rain on the windows, and in a last
instinct of human affection, even now unsubdued by her fetters, she
sprang up as if to go and succour him. But she knelt down again, and
stopped her ears with her hands till all possible sound of him had
passed away.

He was by this time at the corner of the green, from which the path ran
across the fields in which he had scared rooks as a boy. He turned and
looked back, once, at the building which still contained Sue; and then
went on, knowing that his eyes would light on that scene no more.

There are cold spots up and down Wessex in autumn and winter weather;
but the coldest of all when a north or east wind is blowing is the
crest of the down by the Brown House, where the road to Alfredston
crosses the old Ridgeway. Here the first winter sleets and snows fall
and lie, and here the spring frost lingers last unthawed. Here in the
teeth of the north-east wind and rain Jude now pursued his way, wet
through, the necessary slowness of his walk from lack of his former
strength being insufficent to maintain his heat. He came to the
milestone, and, raining as it was, spread his blanket and lay down
there to rest. Before moving on he went and felt at the back of the
stone for his own carving. It was still there; but nearly obliterated
by moss. He passed the spot where the gibbet of his ancestor and Sue’s
had stood, and descended the hill.

It was dark when he reached Alfredston, where he had a cup of tea, the
deadly chill that began to creep into his bones being too much for him
to endure fasting. To get home he had to travel by a steam tram-car,
and two branches of railway, with much waiting at a junction. He did
not reach Christminster till ten o’clock.